My son is in 9th grade and is struggling to keep up with his new high school responsibilities. Is he too young for a coach?
Signed,  Worried

Dear Worried,

Many students with ADHD who have done fine in school, may hit a wall when they take a step up to a higher level of responsibility - like high school. So while you and your son may be worried about whether or not he can hack it, don’t worry, we DO have coaches for students in 9th grade. While most of our coaches work using emails and the phone, it may be better for a someone younger, like your son, to receive in-person coaching. Let us know your location and we will do our best to match your son with a coach that can work with him in person or using a face-to-face internet tool such as Skype. Here’s the link to sign up to find out more. Good luck! And let us know how it goes.

Do you have a question for the coach? Send it to coach@edgefoundation.org. We’ve love to hear from you.

And be sure to check out these other ADHD Coach questions:

What is an ADHD Coach?

Why am I always late?

What should I do about spring fever when I need to buckle down and study?

How do I know I need an ADHD Coach?

1. Make a budget
2. Make a list
3. Prioritize
4. Keep it in cash
5. Avoid the mall

This year we thought it would be helpful to provide a simple tool you can use to help you keep track of your spending.  This is a low-tech, print-it-out-and-keep-it-close-at-hand is a  simple budget tracking thermometer.  Go ahead, open up the file and print it out.  Then we’ll talk about how it works.  Ready?

The pdf includes an old fashion thermometer that you color in as you spend your money.  A budget worksheet so you can plan how much to spend.  And a sample that shows you how quickly you can spend $600 if you don’t think carefully about what you are buying.  Start by writing down who you want to buy stuff for and what you’ve already spent on items.  Then add up how much it all will cost.  Divide your thermometer into even segments.  Start coloring it in.  When you reach the top, STOP SPENDING!

Did you have any idea how quickly you could blow through $300 without spending very much money per person?  Let us know if using this old-school tool gives you a new view on budgeting and keeping your spending under control.

Included in the whitepaper are 60 practical solutions for typical ADHD challenges. Highlights include:

• Using creative ways, like music, to keep yourself on schedule
• Working with your urge to procrastinate, not against it
• How to study smarter, not harder
• How to use fidgeting to stay focused
• 4 student qualities for success

Everything you need to know about ADHD, college, and living your dreams. Download your FREE copy at the bottom of this link today!

Fail it Forward

Is it possible people who have not failed are people who have never gone too far…never gone far enough? What side of the coin do you fall on? The “I have failed side” or the “I played it safe side.”

How can we ever know how far we can go unless we are willing to fail? Playing it safe requires us to live inside the boundaries of our limitations. A diagnosis of ADHD can mean a limitation of too few neurotransmitters (the thingies that help us focus and concentrate). This doesn’t mean we have to live inside this limitation. We can manage this in several ways; education, coaching, medication, exercise, diet and therapy just to name a handful.

You know the game we all play sometime; “What would you do if money were not a concern.” I ask my coaching clients “What would you do if you knew you would not fail.” When we strip away the “yeah, buts,” “if onlys,” “shoulds,” “I can’ts” and my favorite “I tried that and it didn’t work” what do we have left?

I can. I will. I am.

It takes great strength and courage (an “I told you so” occasion for the nay-sayers in your life, real and imaginary) to consider the possibility of failing. To know in your heart you might fail and then decide to take the plunge and do it anyway. Anis Nin said, “Life Shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” What will it take for you to feel courageous?

A life of unmet potential is easier and less painful.

Those of us with ADHD have had our fair share of bumps in the road. Sometimes we settle for a life of unmet potential because it is just plain easier and less painful. Henry David Thoreau’s famous quote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” describes it well. Thoreau sought to learn to live deliberately and without resignation. He did not want to discover that he had not lived. Bob, my husband, has quoted this passage many times to me over the years. It has become his mantra, a reminder, as he learned to move through his daily challenge with ADHD. Like many adults diagnosed late it life Bob has had his fair share of bumps.

Many of us have learned to rely on the strategy of defensive pessimism. This strategy anticipates a negative outcome and then we take steps to avoid that outcome. Not necessarily a bad strategy, but certainly a limiting one. Yes, we must learn from our past mistakes. The learning and wisdom we gain from those mistakes guides our future…fail it forward, get it? As we side-step our way to the comfortable use of the word failure we can live firmly in the present. Fail, learn, grow, and succeed.

Want to think on this topic some more? You might also be interested in http://www.edgefoundation.org/blog/2009/07/14/adhd-is-it-a-good-or-bad-thing/.

How do you view failure in your life?  Do you agree that you can’t learn if you don’t fail?

