The Trouble With "Just Try Harder"

It's one of the most common pieces of advice a parent hears — from teachers, from relatives, sometimes from their own inner voice at 7am on a chaotic school morning. But for a child with ADHD, "try harder" misunderstands what's actually happening. The difficulty isn't a lack of effort or motivation; it's a difference in how the brain's executive function system manages planning, working memory, and self-regulation.

In my years as a pediatric nurse, and later in my doctoral research on executive function development, I watched this misunderstanding play out again and again — well-meaning adults asking a child to do something their brain genuinely struggles to do without support, then reading the resulting frustration as defiance or laziness.

None of this means lowering expectations. It means changing the scaffolding around those expectations so your child can actually meet them. In my consulting sessions, this is often the first shift that changes everything else — for the child, and for the parent's own sense of relief.