How much should I be helping… and when do I need to step back?
Because reminding them about the homework, the test, the missing assignment, or the thing they swore they were going to remember can get exhausting.
But simply backing off and expecting them to figure it all out on their own usually isn’t the answer either.
In this episode, I’m sharing what this looks like in real life with my own teen with ADHD and the shift I’ve been making as both an occupational therapist and a parent.
We’re talking about how to support ADHD teens in a way that builds the skills they’ll eventually need to manage school (and life!) more independently without constant reminders, battles, or nagging. We’ll get real about planners too and if ADHD “should” use them.
Plus, I’ll share what I’m doing right now to help him navigate a new school year, and why my goal isn’t to eliminate support, but to be really intentional about how and when I give it.
If you’re worried about how your ADHD teen will eventually manage all of this without you, this episode will give you a different way to think about what you can start doing now.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Unlocking ADHD Workshop:
https://yourkidstable.com/adhd
504 Playbook:
https://yourkidstable.com/504-accomodations-for-adhd/
Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Youtube
Time Stamps
07:00 – When a Common ADHD Strategy Isn’t Working
12:00 – How to Talk So Your ADHD Teen Opens Up
15:00 – Support vs. Independence: Finding the Balance
22:00 – Why ADHD Teens Need Rhythm + Routine
25:00 – Preparing ADHD Teens for More Independence
Transcript
Welcome to the Connected and Capable podcast. You are here with your host, Alisha Grogan, pediatric occupational therapist for more than two decades and mom to three.
In today’s episode, all about empowering teens with ADHD for school success, I’m drawing on both of those experiences.
If you have been here before, you may know that I have a child with ADHD. He’s actually a teenager now, and the way that I think about supporting him as a teen is different than how I supported him when he was younger.
My child did receive a later diagnosis. He was not diagnosed very young. Some kids get an ADHD diagnosis at five years old. He was in later elementary when he got his diagnosis, and I probably wasn’t even sure that it was ADHD, if you’ve heard me talk in some other episodes, until a couple of years before.
We did decide to get him diagnosed primarily for school supports. I could see that while he was managing to do okay in school at that point, he was likely going to need a 504 plan, which, for those of you in the States, is a legal document that supports kids with disabilities so that they are on an even playing field with their peers in a school setting.
We’ll talk a little bit more about a 504 plan, but I wanted to give you a little background on where I’m coming from first as a parent.
Professionally, as an OT, there are lots of things always going through my mind, like nutrition, which we have an episode on here at Connected and Capable as well if you’re interested.
I think about those top ADHD strategies. Some of those we’ve talked about on the podcast and go deeper into in our Unlocking ADHD workshop.
We’ve done those strategies. I have seen success with those strategies. They have helped him grow his executive functioning skills, which are really the source of challenges for ADHD—executive functioning skills like attention, following directions, self-control, and emotional regulation.
I think about those very specific strategies, but there is definitely a shift as he is becoming a teenager.
There’s the obvious shift of preparing him for adulthood and recognizing that his unique brain wiring is likely going to mean that he needs to approach certain circumstances and situations in his life from maybe a different angle or with different supports than some of his peers.
He’s seeing other kids his age growing into adults and how they’re navigating those things, and his journey may look a little different.
But it’s not just that.
For me, it’s really about empowerment and him understanding what works best for his brain. I don’t always phrase it that way, but that is what we’re talking about here. That’s really the root of the empowerment.
So if I asked you right now to name one ADHD strategy for school, what would you name?
At the top of many of your lists, because I think this is such a common suggestion, would be using a planner.
Why is a planner helpful?
It’s a visual reminder. It’s a physical reminder to write things down.
I love planners. I use a planner. They are super helpful in remembering and organizing things, and they are often recommended to students with ADHD to help them track assignments they may have a hard time tracking and remember to do what they need to do.
However, many teens with ADHD are really not interested in using a planner, even if they know it’s going to help them.
Number one, many of their peers aren’t using planners, so they don’t want to be the kid who pulls theirs out to write something down.
And number two, remembering to write in your planner, having your planner where it needs to be, having it accessible, and remembering to check your planner later are all other hurdles as a result of the executive functioning skills that are affected by ADHD.
Those things may make using a planner actually really hard.
At the beginning of the summer, I was thinking about what it was going to look like for my teen with ADHD heading into a new school year. Obviously, I’ve been thinking about that even more this past month.
And I was thinking about a planner.
I thought, “Gosh, I really need to talk to him about using a planner and starting off this school year just to kind of get him on the right foot.”
There’s nothing wrong with that strategy or that approach, but I also had this gut feeling because he has expressed many times that he doesn’t like planners. We’ve tried planners in the past, and he has used them with intermittent success.
It has become obvious that this is something he is not really interested in doing.
So even if it is a helpful strategy, I also want to support his autonomy in this.