Dear Wondering,

The simplest answer is that an Edge Coach is a coach who works for the Edge Foundation. But that doesn’t tell you much, does it? More specifically, we ensure all of our coaches meet strict standards of life coach training and experience before they even take our specialized training to work with ADD/ADHD youth. In addition, all our coaches participate in mentoring by senior coaches as they settle into working with Edge Foundation clients.

We are proud  we have some of the best known and most experienced coaches in the business.  All of our coaches bring amazing life experience to their coaching and have a passion for working with young people who might have ADD/ADHD. Many of them have ADHD themselves, or love someone who does, or both,  so they really get it.

We take the guess work out of finding a good coach (because we ensure that all of our coaches are good), and we help you find one you really click with.

Do you have a question for the coach?  Send it to info@edgefoundation.org.  We’ve love to hear from you.

Dear Late,

Yes, being chronically late can be a problem when you have ADHD.  Instead of focusing on getting your boss to understand why you are tardy, it’s more useful to consider ways to get yourself to work (and school) on time.  You can do it!  It just may take a little experimenting to find what works best for you.

There are three main reasons people with ADHD are usually late.

1.  Getting up late.

Yes, getting out of bed on time in the morning can be hard.  Especially if you are cutting your self short by falling asleep later at night than you should.  (For tips on how to get to sleep on time, see ADHD & Sleep.)  Here are a few things to try:

• put your alarm clock across the room so you have to get up to turn it off.
• use two alarm clocks, so you won’t be tempted by the snooze alarm.
• set your alarm for 15 minutes earlier than you think you need.  It may be that you are just underestimating how much time you need to get out of the house.

2.  Getting sidetracked

Do you jump out of bed with time to spare and still find that you are late out the door? Pay attention to what you are focusing on.

• Keep a checklist of everything you need to do before leaving the house.  And don’t turn on the TV, phone or internet until you get these things accomplished.
• If you take medication, take it first thing out of bed. That way it will start working before you leave the house.
• Set reminder alarms to keep you on track.  Figure out how much time you need to dress, eat and get organized.  Then set alarms to remind you that you need to have that task completed.  Use your phone or buy one of those reminder watches so your alarms are always nearby.
• Add in 5 or 10 minutes to your commute time so you have room for the unexpected.

3.  Being disorganized.

Do you walk out of the house only to realize you forgot your lunch or phone?  Do you spend needless minutes hunting around for your keys or shoes?

You need a “launch pad” by your exit door.  Set aside a special place near the door.  Collect all of the things you’ll need in the morning the night before.  If there are things like lunch that you’ll need to make in the morning, leave yourself a note at the launch pad, so you remember it in the morning.  Then at night, put everything there — keys, sunglasses, phone, purse, briefcase etc.  So they’ll be ready for you to grab as you run out the door.

You may have already tried all of these things, but are still late.  That’s where time with a coach can come in handy.  A coach can give you outside perspective about what’s not working and how to fine tune your routine to make it work for you.  ADHD and lateness often go hand-in-hand, but they don’t have to.  With a few simple tweaks to your routine, you can become a punctual person.

Do you have a question for the coach?  Send it to info@edgefoundation.org.  We’ve love to hear from you.

Dear Sunny,
There’s no denying it. Everyone feels like goofing off on a warm, sunny day. Unfortunately responsibilities of school, work and home don’t stop when the weather gets nice. Here are some ideas you can use to keep yourself on track:

Work with your urge to procrastinate

• Work at night when the call to be outdoors and playing isn’t so compelling.
• Do a moderate amount of vigorous outdoor exercise, then study.
• Take your studying outdoors - some of the time. It’s not as efficient, but at least you’re working rather than looking out the window.
• And next year, plan for spring fever by taking a heavy load in the winter and a lighter load in the spring.

Be accountable

• Get a study buddy and make an agreement that you’ll each get so much done in the next few hours. Knowing you’ve made a commitment to someone else really helps. It’s the power of accountability.

• Whatever you do not take a incomplete. Do whatever you have to do to finish a course. Or you may never finish it at all.

Schedule your study time

• Apply the principal of exercise intervals to studying. Instead of alternating sprinting and walking, alternate study and play. Set a timer and work hard for 30 or 60 minutes then play for the next interval of minutes. Then do it again. Just be sure you quit playing as readily as you quit working!

• Plan to procrastinate. Know when your deadlines are and how much time the tasks will take, and then do them when nothing else on the list is more important to get done because the deadline is NOW.

Study smarter not harder

• Know which classes will cut you slack so you can put energy into the ones that won’t.
• Know when you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. If you’ve worked for 5 hours and know that’s enough to get an A- on the paper and it will take 5 more hours to get an A but there’s other work that needs to be done, move on!

If you have a question you’d like our resident ADHD coach to answer, feel free to add it to the comments and we’ll try to answer it in a future post.

