← ADHD Experts Podcast
ADHD Experts Podcast
576- Beat The Clock: Time Estimation and Management Help for Students with ADHD
00:58:52
Beverley Holden Johns discusses why students with ADHD have time-management and other executive function challenges; how to teach and practice time estimation; how to use visual aids, reminders, timers, and planners; and more. Time-Management Skills...
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- [00:04]
Podcast Host
Welcome to the Attention Deficit Disorder Expert Podcast series by Attitude Magazine.
- [00:14]
Annie Rogers
Everyone. I'm Annie Rogers and on behalf of the Attitude Team, I am delighted to welcome you to today's ADHD Experts presentation titled Beat the Clock Time Estimation and Management Help for Students with adhd. Leading today's presentation is Beverly Holden Johns. Beverly is an author and learning and behavior consultant. She has more than 30 years experience in the public school system working with students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disorders. She was also a professional fellow at McMurray College. Beverly is the author or co author of 28 books in the field of special special education, including the seminal book Learning Disabilities and Related Mild Disabilities. She is the president of the Learning Disabilities association of Illinois and we are so fortunate to have her leading this conversation today. If you are joining us, chances are that getting out the door this morning was stressful. Homework is already becoming stressful because assignments take longer than your child insists they will. If your child shuts down when big projects overwhelm them or they experience tears and anxiety over missed deadlines, you have found the right place. We feel your pain and your desire to stay. Start this new school year meeting the executive function challenges of adhd.
- [01:52]
Beverly Holden Johns
Head on.
- [01:54]
Annie Rogers
Today's webinar will explain how to teach and practice the skill of time estimation. Using visual aids and timers for support, we'll demonstrate how to break down assignments into small parts and how to create an environment that is conducive to initiating a homework routine. Finally, it will detail what a parent can do when their child is overwhelmed by schoolwork or when the assignments are just too difficult. Okay, so without any further ado, I'm so pleased to welcome Beverly Holden Johns. Beverly, thank you so much for joining us today and for leading this webinar on time management strategies for children and teens with adhd.
- [02:37]
Beverly Holden Johns
Thank you. I am delighted to be here. And I thought we would open up with true confessions. This is the case of the passive aggressive Morning Hater. How many of you on this webinar don't like mornings? Well, I'm one of those people. I don't like mornings. I never have liked them. I probably never will. At my age, I like to do a lot of my work at night. So what happened? When I was growing up, I said I didn't like to get out of bed in the morning. And my mother, bless her heart, would start begging me to get up in the morning for two hours in advance of when I really needed to be up. And she would say, come on, Beth, you gotta get up. You'll be late for school. You missed your perfect attendance. Come on, Bev. Come on, Bev. Now what did I do? This was a terrible thing I did to my own mother. I delayed. I just laid there in bed. Why did I lay there in bed now? It was horrible. I was being passive aggressive. I wasn't getting angry. I just continued to stay in bed. My mother's approach to time management was that she would start two hours in advance trying to get me out of bed. My approach to time management was time estimation. Because here was the truth. I knew exactly how long it was going to take me to get out of the out of bed, go in the bathroom, get my clothes on, go get my breakfast and go outside and catch the school bus. So I was passive aggressive. I was a good time estimator. Mother, on the other hand, handled time differently. She was the person for her entire life that if you needed to go to the airport, you went four hours in advance. If you needed to go to church, you went one hour in advance. I, on the other hand. Now am I going to tell you that I have adopted some of her strategies? Yes, I have. Now, the sad part of this story is my little brother, who is eight years younger than I am, observed all of this. And guess what he did to our mother? The same thing. So my true confessions. I feel bad to this day that I did that to my own mother. So now what I want you to do is to look around. On your desk, do you have a calendar? Do you have post it notes, cup of coffee, you know, cup of iced tea maybe, and a to do list and file folders, and do you have any distractions? The point being is probably all of our desks look very different because we have on hand what we need and what works for us. And if I could take a picture of your desk area, it probably would look very different than mine because I have a lamp, I have a water bottle. I have all the sensory things that I need to be comfortable as I work. But I also have a calendar which I can quickly pull out. So the point being is we really have to look at what works for us. And the point of this is no one approach is going to work with all of our children. And sometimes what we do is we say, well, it works for me and it should work for my child. No, remember my mother and me, what worked for her didn't work for me. So what are our objectives today is why are students with ADHD struggling with time management? And to look at some helpful hints and learn how parents can create a homework conducive environment for their child and avoid what I call worksheet wars. So why is time management so important? First of all, it's a teacher pleaser behavior. Teachers like children who come on time.
