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I ask him to go brush his teeth. Ok, he says, cheerful. He goes upstairs, goes to the bathroom, goes to his room and picks up a book. Please brush your teeth and wash your face. OK, still cheerful. Enters the bathroom, puts the dry toothbrush in his mouth for a few seconds and walks out. You need to use toothpaste and water. Ok. Uses toothpaste and water and brushes his teeth, but pretty much only on the right side of his mouth. Face too, please. Ok. He dabs at his mouth with a dry washcloth. You need to put water on the washcloth, hot water. Slightly dampens the washcloth with cold water, holds it parallel to his face and rubs the edge on his lips.

I feel like crying. Should l let his teeth rot? Post a list on the bathroom wall so he can check off when it�s done? He says don�t put a sign on the wall--people will see it and think I�m not normal.

You don�t have to be like everyone else I say. You aren�t average. Your reading and thinking and understanding are really strong, but you have trouble organizing yourself and remembering what you need to do. I want to be like everyone else. You think I�m not normal, he says, accusingly. No, I say, you can be normal and not average. Everyone has strong points and weak points. I want to trade my strong points for something that is more popular, like sports. I think you need to find some friends who like the same things as you. Opposites are good, he says, that�s why black and white go so well together. Well, that�s true, I say, but I think it would be good if you could find a friend who liked books, and writing plays and making movies. I think you might find more friends like that at the private high school we visited. That�s why I think it would be good for you to go there. He says, I don�t want to go there. The man on the tour said that there was more homework than at other schools. I don�t care if it�s more interesting. I want to go to the regular school. But I still want to write the test for the private school because if I�m accepted, Daddy said I could have a dog.

I am so frustrated. He can do better, but he doesn�t want to make an effort. Or maybe he can�t make the effort? Always lays his head on his left arm when he is writing. He says he likes to write that way. His handwriting seems worse every year.

I want to go back to the Montessori school next year for grade 6 he says. Why? Because I want to. I think you are doing better at the new school, I say. You are hardly ever in trouble and you are working harder and your report card was pretty good. Is there something you don�t like at the new school? Yes ,but I won�t tell you. Why? Because I don�t want to. You should never tell mothers anything he says. They react too much. I promise not to say anything. I won�t even look at you. Will you give me a thousand dollars if I tell you? No. It�s good to tell someone. Even if you can�t tell me, you could talk to someone else. No, he says, I just tell myself. I say that won�t help, it will just go round in your head and you won�t feel any better. He says, whatever you ask me I will say no. Ok, I won�t ask. But if someone is hurting you, or doing something illegal or really bad, you have to tell me. No, nothing like that, he says. I say, you can�t go back to the Montessori school. You weren�t happy there, you were always in trouble and you hardly did any work. I want to go back anyway, he says. If you don�t let me go back, I�m going to refuse to go to school at all.

Another day, I drive around for 20 minutes looking for a parking spot. We discuss how busy it is, how long it is taking, how I feel like will never find a spot. Finally I find one, yay, I say, we can stop driving in circles. I park, we get out of the car, walk together to the store. I say, walk over here on the path, not in the traffic. OK, he says. We go into the store. He looks up and says, oh, did you find a parking spot? I say, you didn�t notice that we parked, got out of the car and walked over to the store? No, he laughs.

Hugs - I know how frustrating it can be when you are in the thick of it, and how worrying it can be later on when you ponder the situation and long term implications.

It sounds like he has trouble in the executive functioning areas. This may or may not be related to ADHD. Generally speaking, the executive functioning skills are an area of cognition that deal with planning, organizing, and executing tasks. Not reasoning or knowledge, but how one uses reasoning and knowledge to get the work done and go about life. As people assume more and more responsibility and initiative, and school life becomes more abstract and less structured, poor executive functioning can play havoc. But, people can learn compensatory strategies and develop the skills they need to be successful.

