Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Help or consequences?

DD (just turned 12!) did really well the first half of 7th grade. Straight A's, handed 99% of everything in on time - it was so good. This semester has not been so wonderful. DD has lost many homework sheets and handed in so many late items - she gets anxious and then blows up at home. I've been meeting with a psychologist who supposedly specializes in gifted kids, and she has minimized the ADHD diagnosis and states she believes most of the behavior stems from DD's IQ (bored in class, not inattentive). She recommends allowing DD to suffer the consequences of losing homework or turning it in late. We have followed her instructions to see what would happen. Well, while DD would completely lose it, she really didn't face horrible consequences because the teachers took late homework at the end of the quarter and didn't dock points. Her grades looked pretty horrible (for her) for awhile but then went back to A's once the lost work was turned in. Currently she either has 100's or 0's because something was not turned in.

I keep researching about ADHD and how parents and teachers are to "scaffold" and help with executive function, and I wonder. How much to help? When to allow consequences? I have a 504 meeting coming up for DD. She is allowed to turn in work a day late, and DH and I are to keep on her about filling in the agenda. The teachers refuse to check her agenda because they don't want to draw attention to DD (may embarrass her). DD's main problem is she either forgets to turn the work in, or she loses something between school and home.

Last bit - DD has had some anxiety moments where she began to hyperventilate at school so I know that the issue is weighing on her.

My DD is her twin in many ways and we are having the same issue. She is 11 and in 6th grade. First trimester, no one had complaints about her, her grades always looked good, most things handed in on time. Second trimester she tanked and just decided she didn't care anymore. She started lying about whether she had homework, if she had turned things in, etc. She goes to special ed daily, and she was lying even to the teacher there. She decided to blow off about 30 math assignments. They were not in the online portal so I had no idea she wasn't doing them in class nor turning them in. By the time I figured it out, it was too late to do anything about it.
So now EVERYONE is on top of her. special ed nagging, teachers nagging, we are nagging, and she pulled her grades back up. It takes a team effort. I do not believe that letting a kid suffer the consequences is an adequate solution, because that assumes the kid actually cares, even if they don't, or that they are doing it on purpose, which they may not be. DD did not care about practically failing math. Or doing poorly on other tests and assignments. The fact that no one kept after her and she got away with it just reinforced the behavior. Is there any way you can get regular check-ins in terms of her work a part of a 504 or IEP? I don't think this is something you can tackle on your own. It sounds like you need as much scaffolding as possible and she needs to be taught specific skills. Just as an interesting note, the special ed teacher actually did the opposite of your teachers and threatened DD...said she will go sit with her in her classes if necessary. That would be a logical consequence. Of course, the circumstance was that DD was lying and not even trying, so that may be different than what your DD is dealing with. If a kid is actually trying, then punishment is not really appropriate. But if they are trying but failing, they need more support, not consequences. Yes, eventually she may remember to turn in assignments if she is always getting bad grades when she forgets, but grades should reflect her work and her learning, not her memory in terms of turning it in. After a while she may say, why bother doing it if I'm going to forget to turn it in and get an F anyway. I would instead set some goals, like no more than 3 late assignments per week and if she meets that goal, figure out some sort of reward.

I would tend to go with blackcat on this one - though I will readily admit that many parents think I am way too easy on my kids. But their kids don't have ADHD, and ADHD is crazy making. There is just nothing that looks so volitional. Obviously she can do it - she did it perfectly the whole first semester, right? Obviously, she's just not trying anymore.

Well, maybe.

Or maybe it took everything she had, plus the right alignment of the planets, to pull it off last semester, and now she's exhausted and overwhelmed and it's just become too much. Or maybe the nature of the work changed, or the volume, or the timing, or the writing demands, or Mars is rising in Jupiter....

I have really, truly been convinced that it's true: kids do well when they can. A mountain of LD and 2E report cards to the contrary, lazy and unmotivated are not natural states for kids. They want to please us. They want to feel good about themselves. Even 12 year olds. And if they're deliberately self-sabotaging, well, that's just another way of showing that they are facing a barrier that feels so unsurmountable they're afraid to even try.

So my personal two cents worth is - scaffold like crazy, but put her in charge. You make lots of suggestions, but as much as she is currently able, she makes the decisions, and she owns the plan. Your younger DD is your super visual-spatial one, I think? My DS is too, and I am so not. So this is the hard part for us: my super linear, verbal methods (yup, I love lists) don't work worth a darn for him, but it's really, really hard for him to come up with ideas himself of what would work for him on his own. So we have to keep experimenting, and we continue to search for what will really work. A teacher with electronic assignment tracking is worth their weight in gold. (Our latest challenge is figuring out how to study for tests, a skill he's never needed before - - - but that's a whole other post.) Given the state she is in now, I would suggest you over-compensate at the beginning, but explicitly talk about about the step-wise removal of pieces of the scaffold over time (potentially a looooong time), and how she might know when she is ready to take over the next bit for herself.

