Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional ADD/EF: where would you put your money?

We've cobbled together a scaffolding plan that revolves around weaknesses (of both us as parents and her as a child), and our relative strengths. The first thing that we did was to honestly evaluate DD from our individual perspectives as parents. Yes, we love her dearly, and yes, we're non-objective (I suppose), but we also SEE her in all different kinds of settings because of her virtual schooling arrangement, and we're both physical scientists, able to don that "objectivity/criticality" hat when needed. This also gives us additional flexibility in meeting executive demands.

One book that we found helpful as we started was Late, Lost and Unprepared, and another was Smart But Scattered-- the latter was actually the pivotal bit for us, since it allowed us to frame what we were seeing as a two-way thing with parental strengths/weaknesses as well. We also used an organizing-oriented book that has worked MIRACLES for her-- Donna Goldberg's The Organized Student.

We had to get buy-in from her that she was tired of-- a) other people assuming she isn't reliable/responsible, and b) BEING unreliable/irresponsible. Then we laid out ways to help her, and let her help determine what she thought would/wouldn't work and discussed how to tackle the problems that we saw.

Furthermore, this is a sloooooow process. She's light years better than she was three years ago when we started in earnest, but when she improves in one area (she's now VERY good about filing her school papers and putting extracurricular materials where they belong), we work on others.

Routine-routine-routine. For kids with time-management issues, have a routine that is virtually unbreakable. Put exercise into that routine somewhere. Teach very specific attack strategies and remind the child to use them-- think of yourself as a stage prompter until they have the lines down pat.

Basically it is exactly the kind of thing that DeeDee is referring to in her SpEd specialist's approach, but adapted for a tween/teen. I'm not sure how much of that is appropriate for a 5yo.