The TGD

Ed’s daughter woke up sick with three assessments due that day. She stayed home. Rested. Worried the whole time that there was no way to make any of it up without showing up before school once she was better, which felt like a punishment for having been sick in the first place. Here's where I could've just called the school. I didn't. Instead: "Email your teachers. Tell them what's going on. See what they say." She hated that answer. Sent the emails anyway. Turned out two tea

Reese is an A student. This year, she picked one class specifically to not be an A student in. She wanted a real challenge. Something hard enough that she'd have to actually build the skills we keep talking about: advocating with a teacher, asking for the accommodation instead of waiting for it, working through a rough draft instead of turning in the first one. Her stated goal going in was a C. Not because she couldn't do better. Because a C in a hard class, earned by doing t

When Chris and I got married, I started loading the dishwasher. Every night. Nobody discussed it. There was no summit. A few years later I woke up as the Chief Executive Officer of Kitchen Sanitation. Chris assumed I just loved doing the dishes. I was quietly seething, like someone unplugged my phone at 2%. Chris had no idea anything had been unplugged. My business partner Ed had the highway version. On road trips, Ed drove and his wife Mei fell asleep. Every single time. For

Around this time in the school year, academic momentum can hit a wall. A back to school cold turns into a missed day, a couple of missed assignments turn into five, Canvas/Schoology turns red, and suddenly a manageable workload feels like an avalanche. When a backlog accumulates, students rarely respond with a calm action plan. Instead, shame and cognitive overload set in, triggering a freeze response. They aren't ignoring the pile because they don't care; they're avoiding it

The initial burst of back-to-school energy has vanished. A text a mom sent us last week captured this perfectly: Her son walked in at 4:30 PM, dropped his backpack in the entryway, and collapsed onto the couch. When reminded about homework, he muttered that he needed five minutes. Two hours later, he was still scrolling on his phone. By 8:00 PM, panic set in over a pop quiz, and the night devolved into a midnight scramble. Mom saw laziness. He experienced cognitive overload.

Student Perspective: Fuming after 3rd period. Got put on blast in front of everyone because my notes weren't done, but I lowkey couldn't find the Canvas link to save my life. Honestly so triggered right now that I just want to check out of the class entirely. Parent Perspective: My kid comes home, slams their door, and says their English teacher "hates them." I’ve been down this road before, so I’m ready to fire off an email to the principal before things completely spiral. S

Student Perspective: Heading to soccer. Cleats over my shoulder, bag packed with my jersey and shin guards. I actually remembered my water, a snack, and my mouthguard for once. Beat my brother to the car, so I’m just blasting my playlist to get locked in for practice. Tabitha’s nephew playing college soccer! Parent Perspective: I’m waiting in the car and I finally have 5 minutes to check the parent portal because I forgot this week. I see 2 zeroes in my kid’s science class an

It’s 9:00 PM on a Sunday, and your teen suddenly remembers they need a tri-fold poster board, glue sticks, and colored index cards for first period tomorrow. It is a scenario almost every parent knows too well. When a student doesn't have a reliable process for tracking supplies, it leads to late-night store runs and unnecessary stress at home. Instead of waiting for the next emergency, you can set up a simple, predictable system that keeps supply management completely within

The TGD Last week, Tabitha was coaching a parent who was stuck in a familiar standoff. Their daughter wanted to take AP History, but the parent was understandably nervous about the workload. To compromise, they struck a deal: "You can take the class, as long as you maintain a B average." ​ It sounds like a reasonable deal. The problem is that "keep a B" asks for an outcome rather than a daily action. A letter grade isn't something a student can directly manage on a Tuesday af

The TGD Welcome to Week 5 of our Summer Challenge! Today we are tackling a big one for neurodivergent brains: Flexibility. When routines change or unexpected roadblocks pop up, it is easy for a brain to hit a wall. Flexibility is the antidote to rigidity. It is all about rewarding the brain for being stretchy and handling the unexpected. Here is how our team practiced taking things in stride this week. Skill: Flexibility Definition: The ability to adapt to changed conditions

