It’s a Tuesday in October. Your kid has one class at 2pm.
No one is texting reminders. No bell schedule. No teacher following up. And by the time evening rolls around, nothing has gotten done – not the assignment due Thursday, not the laundry, not the email to the professor they’ve been avoiding for two weeks.
You get the call. Or worse, you don’t, and you find out weeks later. This isn’t a story about a bad kid or a lazy kid. It’s a story about what happens when external structure disappears and internal structure was never built.
The scaffold we never knew was there
High school is a highly scaffolded environment. Bell schedules tell students where to be and when. Teachers follow up on missing work. Parents remind them about deadlines,
appointments, and basic logistics. For some teens this is enough. For many others, the ones who struggled anyway, who needed constant reminders, who still couldn’t seem to get it together despite all that support, college can feel terrifying. Because if they couldn’t manage with all that structure in place, what happens when it disappears entirely?
If you’re a parent who has spent years feeling confused, frustrated, and honestly a little
resentful, wondering why your kid can’t just do what they’re asked, why every simple task becomes a negotiation, why they seem capable one day and completely derailed the next, this is for you.
What you’ve been witnessing isn’t defiance. It isn’t laziness. It isn’t not caring. It’s a brain that is genuinely struggling with the skills that make follow-through possible.
What executive function actually is
Executive function isn’t about intelligence or motivation or how much a teen cares. It’s a set of cognitive skills that develop in the prefrontal cortex; the part of the brain that isn’t fully developed until the mid-twenties.
These skills include the ability to plan ahead, initiate tasks that feel overwhelming, shift
between priorities, manage time realistically, regulate frustration and anxiety, and follow
through without external reminders.
Some kids develop these skills earlier and more naturally. Many don’t. Particularly kids with ADHD, anxiety, or learning differences. And many more kids simply never had the opportunity to practice them because the structure around them was doing the heavy lifting.
This is not a character flaw. It’s a skill gap. And skill gaps can be closed.
When love looks like enabling
Here’s the part that’s hardest to hear: many of us have been managing our own fear by
doing things for our sons and daughters. As a therapist and a parent who has had to sit with my own uncertainty about when to push and when to step back, I know how hard this is from both sides.
We remind them because we can’t tolerate watching them forget. We rescue them from consequences because their distress becomes our distress. We over-schedule, over-explain, and over-manage, not because our kids can’t handle it, but because we can’t handle watching them struggle.
It comes from love. And it backfires. Every time we step in before our kid has a chance to figure it out themselves, we send an unintentional message: I don’t think you can do this without me. And over time, they start to believe it too.
The goal this summer isn’t to stop caring. It’s to care differently. To tolerate the discomfort of watching them struggle with small things now, so they build the confidence to handle big things later.
Your anxiety about their future is real AND it doesn’t have to drive the decisions you
make this summer.
What parents can actually do this summer
The window between now and September is more valuable than most families realize. Here’s where to focus: Shift from reminding to systems. Instead of texting your kid to wake up or asking if they’ve finished their work, help them build the external tools that will eventually become internal habits.
Google Calendar, phone reminders, timers, and simple checklists aren’t just workarounds. They are the scaffolding your teen builds for themselves. The goal isn’t to remove support overnight. It’s to transfer it from you to them.
Let them experience manageable mistakes now. If your kid sleeps through an alarm, let
them be late. If they forget an appointment, let them reschedule it themselves. Natural consequences are not failures they are information and a powerful learning experience.
A missed dentist appointment at home is a much safer mistake than a missed registration deadline in college. Protecting kids from all discomfort this summer robs them of the practice they desperately need.
Gradually reduce your support rather than removing it all at once. One of the most common mistakes families make is going from full parental management to complete hands-off the moment move-in day arrives. That’s not independence – that’s a cliff.
Instead, spend this summer slowly stepping back. Let them manage their own schedule one day a week. Then two. Have them make their own appointments. Handle their own conflicts. The transition to independence should be a gradual fade, not a free fall. Remember that college readiness is emotional AND practical. It’s not just academic.
Getting in was never the hard part. Staying regulated, asking for help, recovering after a hard week, and keeping going when things feel impossible are the skills that determine whether your student thrives. And those skills start with self-awareness, not a GPA.
The shift that changes everything
Here’s what I tell parents in my practice: the goal for this summer isn’t perfection. It’s practice. Your child is going to make mistakes. They are going to have hard weeks. They may sleep too late and miss things and need to figure out how to recover. That’s not failure. That’s the work.
What you can do is help them build the systems, practice the skills, and develop the self-awareness to know when they need support and how to ask for it. Your child is struggling with something real AND they are capable of learning it.
Both things are true. And this summer is your window.
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