Reply to What do you do if you sense your teen is treading toward loser-ville?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Could parents struggling to parent an older child with Executive functioning issues share their stories?[/quote]

I have two boys who struggle with executive functioning issues.  Both have ADHD and one also has anxiety.  Both receive medication, though their medication protocols are very different.  Both of my boys are doing well.  But, it's been years of working on skills.  For example, by third grade, they have been responsible to manage their own homework and I let them fail and helped them develop a  plan to fix it after they did.  We worked on backpack management for two years before middle school.  IME, in ES, teachers and aides were all too willing to do it for them, but in MS, you're on your own, so it was a struggle to get support for this.  It took more than six months to learn to get up to an alarm clock.  When they were little, I used to develop a lot of systems for them to remember to do things.  But by MS, I turned it over to them to develop their own systems.

In addition to working with them, I found that we had to adjust our expectations.  Here, everyone believes their kid can and should go to college.  We all start saving practically from birth.  But, one of mine is truly not capable due to learning issues.  It wasn't so hard for our son because he knew his limits.  Anyway, we explored non college options and he is currently in a technical program and is not college bound.

Finally, we started young at getting our boys into taking care of the house and also working.  Before being old enough to work, they had regular volunteer work and did things like dog walking, gathering mail for vacationing neighbors, etc.  It's not that I cared so much to have them working.  But, in order to be successful, they needed more support and guidance than other kids their age so I had to start them early.

Biggest thing in my parenting is that I always feel like I have a goal for my boys.  I feel like I have to recognize and accept where they are having difficulties so that I can keep them moving along so they become successful adults.  I do enjoy my kids tremendously, but I feel like parenting has never been easy because of their difficulties - like I could never relax and believe that between them and the school, they would be ok.  [/quote]

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