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    Joined: Aug 2010
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    DD is in 7th grade and and excellent student. However, she often has difficulty remembering to hand things in or fully complete assignments. She has established a pattern of lying to us or blaming teachers for these mysterious 0s that appear on her online grading account. Occasionally we have caught her in the lie (the missing paper is in her binder or folder) or gotten her to confess it by threatening to email the teacher to ask why she is giving a 0 since she supposedly turned in the work.

    DD is definitely somewhat organizationally challenged, but we don't think she is ADHD. Her teachers report that she is on task and focused in class and contributes well. Always positive comments on the report card. Binders and folders are messy, but not horrifically so. I would say she is lower 25% as far as this skill. Not bottom of the barrel....but it's a weakness.

    I also sort of suspect she may be self handicapping on purpose. Last year she recieived a few comments from kids about having an over 100% average in a couple of classes, and she has talked about how other kids don't get straight As, she wants to be "normal," other people think it's "great" to get Bs (when any Bs are purely the result of 0s pulling down her grade--all graded work is high As), etc. However, I also think she just has a hard time remembering to jump all the hoops. 0s often occur when something was a bit unusual--you had to turn this project in online instead of on paper, she missed that day of class and had to remember to hand it in the next day, etc. She can stay with it fine if it's within routine, but take it outside routine and she'll forget. Similarly, some teachers have an organized and familiar homework system and others are more scattered and sporadic--she does great with the former, not so well with the latter.

    I want to work with her on skills and techniques to get more organized, but if I bring this up she screams at me to get out of her life, stop treating her like a baby, let her handle it, etc. With 7 current missing assignments in various classes, I also broached the topic of a conference (her teachers like to do group conferences) which was met with "If you do that, I will drop out of school" (DD is nothing if not prone to high drama), because she says it will be embarrassing.

    We have already removed privileges due to multiple missing assigments and repeated failures to turn stuff in, but DD has never really cared about this and I don't think it's a good strategy. Unfortunately, middle school grades are relevant here, as she must apply to high school....otherwise I do think I'd be tempted to leave her be and let her experience the consequences as they fell. In my gut, I feel this is just something we need to work on with her with better systems, but she is fighting us tooth and nail. Thoughts, experiences? I'm also so frustrated with the lying. I have no idea when to trust her at this point. It doesn't help that sometimes teachers really do mess up, lose things, etc so sometimes weird or bad grades are not her fault. But she will straight up lie to our faces and do it beautifully, too. I can NOT tell when she's lying.

    The relationship is really suffering at this point. DD has also accused me of wanting her to be perfect, which is ironic since we've been going through a whole "thing" about her being worried about her scienc fair project with her freaking out about it not being good enough (she won a bunch of stuff last year) and me telling her it's fine. I don't want her to be perfect!! I just want her to complete her assignments and hand them in. I feel like that is completely reasonable, but it's almost like she's telling me that she needs to have 0s to be "normal." I wonder if she can't bring herself to do a poor job on an actual assignment, so this is the only way she knows how to do it? But that may be a crazy way to think?

    Last edited by ultramarina; 09/30/16 06:07 AM.
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    I don't have direct experience of your situation, just a suggestion where to look for advice. Your DD may not be classic ADHD, but it sounds like she has real challenges with executive function, which is where so many ADHD folk suffer. From all that I have read, lying and ADHD very commonly go hand in hand as kids build up defences against their failures. It seems to be the go-to coping strategy. Lying around un-submitted homework usually tops the list. Most suggestions I've seen are around making clear the lying is unacceptable and has consequences, but focusing mostly on support and remediation of the deficits, as opposed to punishment.

    So a google of "ADHD and lying" might be helpful. I went to http://www.additudemag.com , my common starting spot, plugged "lying" into the search, and got 10 pages of links. Not necessarily deep info, but a good orientation before you dig in.

