ADHD and Planners

Here is an email I just wrote to a parent who asked me about their child’s need to use a planner. Have I ever seen one that was particularly good for kids with ADHD?:

Hey!

(To cut to the chase of this very long email, you can just read the last paragraph before "hope this helps!" at the end)

For an ADHDer to remember to do a task, the rule is:

there must be an

 unavoidable

      external

            reminder

that will appear at the moment the task needs to be completed...

Otherwise, a passive decision has been made not to do it.

No physical planner I have ever seen meets these criteria: they are both avoidable and have no way of appearing at the moment the reminder is needed.

However, in an environment where devices are not allowed, perhaps the best one can do is build in daily planner checks that happen without fail--anchored to something that always happens, i.e. at the 10:20 morning break bell I always get my snack, go to this bench, and check/update my planner. At the 1:40 afternoon break, my English teacher lets me stay after class and check/update my planner before I go out and shoot baskets for five minutes... Things like that. 

The anchoring to dependable daily activities is absolutely key, but, frankly, even with the sincere intention, motivation needs to be extremely high for this to become a habit for a student with ADHD, which generally means it needs to be associated with a deeply desired reward...

 (it seems that even huge amounts of suffering do not motivate us the way positive rewards do, perhaps because one way our polar attention profile helps us cope in general is that whether we are hyperfocused on something of great interest or desperately scanning for something to hyperfocus upon (aka "distracted" or "unfocused" or "hyperactive"), unpleasant thoughts and emotions are naturally out-of-mind, unless they are in our face). 

It's also difficult to sustain daily attention to a new habit one is trying to form when it feels superfluous 90% of the time! Remember, all our lives we have been coping with a scarcity landscape of constitutional resources for getting ANYTHING done, so mustering the resources to check a planner with nothing in it day after day goes against very deep and hard-won instincts!

For kids, I try to liken things like this to the work of a security guard:

you WANT there to be nothing of note 90% of the time, because 

*it makes checking quick and easy and 

*STILL increases confidence and calm, and 

*you also catch the rare things you would have missed AND 

*you actually probably also end up taking for granted things that you THINK you would have remembered anyway, but really would not have, or would not have until the last minute.

And while I'm being frank, I think in 20ish years of doing this I have seen two students make good, consistent use of a planner, and I suspect neither of them had ADHD. I have never, ever used a planner for any length of time, even when highly motivated to do so.

I showed J____ what I do do this summer. 

I use Google Calendar, Google Tasks, and phone alarms.

1. Anything time-bound that is outside of my regular schedule requires an alarm. If it requires preparation, it requires a phone alarm that will go off at the time I need to start preparing and another alarm one minute before I need to do the thing. Literally. If I set an alarm three minutes before I need to do something, I will often forget, within that three minute window, to do the thing. It is staggering, but that happened multiple times with recess duties when I worked at a school--I had set an alarm for three minutes before each of my duties to give me time to "wrap up" whatever I was doing, and I would later  remember the duty with shock and shame only after it was already over. 

It is key with ADHD to look at this kind of thing squarely, accept the facts of our cognitive landscape, and adjust to them without judgment or self-abuse. This is not our fault, but it is our responsibility, and cursing ourselves and demanding that we somehow generate the ability to do what we cannot is NOT taking responsibility for it. My recess duty alarms needed to be at the moment when I had to drop everything and go. Admitting that made me capable of showing up consistently, on time.

2. Anything that I need to do on my own time but am not doing immediately needs to be listed (descriptively!) as a task on Google Tasks. This works because I check it regularly. I have to be careful because when I have lots of pressing work, I can neglect it for a while. This is why anything with a deadline or that is important to me to get done in a timely manner goes directly onto my calendar. The Tasks app can actually sync with Google Calendar, if you put dates/times on tasks, but I only use that when my task list becomes unmanageable and I systematically schedule everything... so I can breathe again. (See "Tidy Up" here)

3. That "tidy up" idea also applies to my calendar. Things in my environment that do not change over time.. disappear. I can put a post-it reminder in the middle of my bathroom mirror or my steering wheel, and within days I will no longer see it. I replace such post-its with a different color post-it, or a different kind of reminder altogether, as soon as I notice they have become invisible. This is even more vital to do on the calendar because they become little zones of invisibility, and any anomalous thing nearby may be missed as well. I use the color-coding of events to fight this, but the battle never ends.

