Peg Dawson

Peg Dawson is a pioneering expert in executive function coaching and author of influential books including Smart but Scattered Teens and Coaching Students with Executive Skills Challenges.

Starting in the early 1990s, she developed a practical 11-skill executive function framework and coaching model that emphasizes frequent, short check-ins over lengthy weekly sessions. Her approach helps parents transition from "manager to facilitator," teaching teens to develop internal systems rather than relying on external control.

What makes Peg's work distinctive is how she combines research expertise with personal experience (having navigated executive function challenges with her own sons). Her core philosophy: the most effective interventions take no more than five minutes daily and can be sustained long-term.

The Parental Shift From Manager to Facilitator 

So, Peg, thank you again so much. We are huge fans of your work. We love all of your books—Smart but Scattered Teens, The Planner, of course, Coaching Students with Executive Skills Challenges. 

We see parents struggling a lot with the transition you describe from manager to facilitator, especially as their kids enter adolescence. Specifically, they may struggle to stomach letting a capable teen earn a C or a D in the name of long-term development. How do you coach parents on that? And can you think of an example of a parent who successfully made that shift? 

That’s a tough transition. We often explain coaching as a way station between parents supervising—and in many cases micromanaging—their kids and those kids becoming independent. Unless parents pull back, kids aren't going to be able to do that on their own. That’s where coaching comes in. A few years ago, I trained some coaches for a tutoring company, and one of them explained it to parents like this: you own the car, your kid is in the driver’s seat, and you're not even in the car. The coach is the one in the car with the kid. You have to step back and trust it. I’m sympathetic to parents who are concerned about their kids getting D’s or failing classes if they ease up, but it’s not all or nothing. You don’t have to go from micromanaging to hands-off overnight. It’s about gradually pulling back and negotiating with the kid. Ask: What do you think will work for you? What are your goals? I remember working with a student whose parents wanted him to have a coach. I asked, “Does he want a coach?” They said no. I said, “Well, he sort of has to want one.” So I talked with him and asked about his goals. He said he wanted to earn all A’s and B’s. We talked about what he needed to do differently to achieve that, and he realized he had to study better for tests. I said, “Your mom offered to help, or maybe your resource room teacher could help.” He immediately said, “Definitely not my mom.” 

So I reached out to the resource room teacher and shared the test prep template we use. She was fine with it. The deal I made with him was this: at the progress report—this was the beginning of the school year—if he was getting A’s and B’s, I wouldn’t give his parents the name of a coach. At the end of the marking period, if he was still on track, same deal. The irony was, his resource room teacher was acting as his coach. But to him, a coach was a stranger who met with him after school. He already had a strong relationship with his teacher, so it worked. That’s a great example of parents being willing to pass the ball. In the coaching classes I teach, I often have people coaching their own kids because that’s the only student they have access to. That’s when they learn the difference between parenting and coaching. Some can do it well. Others realize they can’t. And we always ask kids to give feedback. I’ve had kids say, “My mother should not be my coach.” So part of it is really listening to the kid.

Building a Coaching Model That Works

In your book Coaching Students with Executive Skills Challenges, one thing I love—and we’re a coaching practice, but sometimes we’re not the right fit for whatever reason—is this idea of using somebody in the school. We’re a virtual practice, but there are some kids who really respond to the vivid nature of in-person interaction. They’re very relationship-centric, and sometimes they just click with someone in school. What I love about your book is there’s a pretty clear playbook on how someone can learn to coach. Have you seen examples where these organic relationships in school turn into effective coaching relationships? 

Yeah, it’s interesting you say that, because when we first developed our coaching model, it was actually created as an in-school model. We started working with teenagers with ADHD back in the early ’90s using a case manager approach. At that point, we thought kids with ADHD needed someone to check in a couple of times a day—to make sure they were ready for the day, had what they needed to go home, that kind of thing. Then we read Driven to Distraction by Hallowell and Ratey. They were the first ones I saw talk about a coaching model. At the time, they used the metaphor of a sports coach, because there weren’t ADD coaches or executive function coaches or life coaches yet. I went to my colleague Dick and said, “Could we come up with a coaching model for kids based on what they’re describing?” 

