In a way I could have posted this in 2E, but DD10 has no diagnosis, though she is a little ADHD...ish.

DD takes a long time (sometimes, hours) to do her homework. To be fair, she gets a lot of it. She also usually does an extremely good job--but this is part of the problem. She will be overly meticulous and careful when this is not totally necessary (note--she is a straight A student, so this does pay off for her). It's not she is intensely perfectionist, but she is a striver and does like things just so. Also, and this is more the problem, she is a daydreamer (often found noodling around, doodling, or starting into space), she is spent at the end of the day, and she gets too much work.

So far this has been managed through rather strict rules and scaffolding (HW must be started by X time and finished by X time, no screentime till it's done, I check on her a lot). But I am tired of this and she needs to self-manage more. Thoughts on how to remove the scaffolding gently?

Here's a few ways we have done it. My DS is 10 also and we have been working on this for several years.

1. Does she really need all that homework? My DS does actually have ADHD and he has an accommodation to do less practice as long as he shows mastery. For instance, last year they had a vocab/spelling homework packet that they got on Monday that was due by Friday so they could prepare for Friday test. My DS turned it in late the first few weeks but still got a 90% and 95% on the tests. After that we asked if he could skip it. Maybe this is something that you can discuss with teachers.

2. Obviously, you have the best idea about how much effort your DD needs to get A's (if that is her goal). But think about ways the work can be done more efficiently (which leads to number 3)

3. Work periods set with a timer and breaks in between. Have her think about how long she can work without doodling, staring into space, etc. - set the timer for that amount of time. (we are up to 30 mins now) and then reward with a break period we do 10 mins. If may seem like it will take longer but we have found that the work gets done quicker this way. He is able to self regulate as well as he has his timer to refer to and if he happens to get done early, he gets extra break time.

4. Finally, consider whether the work is broken down into manageable chunks. My DS used to just sit and daydream because he did not know how or have the ability to initiate the task. We generally go over the assignment together we work out a plan to get it done, then using the timer, etc. he does the best he can at task persistence.

Good luck.

I am not a big fan of homework and DD13 hates it. That may have contributed to way she used to drag her feet when doing it. It would drive me nuts.

It sounds like there are a few things that might be at play. These are issues that applied to our DD.

Fatigue: a real problem for us as a physical issue but the emotional and mental fatigue of being at school all day is really draining. More so if your child is an introvert, ours is, who needs time to recharge. I feed and water DD as soon as possible after school and allow her to listen to music or watch a short video from you tube. Anything to get a bit of bounce back. Actually, jumping on the trampoline worked wonders!

Lack of real challenge, easy homework used to paradoxically take a lot longer as DD just couldn't bring herself to do it. This also contributes to fatigue. If the work at school isn't stimulating enough DD's brain fails to switch on and she comes home dragging her feet and complaining of being tired. She is then more likely to daydream etc rather than tackle homework.

Too much challenge is equally exhausting whether that is in the scope or the volume of the work.

A couple of times, when we have had a good teacher, we negotiated for DD not to do sections of homework that lacked value for her. That concession allowed her to feel supported and she was more amenable to doing the work that had purpose.

You have hinted that you might be concerned about other 2E issues. Is that enough of a concern to warrant following it up? If it is, it is worth doing sooner rather than later as time management obviously becomes increasingly important as kids get older.

I was really concerned about DDs time management but it actually improved as the work got harder and she was accelerated. She is very good now but can still drag her feet over a boring assignment. It helped in the earlier days that we put time limits on her work. After all she had to have a life too. We also made earlier artificial deadlines for assignments to encourage getting the work out of the way before another one appeared.

Perfectionism was our other really intractible problem-- and it was deeply embedded in the lack of challenge, which had fostered that perfectionism in the first place.


This is the best solution that we ever found.


YES-- but there was a limit to how much acceleration we were willing to do, and eventually you run into executive demands that are (globally) out of reach, without actually reaching academically appropriate work.

Negotiating for less HW is not possible--she is at a GT magnet and the HW load is kind of...part of the school identity? I know, I know. Anyway, consider that one totally off the table. Regarding challenge level--she is not extremely underchallenged and she is certainly not out of her depth. It's okay. I would like to see better assignments, but so would everyone, right?

"Work periods set with a timer and breaks in between"--this is a perfect, great idea. I actually do think this would make it take less time.

I also like the plan idea. Maybe taking 5 minutes to make a plan would help a lot. She likes to do things like this.

