At school as you progress in grades teachers have expectation of increases in executive function, self control, initiating and completing tasks, and attention span for things outside your passion (rightfully so as this is developmentally appropriate in NT kids). All usually downfalls of ADHD kiddos. It looks like lazy, unmotivated, undisciplined, not applying yourself, and sometimes willful defiance to teachers. Report cards will show it and some teachers will openly display their displeasure with such a student creating even more problems for teacher/child and teacher/parent relationship.
All true-- but it brings to mind another facet of raising a giftie, too-- the higher a child's LOG, the more likely it is that those executive functions will lag behind
apparent brain development.
We as human beings are kind of programmed to 'see' the markers of logic, attention to detail, and cognitive skill level as proxies of maturation. When they aren't, it's rough to know what functional/dysfunctional looks like.
HG kids, IMO, probably
all have elements of ADD-like behavior by virtue of that asynchrony. We simply
expect synchronous development, and we naturally assume that unless we are focused on that NOT being the case.
In other words,
all kids can be lazy, unmotivated, and undisciplined. Because they are
kids. It's just really, really disconcerting to have your 3rd grader (who is 6) behave like a
first-grader out of the blue.
Except, er-- that's his
age-cohort.Long way of saying that as parents of HG+ kiddos, it's often wise to take a look at NT development within a range.
I have learned to look at our child's actual chronological agemates, minus one year, to plus however many years gets you to their apparent cognitive level. Expect
any behavior which is normative for NT kids in that range-- under different conditions and in different domains, I mean. When it's bedtime, she is 14. When she wants to socialize rather than do work, she's 15 in terms of her impulse control, and 17 in terms of her need for autonomy, 20+ in terms of her social skills and conversation, and 16 in terms of her ability to multi-task.
