Many children with ADHD are expected to organize themselves and complete homework tasks when their brains are not developmentally ready to do those things yet. Children without ADHD often have stronger organizational and executive functioning skills, which allows them to be more successful and independent with homework at an earlier age.

Children with ADHD are often very bright. The challenge is not intellect. The challenge is having the executive functioning skills needed to organize, start, and complete tasks like homework.

I’m Jennifer Davis, an occupational therapist and owner of Joy & Laughter Developmental Therapy. Today, I want to talk about executive functioning skills and what your child needs before they can be successful with getting their homework done.

What Are Executive Functioning Skills?

Executive functioning skills are the mental processes that help your child plan, organize, remember information, manage emotions, and stay focused long enough to complete a task. These skills act like the brain’s management system, allowing your child to start tasks, follow steps, stay on track, and finish what they begin.

There are several executive functioning skills that are critical for your child to successfully organize themselves and complete homework. When your child has difficulty with any of these skills, organizing and completing homework can become very challenging. These skills include:

1. Response Inhibition to Stay on Task

Response inhibition is the ability to withhold yourself from doing something that is fun and exciting.

If your child is sitting there trying to do their homework and they see something really exciting like a favorite toy, they need to be able to inhibit themselves from getting up and going to play with that favorite toy. Because, while it may be really fun to go play, it does impede their ability to do their homework.

In order to be successful with homework, they need to gain the skills for response inhibition so that they don’t go do the things that aren’t important in that moment.

2. Working Memory to Follow Instructions

Working memory is the ability to gather information for later use. For example, when a teacher says, “Pull out your math book, open to page 35, and complete problems seven through ten,” your child needs to remember each step in order to complete the task.

If your child is able to remember each of those tasks, that allows them to then be successful in the activity that the teacher has given them. If they’re not able to hold on to each piece of that information due to poor working memory skills, they’re not going to be successful with the task.

They might instead pull out their math book, get distracted by an interesting picture on page seven, and never get to page 35 like the teacher asked them to do.

3. Emotional Regulation to Manage Frustration

Emotional regulation is another important task when it comes to success with academics and homework. Sometimes the homework assigned to a child can be challenging and frustrating. When those emotions build up and a child is not able to regulate those emotions to persist on the task, it becomes almost impossible to do the work.

We all experience a wide variety of emotions, and every emotion is a good emotion. They’re just not always the right emotion at that time. When a child is feeling exhilaration and excitement, that is great when you’re out on the playground playing with friends—but it might be a bit of a challenge when you’re running around the room trying to do your math homework.

A child’s ability to regulate their emotions and be in the right emotional state for the activity is an important piece of success.

When Motivation Isn’t the Problem

When a child has weak executive functioning skills like the ones I described above, it’s often going to have an impact on their homework or their classwork.

A child may really want to do the assignment. They’re really interested in it even. Maybe they’ve been promised an exciting reward later for doing it. The motivation is there, but when they don’t have the underlying executive functioning skills, they’re not able to be successful.

Our children often want to do well, they simply struggle with those skills. Our job as their caregivers, therapists, and parents, is to help build on those skills so that they are able to be successful in the areas that they want to be successful in.

Why Traditional Organization Strategies Don’t Always Work

For some children, planners, organizational charts, and verbal reminders are enough for them to do the activities. For our children with ADHD who still are struggling with the executive functioning deficits associated with this condition, those typical organizational strategies may not work.

Our children may need additional scaffolding and support for them to be successful. They may need help: in

  • Finding motivation and interest in the activities
  • Inhibiting them from playing with something that’s more fun in the moment
  • Finding the importance of why they’re doing those activities

 

When traditional organizational systems don’t work for your child, it’s important to look at the underlying executive functioning skills and identify if there’s something that can be supported.

How Occupational Therapists Help Build Executive Functioning Skills

In our clinic, we work with both the child and the parent in understanding which of the key executive functioning skills are necessary for a child to be successful in any given activity. We then work on identifying which of those skills may still be weak and developing so that we’re able to strengthen those skills and improve the child’s ability.

We help parents recognize that our children are trying the best they can with the skills they have available, and how they can support their child in developing those skills so they can be successful and independent in tasks in the future. Just because a child is not independent now, and needs additional structure and support now, doesn’t mean that they can’t become independent with additional practice and opportunity.

Get Support for Your Child from JLD Therapy

If you are having a hard time with your child’s success with their homework and you’re not sure if traditional systems are what they need or if there may be an underlying challenge that you’re unaware of, reach out to us.

We’d be happy to help take a look, identify any challenges that your child may be experiencing, and come up with an individualized treatment plan to address those challenges so that your child can be supported in their academic and homework journey.