[00:01:28] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

We’re gonna set the stage because it’s September, and most of us are back to school in some capacity or another. No matter how old your kids are, and everybody’s got work that they have to bring home from school in some capacity.

 

[00:01:43] Diane Dempster

Right. Most kids do—though there are some schools where, if you’ve got a kid in Montessori, you might not have homework. I’ve got a client with a Montessori kid, and they’ve reached grade five, and all of a sudden, they do have to bring stuff home, and it’s a whole new world. Do we wanna start by talking generally about some of the common challenges, Elaine? Is that a good way to step into it? When I think about this, our kids might be a last-minute kind of person—they’re waiting till the last minute, particularly if something’s an overtime assignment. Say, “I’ve gotta write a paper,” or, “I’ve got something that’s due next week.” So one of the challenges is they’re waiting till the last minute, or they’re missing deadlines, or.

 

[00:02:23] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

The project. There are a lot of things that can happen when kids have a project, ’cause those are multi-step, and so you’ve got last-minute stuff, you’ve got planning, you’ve got sequencing, you’ve got prioritizing. There are all kinds of executive functions involved with doing a project.

 

[00:02:41] Diane Dempster

So let’s hold on that and talk about why it’s a problem, because what’s really going on underneath most of these problems is executive function challenges. Let’s list the problems: it might be that they’re forgetting to turn things in, or it never makes it out of the backpack. Or you get to the middle of the semester and all of a sudden they’re missing 14 assignments—which, like, our record was (I think) 27, 30, something like that at some point with one of my kids. I won’t tell you which one, but it’s a record—or they were keeping records; they were keeping a record. So there are all these things that might be going on around homework.

For me, there are two parts of this, Elaine—what you just started, which is what’s going on underneath it, and the executive functions it takes to do that. But then there’s this other piece we forget: homework isn’t just “Do your homework.” There are actually steps to it, and it requires several pieces. We’ve got this list of the 12 steps of homework. Do we wanna just list the 12 steps of homework—capture it? No, we’re not. OK. But it’s not just “Do your homework.” It starts with even noticing and knowing that you have homework, and it ends with turning it in—but there’s lots of stuff that fits in between.

 

[00:04:00] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Let me take us back a dozen years to when Diane and I first started ImpactADHD. One of our very first programs was called Homework Headaches. Out of that, Diane created two breakdowns: “20 Steps from the Pillow to the Bus Stop,” and the “12 Steps of Homework.” The big insight was that so many steps are invisible. As adults, we compress or assume them—then we get frustrated when a kid “did the homework” but didn’t turn it in. Those are totally different steps. Even “do the homework” can be six separate steps. We’ve put the 12 steps into a new handout we’ll share at the workshop.

 

[00:05:02] Diane Dempster

Right—and those steps intersect with executive function. Take just the slice between “start” and “finish” an assignment.

• Some kids struggle with initiation—getting off the starting block.
• Others with sustained attention—avoiding distractions mid-task.
• Others with stamina/activation—keeping energy up through longer work.
• So even in that tiny window, you can hit three different EF roadblocks. You really need to understand what’s happening for your kid from an executive function perspective, not just a “homework” perspective.

 

[00:06:18] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

And lots of kids have all three, plus more. Challenges can also be subject-specific. One of my kids has dyslexia—language arts (reading/writing) was hard, but math was smooth: start, do, finish. For writing, she needed wall push-ups, snacks, breaks—at one point she wore multiple watches with different timers just to keep herself engaged.

 

[00:07:06] Diane Dempster

Well, again, what you’re describing—my kiddo was exactly the opposite. She was an English person and loved to write; she could write all day. But the math stuff was like pulling teeth. I think that’s another aspect of executive function: if something’s really interesting—or, conversely, really boring or really hard—their ability to engage their brain is gonna be different. And I know from listening to you talk about your daughter, she was interested in and excited to do the homework, so it wasn’t that she wasn’t motivated. But because it was hard (or boring, the language I would use), the way she needed to engage her brain required an extra set of energy, an extra step, an extra something. Right? So can we talk about hard for a little bit?

 

[00:07:52] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Yeah, because I wanna break down hard. I’ve been talking a lot this year about what I call the effort tax. People with neurodiversity—with executive function challenges—very often have an internal “tax” on having to do something that feels effortful, and that’s gonna change from person to person. As you were talking about: my kid was motivated to get her homework done cuz she wanted to do well in school. But do you know what the hardest part of a writing assignment for her was? It was choosing a topic. It wasn’t even writing. It was actually choosing the topic cuz she kinda wanted to get that right. It’s like decision fatigue—almost decision fatigue. And so the effort it took—I remember this one assignment, she must have been in middle school—the energy and effort it took just to land the topic took days.

 

[00:08:55] Diane Dempster

And as you’re saying that— Oh no, go ahead.

 

[00:08:56] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

It’s just exhausting, and we’ve gotta remember that all kinds of different things take effort for our kids, and it’s not gonna be the same on any given assignment or for any given kid. Right?