- [07:21]
Annie Rogers
And.
- [07:23]
Beverly Holden Johns
They like individuals who get assignments done on time, etc. So it's a teacher pleaser. And sometimes the child may not be able to do all the work, but if the child engages in teacher pleaser behaviors, they may end up getting a better grade than they might get otherwise. It impacts friendships. Think about this. If people, if you have a lunch date with someone and you're late every time your friends are going to say, oh my goodness, maybe that person, you know, I really don't want that person as a friend. And it impacts trust as well. We don't tend to trust people if they say, I'm going to be here at this time, I'm going to do this at this time. And impact school performance. Certainly impacts a job. You can't be late for work or you're probably going to lose the job. And it impacts many life decisions. Throughout life we have to make decisions. We know people who can make a decision if their life depended on it. And you think, oh please, I had a brother in law and when you would go in a restaurant to order, everybody would have their food ordered and decide what they want. But oh no, he didn't. He just had to continue to look at the menu and went on and on and on. So time management is really very important. And two big ideas work ahead and seize the moment. Now you're saying, how does that work? Well, seize the moment means never put off something you can do at this moment. How many of us read an email and you say, I think I'll get back to that later. And then we get lost in the sea of emails and guess what, we don't get back to it because we had 50 other things that happened in between. So anything that we anytime we could teach children, children to do something right away rather than to postpone it is much better and then work ahead. Having worked with a lot of children at all levels, including at the college level, what I wanted to do was teach students how you felt really good when you got something done in advance. So what I would do is I would give students bonus points if they turned in their assignment early and then we would talk about now didn't you feel better that you have that done or allow them to give you a draft to review? Sometimes our children just get lost and they don't Have a clue what the teacher or the parent wants from them.
- [10:21]
Annie Rogers
And.
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Beverly Holden Johns
And sometimes it is just a nice thing to do to give them a draft or a rubric to look at some kind of model and then spreading out assignments. One of the things that I found was when are most assignments due in schools? At the end of the semester. So what I did was always give my students assignments that were due before the end of the semester so that they weren't caught up in that end of the semester panic. And I have seen students fail classes because they got so overwhelmed. They had so much to do at the end of the semester they just couldn't face it. And what did they do? Gave up. And they may have had a good grade until that time and then they didn't turn in the final assignment and they got an F. So I've always made a big deal about reinforcing students who work. Now. What are some of the cautions in time management Watch organizational systems I've had to learn so many times. The hard way is that I have to think outside preference and find out what works for an individual child because it's probably not going to be the same thing that I do. Assignment notebooks are a good example. If I polled you, probably some of you, you like to only see on a calendar one day at a time. Some of you like to see a week at a time. Some of you like to see a month at a time like I do. And so the monthly calendar may work for me, but it might not work for a child. And then manage what is manageable. I think we really have to look at whether we have very unrealistic expectations depending upon the age of the student and not give them too much to do at one time. I've often heard it said five to 10 pieces of paper is the most. How many times we go to a meeting or it's online and we're scrounging through. That's on page 35. It is too much to manage. And then now we need to watch timers. Now I will tell you I love the time timer. It's in the attitude store. I absolutely love the time timer because it gives the child the opportunity to see what time actually looks like. And when I say we have five minutes to do this, they can watch the red until the red moves away. However, we have to be very careful with children who have anxiety because a timer may make them more anxious. And a better approach for us to use rather than a timer might be the same. How about if we work together on these Last three problems and we're still getting the point across, but we're not using the timer. Extended timelines. This is a real source of contention for me. We give students extended timelines because we think they need more time to do an assignment, but we fail to teach them how to manage time. So if we just give extended timelines and we don't at the same time have a goal in the IEP to teach them time management strategies, it doesn't work. It's an accommodation and any accommodation has to be taught. If you think about reading, we accommodate children who can't read, but we better be teaching them to read also. And then be cautious of the pre Mac principle. Some of you may know the pre Mac principle, may use it, et cetera, et cetera. Well, here's the Premack principle and we tend to use it a lot with children who have autism. All right, first you do the non preferred activity and then you get to do the preferred activity. So non preferred first and then we reward you with the preferred activity. However, a common mistake is we give the student the non preferred activity, failing to recognize that they don't have the skill to do the non preferred activity. And then we say, well, obviously the Premack principle didn't work. Premack principle is also called grandma's law. My grandmother said, if you want, you know, if you want lemon meringue pie, you have to eat your peas first. Well, I had the skills to eat the peas. I didn't like eating the peas, but I ate them because I wanted a piece of lemon meringue pie. So always look to make sure that the student has the skill to do what the non preferred activity is.