Regarding a dx, DD is super frustrating in that she shows signs of something being off but is very high functioning and also performs well when assessed. We are tired of paying people and/or asking people to assess her and coming up with nothing. At this point, I just try to cope with issues as I see them.

Excellent advice already above.

We had a very similar issue the year one of ours was 10--our high-energy, social, achieving one, but also with the attention span of a flea. Actually, it's one of the major factors that led to homeschooling that one.

In our case, we narrowed it down to

1) too much work for no reason--the school decided arbitrarily that middle schoolers should have 2+ hours of homework a night, so even if a class didn't warrant the requisite amount of homework, teachers made sure there was something you had to do;
2) physical and mental exhaustion after a whole day of being
3) perfect; and, bonus,
4) having to exert extra attention and energy -making up for teachers' errors-! (All the teachers were very sweet and accommodating, as was the administration, but they were seriously struggling with massive curricular and organizational changes, which had not received sufficient inservicing.)

I would agree that the level of executive function (attention, planning, organization, impulse control) necessary to complete assignments the content of which was certainly academically well within range was a big piece of the puzzle. There is something about being 10, too. Old enough that adults start to have expectations of you to be organized and self-managing, but young enough that pre-teen scatter-brain is a fairly routine occurrence. That was also a particularly challenging year for our parent-child relationship (which nightly struggles over homework did not help!). My attempts to work with the school to modify the homework situation did help our p-c relationship, though it had exactly zero effect on the homework policy.

Yup. That's our situation, too. As you know, we haven't had any of ours formally tested, but I'm pretty sure I know what a neuropsych would come back saying. These subclinical kids can be like that. On the plus side, sometimes getting a Dx becomes a kind of stigma to them, and the absence of one allows it just to be a learning or temperamental style. I find that it has helped to explain their own learning profiles to them, based on my observations, including examples.

With ours, one of the things that has helped has been writing one's own homework (or homeschool) schedule, initially with guidance, including breaks for snacks, playing with sibs, moving around, etc. It's an opportunity to see what needs to be done, how long each one will take, how much time you need to allow for everything, and to see each one being checked off the schedule/list as it is completed.

We also did use the timer during that 10-yo year. 10 minutes of homework at a time, with the kitchen timer counting down in front of you. I usually specified a certain amount of work to be done in that time, as there is research that ADHD-type students actually perform better when under time pressure. ("You have 10 minutes to finish the next 5 algebra problems.")

Oh, and shameless bribery (aka, positive reinforcement), in the form of very small food (candy?) rewards after timed intervals of continuous work...in the classical ABA style. They are not too old to work for M&Ms.

Just noticed that today's marathon "HW" session somehow resulted in a new poem half-tucked away on a corner of her desk...

It breaks my heart a little because she is intensely creative, and some of what happens is that the creativity is struggling to escape during school and HW time both. She has a lot of fire in her to Make...

This is kind of true of her, BUT she gets very upset with me if I do it. I don't know if she is reacting to this environment at school. BTW, she does not have difficulty completing work at school except on very rare occasions. Many of her classmates do, because a lot is expected of them. So, somehow she is managing. I think she is extremely tightly wound at school. She is visibly relaxed and different during summer. She says she likes school, though. She is very happy there socially.

We used to find drawings (especially what you might call illustrated text) under the same circumstances. Even now, I'll walk over to check on work and find drawings, or miniature letters intended for the youngest sibling's imaginative play, or lesson planning for teaching the little sibling (!). But now it's okay, because we don't have all of this happening on top of a 6 or 7 hour school day; it's happening during the homeschool day, and I can feel free to adjust the goal list for the day to accommodate spontaneous interests. (It's not like we'll fall behind the public schools' academic expectations!)

Does your DD have any outlets for her creativity during the school day? Or is it all "serious" academics, all the time?

Then give her more time to poetify or whatever it is she wants to do.

Mine was also fine at school--the model student, actually, according to all teachers (except for talking a lot). I think it was very stressful performing all day, which made the evenings that much worse. There was nothing left by that time. No energy for self-management of any kind, really.

I'd love to. She's not overscheduled. The point of getting her to manage her HW better is so she can poetify or whatever!