 

[00:09:08] Diane Dempster

What was coming up for me is stress. You add stress onto the situation—maybe they really want to get it right and they tend to have perfectionist tendencies, or it’s for an important grade, or it’s for an important teacher. So you raise the bar on the stress level; raise the bar on the stress level, shrink the bar on the executive function capabilities. Those two correlate. And if we’re chirping at ’em to get it done—“Why are you taking so long to do this?”—then we’re lighting the fire. We think we’re trying to motivate them, but what we’re actually doing is raising the stress level; executive functions are shutting down even further. I think we need to make sure we’re putting in a comment here about stress—either stress that they’re imposing, stress that the teacher or an outsider might be imposing, or stress that we are inadvertently imposing just because we don’t—like, I was on the phone with a mom the other day and she’s like, “Why is my kid taking three hours to do their homework?”

 

[00:10:14] Diane Dempster

“I wanna be able to do X, Y, and Z. I wanna move on to something else. And I don’t feel like I can move on to something else while my kid is doing their homework.” And I’m like, well, is your kid interested in doing their homework in less than three hours? “No. They don’t care.” So we add stress to the fire because we have our wants and needs, and it’s hard when they are in competition with each other.

 

[00:10:35] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Yeah. Well, that brought up so many things—this is a big anything. But the workshop, guys—really, that’s what the workshop’s for. Here’s the thing that’s coming up really clearly as you’re saying this: we talk about this a lot—the key with navigating anything is to get clear on what’s the problem we’re really trying to solve. We are so good at jumping to solutions and throwing a solution in place, and then trying to fix the problem when we haven’t really slowed down to get clear that the problem is really what we think it is.

 

[00:11:16] Diane Dempster

Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait—this is where I could tell my planner story and it would actually fit in. How many times do we tell the planner story and it doesn’t fit in—but it’s homework time and we can talk about the planner!

 

[00:11:26] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

1. So we’re gonna take a break, and we’re gonna come back and you get to tell your planner story. You ready?

 

1. We are having a conversation about homework and kind of setting the stage for all the different ways that we think about it and look at it, and the challenges that it brings—also looking at the problem underneath the problem—and Diane is gonna tell the planner story.

 

[00:12:04] Diane Dempster

Well, the reason I’m telling this planner story—just to reiterate—is that the comment you made was that we often come in with a solution, right? So instead of starting with a solution, which is “My kid needs to use a planner,” we wanna back up and go, What’s the problem we’re really trying to solve? OK—they need to capture their assignments.

 

[00:12:25] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Can I just say one more thing? Yeah. One thing before the planner: every kid in every school—at least across…

 

[00:12:45] Diane Dempster

I was gonna talk about that. Yeah—every kid everywhere is given a planner, because in third grade in our school everybody got it. And in third grade, everybody taught their kids how to use their planner. We know our kids are behind in executive function, so their ability in third grade to do the things that everybody else is doing—to organize and use the planners—is gonna be slowed down. Our kids might be ready to use a planner when they’re more like fifth or sixth grade, but everybody learned how to do it in third grade. So we’ve got this: they weren’t ready to do it when they learned.

 

There’s the “everybody gets a planner” challenge (that’s the solution: use the planner). The problem is: our kids need to have a way, a process, a system for capturing assignments—some process and system; it doesn’t matter what. And what’s really underneath that is: what are their executive function strengths and what are their executive function challenges? Some kids are really good at remembering.

I have one kid who—if you told him what his assignments were and you had his attention when you were telling him—he would remember ’em for a month, because he had that good of a working memory. Other kids need to write ’em down and track ’em and all that other stuff. So you’ve gotta understand: don’t start with a solution—start with the problem: I have to capture an assignment and know what my assignment is. And the problem under the problem is: I have really poor working memory, or I’m gonna forget by the time I get home, or whatever.

 

[00:14:19] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

And then we’re like, “Well, but why can’t they just use the planner?” Right? But Diane—why can’t every kid just use a planner?

 

[00:14:26] Diane Dempster

Because everybody’s different. A couple reasons: one is everybody’s brain is different—some people find it really difficult to even use a planner. The other piece is that when we come to our kids with a solution rather than identifying the underlying problem, we miss the opportunity to get their buy-in to solve the problem in the first place. We’re saying, “Just use a planner,” and they’re like, “I don’t wanna do what you’re telling me to do,” cuz you’re telling them how to do it, and they want to figure it out themselves.

 

[00:14:57] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right. So when we solve a problem for them, we’re actually robbing them of the opportunity to learn how to problem-solve for themselves.

 

[00:15:09] Diane Dempster

Yeah—or to partner with us to problem-solve if they can’t quite do it on their own. But asking, “What could you do to capture your assignments? And what help would you need?” could lead to seven or eight different solutions rather than “Use the planner.”