Obviously, calendar and task-checking are anchored to my work time. I start with email and try very hard NOT to address all emails as I go, but to list them as tasks if they will take more than a few minutes. This is also hard.

But my work time is anchored to nothing!

To get a little holistic here before getting back to J____:

It is only in the latter half of my 50s that I have learned that ALL of the above have to be anchored in a life that prioritizes self-care, relationships, then work, in that order, and the only way I do that consistently is by making a daily action plan upon awakening. I list what I am doing for

sleep

nutrition

exercise

emotional/mental health

quiet

creativity

staying connected to the people I love

keeping up with work tasks

and

I make a schedule with these priorities in mind. That's where work time gets anchored.

Again, this is ADHD (and a lot of other things) recovery at age 56.

So, what about J____?

I mentioned above looking "squarely" at what one can and cannot (yet) do.

J____'s face, as I went over my tasks/calendar/alarms system with him, seemed to indicate that he could not see himself doing these things. We talked about how it feels disrespectful to me for me to ignore that look and just squawk useless things at him. By definition, in my practice, if a student believes they are hearing something useless to them, they are right.  Their mind is wandering. I am reinforcing their sense of difference. At the very least, I am putting the cart before the horse. They need something they can imagine possibly doing.

So J____ and I put our heads together and tried to come up with first steps that he could imagine doing. And here is what we came up with:

The problem he believes he needs to solve is occasionally missing assignments, missing instructions, or failing to follow-up on work he has missed due to absence. Using a planner regularly and building in checks/updates several times a day would probably solve this, but it feels like overkill. Happily, J____ thinks the information on the school's web interface is quite complete, so checking that regularly is a more reasonable starting place. 

I mentioned that without a planner most of us need SOME place to write down additional information about assignments and things we want to remember that don't apply to everyone, so they won't be on the school/class site. J____ agreed that he should have a small notebook for this purpose, but I got the sense he was not really imagining he would use it. I think it would be good to get in the habit of having such a thing, so that when he is ready to start using it (or trying it out to find what he will really end up using--I also use "notes" in iOS for this), but I don't think it needs to be emphasized.

We agreed to anchor an assignment-check to-do list to his getting-home routine. 

I suggested 

* we make a sign that is posted prominently somewhere unavoidable (fridge? gaming device? pillow? bedroom door? see post-it discussion above) for him;

* he admit that he needs support to remember this kind of thing while building the habit, and that he officially approve of kind, brief parental reminders about this this year. I said I would suggest to parents to remind once or twice, without judgment or assumptions about what he is or is not doing at that moment. He suggested a complex battery of reminders, ramping up if he is not checking his work after the first several... but I told him I thought that would be inappropriate to ask in most families, that it sounded like a way to be able to blame parents if things went wrong, which would not be helpful. If things go wrong, he should first consider what he can do to improve his consistency (multiple signs? avoid particular activities until after work check? etc.) before asking them to ramp up their attentiveness to his... inattentiveness :)

The sign looks like this:

Daily Homework Check

Within 1 hour of getting home, 

every day, 

whether or not you think you have homework!

• Check email, notebook, and Google Classroom, including To Do and Missing tabs

• Check all three again after you finish each assignment, until there are no more assignments to do 

• OR use Google Tasks to list assignments and check them off

• OR do the same thing on paper or a post-it

• For any assignment that is not due the next day, spend at least 15 minutes on it (unless the work due the next day takes more than 90 minutes)

It could probably do with some colorful adornment and/or editing for brevity, now or over time.

All of this has been to say: I don't think a planner will help, but that is also my bias. I do think the goal of anchoring the things on this sign to J____'s getting-home-from-school ritual truly IS the first step toward "work management" in the bigger picture, which is what a planner is all about.

Hope this is helpful!!

BTW, I will humbly add that I am finishing this email at 11:20am... and my intention is to, ahem, write today's action plan, which I have not done yet..."upon awakening"....