As I have written before, I have found out the hard way that avoidance is a deadly habit, and becomes its own reward. You don't want to punish for disability - but you do want to make avoidance more painful than the alternative - doing the work. So consequences for executive function failure, no. But consequences for refusing to engage with and own the scaffolding, yes. But I would start gentle - it sounds like she may be pretty deep in a hole right now, and need a lot of help just digging herself out before she can see the light of day. Anxiety has huge impacts on our ability to think, judge, and make good decisions. (In fact, anxiety can manifest a whole lot like inattentive ADHD, so you may have some chicken and egg happening here. If her anxiety is that high, she may truly not be capable of making good decisions right now.)

If she has a particular teacher whose good opinion she values, it really helps to be able to work in partnership. DS (almost 13!) worships his teacher, who is awesomely supportive but also seriously hard-core about 'grow up and shape up'. It's occasionally disconcerting (you do understand he can't do this on command, right? Yes, I do agree he's behaving like a kid several years younger when it comes to EF - and you do understand that's pretty much textbook definition of ADHD, right? No, actually, the teacher doesn't, but I've made that aspect my problem and our good cop/ bad cop act is helping a lot). I agree that yes, DS does have to try lot harder. But what he has to try a lot harder at is understanding his weaknesses, and owning the need to build and adhere to scaffolds that enable him to compensate. He does not have to try harder to make EF functions appear out of thin air. Yes, he is absolutely accountable for his choices and avoidance will not be tolerated - but he is only accountable for those things which actually are choices, the behaviours he can control.

This is, of course, a lot easier said than done. A lot of what I and DS's teachers have done over the years trying to help him just enabled his avoidance. The distinction I make above is not terribly clear in real life. But we keep trying, and we're getting better at it.

So bottom line - - - trust your gut. No one else has all the info you do. If you think she needs help rather than punishment, you are probably right. Maybe see if you can identify what changed since the first semester - is there anything different about the workload that means she needs some different kinds of supports now that weren't essential then? Or maybe it's just the anxiety of trying to keep up slowly built up over time, increasingly challenging her compensation mechanisms until it overwhelmed them - so the change sees sudden from your end, but not from hers. In my experience, when 2E kids hit the wall, it can look pretty sudden from the outside, but the struggle may have been growing, invisibly, for a long time.

You may also find some useful practical strategies in HOPS, which is a homework and organization intervention developed by school psychs. Parent manual: https://www.nasponline.org/books-and-products/products/books/titles/hops-for-parents. (There's also an educator manual, for school-based intervention, but the strategies can be implemented from home.)

Good meeting at the school!! But let me back up: I read all your comments above (big thank you!!!), and our DYS adviser had a few options. One was related to what Platypus said - get DD's buy in and have her write a letter for the meeting. I explained to DD that I would like to hear what she thought did and did not work at school.DD moaned and groaned "Whyyyyyy" and after a time of that we got down to business. I listed many accommodations kids use at school, and DD either muttered "ok" or "NO!" I then had a document to present to the school. I told DD she probably would be asked to come by the guidance counselor, and DD insisted she would not talk at the meeting.Well, at least she had come up with a plan.

So, the meeting went well. We got everything we asked for which wasn't much but very important! Emailing homework to school (a back up if she forgets to turn it in) and teachers posting the homework sheets online. Some teachers already do that but not consistently. One teacher told her to take pictures of the work sheets which is a great idea except that means DD needs to remember to take a picture of the sheet so it probably won't happen. This should take care of DD's problems!! She does fine in class and on tests - it's just that dratted black hole between school and home!! I will add that DD was horrible at the meeting. Bad attitude. She acts like a cornered cat. She does not understand yet that people are there to help - not make her life miserable.

aeh - great book!!! Thank you!! I will pass the name to others as well.

Sounds like a good plan. I hope that they follow through. My experience is that many teachers/staff sound really good in meetings and then they carry on like they always have.

My DD is the one who has what we describe as her "feral bear" mode. Basically, when she's scared her response is to be nasty. She's unpleasant and pushes people away when they try and help her. Teachers, not unreasonably, react to this by going and looking for someone who actually wants their help. They don't realize she's behaving this way because she's terrified and her anxiety is through the roof. They just think she's being a b&*%&. I feel for you on this one. It's really difficult to help a child in this mode, and difficult to persuade people she needs help. It's a nasty spiral. The disability causes anxiety which causes behaviour which stops teachers from seeing the disability or trying to help address it - which ratchets up the anxiety and off she goes. We have had the experience of shocked teachers, unable to believe what a completely different child - what a nice child - ours became once she finally got the help she needed (from us, at home. sigh).

So my best empathy coming your way. Hang in there, hold her tight, let her see in no uncertain terms that you are on her side, that you see what she sees and that you are going to help her find a way to reduce this pain. And be honest with her it might hurt even more for the short term because it can be a lot of work. And yes, this sucks and no it's not fair. But for us, as DD began to feel more capable and competent through remediation, the feral bear dissipated, and a far happier, engaged, risk-willing girl re-emerged. That bear ain't domesticated by any means (not in her nature!), but we have trust and a working partnership that (mostly) keeps the feral at bay.