Is EF and ADHD the same thing? There is a lot of discussion about this. Generally most experts say that one can have EF disorder without ADHD but virtually all individuals with ADHD have some aspect of EF. The two disorders very often come hand in hand. My son has both, and we have found that the combination of medication, highly structured routines and explicit instruction on strategies has yielded pretty good results. But, your example of the teeth brushing is something we see every weekend when he is not on his meds! And, like your son, he is cheerful and ernest about approaching tasks. Medication helps him attend to the strategies he has learned, but medication alone does not teach him the strategies!

Here are some articles that give you more detail about EF and ideas to help:

Executive Functioning: A New Lens to View Your Child http://www.greatschools.org/special...-lens-to-view-your-child.gs?content=1017

Is it Executive Functioning or ADHD disorder? http://www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/7051.html

Executive Functioning Fact Sheet http://www.ldonline.org/article/24880

What is Executive Functioning? http://learningdisabilities.about.com/od/eh/a/executive_funct.htm

Here are two books that I have found very helpful:

No Mind Left Behind by Adam Cox
Late, Lost, and Unprepared by Joyce Cooper-Kahn

A neuropsychologist can evaluate for EF. If you are thinking about ADHD, many physicians will order such testing as part of the diagnosis. Maybe a neuropsychological evaluation would be the first step in understanding what is going on. The testing will also help you sort through HS options. (Generally speaking, a highly structured environment would be best) Good luck.

hugs! Some of our boys are just 'like that.'
Keep the toothbrush at the supper table and have him brush on the spot right after he eats. If you use Tom's Toothpaste, he doesn't even have to rinse until he gets the idea himself.

Keep a journal about which activities of daily living are really bothering you the most, over and over, and then decide which ones to stop caring about and which ones to brainstorm with us over. If he doesn't wash his face there's no harm done. Can he still get away with 'sleeping in his tomorrow clothes?' Sweatpants and a tee shirt is a beautiful thing.

Praise him for ever evidence of 'being observant' he gives you, no matter how small. "Hey, you didn't trip over that raisin on the ground, you are observant!' If he balks, do it silently in your own mind. Sounds weird but they read us like books, sometimes.

If he doesn't type, then now is the time to hothouse it. Opens lots of cage doors.

I found that practicing to meditate was really important to my still-umbilically-emotionally connected boy.

Keep firm about not letting him go back to a bad situation. Sometimes if he'll join you in the kitchen to cook or bake 'his specialty item' it's easier to talk. Sometimes in long car rides. Keep praying.

Don't believe everything he says.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

We had a reward system for following instructions.

DS memorized the steps for following instructions:
1. look at the person who gave the instruction
2. say "OK"
3. do the task
4. check back ("hey mom, I brushed my teeth")

Correctly followed instructions (all four steps) get praise and sometimes a little reward. This obviously requires parental follow-through every time.

We started giving simple instructions, then moved to more complicated ones. It worked.

More generally, I hope you have some help (through school or privately) to work on executive function throughout his day-- it sounds like he needs help staying tuned in.

Best,
DeeDee

My son is similar, but he has executive processing problems associated with autism and NOT adhd. Since he has had these issues from a young age, we have worked on them consistently. For example, brushing teeth required us standing in the bathroom with him going through every step and gradually fading our way out of the bathroom until it became such an unconscious routine that he didn't need to think about it. My son took lots and lots of practice to be able to do "simple" things, but with consistency he can do it. Your son is older so I'm not sure where to recommend starting but we used OT and ABA therapy beginning when he was 2 1/2 years old! I think an older kid might be embarrassed by Mom standing telling him how to brush his teeth. Sometimes what we do now is say "First this, then that" meaning he is not allowed to read until he shows me he brushed his teeth or whatever. And yes...when he DOES do something menial correctly PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE!!!! Wow, you brushed your teeth RIGHT when I asked!!! Holy moly, that's great! I love it! Nan

I printed out the links Mich provided and they are great. When I researched EF years ago, the info I found was not so good. Thanks for providing those, Mich. I'm going to use them with DS's teachers.

