Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Help with adhd and other things...

I tried coming up with a more informative post title but I couldn't. Sorry

My ds11 was diagnosed with adhd-in back in 2008. He's in 5th grade this year and a quick chat with his teacher sent me into a spiral of worry. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before but....
My ds has horrendous organizational skills. He hasn't brought home his homework at all this year. His desk is a disaster. His room is a disaster. His backpack has a pb&j sandwich in it that should be carried away by a hazmat team. He isn't going to survive in middle school. He can barely brush his teeth without me directing him to the bathroom and then staying in front of the door to make sure he doesn't leave again. He has lots of tantrums where he'll kick the doors and be loud. My husband had to clean his room for him by removing almost everything from the room, yet ds is still talented enough to make a disaster

We are going to start seeing a therapist next week but they already have him pegged as having some sort of disruptive behavior disorder. I'm not sure that's accurate. Could having a high working memory but low (relatively) processing speed be to blame? Or am I just trying to avoid a somewhat negative sounding diagnosis

Ok, so having an 11 year old who can't do normal activities of daily living, without a tantrum means that something has to change, if possible.

Will a label help? Hard to know...

What has been tried for the ADHD? Medication? Parenting approaches? Friendship club? Organizational skills training at home or in club?

What is the rest of the house like? How much are you willing/able to do for him? DS and I had an agreement that his backpack was not his 'personal space' - that meant I went through it every day and made sure that no PBJ science experiements could grow, or that no school permission slips or homework sheet went unnoticed. No everyone's style, but I felt that the best way to teach him was to give him a taste of the benifits and slowlllllllllllllly wean him into self management.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Thanks He's been on medication, that's it. Even on the medication, he isn't great at following directions and getting stuff done. He does say it improves his concentration at school though. But the general organization and personal care stuff doesn't change. DH and I have pretty much taken everything away from him and he has to ask to have something and needs to put it away before getting anything else. It's very time consuming and frustrating for everyone. I do think we were expecting too much I guess. The kids (I have 5 altogether, ds11 is the oldest) all have chores. DS can't complete a chore without constant supervision. It's hard to tell if he really isn't able to or if he just doesn't want to. I know that no kid really loves chores but we've tried every punishment/incentive in the book and still, we're left scratching our heads, wondering where the heck we went wrong!!

I will admit, I'm not the best at organization and having 5 kids doesn't help. I had to create a rigid schedule for after school or else I get NOTHING done. I can't bend the rules at all or else everything turns to a chaotic mess until I can finally wrangle the kids into pj's and declare it bedtime!! Mornings are no better Just substitute pj's and bed for car seats and school drop off!! I think that if I can finally get myself together, everything else MIGHT fall into place. But that might not ever happen. Cause I'm a master procrastinator...But I'm working on it. Promise

If you haven't tried 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Lisa Bravo - then give it a try. Use it for all the kids - it works great for a team. It's hard to get started, but we had results with it much much better than anything else.


That's good that you have room for improvement in this area - because I can promise you that changing YOU is easier than changing DS11. Really.

I think it's great that you have a rigid plan - kids need structure, and adultsn need it too! I hope that Flylady.net and HouseFairy can show you how to have a rigid plan that is less painful to enforce.

One idea is to just set the timer for 15 minutes and brainstorm all the 'tension' areas in the home routine. Once they are on paper you can see which is the key one to work on next. Basically all you can do is work on one thing at a time while keeping all the systems that do work pretty well rolling. What works well in some families is for each kid to have a written down 'schedule' of all the AM and PM chores, so that you don't have to repeat yourself over and over and over. Pointing to the chart is easier on you, and you are less likely to get frustrated if you have a chart to point to. Some times this chart ends up in a plastic page protector so that the kids can make X after each job is complete. Then you have to add the step 'wipe off Xs' to the job chart.

From a 'Behaviorism' standpoint, the biggest positive reinforcer in your home is probably your (and DH's) attention - particularly since you have to slice it up. Take advantage of that! The 2nd biggest positive reinforcer for DS11 is probably the attention of the younger kids. What's great about Transforming is that it recognizes that there are some kids who are just as willing to 'go after' the yummy intensity of negative attention,as in yelling and 'needing supervision' as they are to work to recieve positive attention.

Remember, anything that gets the 'subject' to do anything is acting as a reinforcer. I think gifted kids are much more likely to be interested in reinforcers like 'respect' 'control' and 'power' than normally developing kids. I used to give out 'respect' points to DS, just as a way for him to get my attention for positives. I made them up out of gut reaction, and it must have been before Transforming, because I subtracted them too! DH though DS and I had lost our minds, because the points couldn't be redeemed, or trigger a consequence, they were just a form of communication - like a video game. In a similar vein, for a while DS and I passed a dollar bill back and forth whenever we saw behavior in the other that we wanted to appreciate. Like 10 times a day. DS loved to be acknowledged. I think because he was seldom appreciated during the school day, and couldn't do so many of the things the ND kids could do easily (like sit still - one of elementary school's highest achievements!) , and yet he know he was 'smarter' than them in some way. I remember being frustrated over that in Middle School. The girl with excellent Executive Function skill won all the awards, but I 'knew' that I understood and learned more fully than she did, and I resented it fiercely.

Anyway - hope that helps,
Grinity

I can sympathize with your concerns about your son's organization. My DD just turned 9 and she is a constant work in progress in the organization department. Maybe it is easier for us because we only have two kids and I am OCD? Or maybe it is worse because I can't relax and let things go?

What has helped here (immensely) is to help her with the organization. We had her make a morning schedule and a bedtime schedule which she designed herself on the computer and printed out. Both are posted in her room and in the kitchen. She picked the order of the activities and all we have to do is refer her to her list when she is dawdling. It saves us from going through the list 20 times to see what she has and has not done. And, it is helping her take responsibility for what she forgets. If she leaves home without checking her school bag to be sure her homework is there then it is not our fault (this is probably my favourite part).

Her and I sit down on Sunday and plan out her lunches for the week. She loves having a say in the menu and helps us pack it the night before - this is also good! We also do up contracts for homework, as hers is doled out on a monthly basis. She decides how much to do each day and we type it up and she signs it. We simply have to remind her that it is homework time.

We figured that she was never going to just figure it out on her own, so we are doing our version of intensive tutorials to help her out. It has reduced a lot of the friction in our house! With DD, it works well when she is involved in all stages of planning. We get great 'buy in' when we use her ideas. Commiting them to paper is the key in our house.

My DS11 (ADHD-in) has some similar issues. Oppositional disorder has been suggested. I don`t think so, but I do know he is lacking skills in frustration tolerance, flexibility and problem solving in daily life. A book that has helped me is The Explosive Child by Ross Greene. Since I read this book and started implementing his approach, life with DS11 is 100% better. He also started ADHD medication around the same time, so that has made a difference as well. The yelling, tantrums, etc have pretty much dissappeared.

As far as the problems with organization . . . well, we aren`t doing as well on that front! Basically, I act as his Executive Function. I am trying to show him organizational methods that work for me, and modelling what I hope that he learns to do himself some day. Last year at school his teacher helped him quite a bit and gave him a different system (one big binder instead of a lot of duotangs) to keep track of his stuff. We are also going to try a watch with text message alarms set during the day (toothbrushing, packing up homework, etc). He doesn`t like that I go through his school bag every day and tell him what homework needs to be done, but I do it anyway. I`m trying to back off a bit this year and let him see the consequences of not following through. He starts middle school next year as well. gulp.

Two books that you might find helpful are

Late, Lost, and Unprepared


and

Smart, But Scattered