Executive Function Strategies Blog

Morning Mad Dash: 6:57 AM - Scrambling Out the Door

Olivia has to catch the bus at 7:30, and she likes to sleep in until 6:45 … and maybe hit the snooze button one or two times after that. That leaves her about half an hour to madly dash about the house eating breakfast, choosing an outfit, brushing her teeth, packing her lunch, changing after reconsidering her outfit, texting her friends, returning to the original outfit, and - if time allows - packing her homework from the night before. With this routine, Olivia has felt frustrated a few times when - despite assuring her teachers that she really, totally did the homework the night before - she hasn’t been able to actually turn it in and get credit.

Picture this: You go from 6:30am wake-ups to 10:00am ones. You go from four intense hours of learning to a 50-minute class followed by a three hour break. You go from abiding by a curfew to having no curfew at all. These are the kinds of transitions that college freshman eagerly look forward to (and make me wish I were still in college…). But the awesomeness of these transitions is often coupled with the loss of some strong support systems.

When does a minor problem become a major problem? Sometimes the tipping point is just out of view, but it creeps up over time.

In 2013, my primary care doctor came into the room and said to me, “You’ve gained six pounds since you were last here.” Yup. That sounded about right. Seeing as I’m not a scale-watching fanatic, the comment didn’t really affect me. But that wasn’t the end of the discussion. “Six pounds isn’t a problem,” she carefully explained, “unless it’s another six next year and another six the year after that.”  

If I earned a gold coin for every time a parent complained about their child’s love of video games, I would have stormed the castle, defeated the castle warlords, and earned magical powers to advance me to the next level by now (because what else are gold coins for in video games?)