Transcript: Dynell's Pop-Up Podcast #100
5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Teen Turn In Their Assignments Without Losing Your Mind or Taking Over - Part 1
Welcome to my Pop Up Podcast. I’m Dynell Garron, educational therapist helping teens who have anxiety, depression, or ADHD graduate and helping their parents find simple ways to support them in school, hold them accountable, and maintain their connection.
It wasn’t too long ago that I was floundering, devastated by my son’s struggles with school and mental health, and I felt completely at a loss. Fast forward past many years, tears, blow ups, and shut downs, and you’ll see the confident, competent young man who knows who he is, who takes good care of himself most of the time, and who still doesn’t like school, but knows how to navigate it without being overwhelmed.
And, If you eavesdropped on our conversations today, you would mostly hear - connection, respect and a real partnership. It’s been a journey and I’m here to share with what has worked for us and and what works for our clients.
If you are parenting a teen who has a diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, or depression, and you’re absolutely determined to give your teen every possible opportunity to succeed in school and trying desperately to understand and meet their needs, you are in the right place.
My goal is to give you concrete, actionable steps that you can implement right away to support your teen in school and to relax a bit so you can enjoy parenting this special young person whom you love with every fiber of your being. So, wherever you are listening from, welcome. Let’s jump in.
Are you pulling your hair out because your teen keeps having missing assignments and scary grades? Well, I'm going to share with you five ways you can help your young person turn in their assignments without losing your mind or taking over. And this is a long discussion. So today I will present part one.
And in the next episode, part two. I will say that our suggestions are different than most because we are going deep into why teens struggle with their assignments when they have ADHD, anxiety, or depression. And speaking as a parent, the more information we have about what our teens are dealing with, the more we can understand them and give them what they need.
So let's go. Tip number one. Recognize how anxiety, depression or ADHD impacts your young person right now, and especially when it comes to school. You know, these diagnoses make learning difficult because they impact attention, working memory, and executive functions, which I refer to as the three major learning systems.
For instance, your teen's energy can drop significantly when they are experiencing depression or anxiety. Your young person's ability to focus and filter out unnecessary information is challenged when they have ADHD, and their frustration, tolerance or motivation can be very, very low. And of course, all of the planning, time management, and self monitoring necessary for school success can go right out the window.
By the way, I just finished a guide on the three learning systems, which will be released shortly. This guide is so good because the first part provides an overview of each of the three learning systems. The second part is a dissertation. No, I'm kidding. It's not a dissertation, but I go into detail about how each of the learning systems impacts your child's ability to complete their assignments and get them turned in.
I think you're going to love it, and I think it's going to be a resource for you going forward, and it will help you accomplish this first goal, which is learning more about how each of these diagnoses impact learning. Tip number two. Now, this speaks to one of my greatest frustrations as a mom and as an educational therapist.
Mental health work and academic work happen in two different arenas at two different times. So unless learning is specifically discussed in therapy, young people just don't have the strategies they need to reduce anxiety and overwhelm while they're learning. And what I often see is a shutdown or complete avoidance because of intense emotions.
And honestly, that puts us parents in a very difficult position of having to choose between our teens mental health and school. You know, when I was working with my son, I ended up giving him tools that he could use. The moment he started to feel stress or anxiety while he was learning.
And these tools allowed him to take care of himself and also to keep moving so he could get his work done. One of the most important skills I think we can teach a young person is to recognize where they are on what I call this continuum of symptoms. They need to be able to ask themselves, and really ascertain, am I just tired?
Do I feel stressed? And I think I can still get some work done, or am I stressed to the point where I can't even think? Because we have to help them manage their symptoms and their responsibilities. And so how do you do this? Well, certainly working with professionals, when we work with clients who are seeing therapists, we coordinate with their therapist, of course, with the family's permission, because it's very important that we do that.
If you're not seeing a therapist, or if your young person isn't seeing a therapist, then I think you can start by having your teen reflect on and talk about their school experiences. And specifically, I would ask them to share with you what comes up just before they check out or just before they put their head down.
And what we are listening for is the cause of the difficulty. Often that is internal. And what I mean by this is often our young people are suffering because of a belief they have about themselves, their teacher, or school or the assignment. And our teens tend to think in black and white terms, either I can or I can't.
Either I'm smart or I'm stupid. And so you being the fabulous parent coach that you are, you actually get to guide them toward problem solving by asking a series of good questions. And so some of the questions could include, hey, dude, what happened just before you slammed your laptop?
Or what were you saying to yourself? Or what thoughts were running through your mind? Why do you think that came up for you when your teacher said such and such? What do you wish had happened? So what do you think is getting in the way? And we're not just firing off questions, because that would feel like an interrogation.
And there is a dance we do with questioning and eliciting responses and reflecting back to our teens so that we can dig a little bit deeper. This is part of the motivational interviewing skills that we teach parents in our parent coaching program. As parents, we're so used to jumping in, figuring out the problem, fixing it for them, or telling them how to do it.
And I just want to be clear, that's not what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that we talk to our young people in a way that gets them to uncover for themselves the barriers and solutions. And I want to caution it doesn't happen right away because teens are so used to being told what to do they need time to warm up to the idea that you really want their opinion and you're not going to jump in and fix it for them?
I noticed this with my son. At first when we started having these types of conversations, I had to bite my tongue because I was very frustrated every. Question I asked him, the response was, I don't know. So eventually, I learned to offer choices. Do you think it's this, or do you think it's this?
