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If you ask a teen why their grade is lower than they would like in a particular class, most of the time the answer is missing assignments. Missing assignments can drag a student’s grades down, leading to increased stress and a lack of confidence. Oftentimes, parents feel frustrated when their child is missing a lot of assignments, prompting them to ask, why won’t they just turn them in? There are a lot of different reasons why a child might not be turning in their assignments. This blog post breaks down some of the main reasons why teens with ADHD struggle to turn in their assignments
The most obvious reason why a student might not be turning in their assignments is that the assignments aren’t done. Many individuals with ADHD struggle with Working Memory, meaning that teens with ADHD often genuinely forget about doing their homework assignments. If they get distracted while completing the assignment or forget to work on it altogether, they’ll often find themselves in class the next day frustrated that they don’t have a complete assignment to turn in.
One of the best ways to help a student who is struggling to remember to complete their assignments is to help them keep track of everything they need to do. Help your child develop a planner or calendar system that works for them, where they can track everything they need to do. In addition to developing the system itself, help your child develop routines around work completion. The best way to ensure that all of their homework gets completed is to schedule regular times to work on homework, ideally prompted by a reminder in their phone. When they sit down to homework, help your child get in the habit of checking their planner or assignments list before they start, and checking off the assignments as they complete them.
Because Working Memory can be such a challenge for folks with ADHD, many teens with ADHD do a great job completing their assignments and then completely forget to turn them in. This case is common when students have to turn in work online or if the expectation in class is to turn in homework without any prompting or reminders. This case can be particularly stressful because the student has done the hard part and gets penalized for what should be the easy part of the assignment.
For both online and physical assignments, building reminders into your child’s routine is the best way to ensure that they turn in their work. Phone reminders are often the best kind because most teens always have their phone handy. However, reminders from an adult and sticky note reminders can also be quite useful. For online homework assignments, have your child schedule reminders for approximate times that they will finish their work. For physical assignments, have them schedule reminders that coincide with class time. In all cases, be sure to set 1-2 back up reminders, giving your child a second prompt ten or fifteen minutes later. These secondary reminders are important in cases where your child is busy and silences the first reminder without turning in their assignment. Having a few reminders set up increases the likelihood that they will turn in their assignment when prompted to do so.
Organization of both physical and digital assignments can be quite challenging for teens with ADHD. If a teen does not have good organizational systems or good habits around maintaining their organizational systems, it is quite common for things to get lost. The result of this challenge is that teens might finish assignments and then lose them, or lose the assignment before they even get a chance to start. Even with digital assignments, lack of organization or improper naming of files can often lead to files getting lost within a student’s drive or computer.
Help your child develop good organizational systems and support them in developing habits to maintain these systems. Setting up organizational systems can be overwhelming for students with ADHD, so developing folder or binder systems together can be quite supportive. Similarly, tackling a student’s Google Drive together as a team can help your teen feel both empowered and supported. Help your child find a place for every item and file that is clearly labeled. Then, remind them to always place new items in the proper place. A great way to maintain organizational habits is to build in time, whether it’s daily or weekly, where the student can look at their papers or files and reorganize anything that might be out of place. Building in this regular habit will prevent their items from ever getting too out of hand. Additionally, encourage your child to always name their files something easy to find and descriptive, so that they will never lose a file in a large pile of untitled documents.
If a child is missing a lot of assignments, it can start to feel overwhelming. When they look at the long list of tasks they need to get done, at some point the pile might feel insurmountable. Unfortunately, this level of overwhelm can often lead to teens shutting down completely and avoiding their work, thinking to themselves, I’ll never get out of this hole, why bother trying? In this case, the more assignments they miss, the worse they feel, leading to a cycle of overwhelm that is difficult to break.
If your child reaches a point of overwhelm, it is likely that they will need support to get out of it. Offer to help them look at their tasks, and work hard to come across warm and supportive, rather than demanding or shaming. Writing down all of their tasks and discussing how much time each one will take is often a good place to start. In this exercise, many students discover that the time they need to complete all of their tasks is less than they thought. To get started on their work, ask your student “what is one thing you feel like you could do right now?” In most cases, getting one small task done immediately, even if it’s a single assignment or an organizational task, gives teens enough of a sense of satisfaction that they feel motivated to keep going. When students have been avoiding their work, getting started is the hardest part. Therefore, getting some support in getting the ball rolling will typically lead to them finishing their assignments on their own.
In some cases, teens might complete their homework and have it on their person, but fail to turn it in because they are worried about how they did. This type of action can be common in particularly challenging classes or in a class where a child has received poor grades on assignments in the past. If they associate bad experiences with turning in their work, they can sometimes start avoiding turning in their assignments altogether out of fear of criticism.
The best way to support your child through self-doubt and anxiety is to give them encouragement and support. In addition to celebrating their successes, encourage them to do the same, asking them to share any wins from their day or week. Model self-celebration for your child, sharing your own personal victories. In addition to self-celebration, model learning from your mistakes and growing as well, sharing with your child times where you made a mistake and what you learned from it. This behavior can help signal to your child that there is nothing wrong with failure or missteps, and that they are not something to be ashamed of or avoided. The more confident your child feels and the more comfortable they feel with failure, the less likely they will be to avoid turning in their assignments.
Some teens need more support than others when it comes to organization and other Executive Functioning difficulties. While parents can do a lot to support their child, sometimes they might need an expert to help. YA Success Coach offers 1-1 coaching sessions for teens to support them in building systems that are supportive to their unique needs and centered around building independence for long-term success. If you think your child might benefit from more specialized support in Executive Functioning, contact me today to learn about the different options available.
Having a conversation is the first step to helping your child realize their full potential and set them up for success!