The TGD This week, we’re tackling Time Management using sensory signals and songs. Time Management Definition: The capacity to estimate how much time one has and how to stay within time limits. Why it matters: Many neurodivergent brains struggle with "feeling" time. To calibrate that internal clock, we can flip the script and make our vocab more concrete and relatable or use more fun and friendly techniques like music. Try it with us - this week, instead of saying “we’re leav

The TGD Welcome to Week 3 of our Summer Challenge. Our focus this week is on your brain's attention span and its internal mental notepad: Sustained Attention and Working Memory. Keeping focus from evaporating when a task gets boring is incredibly hard work for a neurodivergent brain. If your family struggles with this, the good news is that cognitive endurance is something we can intentionally scaffold and build over time. Here is how our team put these skills into action thi

The TGD Welcome to Week 2 of our Summer Challenge. This week, we're talking about two heavy-hitting executive function skills that dictate how we handle big impulses and intense emotions: Response Inhibition and Emotional Regulation. It is very fair for these to feel like a massive lift for neurodivergent brains, but they are muscles we can absolutely train. Here is how our team put them into action this week. Skill 1: Response Inhibition Definition: The ability to put a buff

The TGD Welcome to Week 1 of our Summer Challenge! Today, we’re tackling our first two executive function pillars: Planning/Prioritizing and Task Initiation. For so many of our clients - adults and kids - the hardest part of a task is often just the friction of getting started. Here is how we’re lowering that barrier this week. Ed worked on Planning and Prioritizing by creating a roadmap and deciding what to tackle first. For neurodivergent brains, "mental simulation"—literal

The TGD Ed’s family recently spent hours outside completely disconnected from screens at a beautiful retreat, and Tabitha just got back from a wonderful visit with her daughter and son-in-law and grand-pup. We all need this time to take it easy, breathe, and slow down. But when the schedule clears out, a familiar friction often creeps into the house. Without the rigid guardrails of the school calendar, routines fall apart. Mornings stretch into afternoons, screen time creeps

The TGD The binders are recycled, the backpacks are buried in the closet, and the schedule has finally opened up. There is a specific kind of magic in a summer afternoon that has no "due dates." But for many of our families, that lack of structure can quickly turn into the "I’m bored" refrain or a total digital hibernation. The thing is, the school year provides a massive "external brain" for our students. Bells, planners, and teachers act as the scaffolding for their Executi

The TGD There is nothing quite like the "Final Toss." It’s that moment your student walks through the door, drops their backpack like it’s radioactive, and declares they aren't touching it for three months. It’s a sensory signal that the pressure is finally off. We’re celebrating right alongside you. We’ve had some big wins at TGD Coach lately: Ed finally secured a medal at a local cartoon trivia contest, and Tabitha finally nailed her aerial chopper (her muscles are still pr

The TGD We’re almost there. There is a specific, slightly frantic energy to this time of year—the smell of sunscreen mixed with the dust of emptied lockers. Ed is excited to hand out end-of-year awards, but that doesn’t compare to the joy of seeing the mountain of old tri-folds finally exit his classroom. It’s the season of "done," and there's a huge relief in that. You made it, and it’s very fair to just want to shut the door on the last ten months. And, our brains are biolo

The TGD Ed and Tabitha often used the tool of whispering something unexpected in the classroom to gain attention. When a client is caught in a loud, swirling storm of test anxiety, they can’t hear their own logic anymore. They're stuck. To fix it, we need a pattern breaker. We need something so sharp and immediate that the nervous system has no choice but to stop and pay attention. When a client is ruminating—repeating those "I’m going to fail" thoughts—the brain is trapped i

The TGD Ed and Tabitha have watched it happen more times than we can count—that moment during an SOL where a student’s eyes glaze over and their posture starts to melt into the chair. In this state, "focus harder" is often the least helpful advice you can give. They aren't being lazy; their brain’s battery has simply dipped too low to power their executive functions. When a student gets stuck in an emotional loop or drifts into a fog, it’s a biological signal that they have s