Have you ever had a student spend 45 minutes avoiding an assignment that would have taken them five minutes to finish?
They argue about why they shouldn’t have to do it, negotiate over how much they need to complete, ask to go to the bathroom, or decide they need a drink before they can get started.
Meanwhile, you’re looking at the assignment thinking:
If you would just DO IT, this would have been over half an hour ago.
I had a student who did this exact thing during study hall.
Writing assignments could turn into an entire period of avoidance. He would find every possible way to delay getting started, and when we did get him to write, an adult often had to sit beside him and prompt him through the process.
From our perspective, his choices didn’t make sense. He was spending far more time and energy avoiding the assignment than it would have taken to complete it.
We see the arguing, negotiating, shutting down, or escaping and call it defiance, work refusal, lack of motivation, or “demand avoidance.”
Those labels describe the behavior we can see.
They don’t explain why avoiding five minutes of discomfort feels preferable to spending five minutes getting it done.
And that’s the question we need to answer before we decide how to intervene.
If we misunderstand what’s driving the avoidance, we can choose interventions that feel good in the moment but reinforce the pattern we’re trying to change.
That’s why students described as having pathological demand avoidance and work refusal at school can get worse when we continually lower expectations. Here’s why reducing demands may reinforce avoidance, and what students may need instead.
When a student argues, negotiates, asks to leave, or refuses a difficult task, reducing the demand can feel like the supportive thing to do. But temporary relief doesn’t necessarily help that student build the skills needed to handle challenge independently.
In episode 270 of De Facto Leaders, I explain why demand avoidance and work refusal can be signs that a student needs more support with executive functioning, not simply fewer expectations. You’ll see how planning, predicting, estimating time, visualizing an end goal, and talking yourself through discomfort all contribute to a student’s ability to persist with challenging work.
We’ll also look at how excessive prompting and repeatedly removing difficult tasks can unintentionally make a student more dependent on adults, and what we need to build instead.
You can listen to the episode here:
In this episode, I mentioned the Task Execution and Planning Protocol that helps clinicians and educators support students who present with demand avoidance and require constant prompting during functional or academic tasks. You can learn more about the Task Execution and Planning Protocol here.
I also mentioned my free training, “How to Be Evidence-Based and Neurodiversity-Affirming By Support Executive Functioning”. You can register for that training here.
To learn more about my YouTube channel called “Dr. Karen Executive Functioning Systems”, where you can learn how to build scalable executive functioning strategies you can use in your therapy sessions and classrooms. You can subscribe to the channel here.