:)

Mike

Mike's Guide to ADHD for the Short-Attention-Spanned

Look! A link to a doc! Mike's Guide to ADHD for the Short-Attention-Spanned

Impromptu Morphology Overview--Powerful Dyslexia Intervention and Vital Language Arts Reform Content

 

Making Math Less Repellant

A lot of students experience math as something teachers say is process-oriented, but the students' actual experience is that it is product oriented. The concerns are, in order of importance: Am I done? Am I right?  And often "am I right?" is a distant 2nd in importance. For the adults, the primary concern is "have I learned the skill?" Until the students and adults have found common ground by explicitly discussing these different lenses, everyone tends to be a little frustrated and feel like the other's behavior is inexplicable/unreasonable. The adults have to realize that the students' assumptions are reasonable, as is their approach, and, especially in middle school, students will need to feel some agency in the process of changing their approach to work. "Show your work" feels like "clean your room," unless the student feels like they are in a collaborative learning relationship with their teacher, and can understand that showing the teacher their thinking is their part of that collaboration. We adults also have to realize that the assertion that we are collaborating for the student's good is highly dubious, on the surface: we offer them more choice or less choice in any given situation, but the very fact that it is ours to offer is entirely worthy of resentment and suspicion from anyone trying to assert autonomy: they have to go to this school; they have to work with this teacher; they have to do this work... but I, this willing participant in this oppressive institutional setting, swear I'm here to help! I worry more about the students who don't push back.

A guiding principle of my work is that I cannot build motivation in an area where students feel more unsuccessful than successful. They simply have to feel successful much more than 50 percent of the time, or any normal person will prefer other activities. Teaching students to notice and celebrate micro-successes is a key life skill. 

In math, specifically, the primary foe, or at least, the starting place, is differentiating between challenges with conceptual understanding vs challenges with accuracy. Many students experience math as a "right or wrong" zone (setting aside the above insight that "done or not-done" may be far more important to the student who sees schoolwork in general as a barrier to freedom/autonomy), and whether they make a "careless error" (accuracy) or a conceptual/procedural error that reflects a developing understanding or skill, they simply feel wrong, which is demotivating (and also MOTIVATES rushing, because it feels bad and so we want to be out of it sooner). Kids need to know that conceptual errors are a part of learning (blah blah blah...but, no, really! (ok prove it)), and 

if their calculations were accurate, then a "wrong" answer is actually right in two ways: their calculation skills are strong, and they are closing in on the correct procedure/understanding by filtering out what doesn't work, and (hopefully) why. For those of us who have carried the right/wrong framework into adulthood ourselves, asserting this for a student can come off as disingenuous (a deeply middle-schooler-repellent thing, and also super common and obvious to students), but we need to do the (emotional?) work to truly see that it isn't! We are not pretending a wrong answer is right! We are parsing the genuine rightness, and thereby modeling the process-oriented mode of math-learning in a genuine way. 

If their calculations were inaccurate, but their conceptual understanding is strong, they are right in the most important way: they have met the primary learning goal of the lesson! Plus, congratulations: you have entered the realm of the adults! You ask what does this learning have to do with real life aka when will I ever use this? Well, accuracy is the most straight-forward and disappointingly simple problem to solve, and millions of adults' jobs depend upon their ability to be accurate in areas where they 100% understand the conceptual framework and the stakes, but a mispunched key on a calculator, typo on a spreadsheet, or ambitious use of mental-math can make them wrong in a truly consequential way. So what do we do? We use inverse operations, we re-enter the data in the opposite order, we get another set of eye-balls onto the work... And most importantly, getting back to math class, I believe, in the context of right/wrong, done/not-done, this kind of "checking your work" sounds just like "showing your work" (aka clean your room, check your email, eat your vegetables....), but in the context of "wow, you have such a great conceptual understanding on every single one of these problems, so you can tear through them at light-speed! So cool. Let's figure out how to boost the accuracy piece so you don't get fired :P" or "Man, your calculations are PERFECT! I'm so jealous! It looks like you don't know that you have to multiply by the reciprocal yet, though. But with calculation skills like that, you'll be rockin' these next time around...!" it becomes a conversation about making a good thing better.