The truth is that a planner is a really good strategy. If you haven’t tried a planner, you’ve forgotten about it, or it has been successful for you, please use the planner!
There are so many different types of planners you can use. You can use digital planners. You can use pen-and-paper planners. You can put them in places your kid is likely to see them. It can become embedded as part of their routine.
The takeaway here is not that planners aren’t beneficial. They are, and I teach that in some of my workshops.
However, this is where I think the difference comes in with having a teen and respecting his autonomy, knowing that he doesn’t want to do this.
I brought up the planner, but I already knew he was probably going to push back on it, and I had accepted that.
I decided I wasn’t going to let this be a point of contention, and I started to allow myself to think about other options for helping him keep track of and remember to do his homework or study for a test.
I think this is where the empowerment piece really comes in for me, because it was in the conversation with him about what was going to be helpful.
When I asked him, “Would you like to use a planner?”
He immediately said, “I do not want to use a planner. I do not like using a planner.”
And I said, “Okay. I hear you on that. So what would you like to use instead?”
He just looked at me.
I said, “Do you think it’s a challenge for you to track the assignments you have to do and to remember to do them when you get home?”
He thought for a couple of minutes and said, “Yes, sometimes it is.”
In this moment, what I’m helping to do is develop self-awareness.
This in itself is working on self-awareness, which is one of the most critical and absolutely important executive functioning skills we have.
I’ve talked about it in other episodes. It’s featured very strongly in our executive functioning workshop because it is at the root of pretty much every other executive function.
We have to have awareness that we’re forgetting things. We have to have awareness that we’re not paying attention.
When we exercise this muscle and get our self-awareness muscle stronger, it helps us think of the tools, strategies, and resources we can put in place to help ourselves.
This is already starting to build the foundation for him being able to empower himself, just by asking him, “Do you think this is a challenge in your life?”
Younger kids may struggle to see that something is a challenge, but it’s so important that by the time we are at the teen years, we’re starting to ask these questions to help them reflect on themselves.
Another example of how this may play out in school is when your child gets a grade that isn’t great and you have a conversation with them about what happened before the test.
I ask very specific questions.
“Do you think you prepared for this test?”
You may already know the answer to that question. And sometimes our kids have prepared and just haven’t done well for a variety of reasons.
But often for our kids with ADHD, there is a struggle to remember to study and to hold their attention on something that isn’t enjoyable or giving them dopamine hits. It can be difficult to sustain attention on a topic they may not be interested in.
Studying can be very challenging.
So I want to create that awareness by asking, “How did it feel when you were studying?”
Now we’re just talking about how it felt, and I want them to give voice to that.
Was it challenging? Was it hard? Was it frustrating? Was it boring?
Maybe they’re using other adjectives, but if they’re able to say, “Wow, that was really boring,” or “I was really having a hard time paying attention,” or “I forgot to study until the last minute and I only had a little bit of time to study,” then we’re able to make a plan moving forward—with their input.
That’s the same thing that’s happening in this planner example.
With my son, I’m saying, “Do you want to use a planner?”
“No.”
So my next question is, “Do you think it’s hard for you to track your assignments and tests?”
He thinks about it and says yes.
We’re building self-awareness.
Then the next step is to say, “What would be helpful? What other ideas do you have? What do you think would be helpful?”
Sometimes your teen may have ideas.
If you’ve caught them at the wrong time—which is probably more than half of the time—and they’re not interested in this conversation, they may not be proactively thinking. They may not want to deal with it right then.
Choosing the time for this conversation is equally important.
I love talking to teens in the car when we’re in the car together. Teens also love to talk about things before bed, which is my least favorite time of day because I am a morning person and I’m so tired at night! But I know I have to lean into that at times.
It’s about knowing when it’s a good time to talk to your teen.
Sometimes we just don’t know. We attempt a conversation and have to come back to it later. I would come back to that conversation soon.
Don’t be discouraged if your teen starts putting up walls.
It’s also really important that we’re approaching the conversation with curiosity and kindness.
I think kids with ADHD, at all ages, can have an experience where they feel like they’re always messing up. They’re always missing the mark, letting someone down, or not doing it the right way.
Even if they’re not expressing that, I think it’s important to keep in mind that kids with ADHD hear far more criticism and correction than their neurotypical peers.
We have to keep that in mind because, as parents, we can approach these conversations with frustration. That really will come across in our tone and in the things we say.
If that has been you in the past, it has been me in the past, too. I have messed that up so many times.
I do a reset. We talk about it. I apologize. I talk about how I mess up, too, that I’m working on it, and that I’m committed to doing better.
That’s an opportunity to move forward.
It’s never too late to start that conversation.
I want to encourage you to know that it’s okay if it takes multiple conversations or multiple attempts to start opening that door to communication.
Because again, what we’re really talking about here is empowering teens.
