Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Labelling children = good, except gifted label

Dottie
boyoboy that student is lucky to have you.

He may have a 2e and rather flunk from not trying than face it. ADD comes to mind as just one possibility. But beyond advising his parents what can you do?

You might have luck with the methods in 'Transforming the difficult child workbook' by Lisa Bravo. offlist me for more details.
Love andmore love
grinity

Hmm...

well, that kind of thing is how task-avoidant perfectionism can manifest. If it's severe and well-entrenched, I mean.

I'm not sure that there IS a way of addressing it externally, however. All you can do is offer little nuggets of counteractive wisdom and hope that something seeps through the mental barricade well enough to make an impact.

I wonder what would happen if you just gave it your all?

It's better to not have regrets about not doing your best.


If you do your best, you don't have anything TO regret, you know.

Yes!! This plus ADD... this whopping nasty combo is both myself and my DD10. It's brutal beyond words. I'm 45 and still don't know what the h*ll to do about it.

Frankly, my DS8 ADHD/language disorder/partial CAPD/possibly HFA/possibly SPD is MUCH easier to deal with. lol. (sigh)

Dottie, is he a student of yours in a school class or a student you're tutoring outside of school (or other?)?

I had a friend in school who was very much like this - he may very well have been the smartest student in our school, but he had an attitude about school lessons in the elementary - middle school years that it was all covering things he already knew simply because he was so smart, therefore he didn't need to do any work (and he literally spent most of the time in class reading books that had nothing to do with the classwork). It was, and still is, a mystery to me how he managed to get passed on to the next grade each year because he never did any work. I am sure he was smart enough to pass all the tests we had, but it just always amazed me that he was never held accountable for participation in class and turning in work assignments outside of tests. I suspect he didn't get the best grades in the world, because by the time we got to high school and we were able to track into honors and AP courses, he was no longer in any of my classes (but he was still attending the same school). He certainly was smart enough to have been our class valedictorian, but he wasn't even sitting in the with the honors ranks at graduation. This was *many* years ago, and the ticket into those honors classes and AP courses was achievement and grades - there was no getting into them simply via a high-scoring IQ test. These, in turn, at that time, were the key to getting into prestigious colleges.

I lost track of him when we graduated - and didn't hear anything from him for years. If you'd asked *him* in middle school where he would end up in life, I am sure he (and his parents) would have been certain he would be a highly-acclaimed scientist who'd made some amazing discovery and won a Nobel Prize or something. I always assumed that, because of his attitude in class, he *must* be profoundly gifted and would end up doing amazing things.

He found me via FB when our graduating (high school) class had one of our memorable-year reunions. He's a computer programmer, nothing more. Very ordinary life. Not the predicted Nobel Prize winner, didn't do anything amazing in life (at least not yet) and hasn't changed the world. OTOH, he's had a very good life. He turned out to be much more humble, now, as an adult, than he was as a child who thought he was "above working" simply because he was smart. I'm guessing the reason he fell out of the honors/ect classes etc in high school was his refusal to do work that he thought was below him... so somewhere along the way his teachers must have started to hold him personally accountable.

I realize this isn't advice at all - just an observation of another person's experience. In the end, it seems to have all worked out ok! He didn't get into a great college, but he got into college. Somewhere along the way he got it that you do have to do work and that profound intelligence isn't an excuse to have the world be your servant. He never set the world on fire, but he turned out ok. I am much more impressed by the nice, well-rounded person he is now than I ever was with his attitude as a teen who thought he didn't need to work. I suspect that the teachers who finally did hold him accountable and responsible for doing his work did make a difference for him.

polarbear

I too would leap to the possibility of 2e before concluding laziness.

Lots of kids with autism never learn to follow the world's rules and priorities--the ones who cannot accept instructions typicallyend up unemployed regardless of IQ.

I would suggest cognitive behavior therapy. A skilled therapist would help the child see the relationship between his actions and the likelihood of achieving his goals.

DeeDee

Dottie, what does this student answer when asked why he doesn't work?

Here are some ideas to explore...

It might be a mindset issue. Not sure if you've read that or not:
http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck/dp/0345472322 In that being told he's smart and even "too smart for school" you either can do or can't.

Another possible/related lens: There is no consequence of failure that is anywhere as tragic as bumping into your own limits. i.e. If internally he believes he can do anything, then as long as he doesn't try he never finds limits.

Some of the mindset concepts get into exploring metacognitive skills. Maybe directing him towards metacognitive development along with study skills ex situ will get him to the skills. Rather than hitting a wall he'll have the tools necessary to surmount it. There is a bit of confidence building that works into this.

And opposite that: Is he autodidactic outside of school? If so perhaps his style is so out of whack from school approaches that conformity to a system less effective than his own is trying. Maybe an opportunity to do some school work independently would light his fire.

Maybe he has yet to encounter his bailiwick and is a very intrinsically goal oriented person. Perhaps exploring careers and colleges and talking to people in fields of interest would fire him up.

On the other hand, no harm in being a happy well adjusted (and well paid) computer programmer who might've been a brilliant highly published and respected researcher.

Yes... sigh. I don't even know where to begin. My son's is "severe" according to the psychologist, and... well, thank God he's smart. That's all I can say. It's really, really hard though. School is a write off without constant intervention. It sucks. He has so much potential... it's really heartbreaking sometimes.

Sometimes I wonder if ADD is partially a consequence of high processing speed. When your mind works at the speed of light and pictures and ideas appear from every mental direction, it can be very easy to get pulled down a series of tangents to the topic at hand (no, I don't have ADD, but I do process information very quickly, and often have to struggle to stay focused).

I don't know much about ADD and wouldn't be surprised if there was also some anatomy or distinct biochemistry at work, too. But still, it wouldn't surprise me to see some kind connection to processing speed (and maybe working memory, too).

Feel free to say YOU'RE SO WRONG, VAL!!!

Val, I don't know, my one kiddo w/ ADD tested with average processing speed, but honestly I don't know that she's really average in processing speed so much as majorly not detail oriented and one who made a ton of mistakes. The two IQ tests I've taken have both placed my processing speed at or above the 99th percentile and she's my equal in speed games like Blink.

I've almost felt the opposite at times. My ADD kiddo is smart enough to compensate so well that teachers assume that she's doing just fine and it is hard to know what to do for her when she's performing above grade level across the board. The typical interventions just don't seem appropriate for a kid who isn't behind. It's also hard to get anyone to recognize that there is a problem. She performs more like a very bright - MG kid than a HG one, but many aspects of her ability really are more HG than bright or MG.

FWIW, we've found that our dd has really taken off with a very structured middle school environment that would have driven her sister crazy and in math especially since she's gotten past the basic math facts memorization stuff. She's coasting through Algebra I where I've seen kids who were much more consistent high performers in the early years struggle once they hit about this point where it relies more on conceptual understanding than rote memorization and attention to detail. The attention to detail thing still trips her up in some areas, but it has been a pretty easy year none the less.

That does make me wonder if our two local school districts are mistaken in how they choose kids for math acceleration, which basically entails the higher performers in elementary school and tracking them into subject accelerated classes as they enter middle school or part of the way through elementary. It works fine in late elementary and early middle school, but I've definitely seen some kids who can't keep up with the acceleration once they hit about Algebra I.