 

BTW I dropped that "careless error" thing in without addressing it. I think that term is SUPER judgy. Careless errors don't feel careless; kids are putting in the effort they know how to put in. Well, at least, ADHD kids like me are. And the voices that tell us our best efforts are insufficient become the internalized voices that lead us to blame ourselves and even hate ourselves for not doing things we know we should, don't know why we don't, but in fact can't, at least until we learn or are taught how. For some of us, avoiding the careless errors takes MUCH more "care" than conceptual errors ever will. I guess I think that when we say "careless errors" we are erroneously (carelessly?!) projecting the ease we would have avoiding such errors onto a kid, and I just don't think we actually know how easy or hard that is for that kid, and asserting that it is a lack of care is just mean, because it shows them we assume they made the choice not to take care. It's disrespectful. And this builds distance between us and our students, which is the opposite of what we need, if the work of teaching and learning is ever going to feel collaborative to the students.

Math Journals for Students Who Can't Remember Math

There are a lot of students who seem to be unable to retain math procedures in spite of herculean efforts to do so. In particular, some people on the autism spectrum can seem to have a wholly divergent comprehension and mental "filing" system, making connections that other students don't make, and finding the associations which enable other students to retain their learning completely ineffective or incomprehensible. I'd love to hear from anyone who has a deeper understanding of what is happening for these students! In the meantime, my pragmatic-tutor mode has led me to rely on creating math journals with such students, and advocating for their use in all math work, including assessments!

It can take some careful conversation with some math teachers, but eventually most can understand: this student can work endlessly to comprehend and complete various math skills exercises and activities—perhaps several times as much practice as the average peer who retains the skills mentally—and it just does not stick, in much the way that spellings do not stick for dyslexic students, so they have to re-spell almost every word, each time they write it, even on the same page. The parallel breaks down with math, in that a student cannot usually "sound out" the procedure for a math problem the way one can sound out a word. So what would an adult do in a professional situation in which the requirements to produce work outstripped the capacity of their memory? Write down the things they need to remember! Thus, this student has created a journal of math procedures. This is in no way an "easier" way to do math: they have worked harder than the vast majority of peers just trying to retain all this math mentally before realizing a journal was necessary, and then they had to meticulously re-learn the procedures yet again and write them down in an organized manner that could be used as a reference. And of course, the journal does not contain answers, it contains procedures, and therefore still requires the critical thinking needed to choose the procedure, and the attention to accurate application and calculation required to answer the specific problem presented to them. Thus, for this student, it is appropriate and fair for them to use the journal for all math work, including assessments. In fact, it would be unfair for them to be deprived of it.

We put one problem type per page, with a heading at the top that uses words the student will recognize when it counts. Similarly, we don't worry particularly about neatness, but we simply employ the journal later, and if it is not useful because it is not legible, we fix it. 

I recommend using a small, loose-leaf binder, so that the student can alphabetize the pages for easy access. Ultimately, though, we have to use what the student is comfortable with and agreeable to using... or they won't use it anyway!

ADHD and Procrastination in Middle School — Broken Promises to Self and Others

So, there's this rut we ADHD kids get into, that parents and teachers often don't seem to be able to understand. Term after term: assignments get missed; work quality decreases or stays the same while peers' work keeps improving; "attitude" devolves toward defiance or indifference or both. The level of executive functioning required for success keeps increasing, but the skills to manage developmental delays in executive functioning  are not being taught, or they are not being taught at the micro-chunked level that we would need in order to embrace, retain, and employ them. As it stands, the increasing cognitive load and workload force us to ignore "extra" assignments—like using a planner well, or keeping a binder organized with labelled dividers—in order to feel like we have a chance in hell of successfully completing actual coursework. Organizational requirements in middle school feel like the coast guard yelling down at you as you bob in the bay to comb your hair so you look nice while you drown.



Thus, around the middle of the term, and toward the end, alarms are raised. Emails and calls go home about missing assignments and poor work quality. At best, there's a wack-a-mole quality to mid-term grades, with, say, a D in science last term raised to a B this term, but now math is a D, and English is a C-. Any statistician would see that pattern and assert that there is a shortage of resources in this system: one area cannot improve without a descent in another area. Yet, we often blame the student... for trying to do what we said!—we freaked out about science last semester, and science improved! It's pretty reasonable for the student to ask "What do you want from me?!" at that point...

