Speech Therapy Connections
Executive Function Coaching For ADHD and Autism.
For Kids, Teenagers and Adults in Bergen County, NJ.
Does Your Child Know What to Do... But Can’t Always Do It?
Why can’t my child follow directions, even ones they’ve heard a hundred times?
Why does my child forget everything I just told them?
Why does my child lose things all the time?
Why does homework turn into a fight every single night?
Why does my child get overwhelmed so easily, or give up the second something gets hard?
Why do simple transitions between activities turn into meltdowns?
Why is my child described as disorganized, scattered, or a behavior problem at school?
Why has my child spent years trying to learn to read and still struggles?
These are questions we hear constantly from parents of autistic kids, teens and adults with ADHD, and young adults navigating high school, homeschool, or the leap to college. And often, the answer isn’t that your child is lazy, unmotivated, or doesn’t care. The missing piece may be executive function.
What is Executive Function?
Executive function skills are what let us take what we know and actually use it in the moment. They govern task initiation (how we get started), working memory (how we hold onto directions and information), self-regulation and emotional regulation, cognitive flexibility (how we adjust when plans change), organization and time management, planning and prioritizing, and impulse control.
That’s why executive function challenges look so inconsistent. A child can follow a multi-step direction perfectly on Monday and fall apart trying to do the same thing on Wednesday. A teenager can manage their time well during a structured school day and completely lose track of an assignment the second they get home. None of that is a character flaw. It’s how executive function works, especially for autistic and ADHD brains. At Speech Therapy Connections, we provide executive functioning coaching and speech therapist parent coaching for kids, teens, and adults, including support for homeschool families and young adults preparing for or already navigating college.
When Behavior Is Telling Us Something More
Executive function shows up everywhere: in attention and focus, in how someone handles a change in routine, in how they respond to frustration, and in how they get themselves started on something they’d rather not do.
Think about a child sitting down to do homework. They have to stop doing something they’d rather be doing, shift their attention, remember the directions, figure out where to begin, keep track of what they’ve finished, ignore distractions, notice when something isn’t working, manage the frustration that comes with getting it wrong, and decide what to try next.
That’s a lot happening beneath the surface. So when a child crumples the worksheet, argues, shuts down, or says “I don’t care” we look past the behavior itself and ask what made this hard. Time blindness? Trouble with task initiation? Poor working memory? Difficulty with cognitive flexibility? A nervous system that was already overwhelmed before the pencil hit the paper?
Understanding the why is what tells us what kind of support will actually help.
Executive Function and Regulation Work Together
This is especially true for autistic kids and kids with ADHD. When someone is overwhelmed, anxious, overstimulated, or emotionally dysregulated, it becomes much harder to access executive function skills they already have. And executive function itself helps with regulation: it’s what lets us pause before reacting, shift our attention, hold a plan in mind, and communicate what we need.
We don’t treat self-regulation and executive function as separate. We look at what helps a person feel supported enough to think, communicate, problem-solve, and participate in everyday life. Nobody needs to be perfectly regulated before we can start working on executive function skills.
Who We Work With
We support:
Autistic children, teens, and adults
Children, teens, and adults with ADHD
2e (twice-exceptional) and gifted kids with executive function challenges
Kids with learning disabilities
And across every stage: kindergarten readiness, elementary and middle school support, families / homeschool families building routines and independence at home, and teens and young adults preparing for or already navigating college.
Our Approach
There’s no single strategy or program that works for every person, and executive function support shouldn’t mean forcing someone through a predetermined checklist. We start with questions: What’s hard right now? Where’s the breakdown happening: task initiation, working memory, planning, flexibility, follow-through? What can this person already do when the right supports are in place? What could change about the task, the environment, or the way we’re communicating?
Our approach has been developed through our own clinical expertise with supporting neurodivergent students, continuing education, and multiple respected professionals in the executive functioning field. Our work has been informed by Sarah Ward’s executive function approach, Unstuck and On Target!, the work of George McCloskey, the work of Russel Barkley, professional education through Learning & the Brain, and Tera Sumpter’s Sumpter Executive Function Framework (SEFF).
We bring these perspectives together through our own clinical lens: executive function and regulation are deeply connected and should be supported together. Rather than treating regulation as something that must happen before executive function work can begin, we look at how a person’s ability to regulate their attention, emotions, thoughts, and actions interacts with executive function throughout everyday life.
Executive function coaching might look like teaching learning to get ready independently in the morning, managing multi-step homework, planning and prioritizing a school project, building a homework routine that doesn’t end in a fight, or figuring out what a first semester of college actually requires when nobody’s reminding you what’s due.
Let’s Figure Out What’s Actually Getting in the Way
If you’re exhausted by nightly homework battles, a morning routine that falls apart daily, or watching a bright kid struggle to translate what they know into what they do, you’re not alone. And it’s not about trying harder.