My daughter occasionally gets "lost" in the bathroom or while dressing/making her bed/any other chore she isn't particularly interested in. And I have to nag, and then we both get irritable.
Finally I explained the obvious: these things must get done. That is not negotiable. They must get done in this particular way. Also not negotiable.
However, they can get done with nagging and yelling and unpleasantness, or they can get done without all that.
And we walked through the order and timeliness a couple of times, after which she said that she had it down, and could manage. And mostly she has, because the lack of nagging and unpleasantness is a huge reward, in her eyes-- way better than stickers or M&Ms.
And when I praise her she gets really squicky, because she hates any sort of spotlight. (When we were going through the Great Potty Training Ordeal of 2002, she would refuse to go unless I promised not to praise her!) So weirdly, the negative reinforcement really is better, in her case, though I realize mileage varies widely.

It might be time to have a little talk about 'average kids' and let him know that average kids do what their parents say without needing explainations or to check their parent's logic. Average kids go to the schools that their parents think are best for them because average kids know that their parents have more experience and a better chance of making the right choice.

I asked my son what 'obey' meant, pretty recently. He stammered: 'It's when you ask me to do something, and if I think it's the best thing to do, then I do it, right?'

I tried to educate him that it was closer to 'I say do it, and you briefly check to make sure it isn't dramatically bad, and then you do it - right away.'

I would also instituted the 'no lawyering' rule when discussing important issues. The black and white 'going well together' argument deserves a look of confident distrust, and a 'Honey, you have strayed way off the path of this idea exchange. I'm going to go do something else for a while, but let me know when you want to actually share ideas on this topic.' I found this very hard to do, but in the long run, I couldn't 'outtalk' my kid. I had to adopt a calm-assertive pose of 'I can't explain it, but that doesn't make me wrong. I have experience on my side.'

I even have to occasionally say the words he least likes to hear: 'I know you don't understand my logic. That isn't because my reasoning is wrong, it's because you are a child and lack enough experience to understand this particular situation. My hope is that when you are grown up, you will look back and understand. I'm sorry you don't like it, but that is just the way it is.'

Best Wishes Verona,
Grinity

Thank you, thank you thank you!

To come home from a day at work and find so many supportive and helpful messages on this thread (as well as the other less fraught thread on subtest scores) is like the best Christmas present ever.

The EF ressources look great Mich. And I agree that a highly structured school environment would be best. I have my eye on a private middle school-high school that I think might fit the bill. He started Judo this year (I wish we had done this sooner) and the structure and controlled atmosphere seem really good for him.

And Grinity, you seem to always say what I need to hear. I have been trying to shut down the "lawyering" since I realized last year that we were having disucssions about starting homework that reached their logical conclusion 45 minutes later with me saying "you still have to know how to add to work at McDonalds!!" I generally try to say something like, "well, this isn't up for discussion" and walk away. The first time I did this DS was quite taken aback and said "I don't like it when you talk that way, it sounds like you're in charge." Shows I had strayed quite a way too far in the other direction. It seems best if I keep the tone light and neutral. I think I'm going to write down your sentence above (I know you don't understand my logic, etc) and keep it in my pocket for next time.

I also try to do the praise for little things, but for times when DS might find this annoying (like eldertree's DD, he only likes praise in small doses), I love the idea of saying it in my head. I think this will help me with my catastrophic thinking too.

Any information on meditation to share? DS actually developed an interest in this from his former Montessori teacher, but I'm not sure what he was doing, besides staring at a candle, and it didn't last long. If I had some methods to share with him, it might do us both good.

Thanks for listening.

Yup - it's like that for me too! It's so strange to me, even after these last 6 years to hear that people feel like I understand them when I speak. For the first 42 years I mostly got blank stares and the unspoken message that when I speak folks feel pain mostly. LOL. Ok I'm exaggerating, but you know what I mean!