- [15:33]
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- [17:21]
Beverly Holden Johns
With time management and what can we do about it? And the first reason is cognitive overload. Probably many of you who are on cognitive overload, a lot of the time you're thinking, oh my gosh, I just can't get all, all of this done and everything is coming at you at one time. That's how our children feel. When that's happening, we need to take the opportunity to simplify the task as much as we can and to reduce the amount that they have to do at one time. And then anytime we can integrate with previous learning, it's better. And then, oh, everybody thinks they can multitask. Sure, I can do three things at one time. No, you can't. One task at a time. So how do we do one task at a time and then remove distractions, but balance the need to move, movement and create while listening? Because we're working with children with ADHD and we know that some of our students are not going to be able to listen to a lecture unless they can doodle, unless they can draw a picture, unless they can be shaking their leg, whatever. So otherwise one task that is a cognitive task at a time and then rejection sensitivity. And you're reading a lot in the ADHD literature about rejection sensitivity with students. They are afraid to fail. I work with a lot of other writers and I see this all the time. They just can't get the writing done. And then I take a look at it and I think it was good writing, but they were afraid they were going to fail. And that's a very terrible feeling. So remember that. Rejection sensitivity. When you've got a child and that child is not wanting to do something, ask yourself, are they afraid of being rejected? Somebody isn't going to like their work. So we want to listen and ask questions and not be judgmental and give positive feedback and give them proofreading checklists, then auditory processing. This I go through some real battles with individuals because students may be in high school and the teacher gives three step directions and the student can't do them because they can't process. And I'll always say, well, are they able to do three step directions? No, they said, but they're 15 years old and they should be. No, they can't. One step direction. I have seen as a result of the pandemic, our ability to process auditory information has gone down. We're just easily distracted with a lot of things. We have a lot on our mind. And so we need to make it easier for students to give them a one step direction and then always check our vocabulary. And good teachers and parents know how long it takes for children to process information. And we've got to watch that and then use voice to text software. One of my favorite podcasting tools is NotebookLM Google. And I like NotebookLM Google because you could put a lecture in and then it comes up with a like what I call a radio talk show. And then it says, now remember the key facts are so that sometimes will help our children who have auditory processing problems because there's a lot of repetition in them. And certainly. So what are some more reasons that students struggle with time management? Procrastination. Have we heard of that? Well, I really don't want to do that. Don't want to clean my house. I think I'll find this to do so for our children with procrastination. Certainly it can be the rejection sensitivity. But one of the things that we need to do when we see our children procrastinating. Procrastinating is don't expect them to start the task alone. Help them start. Let's do the first step together and then you can do the second step. So we are there to do it with them and we need to make the work environment pleasant. So let's say you yourself have a big project to do and you say, I don't really want to do that. Well, how about making the work environment pleasant? So if I have a tough writing project to do, you can bet I treat myself to a cup of hot chocolate and it's by my side and I think, okay, I've got that. I made my work environment pleasant so that I didn't mind doing it. Because when I was doing the hard writing, I had my hot cocoa or I had my fidget or whatever. And then we've talked about the premack, making sure that the child has the skill. And then this one, I call it cathartically dumping. We all are upset about many things in our lives. And when we are upset and when our children are upset, they need to Dump it. In other words, their working memory is not intact. If they're worried about what's going to happen, what is doing this. So we need to really identify positive outlets for emotions. So mindfulness. Look for appropriate forms of expression. Maybe they can draw, maybe they can do a collage, whatever. I remember working with a young man, and he would come in, and he had always come in from the school bus, and he had always been wronged by the bus driver. So he would be just on and on and on. The bus driver did this, the bus driver did that. It's terrible the way the bus driver did this, etc. Well, what I found was if I tried to talk to him, it did not work at all. He would escalate. So I started saying, I tell you what, Spence, how about if you write down your side of the story about what happened on the bus and I'll put it in your file. Oh, somebody hurt him and he had to dump it until he dumped what was bothering him. We were not going to have a happy day doing academics. So I think sometimes we forget that