But I still haven't gotten to the rut I mentioned.



The tragic disconnect between such students and the adults around them seems to be this: by the middle of 7th grade, every term has had this freak out in the middle, when everyone starts pointing fingers at the student and bemoaning the ascendant calamity. The student generally does the best they can, scrambles and lunges, under intense pressure, and (between that and the grade inflation of most independent schools or the low-low-bar in most public schools—the former to support statistics that prove the school is giving families the success they are paying for, and the latter to support statistics that prove the school is successfully educating a vast diversity of learners) emerges with a report card that no one loves, but that doesn't feel tragic to the student. So why all this brouhaha every term? It always comes out OK; I dip, then I rise. Why you yellin'?



Parents and teachers are at wits end, because their entreaties seem to have no effect. Students say, and genuinely mean, "I will do better!" and they usually do! But nowhere near better enough. 



Neither party seems to realize the facts of the situation. 



The student does not understand that the mid-term slump is a hole out of which they will soon not be able to dig—somewhere between 8th and 12th grades, that last-minute burst of energy will not pull them back into the passing zone. They also do not understand that the actual learning they are doing, especially in math, is increasingly foundational to future work, so passing without learning is another set-up for a future crash-and-burn. 



Thus, it is important for parents to understand that it is a developmentally inappropriate expectation for almost ANY teenager to be motivated to change a behavior based upon a future possible negative outcome. They are wired for immediate positive reinforcement, and future positive reinforcement only when it is very compelling. Dire warnings based upon the experience of others do not feel salient, and this is quadruply so in teens with ADHD.

Our teens are hard-wired for a severe case of something akin to what psychologists call "optimism bias."  Simply put, positive reinforcement is MUCH more effective than negative reinforcement. An expected reward seems to remain present in the mind much more effectively during the day, when choices count, than a dreaded punishment, which may only actually come to mind when they are actually suffering it, and, worse, the thoughts may be more resentment than reflection... and this resentment often inspires more rebellious instincts than any desire to do what one is told! In fact, the desire to change behavior might actually be inhibited, because that means admitting defeat and giving the oppressor what they want.



Most parents do not understand that the myriad iterations of "I meant to do that" and "I don't care about this" and "that teacher is a jerk" do not represent students willfully avoiding work they do not want to do, but choosing an ego-saving assertion of choice in a matter where they probably have little to no actual choice at all. What appears to be a poor choice or defiance is actually more usefully perceived as a symptom of ADHD. What's more, developmentally, any middle schooler is desperate to put aside childish things. The honest answer as to why a student with ADHD didn't do the work is probably deeply humiliating, and therefore may not even be consciously accessible: either "I don't know" or "I can't, even when I try." Students mean it when they promise; it feels do-able; people around them are doing it; they will just work harder! And it doesn't happen. Of course, they then say they didn't want to do it in the first place.



If students can only pull themselves together at the end of the semester when the terrible outcome finally feels immediate enough, it is not just because they finally "get it" but may be because their brain is literally not stimulated enough to muster the actual focus needed to produce the work until they are at risk of immediate dire consequences. Abstract notions of future suffering don't fire up the neurons in the necessary way to keep the student on task... so they put off the impossible until it is possible. 



Intrinsic motivation is great—best kind, first choice! But, so far, there are only two solutions I know of when ADHD is the primary barrier to school achievement for a bright student: sitting with the student to redirect them, repeatedly, for the entire, or almost entire, course of a carefully laid out work plan, or providing profoundly compelling positive extrinsic motivation. Either one of these can provide an experience of success that can build momentum for future positive change.





Otherwise, we are left hoping that the student will somehow come to understand themself, and adapt, naturally. The best hope for this probably comes from, at least, describing this whole dynamic to them, to see if it resonates.


The following is an admittedly somewhat-frantic email I recently sent to a former student, who has already heard all of the above, who is still firmly entrenched in the cycle above, and who had just sent me a "good intentions" email after their parent insisted they contact me. Any tutor will tell you, this email is too long for a student with ADHD, and many others... unless that person is at a tipping point, genuinely hoping for change, and maybe kind of feeling like the jig is up:

Hey ____!

