Oh, that dreaded "line"

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My DD, who is 11, struggles with school organization too. Being in middle school, things are compounded by changing classes, different teachers, and homework that seems to be assigned out of thin air! A few things have helped us:

1. The entire middle school uses the same planner. Believe it or not, many "neurotypical" kids have the same issue with executive function challenges. I have gone to my daughter's core class/homeroom and seen a stack of planners that have been misplaced or left there! In some ways, knowing that other children are also dealing with this makes me feel a little better! But the school is trying to have every child and teacher utilize the same program. It may not be the best for my child (I envision her using a great homework app I found for the iPhone), but at least it's a start. Would bringing your child *and teacher* on board with a planner help at all? The teacher could ensure that the homework that is supposed to be written down is written down and the accompanying papers are in the backpack?

2. Every morning, I ask my daughter to envision her school day (they have block days two days per week, where the schedule changes - again!). It seems silly, but I have her close her eyes and imagine walking to first period, second period, etc. For each class, I tell her that she should imagine giving her homework to the teacher. Does the teacher want it in a bin? Does the teacher need to check off the work? In all cases, her planner has a box for each class. I have her write down what she is going to do for that day. So not only does the planner have future assignments and homework, but it is her "brain outside her brain" - it contains what she is to do in class *that* day. I also have her draw a little box next to the task for each class. When she finishes the task in class, I have her check the box. It seems tedious, and took us awhile the first few days, but now it goes by much faster and we do it first thing in the morning, so it's fresh in her mind.

3. It's weird, but my DD says she focuses better in the morning with hot chocolate…so she gets a mug before school with breakfast

If you haven't already, you can check out hints and checklists from the book "Smart, But Scattered" by Peg Dawson.

4. Forgot to add that the last resort thing I do is when I pick up DD from school, I actually run through her binder and ask her what she had done for each class and what she remembers she needs to do that may not be written down. Quite a few times she has remembered something while we are still at the car at school and can still dash in to get what she needs or turn something in. It's not a good solution if your son takes the bus or gets home another way.

5. All of her teachers have a website or online calendar with homework assignments and I check daily for what needs to be done and what projects are on the horizon. I'm still in the process of reminding my daughter how to check these sites herself and put information in her calendar, but that's a tremendously arduous task for her right now (just navigating 5 different websites is hard!). I remind her and have her do it while I stand next to her.

6. If you have even one teacher whose help you can enlist to help with the organizing (putting papers in the right spot, righting down an assignment), use that as a first step. If your son feels successful in one class or one subject, it could give him the encouragement to continue.

I will say that competence has bred confidence. My girl was really panicking the first few weeks of school, but now that a routine has been established, she is calmer and thus more able to remember some of these tasks on her own. Your son *will* get there, but it may require a fair amount of scaffolding (to the point where you may be repeating yourself over and over!) to do it.

I havent seen in any other posts so I thought I should add hormones into the mix.... He seems to have gone from managing this system ok to not at all... perhaps his system has taken a round of hormones and it is pushing him off course. Others have said they had this around 12 also but a couple of years later improved... about the time the first major hormonal change slows down again... if his body is developing it could be using up his already limited resources.. I know hormones are creating havoc with my dd10 at the moment!

Anyway, just a thought, I may be way off base.

A slightly non-topic reply, but your post makes me feel better. My son does the exact same thing, and will not put papers in folders, period. If it doesn't go in the accordion portfolio, which he loves for whatever reason, then it's liable to wind up anywhere from the locker to the hallway on the floor or the bottom of the backpack. I get frustrated that he will not come to me with his backpack. He just lays it on the floor and points me in the general direction of it -- if he remembers to do that much. I am terrified about middle school, because I remember how long it used to take me to get things in and out of my locker at that age. Rather than be late, I wound up carrying everything on my back all day and got made fun of on top of aching all the time. I guess I can relate to you and your son as well. I would give you both a hug if I could.

CubeDemon, I doubt they were really better at all.

I think what makes me think, sometimes, that they were better is, basically, nostalgia. The human emotional tendency to view the past with rose-colored glasses.

Mainly, though, it's the fact that, back then, I WAS a kid and a lot of it was Saint Alan's and Miss Typical's and Our Lady of Uncommon Sense's and Handsome Stranger's and Cattrina the Martyr's worry (even if Cattrina the Martyr did the vast bulk of the worrying). Princess BeeBee knew that there were problems, and Princess BeeBee had issues, and Princess BeeBee definitely was not the happiest kid on the block...

...but Princess BeeBee was a KID. "Oh! I backward cast mine e'e on prospects drear, and forward though I canna see I guess an' fear..." Yeah, that s**t belonged to the grownups back then.

Now it's 2013, and it's much less likely that a high-functioning kid is going to slip through the cracks or below the radar. Maybe they're more likely to get help and accomodations and skills training, and maybe they're just more likely to get labelled and pathologized and written off (given up on and dismissed, where at least Princess BeeBee got halfway believed in and pushed like the dickens).

But mostly, in Princess BeeBee's world, what makes things look so much darker today is that Princess BeeBee is 35. Princess BeeBee has some (relatively fresh) bad experiences with being pathologized and written off under her belt, and by virtue of the passage of time, those experiences are a lot larger in Princess BeeBee's mind than the nightmare that was middle school (even if middle school was longer, and more damaging, and worse, with the potentially more disastrous outcome). And most of all, PRINCESS BEEBEE IS THE MOTHER NOW. Saint Alan and Miss Typical and Handsome Stranger are long gone, Cattrina the Martyr is 88 years old, and Our Lady of Uncommon Sense (who was Saint Alan's sister and perennial advisor-- think of her as the Wise Woman of our little village in the Kingdom of Aspergia) has enough on her plate.

What makes back then look so much better, dear one, is that now it's my kid instead of myself that I'm afraid for, and there's no grownup to look to for answers. And the fact that I've read that story, and I know how it ended, and though Princess BeeBee did not exactly live happily ever after, there was happiness and she did live. The ending of this story remains an anxiety-filled mystery, and I can't even skip ahead and find out how it all goes.