people have to have those outlets and we have to teach children how to use those outlets. And then cognitive inflexibility is hard. And it has gotten harder for many of our students to what I call switch gears. So they're doing one assignment, and we say, and now it's time to do this. And they really can't cope because they think it's the end of the activity that maybe they prefer. So we need to use the term pause. Let's pause on this. We'll come back to it later. Or we need to build in between steps. We're doing, you know, a motor activity, and we're going to go into math. That's going to be hard for some children. But what we can do is do the motor activity. Do a motor activity with math and then do the math task. And then failure to identify roadblocks and triggers. Do what ifs. What if we miss the bus? What if somebody stops you and wants to talk? What if. Because we all have roadblocks and triggers, we may have. We know that some people are. A word, a sentence, and particular smell in an environment will trigger a very negative reaction. And when that happens, it's a roadblock. And sometimes the child just freezes. So we can do the what ifs. What if this happens? Do time estimation. We're going to talk more about that. And then we have children who are. And I noticed that in the questions that some of you sent me. Routine resistance and Some of our students don't like routine and what we need to do is intersperse fun activities in the routine. So we do two things and then we get to do a fun activity. But we don't really know ahead of time what the fun activity is. So that makes it even more fun. And then student preference. It's all about student preference. Exposing the student to choices, letting them experiment with different types of planners, letting them experiment with types of writing utensils that they want to use to find out what works for them. I have to tell you, some of you may use bullet journals. You know they're the journals and you faint. You can make them look pretty beforehand. I have a friend who does it. She said, here's my bullet journal for the month. Well, I was teaching an adaptations class and I said, okay, let's look at different preferences for the way you keep track of what you need to do. I said, so for, you know, the next month we're going to do bullet journals. Half of the class hated bullet journals and half of the class like them. And it was my point to show them that one particular thing is not going to work for everyone. I don't use a bullet journal. Maybe some of you do time blindness, which is that inability to sense how much time has passed and estimate the time needed to get something done. It really is, if we think about it, a multi dimensional skill. It involves concentration, memory and planning. And sometimes we misjudge deadlines because we think we had all of this time to do it and suddenly it's Friday and the assignment was due. And it really involves time sequencing as well. And we try to multitask and we can't do it. So picture this, mental multitasking. So we're always thinking we're doing something, but we're always thinking about what we have to do next. Well, that in itself can cause us some anxiety. If we say, oh my gosh, I'm doing this, but I really wish I was doing that because I'm going to have to spend two hours doing that. Our background, tasking on a zoom and reading other material. Dan, if we're honest, we probably all do it. But are we really multitasking? Are we really concentrating on both things and then stacking our productivity? Well, we decide we're going to go out for a walk, but we say, oh well, while I'm walking I can check my emails. Well, if you need a walk to cathartically dump and you're checking your emails, it doesn't work. And then switching tasks often we need to remember that every time we switch attention, our brain has to use extra energy to switch gears, so to speak. What do we need to do? We all are using technology. Maybe some are using it too much to model appropriate use of technology to try to teach our children one thing at a time. Take a walk without the phone. Keep switching to a minimum. Watch worksheets and as your if you're a parent and your child comes home with a worksheet that has six separate sets of directions on one page, it isn't going to work because they can't switch direction and they're still doing direction number one and they're down to direction number six. I'm going to share with you what I do when because I have taught some after school programs and that's what I would see so much and I'd think, oh my gosh, I don't want to do this worksheet either. So starting a task. Remember we talked about this? This is difficult for children because they will tend to procrastinate. So use Behavior Momentum, a well researched strategy that says if you want a child to do something that you perceive could be difficult for them, do not start with the difficult task. Instead, give the child something easy to do. Reinforce them. Give them something else that's easy to do. Reinforce them and give them something else that's easy to do and reinforce them and then give them the more difficult tasks to do. And the research has shown that because you gain momentum for success, it is exciting and the student is more likely to be able to do. Write a list of what needs to be done. There are some that say write it down physically because there is an adrenaline rush. Write when you get