For meditation try this link

https://sites.google.com/site/giftedmeditation/

Yea for martial arts. I just read that martial arts studios are basically 'Buddism for Westerners.'

Ohh yes, write down my sentence for your pocket, or on your hand, or on postit notes all over the house. :It sounds like your in charge!- heartbreaking, but yeah, that was our house too. Not average. Excellent observation about 'too far one way.' The book I got this from is 'Transforming the Difficult Child Workbook' by Howard Glasser and Lisa Bravo. They think it's about ADHD, but I think it's about our Intense Gifties. LOL again!

I like your 'tone light and neutral' - just like Caesar Milan. Hey, can I be the 'gifted kid whisperer?'

Keep me posted!
Love and More Love, (because that's what it takes)
Grinity

If your DS doesn't want the steps posted, how about a laminated step/reference sheet kept where he can refer to it easily for those personal care task that are multi-step. This can be used for teeth brushing, showering(mine forgets to rinse), laundry, dishes, whatever. It is his personal property and there to help not nag. If he is approaching puberty you are no longer a viable person to talk to due to lack of Y chromosome plus you are old to him and just don't understand. Maybe he and Dad can go out an putter and talk as they do something. Your son is entering that age where sports kids become kings of the roost. He just needs to find his roost.

Thanks vicam for the ideas. I especially like the talking to DH while puttering idea -- DH is much less emotional than me (DS is right that I sometimes "react too much"), and I'm sure DS would have an easier time talking to him about what's bothering him at school (which I have now gleaned is something social not academic). Its just making sure that DH (more of the strong, silent type) finds the "right moment" sometime before next year.

Meditation, eh? I like the woo-woo. Yoga is the combination of the breath, the focus, and the gaze. It's for the cultivation of self-control, both the kind where you do less of what you don't want to do as well as the kind where you do more of what you tell yourself to do. I used to complain when I would stop to eat or sleep in the middle of a project. I'd say, "aggravating demanding body, doesn't it know it's here to serve me, not the other way around?". I like Richard Freeman's Ashtanga yoga, where the meditation is in the vinyassa, in the movement. I'm sure there's the same meditation within judo, tai chi, etc..

I'm not sure but from what I'm reading maybe he's not trying to calm, maybe he likes the woo-woo and wants to sharpen his focus. Tell him a psychic told me "we're always time traveling. It's just we usually do only going forward in slow motion. You should consciously focus on time traveling backwards by remembering. Just hold onto your memories a few seconds longer, whenever they happen. Try to see the details in your memory of your surroundings a littl more clearly."

And then there's something else they're selling on the Internet called "remote viewing". Supposedly it's real, and the guvament uses it, yeah, whatever. They had a class at the omega college in NY, I just couldn't go at the time. I think it would use the same part of the brain that you visualize what you read with. Like they always tell the kids, "a good reader can see movies of what thy're reading in their head.

On one hand if this kind of fun and nonsense can help him sharpen his memory recall and become a little more observant of paying attention to details o er time, that's great. On the other hand I think many of us want to be a little less different or a little more normal, I don't think this type of spiritual enhancement meditations will help much.



Hey Grinnity, I love Cesar Milan. I've just started watching his show all the time. I was going to post the other day that he taught a girl to walk her dog by making his obedience lessons over the top exciting. He told her to make dog's memory of training day be at least as intense as the dogs memory of it's trauma. It reminded me of the nurtured heart, making sure you feed your child more energy when they're having a good day than you give them when they're having a bad day. I laughed and didn't post it because, well, I compared a kid to a dog. No, no, I mean Cesar Milan's stuff is good and resonates with a part our nature too. Like he says don't treat a dog like a person, that's not fair. It confuses them. I was thinking about something I heard long ago about people having an animal and an angel mind. I compared that to establishing habits in our animal mind so that our higher order thinking can stay in the clouds while our feet are on autopilot.