Yes, I've worked with the books and found them helpful. There are tools in the books to help you identify areas of strength and weakness in your child and in yourself so that you can implement strategies that take advantage of strengths to help overcome weaknesses. Executive skills can certainly be strengthened: although any underlying processing weaknesses will probably still be there, learning and practicing explicit strategies to compensate can greatly improve functioning. My son, for example, will probably never be able to reliably recall three unrelated 10 minute tasks that I ask him to have done before I get home from work, but he *has* learned to take notes on his phone as I'm giving him the instructions so he can refer back to the list and actually get them done.
In implementing the ideas in the books, we have found that we get the best results with our son by taking an approach that is purely positive, never punitive. We have found that is really important to recognize and praise or reward even tiny amounts of progress so that he gets to see his effort paying off and develops an idea of himself as being capable of improving in these areas, something that he had pretty much despaired of. If classroom interventions are in the works, you might want to make sure that the goals set for your child are incremental, starting out with big supports and requiring very small changes in behavior that don't seem overwhelming to your child. These levels can be adjusted slowly so that the process of learning these skills never becomes unduly stressful (which would just further impair executive skills).