to mark off what you got done, always give a visualization tool. Consider a rubric and have the student rate the task on level of difficulty from 1 to 5 before they begin and then have them rate it later because sometimes they'll say, oh, this is task, this is too hard, I can't do it. Well, the bottom line is they might say, oh, it was five, it was really hard. You get it done and you say, hmm, how was that? Oh, well, it was really only a 2. So I get the idea that something that I thought might be too difficult really wasn't and then just some step by step directions and have them practice those. Practice them with fun. And then I love Beat the Clock used to work with this young man and he put his head down on the desk and he'd just find anything he could think of because he didn't want to do the task. And I learned to say to him, oh, Andrew, I bet that task will take you 10 minutes to do. And you know what? Andrew would get it done in three because he wanted to prove me wrong. So how long did it take you to do it and make it a game? Continually do these exercises with children or time estimation. Write down, how long do I think this task will take? Well, I think it might take me 20 minutes. It only took me 10. So then they begin to get a sense, but we have to practice it with them over and over again, and we need to model it as well. And then create a roadmap game. Where am I going? So what roadblocks might be in the way? What are the. What are my tasks and what are the modifications? And then teaching children to learn from what happens that didn't turn out well. Good old reflection. Execute a plan. And then, oh, it didn't work because I didn't count on getting a text that I really wanted to answer. All right, so what am I going to do the next time? Not going to look at my text. I'm going to execute it and I'm going to repair. And then reinforcing may need to reinforce successive approximations. If the child doesn't do it perfectly, but they did it okay. Reinforce the pieces they did okay. And then balance between delaying and recognizing for being on time how many of you have been on a zoom. And they will say, and you're on time. And they will say, we're going to wait five more minutes as people kind of dribble in. What you were doing is reinforcing the people who are late when you should be starting on time to reinforce the people who were on time. That's about teaching children and adults respect. What about routine resistance? Work to identify what parts of the routine they don't like to do and why. And then always intersperse activities that are fun. My favorite behavior management tool, taught to me by a dear colleague, Dr. Eleanor Goslow, many years ago, is be positive, be brief, and be gone. What does that mean? So we give the child the instruction and we word it positively one step direction. That's why we're brief. And then we move away from the child. Moving away from the child says to the child, I'm going to give you time to process and I'm going to allow you to save face. This is very effective strategy. And then probably all of you know the wait strategy. When you start getting yourself into a situation where you're arguing with the child, remember Wait. Ask yourself, why am I talking? Do I really need to be talking? Did my poor mother need to be talking for two hours trying to get me out of bed? No, it didn't work. Sometimes we just need to stay quiet. And we talked about behavior, momentum. So planning and prioritizing, which are the tools and trade the types of pins children want to use notebooks, bracelet reminders, cognitive credit cards, sticky note reminders, all of those things, they're tools. But we have to find the right tools for the children with whom we're working. And then note taking framed outlines where we give them a lot of of it and then we expect them to fill it in. And then making lists and prioritizing breaks. A lot of people will do backward planning for long assignments. I know I did this so much with students from about the sixth grade on looking at a long term assignment. Now how are we going to break this down so it's manageable parts. And a lot of people say, what should we use? Digital versus analog clocks. Pair together, put digital only one view at a time. Analog clocks, three views of time. They see the past, they see the present and they see the future. Most of all, they see the passage of time. One day in a college class I was teaching at night and I said to the students, it's now 20 till 8 and we're going to take a break until 8 o'. Clock. And I got these blank expressions, what's going on? Well, one of the students came up and she said, what do you mean 20 till 8? Because they were used to digital clocks, they didn't use an analog proofreading checklist. Always do those with students because some of our children will rush through assignments just to get them. So here's a sample of a proofreading checklist. You can vary it as you like. Now helping at home, always find a positive place for the child to work which is free of distractions and it's pleasant and it is a place that meets their sensory needs. They may need a water bottle, they may need a cushion on their chair. What are their sensory activities? And then always do a non homework activity together with your child when they arrive home from school. School. They don't need to do more schoolwork right away. School work has been difficult for them. Give them a break. So