Our initial thought was to move away from the case manager idea and use a coach instead, because a coach implies skill-building, which a manager doesn’t. And we thought, let’s build this into schools—there are people there who see kids every day. As you pointed out in your questions, we really believed kids needed frequent, daily contact. The first pilot study we did had coaches checking in for maybe five to ten minutes a day. It wasn’t a big time commitment, but logistically, it was harder to manage than we expected. Kids’ schedules are constantly disrupted, so even if you aim for daily check-ins, you might end up with three a week. But our reasoning was solid: these are kids with working memory challenges. If you only meet once a week, they may not even remember what they agreed to do. That was the main rationale.

You mentioned five to ten minutes. I want to follow up on that, because we’ve found that sometimes our clients just breathe a huge sigh of relief when they hear that coaching sessions don’t have to be an hour. At least initially. You can build up to longer meetings, but the idea that a check-in can be short and focused is really comforting to them. Everything else in their life is anchored in 45-minute or hour-long blocks. These shorter sessions feel lighter and help build momentum. Was that short-session structure something you just observed worked better, or how did it evolve? 

That was mostly trial and error, but you’re absolutely right—the idea of being locked into an hour a week can be overwhelming for kids. I also like using that as part of your pitch to them: “No, you don’t have to meet for an hour. We’re just talking about quick check-ins.” That makes coaching feel much more doable.

One of the coaches I trained—someone I really like and still keep in touch with—has her own private practice. She coaches kids for an hour a week, but splits it into shorter segments: a 30-minute session at the end of the week and two 15-minute sessions earlier on, like Monday and Wednesday. She’s found that works really well. Everyone’s different, but I agree with your approach.

We appreciate your approach, especially in Smart but Scattered Teens, where both the teen and parent rate executive skills. We’ve found it especially powerful when parents reflect on their own executive skills and reflect on their parenting style—then get feedback from their kids. That creates a really strong foundation. Sometimes a painful one for parents, but a useful one. 

How did the idea of having both parents and kids fill out executive skills assessments evolve in your work? 

That actually started by having couples fill out the executive skills questionnaire. I remember a guy who came into my office—he’d been pushed in by his wife because she thought he had an attention disorder. The more I talked with him, the more I thought, this might not be ADHD, it might be that he and his wife just have really different executive skill profiles. So I sent two copies of the questionnaire home—one for each of them. When I looked at the results, their profiles were complete opposites. His three strengths were her three weaknesses and vice versa. That was incredibly helpful information for them as a couple. I’ve since shared that concept in workshops with marriage therapists, and they really love it—though it does need to be handled with care. 

Then we realized this could be just as helpful for parents and kids. It puts them on equal footing. It shows that no one has super executive skills across the board. Parents quickly discover they have their own strengths and weaknesses, just like their kids. We often suggest that both parent and child each pick a skill to work on. Maybe the mom focuses on planning or time management, while the kid focuses on organization. If everyone is working on something, there's more empathy. The kid doesn’t feel like they’re carrying it all alone, and the parent realizes this stuff is hard—it takes real work.

Speaking personally, when I first did it, it was really eye-opening to see where I was weak and where others were strong. You identify 11 executive skills in your books. It’s such a useful framework. But in the field, we’ve seen a lot of disagreement—some researchers identify as few as 1 or 3 skills, others as many as 40. Your model really helps coaches like us, but how should parents, psychologists, and coaches think about that fragmentation and measurement challenge? 

Your experience mirrors mine. When you look at the field, you see everything from one to 40 executive functions. The hardcore researchers typically focus on three: working memory, response inhibition, and cognitive flexibility. They may use slightly different terms, but it's basically those three. The issue is, when you look at what’s embedded in those categories, it’s just too much to deal with. I was helping a teacher once who was doing her dissertation and wanted to explore executive skill development. She started with that three-skill model, and I told her, “Rachel, that’s not helpful.” I pointed her to our 11-skill model, and once she made the switch, everything clicked. I think one or three skills is too few, and 40 is way too many. Russ Barkley talks about 33, George McCloskey talks about 32 or 33. 

