Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional Suggestions to Improve Executive Function...

HoneyBadger - my DD is 9 and the only person who ever mentioned she might have ADHD is the psych who dud her IQ test, who then said "but she doesn't have it because later in the test she could focus quite well." which i now believe is completely wrong. The whole point is that she can't choose to pay attention.

My DD is not hyperactive (sometimes at home) and is quite well behaved (again less well at home) but she's often off with the pixies when she looks like she's attending. But when you look at the whole picture I am quite certain she has inattentive ADHD.

To be honest I think that we have done a pretty reasonable job of parenting and partly through luck and partly through choice she has a had the best possible run health wise. ADHD, ASD and other conditions are clearly tied to gut issues and my DD has always had a great diet and has never had antibiotics ever, or any other drugs, including during pregnancy and birth. Due to DH and my chemical intolerances she lives in a very chemical free house, no cleaning chemicals, no perfumes, no carpets, etc. DH and I often wonder just how much more obvious her issues may have been if she'd had any environmental triggers or gut disturbances.

Nik - I would not say these issues are part of giftedness, but that they occur more often in the gifted. The developmental paed I mentioned earlier described gifted and inattentive ADHD as co-morbid, occurring together to often for chance.

And I do think that there is a lot of overlap between a number of those conditions you list, but not all of them. And again many of them are co-morbid. But in particular it seems to me that EF dysfunction is being used to describe inattentive ADHD, which I think is really misunderstood and has a bad rep.

Please excuse my typos, I am on my phone....

I just ran across this presentation "Working Memory and Processing Speed in the Classroom. It does a great job explaining what each skill is and how it works in learning and life situations. I don't know much about the author - but will be doing some more research. Anyway, ho[pe you find it helpful. http://vbida.org/PDFs/WorkingMemoryProcessingSpeedClassroom.pdf

Grinity - love your story about the hotel bed. I thought I was only one that did that!! How cute that your son parroted what you've been teaching him all these years. It appears that he does listen to you!

I think many of those diagnoses stem from conditions that can fit into a "lagging skills" model. Children develop skills or abilities according to as timetable, and some kids develop more slowly than others. If they don't fit into developmental norms, they really stand out,m especially in a classroom setting, and can cause difficulties depending on how they and those around them react to their lack of skills in that particular area.

The reactions (shutting down, acting out, refusing to try, giving up, or developing coping strategies that may or may not be useful) can look similar across children, even if the reason for the reaction is different for each child.

I think it's only been recently that the "lagging skills" model has been used to understand some kids who might otherwise be termed Oppositional Defiant or something else -- kids who have difficulties in the area of shifting cognitive set (switching gears) or keeping track of time, or who have very very high persistence/perseverence (i.e. STUBBORN!!!) and just can't see another's point of view (low empathy skills). If you see their behavior as not being willful, but stemming from a lack of skills, it gives you a starting place to go back and teach thoise skills (perhaps at the preschool level) and hope that now that the kids are older they can pick them up more quickly.

Yes -- that's the "lagging skills" theory again. My son had HORRIBLE sense of time and schedule when he was a preschooler -- so much so that I never did any of those things with him then, because it just wouldn't have made any sense to him.

But now that he is 9, and shoudln't really need it, I need to just go back to do them with him.

I've been working with him (and hjis younger sister) for the past week and am REALLY encouraged. We just went on a long car trip and as I was driving 60 miles per hour almost exactly, I taught the kids (who were begging from the back seat every few minutes "How much longer ad nauseum) to measure our rate of time by watching the mile markers go by.

AFter a while I had the kids see how long they could hold their breath. My older child was able to hold his breath for a full milk (about 1 minute at the speed we were traveling).

Finally I had him close his eyes and try to guess when a minute/mile went by. He thought a minute was up after 20 seconds the first time! He was really surprised and so was I. We did this a few more times, and after using a few different strategies, he managed to get to a minute.

We're going to spend the rest of this vacation learning to estimate 5 minutes and 15 minutes.

Gee, that's one problem I do NOT have because I am as disorganized as my son.

But if your husband is amenable to improving, I'd say just ask him to focus on one thing each month (do something 30 times and it becomes a habit they say). If you and he notice he is perpetually running late because he has misplaced his stuff for work, that's a good place to start.