take a walk, do something fun that builds your relationship and look over the homework together and then break it down into small assignments. And what I like to do every few minutes, depending upon the attention span of the child, is to do what I call mindful Moments, a short two minute pause. They can stretch, they can listen to a song. Deep breathing teaches the children life skills also to look for those mindful moments. And then traveling assignments are traveling locations. What I used to do if I was. If a student came into my after school program and they had an assignment and there were six sets of directions on one sheet of paper. I would take the sheet of paper, make a copy and. And then I would break it into small parts and I would put one, let's say it was math. We put one math problem on one part of the wall, one on another. And I would gift the students some time to walk around and do the assignment. That's a traveling assignment. And always have the children highlight direction words because sometimes we think. Think children understand direction words and it might be a different word than someone else uses. And meet with the teacher for homework help. Meet with the teachers or case manager prior to the beginning of the year and learn about their expectations. So will they share their notes either prior to class or after class and find out how the teacher communicates homework and if it's a software system. I was just on an IEP not too long ago and they did a software system but the parent was not able to get into the software system. Well then come to find out. One of the teachers couldn't get into the system either because you have to find out who has access to it. And does everybody in the school have an assignment notebook? So what are the ways that the teacher communicates? And then there does the school have a check in and check out system for some of the students? And how much homework does the teacher give each night? And how are students able to use artificial intelligence? I just will refer you to fall 25 attitude. Carol has a wonderful article on how AI can help students stay on track and then communicate at the first sign of a problem. Don't think it's going to get better. We have to reach out. And it's all about time. So we teach children, we model how to use time. It's all about individualization. One size never fits all. We mentor our children and we figure out the ways that will motivate them to understand more about time management. And we encourage. We're builders. We look for everything that our students do that is positive and we reinforce that. So I'm going to stop and we're going to have a period of time for questions and answers to kick off.
- [42:12]
Annie Rogers
We have this question. Effective time management requires a degree of personal responsibility that my teenager is lacking. When they stay up too Late finishing homework after wasting hours on video games, and then they're late for school the next day. It's always someone else's fault. How do we start to hold them accountable? Is it just a matter of letting natural consequences do their thing?
- [42:39]
Beverly Holden Johns
And that's an excellent question. And again, we're dealing with teenagers, some of whom are always testing the limits to see just how far they can push to get something done. And we all know that some teenagers live on, on the edge. Some adults live on the edge. I mean, if they've got to be someplace at 4 o', clock, they're there at 3:59, they're pushing it. But I really believe the best thing is not to nag. Remember the wait approach? Why am I talking? I don't need to say anything. You know, I need to model, you know, how we do things. And then I have to reinforce. With successful approximations, you're not going to change the child's behavior overnight. So you're going to start looking for any glimmer of positivity and you're going to reinforce any glimmer of that, oh, look at what you got done in just 15 minutes. That was phenomenal. So I think we have to, we have to reinforce successful approximations. They have learned some of these strategies that are not working for them. And so we need to be looking for what they did well and making a big deal out of that. That's how we're going to teach.
- [44:19]
Annie Rogers
And I will just recognize that. Man, that is hard, very hard work to find those glimmers of success when your expectations and perhaps your frustration are not aligned with what you're seeing, so.
- [44:38]
Beverly Holden Johns
Exactly, exactly. And you're taking, you end up taking ownership of the problem like my mother was taking ownership of a problem when she really should have been reinforcing me for getting out of bed on time. But then she was getting frustrated and it was a vicious cycle. And yeah, she should have just set a clear limit and remember, be positive, be brief, and be gone. And then moved away from me. And I think that sometimes. But that is hard because we are human beings and we do get frustrated. We want them to do things the way we want them to do. Maybe they're going to get it done, maybe they're going to do it a different way, which is okay. But we have to continually look and change our focus because a lot of our students are what I call reinforcement deserts. Nobody ever says anything nice to them. And we got to be able to find something that we can grab a hold of. Where they made some progress and reinforced it.
