Eps 479: Cindy Palmer helps us set our neurodivergent kids up for success

Joyful Courage for Parenting Teens

My guest today is my good, local friend - Cindy Palmer.

Cindy’s here to talk about executive functioning in kids with neurodivergence, especially during the transition to college. High School is a time that is typically incredibly structured, down to the minute, and the transition to college is tricky for all adolescents. What do we do when it feels like our kids aren’t ready? How can parents help scaffold that transition? Especially for kids with neurodivergence? Cindy shares lots of strategies and ideas around supporting our adolescents during this tricky time - getting curious & compassionate, not holding a certain view on what things “should” look like, and what kind of bumps slow down (or stop) our kiddos from getting their work done.

I ask Cindy what we can be doing in the middle & high school years to help with the transition (spoiler: it’s lots of practice & baby steps) and we talk about how important grades actually are. We get into what we can hand over to our kids right now (how about waking themselves up in the morning?) and why we want to practice these life skills in middle school, not the first week of college. We wrap up touching on adjusting our expectations for how older kiddos contribute to the family (and how we can use these as opportunities to teach life skills).

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