My response is, if kids aren’t naturally acquiring these skills, then we need to create opportunities for them to develop—and we probably need to teach them. But no one—parent, teacher, or coach—can teach 40 different skills. 

So we started with the question: of all the skills out there, which are most critical for school success? That’s what we were focused on. We tried to create a manageable set, and that’s how we landed on 11. And I don’t often toot my own horn, but I think that was one of the best decisions we made. The 11 skills are understandable. I can give a one-hour presentation and parents will walk away knowing what they’re good at and what they need to work on. They can immediately recognize, “Oh, it’s task initiation,” or “It’s sustained attention.” The framework is just really relatable and easy to translate into behavior.

For the parents listening, one of the most helpful things in your books is that you give examples and non-examples for each skill. If it’s a strength, here’s how it might show up. If it’s a weakness, here’s what it might look like. 

We’ve found that skills like time management, goal-directed persistence, task initiation, and planning are more coachable than inhibition and emotional control. That might be a limitation of our practice, but I wonder—does that align with what you’ve seen? 

Yes, it actually does. We developed a variation of our executive skills questionnaire, the ESQR, which has more research behind it and is available on our website. Anyone can take it. We did factor analysis on it and narrowed it down to five core factors: plan management, time management, organization, emotional regulation, and response inhibition. There’s a national coaching company called Beyond Booksmart that uses that measure at the beginning of coaching and again 16 weeks in. Coaching may continue longer, but they use that point for pre-post comparison. What they’ve found is that plan management is the skill that improves the most over that time. So that aligns with your experience.

We have had coaches successfully target inhibition and emotional control too. I remember a social worker in Quebec working with a student on the spectrum who had frequent meltdowns in school. She and the student created a set of coping strategies, defined what “melting down” meant, and built a menu of five alternative strategies. Then they tracked the incidents. He ended up successfully using those strategies, which helped reduce meltdowns. I think a similar approach works for response inhibition: what can you do instead? In Smart but Scattered, we share something called a “hard times board.” You identify the problem situation and then break it down into “can’t dos” and “can dos.” For example, you can’t throw things or storm out of the classroom. But you can ask for help or take a break. That structure works well for kids on the spectrum and others too. But I do agree with you—most teens coming into a coaching practice are going to focus on the executive skills that are most closely tied to academic success.

Sleep, Motivation, and the Teen Brain

To your point—we’ve sometimes found that improving sleep can help with emotional control and response inhibition. Maybe just because when kids are better rested, those skills naturally improve. I’d love to double-click on sleep. I’ve read some of your writing on this, even back in 2014 when you were already saying, “Hey, sleep is a big deal.” Now, of course, sleep is a hot topic. Parents sometimes seek us out specifically for help with sleep. And we’ve found that the same principles of executive skills coaching apply. For example, we had one client say, “I want to be in bed by 11. Lights out.”  You've got to almost build a plan to back into that 11 p.m. bedtime. That requires a lot of executive skills. Have you noticed an uptick in the need for support around sleep, or has this always been there? 

Well, it may have always been there, but yes—and I follow the sleep literature and related areas like procrastination. Once a year or so, I’ll search for new research on procrastination, and in the last few years, there’s been a surge of articles on bedtime procrastination. It’s definitely a thing. And not just for kids, for adults too. How many of us scroll on our phones at night or do “just one more thing” before going to bed?

What’s tricky with teens is that their sleep patterns naturally shift during adolescence. Biologically, most teenagers don’t feel tired until around 11 p.m. I got into this because one of my sons had a sleep disorder, which I didn’t realize at first—I thought he had ADHD. We even did a placebo-blind trial with medication, but his ability to focus didn’t change depending on whether he was on meds or not. That made me look elsewhere, and I realized he had a lot of trouble falling asleep.

