I vividly remember when my daughter’s college community was rocked with devastating news during her freshman year of college. A student ended their life. The news first came through a series of texts that circulated among the students when the police arrived at the dorm. Then the students started texting their parents. Within hours, the school had notified the students in the dorm that there would be a meeting. The parents’ social media pages lit up with questions about how to support our children. Here is the thing. The college my daughter went to is a large university with 18,000 undergraduate students. The only [...]

The mass exodus to college started this past week. From mid-August to mid-September, students from all over the United States will go to college to embark on their studies.  In order to be successful, students need to arrive with a varied set of skills. Time management, organization, life skills, and study skills are all important. For students with ADHD or executive function challenges, these are the very skills that can be particularly challenging.  Here are 5 ways for students with ADHD or executive function challenges can prepare for the upcoming school year. 1. Apply for accommodations. Colleges offer all kinds of support to all [...]

                “I couldn’t handle college.” “I don’t know why I couldn’t get the work done.” “I can’t believe I am back home.” These are the words that I sometimes hear from college students with ADHD or executive function challenges. For various reasons, some students with ADHD find themselves leaving college because the challenges of being in college were too difficult to overcome.  For students with ADHD or executive function challenges, the inability to manage the rigor of college is a dramatic experience.  This is not only a freshman year experience. Sometimes, freshman year can be very successful. [...]

              Photo by Matt Ragland on Unsplash Let’s face it. The college “experience” has dramatically changed over the last few decades. The tuition cost alone may make students feel enormous pressure to succeed. Students may also often hear the message that college is the “best four years of your life”. We as parents sometimes forget the angst we felt when we first arrived at college ourselves, and we build up the college experience to our children. Then they arrive on campus and are shocked by feelings of anxiety, loneliness and stress. These feelings are normal, but oftentimes, our children are unprepared [...]