Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Three and a half more weeks..

And these last 3 weeks look like they are going to be agony for the whole family. My son's Social Studies project that I knew about all year has finally materialized. It's a great project just hits all his buttons. He has to research about poverty & hunger in an emerging nation and try to understand what is being done about it. It is easier the entire project is supposed to be done in less than 3 weeks, as more time doesn't help the situation. (Homework like this can fill out all available time.) Unlike the non-honors classes that drag the thing out most of the semester. I guess it's good that this was assigned after we figured out that intervention was needed, because I've been able to be proactive about helping him get organized. But this is normal a busy time of year with end of year activities like band concerts and studying for finals. I am frustrated that most of the other classes have already finished this project, this teacher is only in her 2nd year.

We have started his intervention but it hasn't been going on long enough to help much yet, so it looks like I will be babysitting my son's work on this project. Something I should NOT have to do in H.S. Last night I sat near him for the 5 hours it took to churn out one paragraph that was due this morning. Most of that time spent agonizing about what he was going to write, and how he had nothing to say. At first he wasn't convinced he needed to do more research to understand the geography more than look at a few maps. It's like he believes that he should just know this information.

It feels odd because he needs the most help at the pre-write stages but once he finally gets writing, the only thing I'm needed for is to be right there so he stays on task. He doesn't need this for either math or science. What is the most frustrating is I insisted that he work on it in the afternoon, so hopefully he could go to his evening extracurricular. That gave him 2 1/2 hours, what I would estimate to be a reasonable time to finish the task at hand. Most of the afternoon was spent in avoidance techniques and he didn't really settle down with it till after dinner & the extracurricular had been nixed. And he had to study for a math & science test the next day.

Not looking so much for advice here as a chance to vent. My kid seems to have so much promise. And then he just gets stuck and sucks us all into this world wind of his agony. I know what I need to do to get him through this project without doing it for him. But he has been doing project likes this for years and I would have expected he could have done them mostly independent by now.

{hugs}

Your statements about getting sucked into their personal hell, and more time not helping... avoidance strategies...

well, you have my profound understanding and sympathies. {sigh}

DD does SO much better with a research project that is completed in LARGE bursts of almost Herculean productivity. And yes, just like your DS, it's all about the Just.DO.it.already... from us, and needing to hawk her so that she does what she is SUPPOSED to be doing, and not a million other things like games, IMing with friends, etc. etc. etc. She'll even stare out the window rather than outline an essay some days. {AUGH}


Just two more weeks... just two more weeks...

Sending you a big hug and empathy for getting through the project - we've just made it through our last few weeks of school and honestly, even without such a huge project, all the little extras that get thrown in add up to just such a bunch of craziness - a time of year that should be fun is just so much danged work that it's nuts!

Re your ds and his project, from my perspective, there's a difference in being in the situation where a student purposely procrastinates or is willfully lazy in not digging in and starting on a project - that's one thing. What you describe sounds so much like my 2e ds who struggles with written expression.


I think it's worth mentioning the timing kindly to this teacher - I know it's high school and that parents are supposed to be hands-off, but it sounds like she hasn't really figured out yet what the end of the school year is like for most kids. A kind mention re timing from a few parents this year might prevent this same thing from happening next year to a new set of students - or to your ds if he every happens to have her for a teacher again

[quoe]We have started his intervention but it hasn't been going on long enough to help much yet, so it looks like I will be babysitting my son's work on this project. Something I should NOT have to do in H.S. [/quote]

I wouldn't think of it as babysitting. Chances are projects like this have been assigned for years in school, right? There's a reason for it - putting together a project that requires research, thought, and a written product requires a lot of skill, and it takes time to develop those skills. My kids have had projects like this almost every year they've been in school - partly because the curriculum goals is learning how to do a project as much as it is learning the content of the project. Keep in mind that all kids learn skills at different rates - some kids learn how to read at an "average/expected" rate, some learn by osmosis at a young age, and others struggle then suddenly become fluent much later than anticipated. Not everyone learns how to read at the same rate or at the same age/grade. Same thing with developing the skills to do this type of project - and from what I think I remember of your other posts, your ds needs help, possibly has some type of 2e going on. So instead of viewing this as babysitting, look at is as instruction and scaffolding - you are providing him the framework to learn skills he hasn't mastered yet.