There were times he’d be awake long after I’d gone to bed. Every now and then, I’d tell him, “Isaac, get off the computer and go to sleep.” The next day, he’d say, “Mom, I did. I was in bed by 11 and stared at the ceiling for three hours.” Meanwhile, during the week, he’d be up till 2 a.m., so by Thursday, I figured he should’ve been exhausted. But he wasn’t. Eventually, I learned about delayed sleep phase syndrome, a circadian rhythm disorder. About 9% of teenagers meet the diagnostic criteria. It’s as common as ADHD, yet no one seems to know about it.

Some of it is definitely lifestyle, but in my son’s case, I looked back at my baby diaries. Even at 6 months old, he was wide awake at night and hard to rouse during the day. That was pre-computer, so it was biological. He’s in his 40s now, but I’ve been advocating for later school start times for a long time. California eventually passed a law about it, but it’s still hard to get schools on board, even though early start times go against the biology of typical teens—let alone those like my son, who would naturally sleep from 2 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Your son with the sleep disorder, and your other son with ADHD—that’s almost a natural experiment. With your ADHD son or more broadly, have you noticed bedtime procrastination showing up there too? For example, we often recommend no devices in the bedroom after 9:45 p.m., but that can be hard for both kids and parents. 

Yeah, sleep disorders are more common among kids with ADHD. With my ADHD son—again, this was decades ago before kids had phones in bed—what I noticed was that when he went to college, he did stay up late. He hung out with friends and had great conversations in the dorms. But after college, once he got a job that required him to be at work at 8 or 9 in the morning, he had no trouble adjusting his sleep schedule. So in his case, it was more of a lifestyle choice.

With my other son, though, it wasn’t a choice. He’d go to bed at 11, and then just lie there for hours.

That makes sense. Your ADHD son could shift when the structure required it, but the other couldn’t. We’ve also noticed that a student’s executive function needs can vary depending on the context—even by subject. A kid might do great in creative writing or philosophy, but need full-on coaching support in math or another subject that just doesn’t interest them. Sometimes that support needs to last a lot longer. Are we over-pathologizing that lack of interest, or have you noticed something similar? 

I’ve absolutely noticed something similar, but I frame it in terms of motivation. If something interests you, you don’t have to force yourself to do it—it’s enjoyable. What concerns me is that parents and teachers often assume kids should be intrinsically motivated for everything. I remember a high school teacher once said in a webinar, “If a kid isn’t interested in the subject, there’s nothing I can do.” That stuck with me.

After the webinar, I thought, how much of my own day is spent doing things I’m intrinsically motivated to do? It’s a small percentage. I’m not excited to make my bed, wash dishes, or vacuum. That’s not how real life works. So I think we need to have honest conversations with kids about how to make yourself do stuff you don’t want to do. Those are powerful conversations.

I remember working with a group of seventh graders in Massachusetts. We started by looking at a checklist of executive skill problems they’d filled out. One of the top issues was doing homework when there are more fun things to do. I asked, “What are the more fun things?” They said phones, video games. Then this group of boys started giggling, and I asked what was funny. They said, “We play chess.” I said, “That’s great! Chess builds executive skills.” But I reminded them, they still had to get their homework done.

Then I asked how they managed it. A bunch of them said things like, “I don’t let myself play video games until I finish my math homework.” They knew they had to delay gratification—first work, then play. That’s the conversation we need to have. A lot of kids are just sitting around waiting to feel motivated, and when it doesn’t happen, they assume there’s nothing they can do. But there is something—they can learn how to get themselves to do what needs to be done, even when they don’t want to.

That really resonates. In Smart but Scattered Teens, I always point parents to the classification system you use for teenagers and their level of buy-in. The fifth type especially stood out to me—it’s that kid who isn’t internally motivated and doesn’t think they need help. The way you lay it out in that section is just so real. You suggest bundling tasks—like, “Do your math homework, then you can drive”—and you make it simple and practical.  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Every kid is different. I remember trying to come up with an incentive system for my son with the sleep disorder when he was in high school—to help bring his grades up. I suggested he could earn points toward a video game or something. He said, “Mom, I’ve got to want to do it myself.” And I thought, oh man, he’s already at that stage. This is my kid who barely graduated from high school, to be honest. I’ll just throw that out there. But what he was doing instead of high school was learning amazing computer skills, and he got a job in cybersecurity right after graduation. It worked out for him. I just needed to be able to see that.