Dear Coach,
“Help!  I just got back from Spring Break and my project is due - I forgot all about it!”
Signed,  Cringing

Dear Cringing,

Well, hope you were having fun on Spring Break at least, because the time between now and when that project is due isn’t going to be any fun at all. You are just going to have to buckle down, put aside every extraneous activity, and just do it.

How an ADHD Coach can help

The issue here is not how can a coach help you deal with an emergency - like forgetting all about a major project until just before it’s due.  It is how a coach can help you avoid ending up in emergency situations in the first place. Wouldn’t that be nice!

One of the characteristics of ADHD is a tendency to shoot from the hip, or the “ready, fire, aim” syndrome. A coach works with you over time to develop better planning and self-management skills; skills that will help you manage your time and your things so you’re on top of your work and the rest of your life and not overwhelmed and behind all the time.

Getting back on track:

That being said, if you find yourself in a time pinch and are feeling overwhelmed, try this:

Assess your time:

• Get two 8.5×11 pieces of paper.
• Use the first page to sketch out a calendar for the upcoming days: columns for the days and rows for the hours. Mark them appropriately.
• Block out on your calendar plan all your classes and other necessary time commitments.
• Block out when you’ll be sleeping and eating.
• On the second page, list all the other things you have to get done.

Prioritize:

• Give the things that have big consequences for not getting them done the higher priority. Give the other things lower priority. You can even let them fall off the list for now.
• Break your project into smaller bits:
• Divide up the time that’s left on your calendar for the high priority things on your list. For a paper, for instance, block off a portion of the time to do/finish the research, a portion of the time to brainstorm and/or write a draft, and a portion of the time to produce the final draft and hand it in.
• If it looks like you have extra hours left on your calendar plan, look to the next higher priority tasks and start scheduling them until you run out of hours in the day.

Stick to your plan!

• Keep the plan with you 24/7. Put it in your agenda, or your flip phone.
• Keep checking your plan.  Stick to it to the best of your ability. If it’s 1:00 pm and your plan says you should be done with lunch and working on the draft, go work on the draft. Remember, it is an emergency plan to get you through a tough spot. One way or another, it will be over soon.

Then sign up for an Edge Coach

Once you’ve met your deadline, get yourself a coach. Your coach will help you plan better so that next time you won’t get into this pickle. By working with a coach, you can stay on top of your work and have fun too!

ADHD Coaching FAQs

The first video answers some of the commonly asked questions about ADHD coaching.  If you still have questions we didn’t answer, please leave them in the comments section.  We want to hear from you!

ADHD Coaching Demonstration

The second video is a short demo of what a coaching session might look like. It gives you an idea of some of the topics you might cover with a coach each week.

Got a question you’d like to see answered? Leave it in the comments and let us know how we can help you keep your edge!

Do any of these things sound familiar?

• Do you do your homework but forget to hand it in?  Or when finally clean out your backpack or room, do you find things you’ve “lost”?
• Do you have trouble getting to sleep on time?
• Are you often late and just can’t seem to get out the door on time?
• Do have trouble staying focused on the things you know you “should” be doing?  Do you get bored in class?
• Do you procrastinate?  Then swear to yourself you won’t do it next time only to find yourself doing it all at the last minute, again?
• When faced with a task, do you know what to do first and what to do next?  And can you get yourself to do it?  And finish it?
• Do you do well on one test and practically flunk the next?
• Have your grades tanked?
• Are you overwhelmed?  Discouraged?  Behind?

 These are just a few of the challenges of ADHD that a coach can help you with.  Really.  An ADHD coach can help you get out of what can feel like an impossible hole, and get on with your life.

How does an ADHD coach help?

Well you probably already know ADHD is a frustrating thing to live with.  And the one thing you can always rely on with ADHD is that it is consistently inconsistent.  That means there are days when everything goes great - and then there are the days when you can’t seem to get out of your own way.

Your friends or family probably get frustrated and say things like, “If you’re so smart, why can’t you just do x?”  And when, for whatever reason, you don’t do x, they say you are lazy, or unmotivated, or not living up to your potential.  And maybe you begin to believe them.

But what if it’s not because you aren’t trying the right things?  After all you are probably already trying pretty hard - or at least thought you were.  What if the problem is having a brain that just works differently, and so needs a different approach to managing these every day responsibilities?

This is where an ADHD coach can help.  ADHD coaches know that the same approach doesn’t work for everyone.  As the old saying goes, if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t blame the foot!  ADHD coaches work with people just like you, every day, and help them find solutions that work for their lives - not for their parents or friends.

So, are you ready to learn more?  Sign-up today and take the first step to getting your life under your control, and finding your edge!