The punchline of the planner story is that my kid—who had, you know, 17 planners during school and was never able to use a planner—about a year ago at age 25 said, “Mom, I bought a planner. I’m gonna try to use it again.” It lasted literally a week. Still can’t use a planner, even though they bought it themselves and were ready to try again.

 

[00:15:47] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So not every system works for everybody by any stretch of the imagination. Part of what we’re saying is: when you’re dealing with homework, make sure you’re clear what the real challenge is—what the obstacle is. Is it getting started? Sticking with it? Bringing attention back when it gets dull or boring? Finishing it? Putting it away? Turning it in? There are lots of different steps.

I wanna go back to what happens before all of that, because for some of our kids, the problem is they’re not bought into “I really wanna do this” in the first place. If you don’t have some level of ownership or buy-in to doing homework, you’re gonna pull teeth along the process of trying to get it done.

 

[00:16:42] Diane Dempster

A couple things come up as you’re saying that. One: I can’t tell you how many arguments I had with my kids when the teacher says, “This is optional,” right? The minute the word optional shows up, all of a sudden optional means “I don’t have to do it.” And technically it does. But we want them to have more practice, we want them to be accomplished—we’ve got our agenda, not their agenda. (Isn’t there a whole podcast on that—whose agenda it is?)

 

[00:17:13] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So, OK—getting their buy-in.

 

[00:17:20] Diane Dempster

Oh, I know what it was—it was now and not now, right? How many times do our kids come home and we’re like, “OK, get your homework done now,” or “You’ve got an assignment due next week—why don’t you do it now?” Cuz we can figure out, “If you get it done now, then you won’t have to worry about it.” But in time-blindness, there are two time zones in the neurospicy brain: now and not now. If the homework isn’t due now—probably tomorrow, maybe before midnight tonight—then it’s not now. Your ability to get them to do it now is very different than at the last-minute, urgent moment. So you may have a now / not now kid—which might be part of the problem. What?

 

[00:18:21] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

There are just so many issues here. OK. So there’s breaking down the issues. The more we can give our kids a sense of agency, the more involved they are, the more they own it. For the kids who really are having a hard time starting—or even owning it—you may actually need to resolve that or address that with some different issues. It may not be strategies for doing the homework. You may have to go back a few steps to get the buy-in, to get them to see what’s in it for them, to help them feel a commitment to doing the homework because there’s something about their education that they care about. There’s something important about it to them so that it’s not just, “You gotta do this because it’s due—because it’s your responsibility.” We’ve got all these adult reasons we think they should do it. And for our kids, if we want them to become lifelong learners, there’s a piece that’s about helping them see some value to themselves—some benefit, even some responsibility for themselves—because there’s something important to them that they care about.

 

[00:19:36] Diane Dempster

And the converse of that is true as well, Elaine. We talk about this when we talk about motivation. How many times do we as parents look at a behavior and go, “Oh, they’re just not motivated to do their homework”? They might be really motivated to do their homework, but there’s something else from an executive function perspective that’s getting in their way. And even if they say—and a lot of times, particularly if you’ve got older kids or teens—they get into this pattern of saying, “I don’t care. This isn’t important,” because they don’t understand why it’s hard for them. It feels better to say, “I don’t care,” than it does to say, “I’m having a really hard time getting this done.”

 

[00:20:09] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

That’s so true. I think—helping them see their “why.” I remember when my kids had what the psychiatrist called an existential crisis in high school because they were having such a hard time trying to take chemistry and they didn’t see the value to them. We had to pull back to where the value was. Actually, they wanted to go to college—which was a long way away—but they did know they wanted to go there. And so they had to find some reason to motivate themselves to want to do it before they could come up with a strategy to get themselves to do it. And to your point, the opposite is also sometimes true. I had one kid who looked at me—who cared a lot—and said, “Mom, don’t you see that if I haven’t done it, I haven’t done it wrong?” So the perfectionism was actually preventing them from doing the work. It wasn’t that they didn’t care; it was that they cared so much. Sometimes that’s what we mean by getting underneath it and figuring out what the real obstacle is, because then you’re really addressing the actual problem instead of just trying to put a solution or a fix in place.

 

[00:21:20] Diane Dempster

And that was how I was going to bottom-line this whole thing: you’ve gotta be really clear on the problem that you’re trying to solve. You’ve gotta have their cooperation and connection and collaboration to do it together, and not have it just be you pushing something on them. And it has to be—come to them with clarifying the problem rather than just coming to them with a solution. Beautiful. Anything else? We talked about so much. What do you want to take away? Let’s do the wrap-up. What is it that you want to take away from this—millions of things we talked about having to do with homework today.

 

[00:21:57] Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Right? What’s the insight that you feel gives you something you could use to apply in your life this week—some awareness, some insight, some strategy—and how do you want to bring it forward into your life? Awesome. As always, friends, thank you for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. You make a huge difference in your being here—listening, tuning in. Just thinking about how you want to think about homework sets the stage for success in school for you and for the family dynamic. So, bravo—and hopefully we’ll see you at Homework Without Headaches.