DD is motivated to do her HW but is not motivated to manage time well. If left to her own devices, she will fiddle around, putz about, then suddenly realize crap needs to get done as bedtime approaches (we are firm on bedtime), freak out, cry, beg for bedtime extension, perfectionism kicks in worse, hysterical scene, etc. BTDT. I wish I could say that her grades do not matter and she could have the learning experience of turning in some 0s, but her grade actually do matter because we are zoned for problem schools and she must apply to competitive magnet middle schools, who rely heavily on grades for admission. Yeah, it's kind of a mess.

There is no or very little class time given for HW. No one gets it done in class. HW is a huge grievance for parents. It actually was better last year (4th) than in 3rd, so possibly some of the complaints were heard. 3rd was horrific.

So much good and useful discussion here.

I really agree with HowlerKarma about the perfectionism. That usually showed up as an inability to even start a project or tearing up work that wasn't what she wanted. Percy's comment about breaking things down into manageable chunks worked for us too. I noticed the school doing this on a recent assignment they sent home. Different parts of the assignment were assigned to different days with two deadlines to meet for part A and Part B. DD didn't need that but it would be good for less organised kids.

HowlerKarma is also spot on that there is a limit to how far you can go with acceleration without stretching the bounds of the executive functioning of a little being. Our DD is till a little person in so many ways and we are mindful of that.

It's interesting about the creativity. School can stifle it at times. DD gets really upset if an assignment is too rigid in its layout and she has no scope for creativity. Be that introducing colour, different fonts, interesting layout. Hope you find some more outlets for your DDs creative spirit. Creativity is as important as academic achievement.

Oh, this discussion is hitting close to home. DD9 was a DISASTER about finishing/getting to homework last year - and I tore my hair out trying to get her to just start, and then finish it all year long. When her G&T class started she was also clearly getting MORE homework than she had previously been getting. I'll admit, some of the homework WAS horrifically boring or busywork...but still. DD might be a tad ADD-ish herself when it comes to homework (excellent PSI, but much lower WM/average than reasoning; no Dx, though; always been strong-willed and a tad impulsive) - although the teacher described her as always "working so hard" at school (hmmm...I always wondered about that). Then she'd get home. She wanted to do ANYTHING but focus on what needed to get done. I tried letting her get to it later, but then she turned into a puddle. I tried making her start earlier, but she seemed to have no focus left (she left it at school???). We always got it done, but it wasn't pretty.

She absolutely does NOT manage her time well. At all. I don't know that grades will motivate her - that is not WHY she has ever learned anything. She learns things because they interest her.

I honestly think part of it is DD needing to "contain" herself at school (be less DD-like to "fit within the confines of school") - she seems to have no discipline left when she gets home for homework. I am glad she is trying to um, "fit" a bit (she couldn't contain herself very well when younger and we'd occassionally hear about it), but she has no patience left when she gets home.

I am seriously thinking of establishing a reward system with Minecraft time (both DC are obsessed, but I limit it - and I admit to using it as a carrot) for getting her work done in a reasonable amount of time this year...I need to come up with SOMETHING.

Carrots are fine! I work for carrots still, only they tend to be the promise of another cup of tea or a little bit of chocolate etc. Everyone needs rewards. Sure it would be lovely to think our kids work for intrinsic satisfaction all the time but I don't. If it is something that interest me, then like Loy58's DD I can plug away for hours. The washing etc....not so much.

We did some carrots in 3rd because I felt like the demands were insane and she should be rewarded if she succeeded. Now...I struggle a bit more with it philosophically. I believe in carrots when you are being asked to do something inherently unpleasant or unreasonable. IDK. It feels a bit oogy to me at this age and stage. But I guess it depends on how "natural" vs. staged and paid they are.

I know what you mean but the carrots don't have to be so obvious. If DD is working hard but starting to look restless I might offer her a treat like a bowl of strawberries or, yes, M&Ms (lucky she loves fruit over chocolate but she is also a sugar hound). Interestingly she took on board a seminar at school on working for 40 mins and then taking a break to do something enjoyable and that in itself is a treat. We don't reward success as such but try to get DD to delay doing stuff she loves to do in her break, be that Minecraft, watch some anime, listen to music, skype with friends...It's actually what most adults do.....get the chores done then relax and do something nice. That's if they can find an end to the chores.

They end?