We’re not telling them what to do, but we’re also not leaving them to totally figure it out themselves.
I think there’s a constant tension for us as parents, and certainly as therapists as well, between providing support and fostering independence.
That is the crux of what we’re trying to do, especially when you have a teen with ADHD.
If we lean really hard toward independence and just try to let them figure everything out themselves, we may be setting everyone up for a lot of frustration.
At the same time, if we’re leaning too hard into tons and tons of support and not giving them a chance to practice building these skills, we’re not really helping set them up for the following years as they exit their teens and hopefully do life more independently.
There is a balance here.
Back to our third piece of this empowerment.
After we’ve had this moment of self-awareness and we’ve asked them, “What do you think would help?” they may have some suggestions.
They may not.
You may bring this up a second or third time and they’re like, “You know what? I’ve thought about it, and I really don’t know.”
I do think that often, if we give our teens the chance, they have solutions. Sometimes they haven’t articulated them before, but they’re able to think about it in that moment and share what might be helpful.
So in this instance with the planner, if we’re not doing a planner, what are we doing?
Right now, our strategy is an app that I have on my phone and he has on his phone. It’s basically the online portal for all of his classes.
Truth be told, not every teacher puts every assignment in that portal.
I also don’t want to go through every single assignment every single day and do a verbal check-in at this point and where he is.
But as he starts school, we’re doing a check-in together when he gets home. We’re going through that app and doing a quick verbal check-in on each of the classes he can see in his portal.
We have to be careful because sometimes he wants to go through it really quickly. He’ll say, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I don’t have anything to do.”
So we’re working on making that check-in meaningful, and we’re also working on when it happens.
For him, it’s not the moment he walks in from school. He wants some downtime before he’s processing that question.
At the same time, if we let it get too late, the whole evening can get away from us and then we’re looking at this way too late.
We’re looking at a check-in about 45 minutes to an hour later and having that become part of a rhythm we’re in together right now.
The hope—and the direction we’re headed—is that eventually he’s going to be checking these every day himself, without me.
Right now, it looks like we both have our phones out. We’re both scrolling through his list of classes and saying, “What did you do today? Did you have anything? Is there a test coming up? Did you hear anything in here? Okay, moving on to the next class.”
I often ask him to tell me something small about that class to help as a brain check so he doesn’t just skim past it.
The idea here, and this is part of balancing support and independence, is that I want to provide more structure and support at first and slowly take it away.
It would be very easy for me to say, “He should be able to do this. He should be able to track this. His brother is able to do this.”
But that’s not looking at his particular needs and where he’s going.
What my son is doing at his specific age, even with ADHD, may look different from what your kid with ADHD is doing at the same age.
Because even within ADHD, there are different needs. Some executive functioning skills need more support than others.
It’s important to think about: How do I give this support now to give him a strong foundation and then slowly back off that support?
Another idea we’ve talked about is taking a picture with his phone when he has an assignment.
At the end of class, right before he shuts his computer, maybe he takes a picture of it. Maybe he’s written something down in a notebook and takes a picture of it.
When he gets home, he can open his camera roll and say, “Oh, these are the three things I need to make sure I’m doing.”
Maybe he takes a picture of the board if there’s an announcement there.
It can serve as a little checklist for him throughout the day.
In some schools and at some ages, that’s not going to be an option. Personally, I tend to lean more toward paper and pencil.
But at the same time, I have to be open to what is going to help him and what he is going to embrace and want to do.
If I force him to use this planner, it’s going to create friction in our relationship.
Instead, I want him to feel empowered and learn, “Oh, this really helps me. I can do this mental checklist later. I can make sure I run through the app and have that be part of my routine. I can look at my camera roll later and make sure I know what’s happening.”
Now, I’ve used the word “routine,” and I feel like sometimes that can almost be a four-letter word because it seems like our ADHD kids don’t want routine when, most of the time, it’s the thing they really need.
Their brain naturally pushes against it.
But over and over again, I’ve seen this as an OT for years—in classroom settings, at my sensory camp, and in so many different settings.
When we have a rhythm or routine to our day, it can be really helpful.
Maybe you’re checking the app 45 minutes to an hour after your teen gets home. They’re going to have a little screen time, have a snack, and before they go outside to play, go to work, or whatever comes next, you’re going to check it.
You’re getting into a routine every day.
But I know that if you yourself have some unique wiring, neurodivergence, or ADHD, it may be very hard for you to get into a rhythm or routine. You yourself may not be a rhythm-and-routine person.
If that’s you, routine doesn’t need to mean, “At 3:45, we’re checking this app every single day.”
If routine feels like a four-letter word to you, I want you to focus more on rhythm and helping your ADHD teen develop a rhythm.
Besides all of my professional experience as an OT, gosh, do I see it over and over again with my son.
There is such a natural inclination toward freedom and exploration and not having routine and structure.