This is my ds - or was my ds before he went through years of speech therapy. He still gets "stuck" with open-ended types of assignments at times, and with trying to organize his thoughts when he needs to summarize a large amount of information. The only advice I can offer up here is - it took us a lot of working with ds - over a lot of time - to really understand what this type of slow progress was coming from, and also a lot of experimenting with different techniques to help him find ways to get the information to flow *out* of his brain.


Are you sure that the issue is that he doesn't know the info? It's possible he knows more than enough about the geography, but doesn't know how to get his knowledge out of his brain and onto paper.


This was true of my ds - his huge stumbling block was just getting started and getting an idea of what to write. Once he had an idea he was able to move ahead. He did (does) need help with staying on task - not because he's purposely not wanting to, but in ds' case because he doesn't have a good sense of time when he's writing - he may sit for an hour but doesn't realize he hasn't been doing anything productive and instead thinks it's only been a few minutes. What my ds does is to set a timer for 15 minutes on his iPad when he's writing - if it goes off and he hasn't made progress he gets up and does something else for a few minutes before going back to it. If he's writing actively and making progress he either resets the timer or leaves it off.


I wouldn't automatically assume he's purposely seeking out avoidance techniques - it's possible he's lost and needs scaffolding up front.


Has he ever really had help that is targeted at the skills he's missing? If not, I would try not to get frustrated and just jump in and help - teach him the skills he needs. He's still a kid with a ton of promise whether or not he can successfully complete a project like this independently today. There were tons of times that between myself and our SLP and some of his teachers that it would be easy looking in from the outside to say "a kid this age doesn't need that kind of help" or "a kid this age shouldn't be getting that much support for that task" or "that mom is a helicopter mom!"... but the reality was simply - ds needed to learn the task, it did not come easily to him, and we stepped in and taught him - taught him both specific techniques/skills and also helped him discover accommodations and work-arounds and tips that helped him be able to ultimately work independently without a ton of scaffolding. (And it's still a work in progress!). There have been some things in ds' life that he's been behind on or unable to do that we (as parents) have said ok, that's not important. But for the skills that are necessary, that are important, you teach your children how to do them or you find the help they need to learn them. It can be really frustrating, but try not to think of it as babysitting - really it's not!

Also try to think of how it might feel to be in his shoes - having a large project to do in front of you that is a big part of your grade, and really not knowing how or where to get started on it, or how to complete it, or whatever the challenge is. Factor in being a teen and not wanting to have to depend on a parent or other adult to show you how to do something the world expects you should have known how to do already and that you are most likely aware your peers can sit down and take on without worries.

Hang in there! You've realized he needs help and things *will* get better the more you learn about what his challenges are and the more he receives specific instruction with the things that are roadblocks for him.

polarbear

Thanks both of you. And I do know the teacher's do expect some parental involvement and I was required to sign a paper knowing I knew about the project and it's timeline. This does imply that they do expect some help from the parents. The project is broken down into parts, the paragraph that was due this morning, the first draft of the process paper that is due a week from Monday, so that all is left for the last weekend is to make the cover page, table of contents, bibliography, and polish it.

Yesterday I did break down the part that was due today into parts and that did help. I made him write in pencil a rough outline, and talked it over with him while he filled it in. I also turned off his favorite web-sites at the router, I am going to be doing that more often when he has homework that needs the computer.

HK, what you said made me realize that breaking this project into tiny parts may not be the most effective. It may be best to simply plan on dedicating all of two Sundays to the project, and clear the schedule of anything else including other homework on those days. He really does work better when he knows he has to turn something in the next day. And I we won't feel like it taking over our life that way.

