Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Middle School Executive Function and Middle School (LONG)

He still has stomach aches most mornings. His pediatrician and Psych agreed that he should be on prevacid to see if that helps. So far, he throws up less often but the stress issue is unresolved. We are hesitant to put him on antianxiety medications but it may come to that. At his point, we are trying to take the focus off of school and grades. He is so excited about his skating that we are letting him focus more there as long as the basic class assignments get done. In addition we still have our fun learning time outside of school.

I guess it boils down to get through the day, do your homework and then we'll have fun and do the real learning.

Thanks for asking

I found an interesting article that studied the correlation between executive function and giftedness. According to this article:


I wish they would have covered HG+ kids in the study. One can only imagine that if there is considerable difference between average kids and superior kids in executive function development, then the gap between average kids and HG+ kids would be even more striking. Of course, when I show anything like this to DS10's teachers, their eyes glaze over. But at least it explains a few things to the parents who are dealing with this on a daily basis.

Oooh, this is so interesting to me.

I wonder how (haven't checked the link just yet) this progressing into adulthood. I also wonder how many adults with this issue as a child turned to an adult ADD diagnosis and/or meds. hmmm.

Has anybody read "Smart but Scattered"? The author makes the point that a real surge in brain development/executive functioning happens around age 11/12, so that a lot of expectations in middle school are just plain developmentally inappropriate.

The middle schools are basing their expectations on the development of normal kids. The graph in the link above shows that executive function peaks for most average kids by the age of 9. (11-12 for your "smart but scattered" kids that are moderately gifted.) If you think about it, that is just about in 4th grade for most kids. I don't know about other schools, but in my son's school the transition from 3rd to 4th brought a dramatic increase in expectation for organization, larger assignments due over several days (which requires time management skills), and longer amounts of time needed to focus and sit still (impulsiveness, fidgeting). In fact the classroom dynamics change dramatically, from sitting and working on a single assignment which was due at the end of the small time block, to lectures by the teacher at the blackboard with long writing assignments due for homework.

My DS is 10 years old, and is just finishing 6th grade with a subject acceleration in Science to 9th grade. His executive function skills have definitely not matured yet. However, he is in a classroom where most of the other kids are 12-13 years old (15 years old for the HS). We have gone around and around with the question of ADHD, but the more I research this, the clearer it seems that we just need to wait until his executive function matures. And hope that the school understands this for a radically accelerated student.

Here is a website that I frequently show my son's teachers!
Executive Function... "What is this anyway?"

ebeth, that is precisely the situation that we find ourselves in, too.


There is nothing wrong with our daughter that another couple of years isn't going to help-- probably substantially, given the trajectory ahead of her. (11 yo and in high school)

She's actually doing better than "typical" in terms of her age-mates, according to everything we can find on the subject. The problem is the inappropriate expectations placed on her because of the (marginally?) more appropriate academic setting.

This has unfortunately presented us with a series of unappealing options, none of which is anything close to ideal. We've chosen to try to support executive skill hothousing and offer educational supports within the bounds of 'normal' with the school and teachers' cooperation and approval, and keep our fingers crossed.

Thank you for this thread! I have read it, and a few others on executive function, over the course of the last week and then attended a 2E conference on the weekend where the keynote speaker's point was essentially that ADHD is not an attention or working memory disorder, it's Executive Dysfunction and that the gifted are more prone to it.

The speaker's perspective gave me great insight into my own daughter (and husband) but has also had me thinking a lot about whether Executive Dysfunction is really just a euphemism for ADHD.

I think HowlerKArma's comment here is an excellent distinction to keep in mind:


My own DD is not average (let alone better than) for her age, so I am confident there is an issue there. But do you define whether a child's executive function is problematic relative to their intellectual ability (and thus what they are trying to do with their time) or their age?

I am so distracted by my toddler that I am not sure if I made any sense there, so I apologise if this seems like a completely crazy ramble.

Hmmmm...

well, I think that for me, that is the question, isn't it?

After all, I certainly am not going to induce changes in my child's neurochemistry just for some improvement in what is, effectively, yet another facet of what it means to be HG+-- yes, it's asynchrony, again.

On the other hand, the problems that this causes are certainly real barriers to her in the here and now. It's hard to imagine my 12yo DD taking college coursework independently at this point, given her struggles to organize and prioritize her time.

Then again, by the time another decade has passed, the "problem" will vanish. So I don't really consider this to be the same thing as ADHD/ADD, which persists. This is immaturity instead.

We've had some success in hothousing some of these skills, but mostly in letting go of the expectation that she is capable of behaving exactly like a sixteen-year old. She isn't, and we're depriving her of the ability to be a child if we insist that she try.

KWIM?

My strategy here has been to try to provide supports for her that she can gradually take over responsibility for. I've found some of the books on executive function, and particular specialty books on subskills where DD is weakest, to be helpful in that regard.

This is made MUCH easier since she is educated at home, however. In a regular school setting with much older peers, it would be a monumental task.

Prior to hearing this Dr talk I would have been horrified to even consider that my DD might have innattentive ADHD, let alone consider medicating her. I came away feeling convinced that

a) she clear does have inattentive AHDH, or executive dysfunction if you prefer

b) so does my DH and his whole family

c) that this is caused by immaturity of the pre frontal cortex. The goal of medicating in this Dr's eyes, being to help the child function and make use of their that part of their brain until they get that massive development as a teen (so that they are using those nerves when they grow rather than not using them and having them pruned). The question is, looking at my DHs family, whether my DD will ever grow out of her "immaturity" of executive function...

I am taking her to a neuropsychologist during the 9 month wait for the developmental paed so we have plenty of time to think and to see if other things help. But my feeling is that we have done a huge amount to teach her useful skills, to set up her environment in a way that supports her and that she is learning to manage a lot of those functions well (for her) but she's just so SLOW about so many things because of how her brain functions.

I really do want to do more to help her but I am not sure if it can be taught, or if it needs either maturity or medication or both...

In my DS's case, this is pretty simple. He's highly asynchronous, so there are tasks he does alongside age-mates that are appropriate, and others that would normally be given to children much older than him. I look at how he does on tasks where he's doing the same thing as his age-mates, and I ask, does he organise and control himself as well as other 7yos on those tasks? Answer is clearly yes. Then I look at how he organises and controls himself on tasks which would normally be being done by a much older child, and I ask whether he does as well as would be expected if he were that age. Answer is clearly no. That's the point - his executive function is age-appropriate, but not appropriate to all the tasks he's doing. Because of this I'm with HowlerKarma - I wouldn't contemplate medicating him (even if I thought it would help) because - well, as I type it I find it's hard to be pithy and convincing, but it doesn't seem right to risk side-effects and possible long-term effects for something which is not his brain working wrongly, but just it still working right for his age in one way.

I'm sure there would be other cases where it'd be much harder to sort out - for younger children, I guess, and maybe also for older children who are less asynchronous. I could imagine someone having trouble if their child didn't have the EF for intellect-appropriate tasks but also found (all) age-appropriate tasks so boring that they couldn't focus on them for that reason; you'd have to watch very carefully to spot that two different things were going on!