Actually, the better way to think about reward systems, whether natural ones like ndw is using, or more staged ones, is as scaffolding. We are trying to teach the kids how to delay gratification--that there are real life rewards to using your time efficiently. But at this age, even very high cognitive kids often don't have the executive functions to hold out for the whole bowl of candy later over a few pieces now. Reward systems are a way to give them an immediate small reward for delaying the bigger reward (have your cake and eat it too!), and a way to support the process of gradually extending the length of your delay prior to gratification. The eventual big reward is the ability to manage yourself and your environment in such a way as to attain life satisfaction (achieve your goals, become the kind of person you can respect, have a positive impact on the world, etc.). That's too abstract and too far away, so we create miniature intermediate rewards as stepping stones or frameworks to hold onto as we make our way there.

Yes, if you reframe the rewards as helpful tools in shaping behaviour, in order to create good work habits...it helps philosophically.
Also, it just makes DS happy if I think of something nice, or yummy, as a reward. It stops the whining instantly and gives him a boost of energy which sometimes leads to him finishing much more than I had suggested to earn the reward.
After all, I still have to do this for myself, to stop myself from doodling, daydreaming, procrastinating...just how do other people manage to get through 8 or 9 hours of constant boring work without being able to think a thought for themselves? I still can't do it. We shouldn't ask it of ten year olds, really.

This seems to be the problem.

I would move out of the problem school area.

I'm living in my house in significant part because of the school districting at the moment.

Granted, principal change is causing the possibility of requiring an immediate move or transfer to another county where property is owned (requiring a 40 minute school commute).

Moving is not a possibility for a variety of reasons and actually probably wouldn't help that much anyway--middle school is a problem for everyone here. The best option by far is the magnet. We knew we were taking a risk when we bought this house in this zone, but it saved us probably 100K, so it is what it is.

For us, this is huge. It's also (eventually) a teachable skill: look at what has to be done, decide how long each chunk should take, and try to stick to that plan.

Here's how we manage DD9's homework approach:

- DD is ordered to "go play" immediately after school, unless there's some time crunch because of imminent scheduled activities. She needs to detox.

- DD determines what homework to do and in what order. We only prod her to make sure that all of it is done.

- DD is highly social, so isolation during homework is a terrible approach for her. It would feel like punishment to her. Even if she doesn't need any help, I end up sitting with her while she's working.

- DD is highly motivated by extrinsic rewards, so we shamelessly pay her for grades. To improve immediacy (because 9 weeks is A LONG TIME at that age), we give her small rewards each time she brings home a paper with a letter grade on it. To short-circuit her own perfectionism, we have a reward for Bs as well as As. Those grades are starting to become their own reward system.

ultra, you already have good advice and I don't have much more to offer re how to help reduce scaffolding *now*… but did want to offer up a tiny sliver of hope - I've noticed with the older two of my children that once they hit middle-school age (or puberty) (or both) their ability to stay focused and on task with homework improved *significantly*. Organizational skills too. I think that maturing helped them with it as much as anything else… so if you can just hang onto your sanity for a year or two it's quite possible things might get better

Hang in there!

polarbear

My DS was encouraged by one of his teachers to use a Time Management Technique called the Pomodoro Technique. She had several after school classes to help the kids get started using it. I have the outline in pdf.


I also takes Dudes approach. You get some me time first thing when you get home. I also sit with my ds and read or something during homework time.

Working with a timer as in "work for 15 mins then you can have a 5 min break" has never worked well for me - the break never comes when I need it! For the last few years I've been using (for record keeping purposes initially, but I find it has other benefits) an Android app called Timesheet. You set up projects - could be Homework, or Maths, or whatever - and then there's a big button to press when you start a task, and another to press when you finish it, and it times you. But the thing I didn't realise would be so helpful is a Pause/Resume button, that allows and records breaks. The nice thing is that this separates time when it's OK to be doodling, checking Facebook or whatever cleanly from time when it's not. With a child, I might suggest "take a short break whenever you need it, but get this piece of work done by X with no more than Y minutes of break" if you think it might work better to permit limited as-needed breaks than to regulate them completely.

I'll have to look for that app. This is actually the same approach we take to instrument practice: you must have practiced so many minutes by the end of the day. If you stop practicing, stop the timer. When you resume, restart the timer. I did eventually have to give them some guidelines about the proportion of work to breaks. Our current modification is that at least 80% of any given session needs to consist of actual practice. (Otherwise, they sit at the piano and noodle for half an hour, after practicing for five minutes.)

ColinsMum, I like that idea as well. I think I will start with a simple timer approach but if that does not work, we will try an app. There are so many great apps now. It's wonderful.