And I wish someone had projected that for me. Within six months of graduating, he was earning more than I was. He graduated at a time when you didn’t need a college degree to get into cybersecurity, so it was the perfect window for him. But I think that’s something parents struggle with—they project into the future and imagine there’s only one path. Either your kid ends up highly successful at Harvard or living in their car. Those are extreme ends of the spectrum, and most kids don’t end up living in their car. There are different trajectories, pathways, and timeframes. We don’t need to panic before they get there.

In a sense, I’d say 75% of our conversations with parents who do step back and consider the big picture are giving some version of the message you just described. There’s a lot of good here. Let’s narrate the positive about your child. Genuinely, sometimes school won’t be a perfect fit, and we’ve got to work through those challenges together. But looking forward, like your son in computer science, I have another student who thrives in camp leadership settings—he’s a natural leader—but he can’t be bothered with Algebra 2. We’ve got to take both of those truths into account. The more we can remind parents: there’s a space for your child out there, even if it’s not the path you were originally imagining. Yeah. And I think another point you raised is really important: we tend to focus on problems and deficits, and we don’t spend enough time identifying and affirming kids’ strengths. I remember assessing a high school student with ADHD using our executive skills questionnaire, and I started by talking about his strengths. No one had ever done that before. That’s actually typical with ADHD profiles—I often see high flexibility and high metacognition. I explained what that means: you're creative, you're great at generating multiple solutions to a problem, and you can see the big picture. Long-term, those are far more important skills. I didn’t need to tell him he struggled with task initiation and sustained attention—he already knew that. So did everyone else in his life. But focusing on his strengths was something new, and really powerful. If we can help parents shift their perspective and do that too, it makes a big difference.

Navigating Setbacks and Mental Health

That’s great. You write about how, while we’re narrating the future and building on strengths, parents and kids are still very much in the present—and often struggling there. I love your idea of “use it or lose it.” Teenagers with executive skill challenges need to practice, or those neural pathways may weaken through pruning. For parents who feel discouraged, how much plasticity are we working with during those years? Is there real hope that these skills can improve with time and effort? Oh yeah. These skills are still developing into the mid-20s. For kids with ADHD, it might be even later, which can be hard for parents to hear. They think, “Wait, my kid’s going to be like this until 30?” But the upside is, that means there’s more plasticity. There’s more room for growth.

Especially when it comes to goal-directed persistence, I see a lot of middle school parents panicking. Their kids seem stuck in the present, and they wonder how they’ll ever make it to college, let alone through it. I always tell them to be patient. Those skills come online late. You’re asking kids to access skills that may still be developing—or haven’t developed at all—when they’re in middle school. Don’t make long-term predictions based on what your kid looks like in eighth grade.

I think that’s very hard for parents to do. But I think that’s very wise. Just two last questions. First: we’ve seen a rise in adolescent anxiety and depression diagnoses. And executive function strategies often interact with those challenges in complex ways. Every child is different, of course, but how should we think about when coaching fits or doesn’t fit? When should we be referring out? The kids I see—or that the coaches I train work with—who have executive skill challenges and anxiety or depression are usually working with both a therapist and a coach. The strategies are different. I don’t have a clear-cut answer for when to refer out, but my general rule is: if you keep bumping up against anxiety or depression and that’s what’s really preventing the student from focusing, following through, or even getting started—if those are the recurring roadblocks—then it’s probably time to bring in a therapist.

Ideally, the best-case scenario is when the coach and therapist can work closely together. Some of the best coaches I know stay in communication with their clients’ therapists, with the necessary permissions. That collaboration helps them align their strategies and share observations.

Yes. Related to this, one of the things I appreciate in your coaching book is the concept of tapering—daily at first, but not daily forever. That’s an important message for kids: “This isn’t going to be forever.” We try to taper to three times a week, then two, then one. But with families we’ve worked with long-term, we sometimes see a flare-up and a need to restart. Parents will say, “I thought we were past this,” and get discouraged. In our practice, we do see a lot of fadeout and then having to start again. Does that feel common to you? Yes, it does. When we first developed our coaching model, we noticed two key times when kids tended to fall off. One was at the end of a marking period—they’d worked really hard toward a goal, and then let down their guard. The other was when they actually achieved a goal. For many kids with ADHD, especially teens, they’ve never hit a goal before. Some don’t even want to talk about goals because they’ve had such negative experiences.

