Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Giftedness and hygene

I am gettin a bit frustrated with my older dd12. She is (recently tested PG) a good kid and is doing great at initiating her own learning as well as more often than not tolerating the mundane. the one thing that is making me crazy is that she is quite a slob (to put it bluntly). I have to remind her to shower, brush her teeth, clean her room etc. I know that cleaning her room is common for kids at this age...but the teeth brushing, showering? I have left lists and notes and yet...nothing changes. Any suggestions? thoughts?

I am sorry to say that for some kids those things are low on the priority list. I sometimes wonder if it is because they feel like no one cares what they look like since they don't understand them anyways. Some of my students have used it as a defense mechanism to keep others away from them so they don't have to bother trying to be nice to people they don't really want to be with. Unfortunately, this often backfires and draws more attention to them because most of their peers are obsessed with their appearances at this point.
I unfortunately don't have any advice, but wanted to let you know that you are not the only one having these issues.
Good luck.

Being messy, I get. Why bother picking it up? I know where it is. If I pick it up now I'll just have to take it out again later.

But personal hygiene? Gifted kids usually have the sensory overexcitability, which leads to being unable to stand being dirty. My DD went through a period around age 2 where she insisted on being carried from the slide to the swings, so our challenge was the opposite... teaching a kid it's okay to be dirty.

Besides, showering should be a pleasant sensory experience when you're doing it right. Maybe she's doing it wrong? There are a lot of things that can turn it into something unpleasant... water too hot/cold, towels too thin, scratchy loofas, smelly soaps/shampoos, bathroom steaming up too heavily, etc. DD6 has a habit of emerging from the bathroom, soaking wet, to ask for help drying off. That's a pretty unpleasant experience during winter, so she's trying to learn to stay in the bathroom where it's warm and call for help instead.

So it's probably worth it to talk to her about it and see if there might be something that can be done to make it better for her. And maybe there's something that can be done with the toothbrush, too... let her try other toothpastes, get her an electric brush if she doesn't already have one, etc. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who enjoys a good tooth brushing, so there's probably no easy fix there.

At our house, on weekends, we generally don't have any kind of schedule, and people pretty much groom themselves depending on how the day progresses. This lends itself to some teasing about who is still a "stinky butt," which gives us a playful way to impart the social consequences of not showering. It doesn't matter whether the person has a noticeable odor or not... if you haven't had your shower yet, you're a stinky butt.

Confession: I was a PG slob in 6th grade, and now I'm a PG slob in my mid-forties who relies on 6th graders to help keep my classroom organized. But I do take daily showers and brush my teeth now, and have for many years. My kitchen, on the other hand...

There are a couple of components to this problem. On a crime show, I'd say we have to look at both means and motive. Let's look at motivation first.

At this age, what peers think is becoming much more important to kids than what their parents say, and that's what keeps most kids clean and groomed--sometimes obsessively--at this age. It could be that she doesn't understand her peers, and they don't understand her.

As a PG kid, she may be so alien to her same-age peers, that they may treat her as a freak whether she's clean or dirty, frankly. Peer feedback does not work the same way for her that it does for a kid closer to the center of the bell curve. That's an issue that will either resolve itself in the next year or two, or will get much worse.

A gentle suggestion from adult she knows and trusts--who is not part of her nuclear family--may have more impact than every thing that you say.

These tasks you mention are, frankly, boring. There is no intrinsic motivation, and you probably have a daughter who is all about challenging herself to solve difficult problems and not big into external validation.

I suggest a point system, in which consistent attention to specific tasks (brushing teeth, daily shower, putting dirty clothes in the hamper), earns points, which build up over time to be cashed in on a significant reward (maybe an experience of some kind, instead of an object) which means something to her. For it to be most effective, you would want her to participate--by negotiation--in the creation of the point system. The design of a system that will lead to something she really wants is the kind of task that will appeal to her, and make her feel that the whole system belongs to her.

As far as the means, we are talking about a mysterious phenomenon called "executive function". I struggle with both the theory and the practice, so I'm kind of hoping someone else will step in here.

Having made a study of motivation, I'd like to add that extrinsic motivation and tangible rewards do not usually work well for tasks that require a bit of creative problem solving (see Dan Pink's TED talk). This is why bribing kids to get As on their report cards or punishing teachers when their students' test scores drop do not work. However, they can be effective for very specific tasks that are easy to execute.

I would also like to point out, though it does not necessarily bear on this particular case, that tangible rewards have been found to be one of the most effective approaches for working with students with ADHD or oppositional issues.

So there you have it. Intrinsic and extrinsic can both be either effectively or ineffectively applied.

I think being slob is nothing related to giftedness. Gifted or not there are slobs everywhere.
is there any study????

Many Americans (including me) shower daily, but I wonder if there is any research showing that doing so only once or twice a week causes problems. That's what people did before running water.

I have one hold-my-nose-to-hug college student, one 11-year-old who'd rather do cannon balls in the tub than use soap and shampoo and a neat-nik 18-year-old who showers twice a day.

All three are gifted.

Personality is the biggest factor with my kids, not IQ.

I also agree that it is personality, not IQ. PG people I know have good hygiene. It helps with job stability...

And poor teeth brushing leads to wasting and painful time at the dentist. Not PG logic to me.

I think it is more the loner, introvert that may be into poor hygiene. If your kid is an extrovert PG, they will care about hygiene.

Ren

Poor personal hygiene is frequently associated with a sensory processing issue (or sensory over-excitabilities, however you choose to look at it) and/or with poor executive functioning (they mean to do these things, but forget to do them or "run out of time" repeatedly, so days go by). Identifying what is driving or perpetuating the behavior can frequently help to identify strategies to make it better.

Allowing your child to try out a variety of types of toothbrushes, toothpastes, soaps, shampoos, etc., giving them a choice between taking baths and showers, explicitly teaching how to adjust water temperature and clear the shower line of cold water before stepping in, installing a flexible showerhead with a range of spray settings, at least one of which is a "soft" or "champagne" setting, and one of which is a hard jet setting, making sure that the bathroom air temperature is right, etc., can help if sensory issues are causing avoidance.

The techniques in "Smart, but Scattered", and "Late, Lost and Unprepared" can help if executive function issues are playing a role. Strategies such as having a morning and evening checklist or reminder app that includes ALL routine tasks, including specific hygiene tasks, may be useful if implemented consistently and tied to some external rewards.

I'd be sure to note and praise immediately those occasions when your child does brush teeth and bathe.