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In honor of Brain Awareness Week, I thought it appropriate to talk about Executive Functioning in the classroom. Parents of children and teens who have been diagnosed with ADHD know all about kids’ executive function challenges at home. You ask your nine-year-old son to clean up his room, and an hour later, in the middle of watching his second episode of The Big Bang Theory, he says that he forgot you asked him to do it.

The classroom presents a much bigger challenge to students with ADHD. To do well in a mainstream school, kids need sustained focus, have to understand multiple-step directions, have to make frequent transitions, and must do lots of written tasks. These are not strengths for many ADHD kids. Although parents can’t change the way kids are taught in school, they can prep their children and partner with teachers to improve their academic skills in the classroom. Here are a few strategies parents can use at home to help their child with executive function challenges do better in school.

Be Prepared: The Long View

The Boy Scout motto has clear relevance for the parents of children with ADHD. Kids with executive weakness almost always perform better in school when their parents take an active role in their learning. Parents should meet with teachers at the start of the school year to introduce their child—sharing clinical evaluation reports and written impressions from previous teachers. They should ask about the core curriculum, the types of assignments students will need to complete in class and for homework, and the organizational systems that teachers will require. If they know these things, they will be good co-managers of their child’s learning.

Be Prepared: The Short View

Be all-in with your child’s weekly workload and tasks. It will dramatically improve her odds of succeeding. As Martha Denckla, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University, has stated, the phrase “on your own” is a death knell for kids with ADHD. It is better for parents to err on the side of over-management and micro-management of their kids’ homework assignments and test prep. Track your child’s homework assignments, dates for tests and quizzes, missing assignments, and grade-point averages in all courses. E-mail, text, or phone the teacher weekly, or meet with her face-to-face. Research shows that frequent communication with teachers leads to better academic outcomes and fewer homework-related frustrations.

Hold a Weekly Meeting

One of the most effective methods I’ve found in helping parents stay on top of their kid’s academic performance is to meet at least once a week with their youngster to review grades and to see whether assignments have been completed. Although many parents look over this information on their own from time to time, such unilateral performance reviews are less effective than scheduled parent-student review sessions.

Weekly meetings prevent the parent from encountering those “missing work” surprises. Meetings can be held with minimal resistance from your child if 1) They are conducted at the same time each week (allowing them to become part of the kid’s weekly routine) and 2) there is an incentive offered to the youngster—extra time on the computer that evening or the opportunity to choose what the family has for dinner that night.