    Hugs to you. I know this kind of behaviour is a huge, huge challenge for parents. Mine are more about always shifting the blame for any problem situation to others (a more indirect kind of lying), but it generates that same sense of failure as parents. Lying pushes all our buttons and is really, really hard to deal with calmly. DS and I have probably had the same fight 50 times since he was 2, and I'm still struggling to find a way to deal with the blame-shifting more constructively. I think we're starting to make a little progress - but this is clearly why I am pointing you to websites and not anything I've done. frown

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    Ultramarine, we were where you are. It started in middle school with DS. At the time we attributed it to adolescent boy-ness, and we tried several methods to help him get his work in: signing off on homework by parent and teacher, SOAR, etc. It was impossible to get him to use his assignment notebook; thank goodness for school's online homework sites. But even when he did homework, and brought it to school, he might tell the teacher it was in his locker. If sent out to the hall to get it, he might not come back. He'd idly fiddle in the locker, or go to the restroom, until class was over.

    It seems that several things were going on:
    He was afraid his work wouldn't be good enough.

    When he really did forget to do it or bring it, or he brought it late, or he wasn't sure about how well he did, he was afraid of what the teachers would think of him.

    This advanced into being afraid to be "judged" at all, and by junior year of high school he had quit piano lessons (because there was an expectation though not a requirement that the students be in a recital), wouldn't give presentations, wouldn't turn in homework at all, wouldn't write at all, won't join the Math team (what if he gets something wrong, especially if it's just algebra when he's in Multivariable), quit the plays because you have to audition...the directors have told him if he wants to be in it, they have a spot and he wouldn't have to audition, but that brings us to another problem:
    He won't take special opportunities; it's unfair to everyone else

    We can trace a lot of this back to a couple of middle school teachers who told him, "you're a smart kid, this should not be a problem for you." Probably some students said such things to him, too; I remember children being surprised when he didn't get 100% and another who was so excited the day she exceeded his score on the MAP to become the high scorer. He is not competitive at all, and "doesn't get" why others might be.

    We can also trace it to his intrerpretation and observance of the school motto that included the words Responsible and Respectful: being late or incomplete with something is irresponsible (he didn't want to face the consequences do he didn't turn it in at all); and asking for clarification is disrespectful because it means you are telling the teacher they didn't do their job well if you didn't understand an instruction.

    On this forum I learned the phrase "socially-prescribed perfectionism", and it seems to fit the bill. It's not that HE thinks it has to be perfect, it's that he thinks OTHERS do, and what will they think of him if he can't meet THEIR expectations.

    The anxiety that goes along with it finally got to be pretty serious. We started escalating interventions through the years, and in this his senior year we seem to be making progress. He is taking medication for the anxiety (as his social worker at school says, "he's more DS now"), he has an IEP that, among other things, has him in a supportive study hall where the teacher works with me to keep him up with the assignment notebook (that took a while to get going) and we are learning to recreate communication habits. He had 4 assignments outstanding one class, and actually got them all in, without getting upset or withdrawing. On two of them he couldn't figure out an answer, so he hadn't turned them in at all. And I was able to talk with him about them without getting frustrated. And he was finally able to ask the teacher and a friend about the questions he couldn't answer.

    I don't know if this is what is going on with your DD, but if you can get the teachers on your side, and maybe get them to send her to a homework check-in person, like home room teacher, counselor, etc. Sometimes it's easier to let her think you are out of it. My son always told me to stay out of it; sometimes I let him think I was, when I had actually worked with a teacher to get something in place. It has to be consistent, though, and continue from one semester to the next. We did try to use a homemade SOAR, but at the time I was very distracted with other issues and could not give him the oversight he needed on it, but I think it could be a great system.
    https://studyskills.com/parents/

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    A few things to consider:

    Is this her first year in middle school and having multiple teachers? If so, adjusting to the increased organizational challenges of handling multiple classes and teachers with different homework/etc approaches can be tough at this point for most students. We've found through middle and high school that our kids typically have a mix of teacher styles re organization: some teachers purposely structure how they assign work and how they expect it to be turned in in a way that helps students meet the demands surrounding organization, teachers that seem to assign things fairly randomly and don't see that they have any need to help students learn/practice being organized... plus usually one teacher per semester who's just naturally completely disorganized themselves. Some subjects naturally lend themselves to easier homework organization too - math, for instance, where typically a class studies from one book all year and completes assignments from the book sequentially and students expect to have homework each night.