One thing I am trying to decide is if we should triage this project a bit. There is one particular small part of the project that will give him more difficulty than others. After doing most of the project, one of the last things is he supposed to write his reflections on the project. This is something that is almost impossible to get him to do. And I don't yet have any good strategies to help. This paragraph is only a small portion of the total grade. So while I don't think it's a good idea to have him blow it off entirely, perhaps limiting the time he spends on writing it. In addition this part is due the morning after his band concert. This whole project is probably only worth the same number of points as his final. He is likely to Ace the final. While I'd like to see him do his best work and I don't want to teach him to blow off part of a project. But I'm not sure it's this small part of the project is worth the stress and agony.

Voice-to-text? That "reflection" thing is a killer for some kids who hate doing it with written expression. DD will talk to me for hours, but wind up spontaneously WRITING just a sentence or two, and that badly organized. It's crazy-making-- and she CAN do a better job, but only if she organizes rather than trying to do stream-of-consciousness in a single draft.

I'd even offer to scribe it for him, or offer question-based prompts if you have the rubric handy... after all, if HE does the rest himself, it's just the one section that you're helping with. I can virtually guarantee that other parents are at least that involved in any particular student's case-- some globally, and some just in one area like this.

Good luck to bluemagic.

My son was heavily assisted by my wife and his two siblings on his Roman Coliseum poster. I wonder what happens to students in college who are smart enough to do the work in high school but who have trouble actually doing it without parental supervision. Is it less of a problem in college because students have more choice in courses and are doing work that interests them?

That's roughly what we hear, too, Kcab-- my pet theory (and DD's) is that this problem is largely one of high school micromanagement policies that dictate too much about projects, and lack of authenticity in project construction, leading to motivational problems galore. Honestly, who DOES want to spend that kind of time on something that has SO little educational value?? This would explain my DD's decision to title a "newspaper" that she had to construct for AP English the 'Nutzlose-Arbeit Times.' Sadly, it went right over the teacher's head.

But that brings me to another helpful tip-- with HG+ kids, let them be a little subversive to blow off some steam over stuff like that, maybe even help them figure out how to thumb their nose at the ASSIGNMENT, but stay on the right side of the teacher. Hey-- maybe it applies to all kids, I don't know-- I just know it's essential to give HG+ high schoolers some kind of agency regarding this sort of thing. The workload is really heavy, and it's really heavy with time-wasters, truth be told.

DD doesn't mind doing a project that isn't stupid.

Good question, I am not sure, I think it depends on the students, subject and school. And I think this is the reason some students struggle in college. But students at college have more choice for what subjects they want to take, so it's likely my son will go into math/science/engineering. And while he might have to write a lot of lab reports, he is likely to only needs a few classes where he will have to write a lot of essays.

My daughter who is at college, seems to be doing OK with this and learned her lessons from H.S. She had an 8 page paper due for a psychology class this spring. Because she knows she struggles with writing she set up appointments at the school's tutoring center. This helped keep her on track, motivating her to have a first draft before her tutoring appointment and gave her some of this support. Many colleges do have support for students who had LD's and my daughter's school was chosen with this in mind.

I don't think this particular project on the whole is that stupid it seems to be fairly well though out, except for the reflections part. There isn't a lot of make work except for the cover & title page. But it's not on something that particularly interests my son. Although I do consider it something worthwhile learning.

The corresponding project in the "regular" class on the other hand is filled with lots make-work. And this is what DS is going to have to put up with next year.

For the getting the words on paper, one thing that helps - I still do this for our engineers who need to collaborate on bids, etc. - is that I will interview them - ask them about the topic, what interests them. I ask them challenging questions - oh, really - why is that? - and the entire time, I'm typing as fast as I can to get snippets of the conversation into words. When I share these snippets, it is so much easier for them to put those snippets into text. I don't mind at all doing this, because it really is an accommodation for a disability, not me doing their work. If a teacher has created a project that obviously was "built for the entire family", that is where I have a real problem. I'll choose my own type of quality time with my kids, thank you very much.