She does get a break when she first gets home--half an hour.

I thank all of you for these great ideas. I was feeling really frustrated and now I feel much more hopeful.

sent pm

I don't know if this would be feasible with your school (I know it wouldn't have been with our regular school), but my new system for DS11 in his e-school is showing all the signs of being a success on several levels.

With e-school, all the assignments and tests for each week are right there in front of him, of course -- it was extremely hit-or-miss to know what was assigned and when it was due last year with the regular school. However, the assignments are still scattered among all of his seven classes in the listings, and he has a habit of cherry-picking and then staying up late in a panic to finish the things he put off because they were worse.

Anyway, I got him a weekly planner where the whole week is across two pages, in columns. On Monday, he wrote every assignment for every class in that column (and it ran out of room and squished into the bottom margin). Everything that had five or more days to go, he highlighted green. Everything that had three or four days to go, he highlighted yellow. Everything that had one or two days to go, he highlighted red (pink). Everything that he did that day, he crossed off, and what was left was rewritten into Tuesday's column and highlighted accordingly. And so on through the week.

My plan for this was to show him what happens when he lets things pile up, with a highly visual demonstration. AND to show him at a glance which things he needs to do first, because they are due soonest -- pink is going critical, yellow is getting there, and green can wait till the others are done. He's picked up quickly on prioritizing with this.

The other bonus is that he can see how much work he's put in this week, as the list has dramatically shrunk down to just a few things by today. He feels good at having accomplished so much, things are getting done in proper order, and if he falls behind as new assignments come in, it will be immediately obvious.

I know this doesn't necessarily help with the "getting things done instead of doodling while you're supposed to be working", but it might -- because there's a very tangible picture of what's left to do and how long you have to do it.

We couldn't have done this in his classes last year, because a great deal of the problem was that even with the Power School system, the teachers weren't that great at posting everything that was assigned AS it was assigned, and he was predictably awful at remembering that he had anything to do. He's never managed to use the regular planners that the school gives out every year.

Pomodoro Technique looks great. Today I had her estimate how much time assignments would take and work to try to get them done in that time, using a timer. She did go over a few times, but I think that was instructive in itself. Actually, this worked REALLY well! I don't know if it was exciting because it was new and won't work after a week or what, but just that simple change kept her on task much better. Then she completed her work in time to work on some art and take a walk, even though she also had an afterschool activity right in the middle of afterschool time--big win.

I am glad you gave it a try.

My ds gets a ton of homework too. It can get overwhelming for everyone if he don't keep up. The Anti-Homework crowd would not like this place. The teacher that put this out is wonderful. She tries to not give too much homework in her class because she knows the kids get a lot in all the other classes.
The way it is written seems very respectful to the kids and their time.

I'm bumping this because we're struggling. I am being proactive with the timer--for each assignment, I ask her to estimate how much time it will take, and then she sets the timer for that amount and has it at her desk. She gets a short breaks when she finishes something (haven't quite been organized enough to Pomodoro). This sometimes works, but at other times she will not finish in the first attempt, or the second. I do not watch her work...she is in her room (working in the living room where her brother is does NOT work) at her desk, which is mildly distracting, but there are no electronics in there and I do peek my head in. At times, she has taken 1.5 hours or more to finish a math sheet, or 40 minutes on a simple social studies assignment.

While I know the math is harder this year (these sheets may be 40 problems, many multi-step...too much), DD has no time management issues at school, always finishes in-class work and tests on time, and is a straight A student. I really don't know what she does in there in her room, other than zone out or possibly stress out. She DOES do a very good job on her HW--it is neatly done, carefully thought out, etc. I have encouraged her to get through it more quickly and not be so meticulous, to no avail. She always finishes and is relatively organized, with assignments done when due, but too much time is spent.

It is killing me to see how much time she is spending. DH says he identifies with this and that for him, the issue required an almost cell-like area for work with zero interesting items. Help???

ETA: Middle school application stress may be a factor. She's worried about getting in to the "right" school. She will, and I've made it clear to her that she will.

I realise I may be barking up the wrong tree, but I'm really going to push what I said before - get her to distinguish between time when she's working (timer is running) and not working (timer is paused) by making that distinction explicit. Then, once she can see that she's taking 30 minutes pause vs 10 minutes work, you have a hope of her making progress. For as long as she doesn't make that distinction, and genuinely thinks it takes her 40 mins to do this work, there's no hope. I think.

