The beginning of the school year creates a new round of demands on a high school student’s time management and organizational skills. Remembering their new class schedule, keeping up with homework assignments (and turning them in), balancing the demands of schoolwork and extracurricular activities, and getting to a part-time job on time can create a stressful wake-up call after a relaxing summer.
Wouldn’t it be great if schools taught time management skills? Turns out that simply giving a student a weekly planner isn’t enough. Consequently, parents often play a huge role in keeping their teens caught up and on schedule. This supervision can cause tension between parents and teens, however. It can also suppress the adolescent’s ability to learn self-management skills if parents lack effective ways to provide this guidance without encouraging choice-making. While it can be easier to “just get it done,” teens will benefit in the long run from parenting that promotes autonomy and executive functioning skills.
Let’s keep some key developmental issues in mind before exploring techniques parents might use. It is normal (and appropriate) for teenagers to desire greater control over their lives as they get older. To test this, try looking at a teen’s phone without their permission. At the same time, many adolescents lack accurate self-awareness about their challenges and resist “owning” the reasons why parents feel a need to provide such oversight. When I teach study skills or coach teens at CRG, it always feels like an important break-through when the client can calmly acknowledge that their parents have had good reasons to provide this supervision while also wanting to let go and see their son or daughter become more independent. In addition to these developmental realities, the post-COVID generation of young people experience heightened anxiety and depression that are exacerbated by high levels of screen time. This newer cultural trend further delays teens’ development of emotional and behavioral self-regulation skills.
We see many children and adolescents (and adults) with ADHD at CRG. ADHD is the correct term for people with a range of subtypes of this diagnosis, including those “without the H.” All subtypes (Inattentive, Hyperactive/Impulsive, Combined, and NOS) are characterized by impaired executive functioning skills, often in the presence of average to high levels of intelligence. Executive functioning (EF) skills refer to the brain’s ability to keep ourselves organized and on track. These skills are carried out in our frontal lobes and help us self-regulate our behaviors and emotions. They require normal levels of neurochemicals (dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine) to be produced continuously so the brain can focus on the right things (and ignore the wrong things), break complex goals into smaller steps, carry out those steps over time, monitor progress and re-direct when necessary, wait before acting while holding a thought, look back to recall previous strategies that may work now and look ahead to generate motivation by envisioning successful outcomes. We naturally assume that reasonably intelligent people possess effective executive functioning skills. It turns out that people with ADHD underproduce these neurotransmitters and often struggle with self-regulation.
Consequently, when they forget, interrupt, procrastinate, perseverate on or abandon something they have started, “lack motivation,” or get overwhelmed by a big goal that needs to be broken down into manageable chunks, it is easy to feel judgmental about their laziness, rudeness, or lack of effort.
I encourage teens and families to learn more about the relationship between ADHD and EF challenges to demystify these issues and inform better approaches. Jessica McCabe’s YouTube channel, “How to ADHD,” is a wonderful place to start.
So, if your teen has ADHD, all the organizational and time management challenges that most teens experience are frequently more extensive and – if poorly understood – more likely to trigger irritation, arguments, and power struggles within families. ADHD coaches use a variety of techniques that can help people with ADHD overcome these EF challenges in calm, productive ways. Coaches tend to ask open-ended questions and then listen with curiosity. They think that teens and other clients will often come up with their own best solutions when prompted to pause and consider a novel inquiry.
Notice that this approach is the opposite of giving answers or telling teens what to do. It turns out that simply showing a teenager how WE tackled similar tasks in high school or college can backfire, even when well-intended. Teens like to be in charge and, because of their emerging maturity, often believe a parent couldn’t possibly understand their frustrations or needs (cue the eye rolls). Coaching approaches can be adapted by parents, as many of my clients’ parents have found after a session or two to learn and practice these techniques with buy-in from their teens. Here are two approaches you might try at home.
The Stoplight Strategy: This simple conversation tool allows parents to offer suggestions while also giving teenagers choices over what they do with those ideas. To use this strategy, explain to your teenager that you want to honor their independence by introducing a new way to check in when it appears they need help to get started. Describe the task or decision they seem stuck on (after listening to them describe it in their own words). Then, BRIEFLY (without a rationale for why you are suggesting it or an explanation of why you think it might work), offer your suggestion for how they might get started.
Before they offer their response, though, the teen should tell you in all honesty if your suggestion garners a red light, yellow light, or green light. Red means, they don’t see it working or wouldn’t be comfortable utilizing that suggestion. Be open to and curious about red lights –thank you teen for being honest and ask WHY it’s a red light to better understand their fears, preferences, or boundaries (this can also promote their self-awareness). Yellow means, they see potential in what you suggested but would alter that by doing it THIS way (that activates their own problem solving). Green means they like that idea and will plan to use it.
Use Powerful Questions: Coaches ask brief, open-ended questions to trigger their client’s EF skills. These are not leading questions where the correct answer is implied, nor can they be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.” The coach (parent) is genuinely curious about what the
client (teen) will do with that inquiry. Teenagers are quick to feel trapped when a right answer is implied and will resist just to be in control. Conversely, an open-ended question can trigger their own reflection and problem solving. Here are just a few examples:
· What would your next step look like?
· Have you tackled a similar decision/task before? If so, how did you do that?
· What’s the biggest barrier to moving forward?
· What would success look like here?
These videos are recommended for parents and others who want to learn more.
· ADHD 101 – Why Kids with ADHD Need Different Parenting Strategies
· Helping Kids with ADHD Improve Executive Function Skills