But let’s say a student sets a hard goal and succeeds. What often happens next is a sense of “I’ve got this now,” and they stop engaging in the same ways. My colleague Dick had an early experience that stuck with us. He worked with a student who didn’t want to be coached by an adult. All his teachers were off the table, so Dick asked if there was anyone he’d be willing to work with. The student said he’d be okay with his best friend coaching him. So we trained a teacher to be a backup, and taught the friend some basics of coaching—daily check-ins, simple planning, things like that.

This student was a junior in high school. He made the honor roll for the first time ever. We celebrated with the school, had a party—it was a huge deal. But within two weeks of the new marking period, he was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. There were many factors, of course, but one was that he thought he had it all figured out. He didn’t realize how much the coaching support had helped him. And once that structure fell away, he struggled deeply.

That experience taught us how important it is to take things step by step. Yes, celebrate progress. But don’t assume that success means the student is fully independent yet. It’s important to prepare parents up front: things may go well for a while, then slide back. That’s okay. When they slide, we pick it back up.

I think that’s why I’ve almost learned to become a little wary of the wins. You want to celebrate them—especially for clients with ADHD who may not have experienced that kind of success or affirmation before—but then it’s like, no, we’ve got to keep stringing them together. It’s not over yet. It’s a process.

The 5-Minute Rule: A Simple Strategy with Lasting Impact

So listen, we’re so grateful. I only booked you for 40 minutes, and I want to come to the end here. We’re so grateful for you and the work you’ve done in the field. Your books, speaking selfishly, have transformed the way we work with families. When we talk to parents, they realize this is not a quick-fix problem. It’s not simple. So I hesitate to even ask this, but is there one move or one high-return thing they could try? You often talk about environmental modifications, for example. But what’s something that, even if it’s not easy, is simple and has the biggest bang for your buck?
Yeah, I’m not going to answer the question exactly the way you asked it, but I do have a rule about the perfect intervention. I used to say, “Here’s the perfect executive skills intervention,” but then I realized it’s not an intervention, it’s a rule. The perfect intervention for executive skills is one that takes no more than five minutes a day, and that you're willing to do forever—or at least as long as it takes. Those two go hand in hand. If it takes more than five minutes a day, most people can’t stick with it. And I can almost guarantee that if you’re able to do something consistently for five minutes a day, it won’t take forever. But I can also guarantee it’ll take longer than you think it should—because we’re talking about habit formation in kids whose brains are still developing.

Here’s an example. It took me a long time to realize this, but this is actually how I got my son with ADHD through high school. Every day when he came home, I asked, “What do you have to do? When are you going to do it?” He’d open his assignment book—or pull it out of his head—and we’d go through each subject: “When are you going to do your math? When are you going to study for social studies?” We’d create a quick plan. The whole thing took no more than five minutes.

Sometimes I’d have to prompt him later. “Aaron, what was it you said you were going to do at 5 o’clock Sunday afternoon?” “Oh yeah, study for my social studies test.” It was a five-minute conversation. And here’s the funny part—I had no idea it was the thing that worked. We were trying so many things with him. I didn’t realize until he was about 28. When kids are teenagers, they tell you everything you’re doing wrong. Somewhere in their twenties, that starts to shift.

This was one of those transitional moments. He said to me, kind of irritated, “Mom, it wasn’t until I was 25 that I stopped making a mental homework checklist at the end of every day.” And I was thinking, wait—what? You were still trying to remember if you had Spanish or algebra to do? He had already graduated from college at 22 and didn’t start grad school until 26, so there were three years when that checklist wasn’t even useful. But even now, he starts every day asking, “What do I have to do? When am I going to do it?” He works remotely, so he has to be able to schedule his own day. That five-minute intervention? He’s in his mid-40s now, and he still uses it.