When a student refuses work at school, more prompting, explaining, or negotiating may actually keep the pattern going.
The problem? Those responses can do the executive functioning work for the or give them another way to delay the task.
I once had a student who seemed to get really upset about his grandfather dying every time I asked him to do difficult academic work.
I wanted to be compassionate, so when he’d bring it up I’d give him time to talk about it.
There was just one detail I didn’t realize at first:
His grandfather had died years earlier, and these conversations seemed to come up specifically when there was difficult work in front of him.
I had another student who did something similar with problems he was having with his girlfriend.
He was in high school, where finding 20 minutes in the day for language therapy was already a challenge.
He’d come in, we’d get ready to work, and suddenly we were talking about his relationship.
Before I knew it, most of the session was gone.
Neither student was being malicious, but the conversations were serving a function.
Something difficult was in front of them, and bringing up something emotional allowed them to avoid it.
In the video below, I’ll show you the first thing I started doing when I noticed that initial resistance and the three-step process I used to help students move forward without ignoring their feelings OR doing the executive functioning for them.
I share two mistakes I made as a school SLP when students avoided difficult work.
You’ll learn how to acknowledge a student’s emotional response without turning it into a 20-minute detour, use declarative statements and reflective questions instead of doing all the planning for them, and hold a boundary while allowing the student to make a choice.
The goal isn’t to force compliance. It’s to stop doing the internal planning, initiation, and problem-solving students need opportunities to develop themselves.
You can watch the video here:
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
▶️ Free training: How to Be Evidence-Based and Neurodiversity-Affirming by Supporting Executive Functioning: https://drkarendudekbrannan.com/efleadership
▶️ Why “Demand Avoidant” Students Don’t Need You to Build Motivation First: https://youtu.be/sp3EyJLGSWM
▶️ Why Demand Avoidance Gets Worse When You Lower School Expectations (And What To Do Instead): https://youtu.be/pdJOnBTxvFQ
▶️ Task Planning & Execution Protocol: https://drkarenspeech.lpages.co/task-planning-execution-protocol-26-yt-1/