Identify where he puts these things when he comes home from work, and why he puts them there. Then try to locate a place by the front door (or door he leaves for work out of) and label it (temporarily if need be) his "launching pad". When he comes home from work, he puts everything right there in the "Launching Pad". (It might need to be near an electrical outlet for recharging purposes -- rearrange things if need be). If he needs his laptop to work at night, get it from the Launching Pad but return it there when done. In the morning, as he leaves for work, EVERYTHING he needs for work should be right there in the "pad". Your job as an organized person should be to help him at first set this up, then help him develop the habit to look into the Launching Pad at night to be sure he put everything there. Ideally he will ingrain those habits himself in a few months.

THIS habit is one I finally managed for myself -- and somewhat for my kids. SO I know it can work!

So, along with working on sense of time, we've been working on ways to focus attention. (Seeing as perhaps my son has signs of ADHD/inattentive)

This past week, I bought my son a bow and arrow set as we are visiting my parents who live out in the country where you can practice in the backyard safely. IN just a few days my son has become a very accurate shooter; he even says that archery is more fun than computer games (for the moment anyhow). And he told me that he feels very peaceful when he is shooting and very focused!

One thing he learned from his current favorite novel (Ranger's Apprentive series) he said, was to visualize the flight of the arrow first, several times, before he lets it go -- he finds that improves his accuracy tremendously. Is this a form of mindfulness, do you think? Whatever it is seems like it must be beneficial!

So, I've been Googling around to see if kids with attention problems have had good luck with archery as a sport -- I'm not sure. I did happen upon this interesting article, which suggests the sports of archery, swimming and tennis for children who have attention difficulties.

http://www.articlealley.com/exercise-for-adhd-1450554.html

THAT was very interesting to me, as we have just joined a pool this year that has a tennis court nearby, and surprisingly, my son has recently started (hyper) focusing on playing tennis when we go there, as well as setting himself goals of swimming more and more laps. It's as if his brain is trying to get him the stimulation it needs, somehow!

Honey Badger - my ds LOVES archery, too! I think that because there is not a lot of external stimuli such as the movement of team members in field sports, he is able to execute the same process each time and focus intently on what he needs to do without auditory or visual distractions. He competes, but so far only in indoor events. He hopes to do a couple of outdoor events this summer - and I wonder if the change in format will affect his concentration. We'll see!

You may be interested in the book, "Spark" by John Ratey. Ratey is a Harvard researcher that has studied the effects of exercise on the brain. His overall conclusion is that exercise helps EVERYONE perform better - especially those that with ��HD or learning issues.

Thanks for the suggestions about DH. Not sure how open he will be, he won't even admit that he has a problem!

I have a brief update for anyone interested in our story.

This summer we did work a lot on estimating passage of time. It really has helped! I bought the TimeTimer (visual representation of time passing) and used to when my son got on the computer or TV to measure his 30 minutes of screen time. We also used it at the pool this summer for the 15 minutes of Adult Swim. Just these two things alone seem to have improved my son's ability to understand how long 15 minues and 30 minutes are.

In addition we got a GPS for the car. My son has been using the GPS to monitor where we are going and how much longer the trip will take. In the past doing even short errands with im has been very frustrating, as he'd get in the car and start complaining almost immediately about how long everything was taking. I now see that he really had no sense of the difference between 10 minutes in the car and two hours!

How this translates to homework -- he;s in 4th grade now and the HW has hit us like a ton of bricks. I'm having him look at each assignment and estimate how much time he thinks each one will take. At first he would be overly optimistic and say "Just a math worksheet, that's 5 minutes" but over time (and we keep records!) he sees that certain types of worksheets take 10 to 15 minutes, reading worksheets might take 10 minutes per page, etc. So he has a much more realistic sense at the start of how long HW will take, which helps overall.

Thanks for the post HoneyBadger. I like the idea of using the timetimer for hw and getting a better idea of how long hw takes.

Just popping in to post this. I have a meeting with my son's teacher today and in preparation was looking up more information about Executive Function and how to improve it, and I found this website: learningworksforkids.com

They have reviewed a lot of the most popular computer/wii/playstation/DS games out there and analyzed which executive functions they can help kids work on. I haven't had a lot of time to explore yet but it seems like it might be a useful resource.