If the process of eliminating distractions hasn't yielded positive results, then maybe the solution is to introduce positive distractions. There was a thread here a while back where a number of us admitted that having music or the television going on in the background actually helped us focus on homework, and get it done quicker. For my DD9, the TV would definitely be a problem, but just having me nearby and able to respond to her commentary or questions is enough to keep her focused and on-task.

The issue here is often one of mood management. The child doesn't have an issue with doing school work at school, because that's what that time is for, and she has nothing better to do. At home, there's resentment, because that's perceived as her free time, homework is an unwelcome encroachment, and there are many ways she could be spending that time. So, how can the experience be made less miserable?

Do you have a chess clock? That might be effective for tracking on-task/off-task time, if she can remember to hit it when she takes a break and again when she gets back to work.

We will use the radio softly to help as a controlled distraction. I have also thrown in the timer on the stove with cookies baking to shake it up a bit. My ds was almost in a rebellion phase last year with taking too much time on his homework. It seemed at times he wanted it to be painful. To be honest some of it could have been me just wanting him to be faster. We don't have to use the timer any more. He might mess around a bit but gets on task relatively quick now.

Could be? I don't know. I actually had DH sit with her and watch her work yesterday, to see how much time she was off task. Answer? Not a lot, though she did tend to jabber soemwhat to DH. She finished the work faster with him in the room, but one math sheet (front and back) still took an hour+. It is laborious math, but not difficult for her. Okay, it is quite laborious. They are doing things like 7893.43/ 56.01. (I just made that up, but division of lengthy decimals, basically) This is 6th grade Common Core math (she is in 5th) so not extremely advanced or anything. I do feel she finds it more challenging than past work. I wonder if she is hitting a slight wall, math-wise.


This is an interesting perspective. Yes, she is resentful. She hates the homework. She has been asking me recently to homeschool her, which is new. (My response to this is basically, "No, because they would find both our dead bodies on the living room floor.") I need to explore that statement further, because she will say she is socially happy at school and the work is not too hard, but still we get that. She does have two good friends who are HSed and whose parents are pretty vocal about the disadvantages of public schooling.

I doubt she is hitting a wall, but it could be she's not one of those kids that is going to be fast or fluent with computations. DD8 with her ADHD would probably spend hours as well. I talked to the teacher about her being slow and a possible reduced workload and he said they don't give a lot of work anyway, they fly through the concepts. Need to learn long division? Here are a few practice problems. Done. (she's in a magnet). I'm going to start a new thread because I'm wondering how necessary it really is to be "fluent" or fast when calculators exist.

Long division is one of those "pay your dues" kind of topics. You should do some of it, but don't grind it to death. It is laborious, and it's not surprising it takes a while (but one should just get stuck into it and get it over and done with). It is important to understand how and why it works, so later you'll have no problem with (e.g.)

x^3/(x-2)=x^2+2x+4+(8/(x-2))

She has actually always been pretty fast with calculations, though, so it's surprising to see her slow. One thing that has been psyching her out ths year is that this teacher is REALLY into showing your work, and neatly. DD is freaked out about this, esp after having a teacher last year who did not require work to be shown at all (DD took full advantage of that). I have caught her carefully writing out things like 3 x 4 = 12 and had to be like--uh, DD, the teacher knows you know that! She isn't sure what is required to show because she has no concept of what is "normal" to need to show.

Maybe it is all about cognitive dissonance. She knows the work is repetitive and pointless. Seriously, 5 and 4 digit manual division is almost just mean-spirited. Perhaps, she knows she wants to succeed and do well and prove her capabilities, but she also hates the idea of flushing that time away on tasks that never give the outcomes of Miyagi's "wax on, wax off." Maybe she is finding abstract solace in the precision and accuracy of execution.

I think many gifted kids know what they need to learn, and either resist externally imposed methods and suffer extrinsic trouble, or conform and experience intrinsic trouble.

Ah, had started mine, and came back to it; hadn't seen your latest. But "show your work" is a phrase I despise, because (talking about cognitive dissonance) it literally is asking for a lie from a kid who does stuff automatically.

She certainly has to show work for long division, but would prefer to just scribble things out in the margin as needed, not meticulously scribe every little thing. I personally feel like it should be up the kid--like, you can get partial credit for shown work, but if you don't want to show, okay. It's on you. (I guess this might be a bad idea for a poor student who is failing, but DD is far from this.)