an-How I handle the empty sparkling water on my son’s bedroom floor — Ryan Wexelblatt (ADHD Dude)

Allow me to introduce you to a regular site on my son’s bedroom floor. 7 empty sparking water cans that have been there for 5 days at the time of this post.

Here are the different options as to how I can handle this:

1. I can constantly nag him to put the cans in the recycling. (Nagged and prompted him for years, that doesn’t seem to give him any sense of urgency to do what I asked.)

2. I can pick them up myself, and if I do that I’m denying him the opportunity to use his own executive function skills, not to mention it doesn’t teach him his responsibility to contributing to cleaning up. (How many of you have cleaned something up because you were annoyed how long it sat there and in the process took the responsibility off of your kids?)

3. I can use language that will help him improve his self-directed talk (brain coach) while also teaching him accountability.

Do you nag/prompt and expect your kid with ADHD to develop a sense of urgency to do what you want him to do in your time frame? If so, how well has that worked for you?

Do you regularly clean up after your kid when she doesn’t do what you asked? Have you considered how that is both creating a sense of entitlement (“people should clean up after me”) as well as denying her the opportunity to use his executive function skills?

How about getting off of video games without nagging or arguing? Any success with that?

ADHD is an “executive function developmental delay, it is not a psychological issue. Lagging executive function skills are not a behavior problem, although many parents and therapists perceive it that way.

I’m going to be short here:

-If you are still regularly nagging, prompting, yelling when you get frustrated you’re only frustrating yourself, straining your relationship with your child and you’re not helping him/her improve executive function skills. Furthermore, you’re making life at home harder for you.

-Many parents become increasingly frustrated with their son/daughter’s ADHD related challenges and seek out advice in Facebook parenting groups, etc. and receive well-meaning but awful advice from people who have no clue about executive functioning . As a result, many parents spend YEARS nagging, yelling, getting frustrated and NOTHING CHANGES.

Executive Function Crash Course for Parents Webinar series has been used by over 2100 families. I encourage you to read what parents had to say about it here: https://g.page/adhd-dude-ryan-wexelblatt?gm

Executive Function Crash Course will be available for another week to purchase as individual webinars. After that, the series will be at my new membership platform along with all of my upcoming webinars. You can read the Frequently Asked Questions about the webinars in the comments section.