- [45:45]
Annie Rogers
So if you only take one thing away, it's to look for those. Those. Those glimmers and try to accentuate those as a strategy. Yep. Okay. A lot of questions today about time estimation from both adults and, you know, regarding their children that it's just seems. It's. It feels like an impossible task to estimate how long things will actually take. Some people saying even for routine tasks, it depends so much on your mood and state of mind. And then up to a child who's suffering really debilitating anxiety over a large project that feels unwieldy. So maybe we could start with the small tasks for kids, a way maybe to gamify the process to help them get a better grasp of how long things actually take.
- [46:44]
Beverly Holden Johns
Yeah. I did write an article that was in Attitude where I talked about making a game of it. All right, we want to go to the local ice cream place and get ice cream. All right, so I'm motivated to do that. All right, let's talk about how long we think. What are the steps before we can get out the door? And then what are the steps after we get out the door? Oh, look at this. What if I can't find my money? What if mom can't find her keys? So all of those roadblocks, but making it a game where, you know, and what if I get into traffic? And then what if we get to the ice cream place? Like this happened to us the other day. My husband wanted a vanilla sundae, and I get to the ice cream place, and they don't have any vanilla ice cream. What do I do? So, you know, making those games with easy things. So we're just building time estimation in all of the time. And are we all going to sometimes mess up? Yes, because sometimes we think something will take us a set amount of time, and it turned out to be harder than we thought it was, and we missed the estimation. Well, that's. Okay. So what have we learned from that? So talking about those what ifs and also practicing fun ways to estimate time, does that help?
- [48:41]
Annie Rogers
Yes. Yes, I think so. And then for. Again, going back to those teenagers where you've. You've established that it takes 20 minutes to get dressed, brush teeth, and eat something in the morning, and you have the same scenario, the same Groundhog Day playing out day after day after day, is that. Is it just a matter of letting them be late for school and face those. Those consequences? It's not a time estimation. It's more like a believing.
- [49:23]
Beverly Holden Johns
Right, right, exactly. I mean, they think they have the answer, and teenagers, a lot of times do think they have the answer. And so they're going to do this, and they're going to do. And sometimes, yes, it's going to be what I call execute and repair. They did their approach, and it didn't work. So rather than saying, you know, you messed up. All right, how can we. What did you learn from this? How could we do it differently, approaching it in that way? I mean, they learned the hard way. They might have been late for school, but how can you repair that? So let's look at what happened here. Where do we think it broke down? And putting some of that responsibility on them to begin to think through what happened in the process? Where did it break down and what can I do differently? Because a lot of times I see people also who just beat themselves up. I mean, I've done it before, you know, I did X and I just beat myself up instead of saying, no, wait a minute. What did you learn from that? And what can you do the next time to make sure you repair it? Reflection. I mean, good teachers reflect all the time. They look at what happened well, during a school day, but at the end of the day, they look at, what could I have done better rather than looking at it and say, oh, my gosh, I just really messed that up, and go on and on and on and on about it. No, look at it. What did you learn from it? And what can you do the next time?
- [51:14]
Annie Rogers
Mm. Someone wrote in and said, we need a webinar just on execute and repair. That might be true. That might be true. Yeah.
- [51:25]
Beverly Holden Johns
I mean, because that's part of the learning process, and sometimes we don't even need to say, all right, tell me how you did this. Okay, how do you think we can fix it without saying, hey, you screwed up? No, but how did you do it? How can you repair it? We all learn from our mistakes. This is a different way of looking at. At the situation.
- [51:55]
Annie Rogers
Yeah, we got another great question that said, how do I get my child to understand that perfection is not attainable? And especially with school projects, there comes a point where it's good enough for a good grade and we need to move on.
- [52:13]
Beverly Holden Johns
Right, right. And that just really strikes a chord with me because I work with a lot of fellow writers, and they will go over the same sentence 35 times. You know, you want to say, look, get it done. But for some of our children, that is really difficult for them to do because they want to do it perfectly. And now we get so many more referrals when students get in middle school for what I call obsessive compulsive behaviors. Because when they're, like, in the lower grades, the teacher will give them extra time until they can get it perfect. But then when they get where they're switching classes all the time, then it really comes out that it is a real issue. And I think that we have to teach children. You know, we look at something and we point out what they did well, and we focus on that, and then we say, it's ready to turn in. So it's almost like we have to give them permission to turn it in, because, again, some will just fixate. Oh, my goodness. I'm not sure that's the correct word that I want to use. I like your choice of words. And move it and move it from there. So it's part of giving them permission to finish the task, because sometimes they are so fixated on it being perfect, and it's not going to be perfect. We all wish we were, but it's giving them permission to finish it.