    So the first step I'd suggest here is to look analytically at which classes your dd is having difficulty with getting assignments turned in, then talk to her about what's required: how are assignments given out, how are they turned in, how often does she have homework in that class etc. Also look at how she keeps track of her homework assignments - is she writing them down somewhere? In individual class notebooks or in a planner or other? If she's feeling sensitive about the classes where she's missing assignments, you can instead look at her full day together - how does each teacher assign homework etc... make it less of a "how to solve the problem of missing assignments" and more of a "how to manage planning" exercise.

    I've found that giving my kids a lot of organizational support at home during middle school and the first year of high school really helps them learn how to be organized in their own way. The level of help required really depends on the individual student - one of my kids has a disability that impacts executive function, and we worked on org skills together all the way through middle school and quite a bit freshman year of high school. He's functioning fairly well now as a junior in high school, but we still check in daily and he still occasionally needs someone to help him with strategies for planning long term assignments etc.

    Re what I actually did/do with my kids: I ask them to tell me about what they did in school each day when I first see them after school. I want to hear what they did in each class as well as what homework assignments they have. None of my kids really wanted to do this when we first started, but I explain to them - it's not because I'm trying to look over their shoulder and micromanage them, it's because they're my kids and I am naturally interested in what's going on in their day when they're not with me. We repeat this "tell me about your day" exercise everyday, and it has benefits beyond helping me support them through organizational challenges, it's helped them realize that I expect to continue communicating with them through whatever goes on during the teen years smile

    Since it sounds like your dd is at odds with you over this, is there another adult in her life who could talk to her about it? Someone she's less emotional and dramatic with?

    Last thing I wanted to mention - ADHD isn't the only thing that can cause executive function and organizational challenges. You've mentioned in your other posts that your dd appears to be making a lot of sign errors and mistakes in the "easy" parts of math calculations but grasps math concepts easily. I doubt this is what's happening, but I'd keep it in the back of my mind and pay attention as you work with her on the math and the organization challenges - these could be related to each other and possibly an undiagnosed LD that's mild enough she's been able to cope up to this point. Again, I doubt that's what's up - but it's something to be aware of.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    ps - there's a book put together for ADHD that helped us a lot in middle school with organizational challenges for my ds (who doesn't have ADHD, but had tremendous org challenges).. I can't remember the name at the moment (ha! I must have my own challenges lol!).. but it was something like "Lost and Scattered"... anyone else who can help with the name? It's a short book with lots of great tips.

    pps - one last tip from me smile If she's doing well with organization in classes where the teacher and homework are well structured, be sure to encourage and celebrate that - those classes were (I believe) really important for my ds in helping him learn how to develop his own organizational system and they helped him see he could be successful at managing homework.

    Last edited by polarbear; 09/30/16 11:44 AM.
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    Following the thread. No suggestions yet. In the same boat for DS 12, a near disaster for the first month in middle school. Just ordered the 'Soar" book.

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    Bright but scattered?

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    Last edited by aeh; 09/30/16 02:52 PM.

    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    Is this the same child in both posts?

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    That's it!

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    This is my DD. I have at times wondered how abnormal she really is because I never heard anyone else talk about how their kid lies about schoolwork. For her, it started in about 4th grade but she was in a highly gifted program and they were treating the kids like middle schoolers. I think the executive functioning demands were just too much for her and she decided it was better to not try and fail than to try and fail. She is now in an actual middle school and has an IEP. She goes to a "strategies" class rather than foreign lang. and the teacher makes sure she is writing down her assignments from the various classes in her planner, checking online for late assignments, finishing the late assignments, breaking down large projects, etc. Not sure if everyone in this group has an IEP or not, or if some of them are like your DD where there is no particular disability (mine does actually have ADHD). Maybe something to check out. This has reduced the stress and the drama significantly and DD is getting A's in all of her classes. Her attitude is also improving a lot. I also have a book "organizing the disorganized child" which has some interesting tips.

    Good luck! I sympathize because it's extremely frustrating to deal with.

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