“Spends most of his time in his room playing video games”
He’s already checked out of your family, and you seem ok with it. Get your kid out of his room and off video games. He’s only 14, if you allow him to continue this way it’s only going to get worse. Step up and parent him instead of allowing video games to do your job- 14 is still a child.

It is bad enough having to constantly live with the consequences of your own disorganisation and forgetfulness, inability to initiate tasks, and the confusion about why this is so, without having people you love (and will likely learn to hate) expressing their disappointment in you, getting angry, blaming you, & punishing / teaching you via ‘consequences’. Never mind the passive aggressive act of letting a child deal the the consequences of forgetting their lunch when it’s something you deliberately chose to let them go through. I was incapable of finding the one spare sheet (a mythical sheet as far as I was concerned) in the airing cupboard that would fit my extra wide bunkbed and slept on filthy, brown sheets for years, the ‘consequence’ of my executive function deficits. I felt disgusting, I slept in a dressing gown to protect myself from the sheet, I begged my mother to have the cleaning lady lay out the sheet for me to put on if she couldn’t manage the top bunk (the bottom bunk was my desk). I broked down during one late night desperate search through the airing cupboard, pulled out the sofabed in the spare room and slept there for months. My mother adored me, but she left me to be a ‘pig in the pigstye’.

Consequences leave incredible marks, but they are not marks that spur the neurodivergent brain into change. Hard-won improvements will happen in time through a loving, collaborative coaching approach, and all that shame and fear and resentment and defiance (the latter two being coping mechanisms against the former) have to be UNDONE and that is a lifetime’s work. When a child has executive function deficits, whether from ADHD, autism, PDA or Oppositional Defiance Disorder, that is a learning difficuty and they need extra support, and extra understanding to buffer their own vicious inner critics (they will have internalised all the blaming, shaming, frustrated words they’ve heard).

Please, consider that your children may have executive function deficits which they are not in control of, and learn to accept them as they are, and be *alongside* them as loving, supportive friends, not angry, punishing, controlling authority figures. It will change their live and yours. There are executive function coaches that could work with your children. There are books, and podcasts [the Huberman Lab podcast on ADHD is amazing], and coaching groups for parents. Most of all, there is *love*. Please don’t be like Derek (whose story is shared over the years of this comment thread) and miss out on having a truly loving relationship with your children and teens. Please get curious about how you can repair your relationship with them, and learn to be truly helpful to them in their struggles. You may need to deal with your own shame, and ‘what will others think’, and fearful pictures of what the future will hold if they don’t get the right grades, and so on. Everything is possible if you let your kid be the kid they are, accept and love them, and get curious about how to work with their strengths. Small miracles can happen, but you need to be willing to change too, rather than just focusing on the problem and the change coming from the child.

Good luck to us all.

My son did enough to get into the college he wanted.. however, the same issues he had persisted and after 3 semesters he dropped out. It is so strange because he was having the best time of his life. He was in band, absolutely loved the college and the people. Even faced with failure, he still wanted to continue and it was heart breaking to pull him from college.

He came back home, got an ok job. We pushed him to look for better and that was a struggle. Eventually, he applied to a great company, got the job and is doing great. Eventually he found an apartment and moved out last year.

He is doing great. Go figure. Have the problems gone away? nope.. getting him to follow though on things are still difficult, but where his job is concerned, he goes above and beyond and is doing well.

The only advice I can give is, don’t give up.

Hi Gillian,
Thank you for your post! Everything you said describes my son to a T!
Did you or your son take meds to help with the issue? Is there something that you found works best to deal with the forgetful? I understand 6th grade is an adjustment for most kids but I think our son’s forgetfulness is more than that. Thanks for the book suggestion! I will definitely look into it!

Liz,
Thank you for your post. This sounds so much like my 6th grade son.
Did your sons figure out a method to help them with the forgetfulness? So many kids nowadays, seems like more boys, get diagnosed with ADHD and put on meds. I really don’t want that for our son.

Cheers again 🙂

So, I suggest a fantastic book to everyone here, whether they think their kid is ADHD or not–it is called, “Smart, but Scattered,” by Drs. Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, and it does not use the label, “ADHD.” Instead, it focuses on identifying Executive Skills Strengths and Weaknesses, and comes up with various strategies for working with, around, or on that weakness.

Much of the comments here lamenting about their children’s forgetfulness is very familiar to me. I was extremely forgetful as a child; I was accused of having a “convenient memory,” I was told that I “Could remember if I really wanted to,” and a whole host of other negative judgments. I also had consequences; natural and otherwise. All this lead to was extreme damage to my self esteem. My son is similar. He is extremely forgetful, and we’ve tried everything; consequences, both natural and imposed. I’ve tried structure, which helps a little. My son forgot a permission slip for a field trip once, and had to stay home. Trust me, this “natural” consequence did not stop this from happening again, and he was extremely disappointed about not going on the field trip; so if that type of motivation doesn’t work; then, this is not about “training” their behavior, it is about a neurological weakness, and consequences will only demoralize them. They need help; plain and simple. They need structure, reminders, and systems. They need support.

Cheers!