Good to hear. The key question is: how? How will you do those things? 

A lot of students decide to change a behavior (or to start a new behavior), and making the decision is all they do, and nothing changes.
"I'm just gonna do better"
or
"I won't turn anything in late"...
these good intentions rarely add up to change unless actual actions are taken AT THE TIME THE DECISION IS MADE to support those changes. 

The Friday check-ups with teachers are the best part of this plan. Nice! :)

• Are they actually scheduled? 
• Have you set up any kind of reminder (phone alarm? calendar notification?) to make sure you get to them? 

Please do these things right away, if not! 

Teachers have very limited resources (time being the most important resource), so please please make sure you show up (even online), and I'm telling you right now, if you don't give yourself reminderS (plural), you probably won't.

The problem for most of us is, the behavior change idea is a big decision: I WILL DO THIS instead of THAT. 

Yet the actual actions involved in that decision are tiny, and there are hundreds of them each week, even each day: Every hour, you will be at a crossroads, and each little decision will not feel important, but it IS: 

• Play the video game now and get work done later? No big deal. 
• Meet with the teacher today or tomorrow? Tomorrow is fine. 
• Do my work completely and well, now, or fix it up later? I'll fix it up later...actually, who cares, maybe I'll do the next one better....teachers like to see improvement, anyway...

ALL OF THOSE RESPONSES IN THE MOMENT ARE LIES WE TELL OURSELVES AND THEY ADD UP TO NO CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR and NO CHANGE IN OUTCOMES. 

I apologize for yelling; it's because I am talking to you and also myself. I have suffered so much humiliation in my life because I could not understand this thing I'm trying to describe to you. I want better for you!

So, please, take action now to remind yourself throughout your day that you need to turn toward getting work done, and done well, first, and away from all other things except family responsibilities and genuine self-care. BTW if you use family responsibilities and genuine self-care disingenuously, as an excuse, I fear I'm useless to you.

Do these things:

• Put on a bracelet, a watch, a rubber band or something else you will see over and over during the day, to remind you to think "Am I doing the most important thing right now?" and, if the answer is no, do the right thing, right away.
• When you learn to ignore the bracelet, or rubber band or whatever, get a new one that looks different, put it on the other wrist, or something else to refresh the reminder.
• Put a post-it or a note on the TV, on the game controller, on the computer--lots of people make a reminder their desktop background--and anywhere else that you tend to go to relax or avoid schoolwork. It can be blank or it can say "FIRST THINGS FIRST" or whatever you need to hear.
• If you look at that post-it or note, and say to yourself, "I have been working; I need a break!" take a DIFFERENT kind of break that doesn't seduce you like those things do. Take a walk; play with a pet; make something; get a snack... AND whatever you do, consider setting a timer and putting it somewhere you will have to walk to to turn it off. A phone in the pocket is too easy to quiet quickly. 
• If you look at that post-it or note and say to yourself, "I hardly have any work; I can do it in like ten minutes!" then prove that to yourself by doing it right away. 
• If you look at that post-it or note and say to yourself, "Who cares. Stupid notes. I'm throwing that away..." just don't do that today. Throw it away next time. This time, double check if you have work to do, and do it right away. Right now, you only have to worry about this one time. Next time, you can get fed up and do whatever. This moment is just about doing the right thing one more time, even if it feels pointless or unimportant, or like someone else's stupid idea of what you should do.
• REAL TALK: Procrastination is not a time-management problem; it is about dealing with feelings! You can google it. If we are honest with ourselves, when we avoid important work moment by moment, it is always because the work causes emotional pain: "I don't actually know how to do this." "I can't do this well even if I want to." "I don't even know what I'm supposed to do and that is embarrassing because I'm supposed to know" ... or WHATEVER. We who procrastinate have to learn to face the truth about these feelings, and ask for help from people who will not judge us, and who know what we need to know. We have to find those people and make the most of those relationships. YOU are in charge of deciding who those people are. I am volunteering to be such a person, reachable by email or text, but it is up to you to decide if you want me in that role, sometimes, always, once-in-a-great-while, or never.....

Wishing you the very best of success, and hoping to hear from you again, ____!

Mike