Reply to support for ADHD teen with low motivation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The only way to get him to get internal motivation is to back off and let him handle it himself. Stop “scaffolding” unless it is something with disproportionate importance (like the SAT or high school application or something). My kid manages As and Bs and some Cs with very little interference from me. While I know he is capable of As, he is slowly progressing in his ability to manage his work on his own on a day to day basis. I’m sure if I “scaffolded” him more I could have gotten him up to all As with maybe a B or two, but then he would not have had the chance to figure it out himself [/quote]
Except, ADHDers do not have internal motivation for anything other than their super special interests. [/quote]

You’re confusing ADHD with autism.

Kids with ADHD absolutely have motivation but they’ll never access it if you never let them grow up and insist on seeing them as crippled. More likely people see normal variations of maturation as ADHD. [/quote]

NP. You are incorrect. Many if not most ADHD kids struggle to find motivation for non-preferred tasks. They can hyperfocus on things they like, but they have difficulty motivating themselves to get started on non-preferred tasks and have difficulty sustaining the effort to complete those tasks even once started. [/quote]

Well OP’s kid gets As and Bs so the difficulty is likely not crippling. One key insight of the Self Driven Child is that you have to have some trust that your kid will rise to the occasion- and that the alternative (intensive parental support and direction) will not pay off in the long run because eventually the kid has to be on their own. [/quote]

You're completely missing the point: ADHD is an executive functioning deficit disorder. Simply trusting that your kid will at some point "rise to the occasion" demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what ADHD actually is and how to support it. Self-motivation requires the ability to see into the future and adapt your behavior now in order to achieve a goal down the road. It requires delayed gratification and the ability to tune out distractions and impulses that pull your attention away from the task at hand and the ultimate goal. This requires executive functioning skills. The average kid with ADHD has an executive functioning system that is 30% behind their same-age peers. It's not a matter of them being lazy. Their brains do not function in that way yet. That's why supports are needed. Ideally, the supports help the kids develop executive functioning skills so that they get to a place where they are not dependent on external supports/motivation. But sitting back and trusting the child to figure it out on their own is 100% the wrong way to approach it. [/quote]

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