Executive Function - Planning & Prioritization: When Your Child Has No Idea Where to Start

Executive Function Skill #6 of 11

By Katrin Kusek, EdD | ADHD & Executive Function Coach

Part of the Executive Function Skills Series. Start with Post #1: "What Are Executive Function Skills? A Parent's Guide."

The Problem Isn't the Project — It's the Map

Your child has been assigned a big project. They're capable — you know it. But when they sit down to work, they look genuinely lost. They don't know what to do first. They don't know how long it will take. They might spend an hour on something that doesn't matter while ignoring the most important part.

This isn't disinterest or laziness. It's a planning and prioritization challenge — and it's one of the most academically impactful executive function deficits a child can have.

What Is It?  Planning is the ability to identify the steps needed to reach a goal and sequence them logically. Prioritization is the ability to decide what matters most — what needs to happen first, what can wait, and what doesn't need to happen at all.

What These Challenges Look Like

In Younger Children (Ages 5–10)

•       Starting a creative project with no clear direction and getting frustrated when it doesn't work out

•       Not knowing what to do during free time — paralysis without a prompt

•       Spending energy on fun parts of an assignment while ignoring required components

Real Life:  Your 8-year-old has a diorama due on Friday. It's Tuesday. They spend all of Tuesday making it look pretty on the outside but haven't addressed a single required element.

In Tweens and Teens (Ages 11–18)

•       Long-term projects that fall apart because they were never broken into steps

•       Doing everything at once or doing nothing — no middle ground

•       Studying the wrong material before a test, or studying inefficiently

•       Overwhelm when facing multiple deadlines simultaneously

Real Life:  Your 14-year-old has four things due on Thursday. It's Sunday. They spend Sunday doing the thing they enjoy most — which isn't due until next week — and don't touch the Thursday items until Wednesday night.

Why Planning Is Hard for ADHD Brains

Planning requires the brain to project itself into the future — to imagine not-yet-existing steps and sequence them in a logical order. For children with ADHD, whose experience of time is often nonlinear and present-focused, this mental time travel is genuinely difficult.

The ADHD brain tends to see tasks as all-or-nothing: the whole project feels like one enormous thing, not 12 manageable steps. This is why children often freeze at the starting line — not because they don't want to do it, but because from their perspective, the entire mountain is right in front of them with no visible path up.

Strategies to Build Planning and Prioritization Skills

1. Teach Backward Planning

Start with the deadline and work backward: 'The project is due Friday. What needs to be done the day before? The day before that?' This turns an abstract future task into concrete daily steps.

2. Use Visual Plans

A simple written or drawn task map — even on a napkin — does the planning work for the brain. When the plan lives on paper, working memory is freed up to actually execute it.

3. Teach the 'Most Important Thing First' Rule

Help your child identify: 'If I could only do one thing today on this project, what would have the biggest impact?' This builds prioritization as a habit of mind.

4. Break It Down Until It's Obvious

'Write the introduction' is still too big. 'Write one sentence about why this topic matters' is where you want to be. The breakdown is done when your child looks at the next step and there's no ambiguity about what to do.

5. Make Planning a Consistent Habit

A two-minute weekly planning check-in — 'What's coming up this week? What needs to happen first?' — builds the planning muscle over time. Don't wait until there's a crisis to plan.

💡 Coaching note: Planning and prioritization is a skill that can be explicitly taught and practiced. Many children who seem incapable of planning simply haven't been shown how to do it in a way that works for their brain.

About Katrin Kusek, EdD

Katrin Kusek, EdD is an ADHD and executive function coach and parent trainer. She works with families of children and teens navigating ADHD and executive function challenges, and coaches young adults through major life transitions — including the leap into college.