I agree with this to some extent. This is really one of the biggest fears I've had for my DS. On the other hand there is some "middle ground". Not all low EF kiddo's are going to go down that path. And not all of these kids are "low" EF it's just their weakest point, they are average in EF but since they are gifted teachers & parents expect above grade/age level independence because they are so "bright". Wouldn't it be nice if gifted but lower EF kids didn't decide they were stupid after having troubles keeping up with those with high organizational skills and therefore didn't go down this spiral.
Yes, I completely agree. We've tried to help our DD's EF develop and we've also tried to help her be resilient by letting her experience "controlled failure" and see what happens when she lets all the organization tasks fall by the wayside. By "controlled failure" I mean get a bad grade on the test, but not fail the required class. At a certain stage parents step in to insist that the homework get turned in, the teacher get contacted, and generally model what to do when things are not going well. I think this is a key component of parenting any child--modeling what to do when things go awry.
My last point is I've seen kids who were scaffold and taught coping skills end up with high anxiety who have had bumps in the road once they are really on their own. Scaffolding students into a situation that can't cope with on their own is it's own recipe for disaster.
Yes. This has proven to be quite tricky in practice. DD skipped a grade and I did not anticipate that the resultant year behind in EF would prove to be as big a challenge as it was. She is so far ahead academically that it has been hard in the teen years to remember that she is just average,
for her peer group, in EF. This asynchrony became more apparent in high school, when more things had legal requirements for age. A big chunk of the scaffolding has been planning the minutia so that she has done key "real life" things before leaving for college. Learn to drive, have a "real" paying job, set up a bank account, it goes on and on and we had one year less to do it. The scary part for us is we won't know how we've done for decades.