- [54:27]
Annie Rogers
Right. And I'm seeing a lot of comments today from. From caregivers and educators are seeing students dealing with anxiety and that this is one of the manifestations of the anxiety. Somebody wrote in to say it takes her son, like, five hours to finish something that should take maybe a half an hour, but he just feels like it's never good enough.
- [54:56]
Beverly Holden Johns
Yeah. And that's where rejection sensitivity comes in. They are so afraid of being rejected, their work of being rejected, that they can't finish it.
- [55:11]
Annie Rogers
Right.
- [55:12]
Beverly Holden Johns
So we need to point out the positive pieces of what they did. And if they're working on an assignment for five hours and we want it done in 30 minutes, that isn't going to happen overnight. So talking about reinforcing successful approximations, you know, if they spent five hours and they got done in four, we're saying, hey, you know, you made some improvement here. I'm really proud of the improvements you made and then backing it up until it's within the reasonable amount of time. But it's always. I think we always have to look at the whole notion of whether they are afraid of being rejected. Yeah. I have a friend, and she has written the trilogy, and it's one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have seen. It's. It's excellent. She will not turn it in. She is so. And. And it. Finally, the light bulb went on with me. I had to check my behavior because I was getting impatient. I thought, just. Just send it in. Oh, wait a minute. She is afraid of being rejected. I mean, and that's not a pleasant feeling. So what did she need? She needed more build up and more mentoring and more coaching that, hey, this is what you did well to overcome that rejection piece. It's hard.
- [56:49]
Annie Rogers
It all comes back to that first point you made in the Q A about. About finding the positive. Exactly. And just how critical that is.
- [56:59]
Beverly Holden Johns
It is because if we as parent, parents and teachers have to see ourselves as builders and everything, every negative statement that we make hurts the child. We really have to be careful. All right. What I did today, was I building my child up? Was I looking for everything I could possibly find to be sure that I was a builder? Yeah.
- [57:35]
Annie Rogers
We're saying there's a flip side to that coin, which of course is kids who avoid doing the work altogether or who rush through it and, you know, tell us that they don't care. Any advice for those kids who are on the avoidant side, I guess of the. Maybe it's anxiety.
- [57:56]
Beverly Holden Johns
My Andrew, you know, he was on the avoidance side and he put the head down on the desk and he wanted him to do anything, you know, and that's how I learned to do beat the clock with him. And it really worked with him. But the other piece I had to do with Andrew was the minute he raised that head up and picked up the pencil like he was going to work, you better believe I was over there saying, oh, thank you. You just let me know how I can help you do this assignment. That's looking for the little things that are going to make a big difference because children with anxiety. And again, we sometimes have to look at our tools like be careful with timers, all of those things that might produce more anxiety once we know our children and we have to give them a lot of reassurance as well. I think that that's very important.
- [59:00]
Annie Rogers
Indeed. Indeed. Well, I'm sorry to say that we have come to the end. End of our hour. Beverly, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your expertise and your stories, your strategies with the ADHD community. We really appreciate it.
- [59:18]
Beverly Holden Johns
Well, thank you. Thank you. And I wish all of you well. And I thank you all for being with us this afternoon to discuss this topic. It really is a very important one for all of us.
- [59:31]
Annie Rogers
Yes, thank you very much to all of our listeners today. Please know if you would like to access the event resources, you can visit attitudemag.com and you can search for podcast 57 6. The slides and recording will be posted a few hours after we wrap up, and if you're listening in replay mode, you can simply click on the episode description. Also, please know that our full library of Attitude webinars is available as a podcast. It's called the ADHD Experts Podcast and you can find it everywhere. To make sure you don't miss any future Attitude webinars, you can sign up to receive our free email newsletters@attitudemag.com newsletters thank you all and thanks again, Beverly.
- [60:19]
Podcast Host
For more Attitude Podcast and information on living well with Attention devil deficit, visit attitudemag.com that's a D D I T U-E-M-A G.com.
- [60:38]
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