But when he does have structure, he seems so much more grounded. He’s so much more responsive and effective in whatever he’s trying to do.
I’ve seen that time and time again.
I see it at the classroom level, too. If he has a teacher who is clear and organized, he does so much better in their classes.
The teachers who are disorganized, aren’t clear, or are sometimes super nice but really laid-back and are the “easy teachers”—those are the classes he struggles in the most.
Even though he loves those classes, understandably so!
Part of our empowerment with teens is helping them find and believe in the rhythms of their life.
That’s part of my empowerment with my teen as well: encouraging him to find these rhythms in his life as a grounding point.
He has lots of different ways he’s doing that.
It has largely come out of a consistent conversation we’ve been having over the last year or two.
Because of his ADHD, he often looks toward different activities in his life and does them in excess because they feel good. They’re a boredom buster. They’re a dopamine hit.
Sometimes those activities are things that are good and healthy for his brain and body, and sometimes they’re not when they’re done in excess—whether that’s screen time, candy, sweets, or food.
Ultimately, as he grows older, those things can become more serious.
There are lots of things out there as our ADHD kids get older that learning how to have self-control around is really important.
We’ve had many little conversations in our day-to-day life that I can see the results and benefits of playing out now.
That conversation is often around:
What things help you feel good AND are good for your mind and body?
Because there are lots of things that feel good but, when done in excess, are not good for our mind and body.
I’ve been working on helping him identify things like, “Gosh, when I work out, I feel really good. When I go for a run, I feel really good. I love that, and it’s good for my mind and body.”
Or, “When I listen to this type of music and not this other type of music, I feel really good, and it feels good for my mind and body.”
This one gets a little gray.
He actually said to me recently that he had been listening to a specific type of music that was very loud and chaotic.
He said, “I love that music.”
Then he said, “You know what? I didn’t listen to it today, and I feel so much calmer. I just feel like I can think clearer.”
I was so proud in that moment because here was self-awareness unfolding again.
We don’t often see it happening, right?
There have been dozens of conversations about this over the last few years.
But this is an executive functioning skill I’m watching get stronger in real time.
It did not happen overnight.
It has happened conversation after conversation.
There are other things he’s doing, too. Some of those other big strategies, like working on retained primitive reflexes, doing movements and exercises, and some of the things the research talks about.
There are other things going on that are supporting him from the bottom up.
But these conversations here and there have empowered him to start recognizing what is beneficial for him.
Because now, as a teen, he has increasingly more decisions to make about what he’s going to do when he’s struggling with boredom, which is a common thing for ADHDers.
Is he going to lean into screens? Is he going to lean into candy?
And please hear me: I am not saying these things are no longer struggles for him.
I’m saying I’m seeing it in process.
If you’re a parent like me listening right now, there is a tremendous benefit to making the time to continue asking our kids:
What things help you feel good AND are good for your mind and body?
They will need the repetition.
They will need that support from us.
They will need us to ask kindly and non-judgmentally so they feel like it’s a safe place to process, start to build that self-awareness, and lean into the supports that help them.
Because if they get home from school feeling really disjointed or dysregulated from everything they’ve had to take in all day, and they’re able to choose activities that help regulate them and are good for their mind and body, that is truly putting them on a beneficial path as they move out of their teen years and into adulthood.
All right, friends, we’re going to wrap up this episode.
I could just keep talking about empowerment. It’s something I think about a lot because I’m living it every single day and watching it unfold in a teen.
I just want you to know that if you’re listening and you’re feeling overwhelmed in any way by your kid’s ADHD, you’re worried about what tomorrow is going to bring, how they’re going to do, or how they’re going to make it, you aren’t alone in that.
There is so much room for us to not always get it right.
There’s room for imperfection because none of us are going to do it perfectly.
None of us.
It’s just about that next step.
I hope you feel encouraged today and have some ideas about how to empower your child around the habits they’re choosing to help themselves get regulated, as well as the strategies and supports they’re using—particularly in school—to help them learn, take the test, do the homework, and do all of the things they need to do.
Because it is very possible.
If you’re looking for more support, we have our Unlocking ADHD Workshop, our bestselling workshop of all time. I love this workshop! It’s 50% off this week, so you can grab the link in the show notes or head to:
yourkidstable.com/adhd
We also have our 504 Playbook. If your child doesn’t have a 504, you live in the United States, they have an ADHD diagnosis, and you want to get supports in place at school, this is a great guide.
My son has a bunch of supports in his 504.
The playbook is 50% off and only $9 this week. It also includes tons of ideas for supports. If your kid is struggling with focus, for example, there are strategies that may be helpful and can potentially go into this legal document to make sure they’re supported at school.
That is their right.
The link to the 504 Playbook is in the show notes as well.
I’m so grateful that you were here with me today, and I will talk to you again soon.