Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What happens to children who are gifted with poor EF

If I understand correctly, Platypus101 was speaking of a child being denied access to higher level curriculum until EF skills are mastered, whereas DeeDee's child is subject accelerated in math and receives IEP/504 remediation/supports/accommodations for EF skills? Therefore it would seem that there is agreement in principle, that access to higher level curriculum ought not to be withheld until EF skills are mastered?

This ability to develop calls to mind ideas presented in Carol Dweck's book, mindset.

My DH has poor EF skills and it has hindered him in the workplace. He is by no means a failure, but with his IQ things could have gone better. Just being honest.


DH is ABD (all but dissertation) in his field (he left with a master's) due largely to this.

Yes, I completely agree. We've tried to help our DD's EF develop and we've also tried to help her be resilient by letting her experience "controlled failure" and see what happens when she lets all the organization tasks fall by the wayside. By "controlled failure" I mean get a bad grade on the test, but not fail the required class. At a certain stage parents step in to insist that the homework get turned in, the teacher get contacted, and generally model what to do when things are not going well. I think this is a key component of parenting any child--modeling what to do when things go awry.


Yes. This has proven to be quite tricky in practice. DD skipped a grade and I did not anticipate that the resultant year behind in EF would prove to be as big a challenge as it was. She is so far ahead academically that it has been hard in the teen years to remember that she is just average, for her peer group, in EF. This asynchrony became more apparent in high school, when more things had legal requirements for age. A big chunk of the scaffolding has been planning the minutia so that she has done key "real life" things before leaving for college. Learn to drive, have a "real" paying job, set up a bank account, it goes on and on and we had one year less to do it. The scary part for us is we won't know how we've done for decades.

I think this is a difficult thing to predict. First, there is no evidence that executive functioning skills should be anything other than age appropriate regardless of IQ, there is no research that indicated that the two are correlated. Secondly, EF continues to develop well in to the twenties, as many of these skills deal with frontal lobe development. So unless you are comparing EF skills in the late twenties it is a pointless endeavor. Also, people often think of motivation as EF, maybe it is and maybe it is not, but a parent wanting a child to do something is not the same as a child wanting it themselves;).

Absolutely. My DS is extremely motivated…to learn more about Minecraft . School stuff? Not so much.

Try minecraft as a bribe: twenty minutes of homework earns him twenty minutes of minecraft...worked *great*'for us for violin practice!

This is me, too. Though it has worked out better for me in the workplace - external controls for task initiation and task completion, unlike academia....I still remember being so desperate in my first real job (doing real stuff as a lawyer that made a difference to people as opposed to being a research assistant at uni) I phoned my mom from my desk! She listened to me whine about how hopeless I was at the bureaucratic stuff and was sure to be transferred into the outbacks the told me "you know, this is stuff one can learn. And you will." Not she never contradicted my saying I was hopeless.

I manage to be good enough these days, but compensate a lot with sheer brilliance. Ahem.

Tigerle - my son needs to get more exercise, so he gets Minecraft time for swimming lengths.. so far it has worked very well