Forgetting Things

Last time I posted I wrote about Abe forgetting to write down his homework. It turns out that the aide had prompted him but had forgotten to check that Abe had actually followed through.   On Sunday, Abe couldn't find his homework folder that had all his homework dittos in it.  He miraculously remained calm, having learned the lesson of the magic letter from mom.  The aide wrote to me that he had put Abe's homework folder in his science binder to keep it clean when Abe's yogurt container exploded at school.  He wrote that Abe "Saw him put it in" and must have forgotten to get it later.  I am getting the feeling that my next task will be to teach Abe's aide about executive functioning.   Executive functioning is the ability to be organized, plan, follow multi-step directions, focus on what is important etc..  As you can probably already guess, lots of kids with ADHD and ASD have trouble with this.  So when the aide prompts Abe to write down his homework, he really doesn't understand that at any moment, Abe can become distracted and forget to do it.  Similarly, just because Abe was there when his folder got placed into a binder doesn't mean that he processed what happened, or that he would remember to take it out later because he needs his homework folder to do his homework.  The challenge is that I do want Abe to be independent and be able to do these things for himself but the reality is that Abe can't handle the consequences of forgetting his stuff.  It makes him too agitated and upset,  Most kids get a lot of practice with this in younger grades when the stakes are not as high and teachers are more forgiving. Also, they can handle the occasional lapse.   Because Abe has always had an aide with him he never really had to be independent.   What I need to figure out is how to teach Abe to think things through without causing so much stress that he isn't able to handle being in a mainstream environment.