Tolerances…How low can you go? And how quick to go low?

Thinking about tolerances, and reflecting on our past & current state of TSG implementation in our family. As I’ve shared, we have three children, one 16 year-old boy who has been the most challenging displaying oppositional & defiant tendencies. Mom hasn’t been on board with TSG, so it’s just been me (dad) implementing.

I’m also a questioner & think I lean towards being an upholder also. Before TSG, I think I struggled with consistency & follow through, because I would read books & try a lot of different strategies and philosophies, pivoting from one to another. Now I feel like I’ve really begun to incorporate TSG into my daily thinking & it’s becoming more natural for me to speak to the children on a daily basis about the skills etc.

Now that our children are slowly starting to accept & use the 4 skills, I I’ve begun to intentionally work on lowering my tolerances and letting them know I’m doing so. I find myself questioning (no surprise there), what is the right balance between lowering tolerances, versus being flexible? Being that mom‘s number one complaint towards me & what she’d like me to do different, is be more flexible, I also want to minimize friction with her if she interprets my lowering of tolerance as being inflexible if that makes sense? I try to pre-teach a change in standards & consequences before implementing a change, although our oldest usually argues and acts seems afterwards or denies I pre-taught on something.

Also, a lot of what Ive learned about ADHD is that they need predictable plans & minimizing surprises is ideal. Because of this, I’ve tried to minimize changes to past consequences etc but feel this is part of lowering my tolerances on behaviors and choices. I feel like my tendency is overthinking and because of this, I am trying to remain flexible to be able to modify chores and consequences week by week if it seems more or less effective in a given situation. Especially since our oldest is high IQ and strong willed & seems good a poking holes in systems (or finding them).

Would you recommend a certain process or philosophy on lowering tolerances? Is faster better than slower? I have felt that if I did and had our oldest actually earn chores whenever he disagrees inappropriately, he could be going to 24 hours quite often.