And over time, my son started identifying his own challenges and coming up with his own solutions. He was really taking ownership of his experience. So giving your teen the space to explore their emotions while they are learning and the tools and strategies to self regulate are critical because ultimately, we want them to learn how to take care of themselves and their school assignments.
And I want teens to know when they can work despite feeling uncomfortable and when they truly cannot work. I don't want them to think that just because I feel a certain way, I cannot do the work. Oftentimes that's not quite true. So giving them the right tools helps them refocus, stay calm while they work, burn off a little frustration when they need to, and keep going.
So tip number one, just to recap, learn everything you can about how your teen's diagnosis impacts learning so that you can find the right interventions for them. Tip number two help your teen manage strong emotions while they are learning so they can stay in action as much as possible.
Now, tip number three is a little bit different, recognizing that all teens have good and bad days. I mean, we all have good and bad days. But our teens, they have not only good and bad days, they may have good and bad hours. The mood and the energy fluctuations can be so intense and exhausting for you and your teen.
And I know this firsthand, you know, many of our kids hold it together while they're in school, and then they come home and explode or go to sleep. Often it's because they've expended so much mental and emotional energy keeping it together at school. By the time they get home, they have nothing left or very little left.
And they really do need to recharge. And I'll be honest with you, if my child is going to fall apart, I'd rather him do it at home. One of the most important skills we can teach juniors, seniors, college freshmen, college sophomores, even, is to know when they can work and when they can't work, be honest about it, and not be ashamed of where they land on that continuum.
Now, this is very different than tip number two, which was all about helping a young person manage their emotions while learning. Tip number three involves discernment. Sometimes we do have to stop and prioritize mental health. But in my experience working with teens who have these diagnosis, I find that most of the time, we don't have to stop.
We just have to make room for it. We have to bring their symptoms into the room. We have to name it, honor it, without shame, no embarrassment, no judgment. And one way to do this is to help young people develop language and express their feelings not to run away from them.
Teach your young person to do. Body scan to see where their energy is and give them permission to talk about it. Another thing we can do is give your teen the best possible study strategies. And what are the best study strategies? It's the ones they're going to use. So often we've been taught, or we teach our teens to study one way, to take notes, one way to think about the work one way.
And the reality is, there are so many ways to engage in learning, and our teens in particular, they need to have different study strategies to accommodate their fluctuating energy levels. Different strategies come with different cognitive demands. Some are more strenuous than others. And again, we're trying to help our young people stay away from all or nothing thinking.
So we want to teach them how to be flexible and use strategies that work for them. One thing I see quite often is a young person putting off an assignment because they have such strong feelings about it. And so I do want to share with you something that we do in our program so that you can do it at home.
What we say to a young person is, look, if you need to take care of yourself right away, please go do that. And before you put this assignment away, here's what we're going to do. We're going to identify the three things that need to happen to complete the assignment.
And then we're going to write down the very first thing you're going to do when you pick the assignment back up. You can jot it on a corner of a piece of paper. You can put it on a postit note, whatever it takes. And why is this so important?
Because when a young person picks up that assignment, we don't want them to go right back into this place of anxiety. We want them to pick it up, take action, and to keep moving. Right? So one of the things I do want to share with you is that I have a Learning Strategies card deck, and it offers 30 different study strategies designed for varying energy levels.
I created this card deck specifically for our clients who have anxiety, depression and ADHD. Now, before I end, I'd like to talk about one more thing, and that is sleep. Many of our teens have horrible sleep habits. My son is one of them. He still struggles with sleep. And when he was younger, we worked with a nurse to create a sleep diet because his patterns were so erratic.
And what I learned from all of this is that he really needed to shut down as soon as he came home from school. I wasn't raised to do that, so I thought it was really weird. And it scared me because and I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but my thought process was, how on earth is he going to keep a job if he has to sleep every afternoon?
The child was in middle school. Isn't that crazy? But isn't that what we do as parents? So there was a pattern, a routine that he had to adopt. To help him get his work done and take care of himself. And the lesson here for me, and this is why I'm sharing it with you, it didn't matter so much what he did, but it taught me that I had to make room for his transition from school, whether I believed it was necessary or not.
And so in our coaching program, we create study schedules based on our clients activities and also their energy levels so that students can develop good habits of taking care of themselves. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would have to take into account my child's energy levels, but honestly, we had no choice.
So I wonder if you can explore this with your teen. Do they need a transition?
So, I know this is a bit long, and let me recap three of the five things you can do to support your teen in school. Number one, identify how their diagnosis impacts them. Number two, give them strategies to recenter and adjust when they need to so they can keep moving.
Number three help them sort out when they can work despite feeling uncomfortable, versus when they need to come to a full stop, which is required at times.
I have two resources for you. The first is a free guide, five tips to help your teen turn in assignments on time without losing your mind or taking over. And it covers all five of the points, three of which I've talked about in this particular episode. The remaining two will be covered in the next podcast.
I have another resource that has helped many teens study when their energy is very, very low, and that is my Learning Strategies, Card Deck and Masterclass Training, which I referenced before. It features 30 strategies that teens can select from so they can mix and match strategies based on what needs to happen that night and their energy level.
And it is a no brainer when it comes to preparing for test with less stress and overwhelm. And I will put the link to that resource in the show notes as well.
I hope you find this information helpful. And you can download the X which BENEFITS. I’ll put the link in the show notes so you can grab it right away.
Go to my facebook page, Dynell ET and let me know what you think. And, also what information would be most helpful for you. I really want you and your teen to have a better school year!@ Thanks for tuning it.
