My LD son failed freshman year

shawbridge
Tue, 11 Apr 2023 21:30:03 +0000

We have two LD kids who have completed college and grad school (although one is going back for an additional degree on a part-time basis). Both kids initially had weak executive skills. This is common with kids with LDs, although they often catch up. We decided to supplement their executive skills with coaching and in both cases, I think it was beneficial.

For ShawSon, we had used a coach who worked with him on planning his work and his week when he was in HS and we continued to work with her for the first two years of college. Over time, his executive functioning skills improved a lot. [He co-founded a company in his senior year of college and was CEO for the first 1.5 years. He founded a second company during grad school and recruited the kid he thought was the best leader in his business school class to be the CEO because he didn’t think being CEO played to his strengths.].

With ShawD, she did not want to work with that coach, but we got the Disabilities Services Office (or whatever it was called) at her school to provide a student in her field of study who worked with her once a week on planning. That was extremely helpful to her.

Neither kids was a big partier – ShawSon was a nerd who preferred board games to drinking and ShawD was studying nursing and had 2-3 jobs during the school year (which she did not need to do as we were paying for everything) and had no time for lots of partying, although at the end of the semester, she and her friends who have a blow-out night or weekend.