Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Improving time management skills

In a way I could have posted this in 2E, but DD10 has no diagnosis, though she is a little ADHD...ish.

DD takes a long time (sometimes, hours) to do her homework. To be fair, she gets a lot of it. She also usually does an extremely good job--but this is part of the problem. She will be overly meticulous and careful when this is not totally necessary (note--she is a straight A student, so this does pay off for her). It's not she is intensely perfectionist, but she is a striver and does like things just so. Also, and this is more the problem, she is a daydreamer (often found noodling around, doodling, or starting into space), she is spent at the end of the day, and she gets too much work.

So far this has been managed through rather strict rules and scaffolding (HW must be started by X time and finished by X time, no screentime till it's done, I check on her a lot). But I am tired of this and she needs to self-manage more. Thoughts on how to remove the scaffolding gently?

Here's a few ways we have done it. My DS is 10 also and we have been working on this for several years.

1. Does she really need all that homework? My DS does actually have ADHD and he has an accommodation to do less practice as long as he shows mastery. For instance, last year they had a vocab/spelling homework packet that they got on Monday that was due by Friday so they could prepare for Friday test. My DS turned it in late the first few weeks but still got a 90% and 95% on the tests. After that we asked if he could skip it. Maybe this is something that you can discuss with teachers.

2. Obviously, you have the best idea about how much effort your DD needs to get A's (if that is her goal). But think about ways the work can be done more efficiently (which leads to number 3)

3. Work periods set with a timer and breaks in between. Have her think about how long she can work without doodling, staring into space, etc. - set the timer for that amount of time. (we are up to 30 mins now) and then reward with a break period we do 10 mins. If may seem like it will take longer but we have found that the work gets done quicker this way. He is able to self regulate as well as he has his timer to refer to and if he happens to get done early, he gets extra break time.

4. Finally, consider whether the work is broken down into manageable chunks. My DS used to just sit and daydream because he did not know how or have the ability to initiate the task. We generally go over the assignment together we work out a plan to get it done, then using the timer, etc. he does the best he can at task persistence.

Good luck.

I am not a big fan of homework and DD13 hates it. That may have contributed to way she used to drag her feet when doing it. It would drive me nuts.

It sounds like there are a few things that might be at play. These are issues that applied to our DD.

Fatigue: a real problem for us as a physical issue but the emotional and mental fatigue of being at school all day is really draining. More so if your child is an introvert, ours is, who needs time to recharge. I feed and water DD as soon as possible after school and allow her to listen to music or watch a short video from you tube. Anything to get a bit of bounce back. Actually, jumping on the trampoline worked wonders!

Lack of real challenge, easy homework used to paradoxically take a lot longer as DD just couldn't bring herself to do it. This also contributes to fatigue. If the work at school isn't stimulating enough DD's brain fails to switch on and she comes home dragging her feet and complaining of being tired. She is then more likely to daydream etc rather than tackle homework.

Too much challenge is equally exhausting whether that is in the scope or the volume of the work.

A couple of times, when we have had a good teacher, we negotiated for DD not to do sections of homework that lacked value for her. That concession allowed her to feel supported and she was more amenable to doing the work that had purpose.

You have hinted that you might be concerned about other 2E issues. Is that enough of a concern to warrant following it up? If it is, it is worth doing sooner rather than later as time management obviously becomes increasingly important as kids get older.

I was really concerned about DDs time management but it actually improved as the work got harder and she was accelerated. She is very good now but can still drag her feet over a boring assignment. It helped in the earlier days that we put time limits on her work. After all she had to have a life too. We also made earlier artificial deadlines for assignments to encourage getting the work out of the way before another one appeared.

Perfectionism was our other really intractible problem-- and it was deeply embedded in the lack of challenge, which had fostered that perfectionism in the first place.


This is the best solution that we ever found.


YES-- but there was a limit to how much acceleration we were willing to do, and eventually you run into executive demands that are (globally) out of reach, without actually reaching academically appropriate work.

Negotiating for less HW is not possible--she is at a GT magnet and the HW load is kind of...part of the school identity? I know, I know. Anyway, consider that one totally off the table. Regarding challenge level--she is not extremely underchallenged and she is certainly not out of her depth. It's okay. I would like to see better assignments, but so would everyone, right?

