Late, Lost, and Unprepared:

A Parents' Guide to Helping Children With Executive Functioning

Joyce Cooper-kahn, Ph.D., Laurie Dietzel, Ph.D. 		      

Executive functions are the cognitive skills that help us manage our lives and be successful. Children with weak executive skills, despite their best intentions, often do their homework but forget to turn it in, wait until the last minute to start a project, lose things, or have a room that looks like a dump! The good news is that parents can do a lot to support and train their children to manage these frustrating and stressful weaknesses.

Late, Lost, and Unprepared is a must-have book for parents of children from primary school through high school who struggle with:

Written by clinical psychologists, Late, Lost, and Unprepared emphasizes the need for a two-pronged approach to intervention: 1) helping the child to manage demands in the short run, and 2) building independent skills for long-term self-management. Full of encouragement and practical strategies, the book's organization--short chapters with overviews, summaries, case studies, tips, and definitions--makes it easy to grasp concepts quickly and get started.

Part I, What You Need to Know, provides information about: what executive functions are and how weaknesses in these skills affectdevelopment; the impact of weak executive function on children's emotional lives and their families; how professionals assess executive function problems; and associated conditions (AD/HD--children with an AD/HD diagnosis always have executive skills issues--learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, Tourette syndrome, etc.).

Part II discusses What You Can Do About It including how to change behavior and set reasonable expectations, and offers specific intervention strategies for children of different ages, varying needs, and profiles.

Late, Lost, and Unprepared is chockful of ideas for helping your child or student be productive and independent--today and in the future.

Joyce Cooper-Kahn, Ph.D., is a clinical child psychologist and co-founder of Psychological Resource Associates, a private mental health group in Severna Park, Maryland, where she specializes in helping children and families to successfully manage the variety of developmental challenges affecting children. Dr. Cooper-Kahn has particular expertise in learning and attention disorders. She holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Catholic University and earned her undergraduate degree from Barnard College (summa cum laude). She is the parent of an adult son with AD/HD and executive skills weaknesses.

Laurie C. Dietzel , Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise in neuropsychological assessment and the diagnosis of ADHD, learning disabilities, PDD, and other neurodevelopment disorders. Dr. Dietzel earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland College Park and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. She is currently in private practice in Silver Spring, Maryland and provides national continuing education workshops. Both authors live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.