Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parents' Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning

Executive functions are the cognitive skills that help us manage our lives and be successful. Children with weak executive skills, despite their best intentions, often do their homework but forget to turn it in, wait until the last minute to start a project, lose things, or have a room that looks like a dump! The good news is that parents can do a lot to support and train their children to manage these frustrating and stressful weaknesses. Written by clinical psychologists, Late, Lost, and Unprepared emphasizes the need for a two-pronged approach to intervention: 1) helping the child to manage demands in the short run, and 2) building independent skills for long-term self-management. Full of encouragement and practical strategies, the book's organization, short chapters with overviews, summaries, case studies, tips, and definitions, makes it easy to grasp concepts quickly and get started. Part I, What You Need to Know, provides information about: what executive functions are and how weaknesses in these skills affect development; the impact of weak executive function on children's emotional lives and their families; how professionals assess executive function problems; and associated conditions (AD/HD: children with an AD/HD diagnosis always have executive skills issues, learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, Tourette syndrome, etc.). Part II discusses What You Can Do About It including how to change behavior and set reasonable expectations, and offers specific intervention strategies for children of different ages, varying needs, and profiles.