"Work periods set with a timer and breaks in between"--this is a perfect, great idea. I actually do think this would make it take less time.

I also like the plan idea. Maybe taking 5 minutes to make a plan would help a lot. She likes to do things like this.

Regarding a dx, DD is super frustrating in that she shows signs of something being off but is very high functioning and also performs well when assessed. We are tired of paying people and/or asking people to assess her and coming up with nothing. At this point, I just try to cope with issues as I see them.

Excellent advice already above.

We had a very similar issue the year one of ours was 10--our high-energy, social, achieving one, but also with the attention span of a flea. Actually, it's one of the major factors that led to homeschooling that one.

In our case, we narrowed it down to

1) too much work for no reason--the school decided arbitrarily that middle schoolers should have 2+ hours of homework a night, so even if a class didn't warrant the requisite amount of homework, teachers made sure there was something you had to do;
2) physical and mental exhaustion after a whole day of being
3) perfect; and, bonus,
4) having to exert extra attention and energy -making up for teachers' errors-! (All the teachers were very sweet and accommodating, as was the administration, but they were seriously struggling with massive curricular and organizational changes, which had not received sufficient inservicing.)

I would agree that the level of executive function (attention, planning, organization, impulse control) necessary to complete assignments the content of which was certainly academically well within range was a big piece of the puzzle. There is something about being 10, too. Old enough that adults start to have expectations of you to be organized and self-managing, but young enough that pre-teen scatter-brain is a fairly routine occurrence. That was also a particularly challenging year for our parent-child relationship (which nightly struggles over homework did not help!). My attempts to work with the school to modify the homework situation did help our p-c relationship, though it had exactly zero effect on the homework policy.

Yup. That's our situation, too. As you know, we haven't had any of ours formally tested, but I'm pretty sure I know what a neuropsych would come back saying. These subclinical kids can be like that. On the plus side, sometimes getting a Dx becomes a kind of stigma to them, and the absence of one allows it just to be a learning or temperamental style. I find that it has helped to explain their own learning profiles to them, based on my observations, including examples.

With ours, one of the things that has helped has been writing one's own homework (or homeschool) schedule, initially with guidance, including breaks for snacks, playing with sibs, moving around, etc. It's an opportunity to see what needs to be done, how long each one will take, how much time you need to allow for everything, and to see each one being checked off the schedule/list as it is completed.

We also did use the timer during that 10-yo year. 10 minutes of homework at a time, with the kitchen timer counting down in front of you. I usually specified a certain amount of work to be done in that time, as there is research that ADHD-type students actually perform better when under time pressure. ("You have 10 minutes to finish the next 5 algebra problems.")

Oh, and shameless bribery (aka, positive reinforcement), in the form of very small food (candy?) rewards after timed intervals of continuous work...in the classical ABA style. They are not too old to work for M&Ms.

Just noticed that today's marathon "HW" session somehow resulted in a new poem half-tucked away on a corner of her desk...

It breaks my heart a little because she is intensely creative, and some of what happens is that the creativity is struggling to escape during school and HW time both. She has a lot of fire in her to Make...

This is kind of true of her, BUT she gets very upset with me if I do it. I don't know if she is reacting to this environment at school. BTW, she does not have difficulty completing work at school except on very rare occasions. Many of her classmates do, because a lot is expected of them. So, somehow she is managing. I think she is extremely tightly wound at school. She is visibly relaxed and different during summer. She says she likes school, though. She is very happy there socially.

We used to find drawings (especially what you might call illustrated text) under the same circumstances. Even now, I'll walk over to check on work and find drawings, or miniature letters intended for the youngest sibling's imaginative play, or lesson planning for teaching the little sibling (!). But now it's okay, because we don't have all of this happening on top of a 6 or 7 hour school day; it's happening during the homeschool day, and I can feel free to adjust the goal list for the day to accommodate spontaneous interests. (It's not like we'll fall behind the public schools' academic expectations!)

Does your DD have any outlets for her creativity during the school day? Or is it all "serious" academics, all the time?