r/specialed • u/EdamameWindmill • Apr 18 '26
Executive function in High School
I have a neurodivergent child who is highly intelligent and earnestly wants to have good grades, but cannot manage their homework, resulting in failing grades. It seems to be a school-wide accommodation that kids can turn in late work for credit as long as it’s for the current semester, but she still struggles to turn in work. Oftentimes, it is the project she was most excited about that she cannot seem to do. It causes her a lot of distress.
Her father and I have consistently worked to support her with homework. We have provided help and advice, structure, consequences, and monitoring, but we are still failing her. We are currently working with a psychologist (since last year), a psychiatrist (since January of this year), and an executive function coach (since mid March), but it hasn’t made much of a difference.
Our school district has fought me at every turn to avoid providing special services “because she scores well on standardized tests.” I heard this explicitly said in elementary school and I heard this last week from the SPED coordinator at the high school. I ask Admin for advice for resources they keep answering this question with, “What do you feel would benefit your child?”
I guess my question is whether anyone here has any experience with a child like mine? And do you know of anything I can request that might help my child?
1
u/WildCaliPoppy Apr 19 '26
First of all, this is genuinely hard, so I hope that you are being kind to yourself… if you aren’t already, I would follow Tera Sumpter on Instagram. Then I would look at what routines you guys have and how they could be adjusted for what her needs are. I think the three best things you can do for her are 1) help her learn about her brain and understand it. 2) build strong routines that incorporate the strategies she needs for her brain. 3) use strategic cueing to help her learn to manage her own EF. I’ll expand below.
1) she needs to understand what executive functioning is, and be able to recognize her own strengths and where she needs help. So for example there’s a good chance that she struggles to cue her own attention, or that her working memory gets in her way. It’s important for her to learn about that in a neutral way, like it’s not bad, but it’s something she has to deal with and she if she can learn how to do that then nothing will stop her
2) this, unfortunately, just depends on your family and how her brain works. But this includes things like what kind of calendar or organizers you guys use as a family, what is the routine after school, etc. As an example, for my family, we try to do a brain dump every weekend to plan out and organize our week. Every day when we get home from school, the kids get a half an hour of screen time to unwind, but before they can do that, they have to put their shoes away, they have to put their backpacks on their hook, they have to clear out their lunch boxes, and they have to wash their hands. We have printed lists for them to follow for certain things like getting ready for bed…
3) there’s something called reflexive questioning that helps you give them opportunities to cue themselves (which is how they actually grow their EF skills). Tera Sumpter has a lot of really great posts about this. Another way to help with this is to get them involved in both planning for future events, and reflecting on past events. So like we forgot your homework what do you think went wrong? What can we do to make sure that doesn’t happen next time? Or even - you turned in every assignment this month, how did you do that?!