As adults?

I know it's a silly question, in that it's obviously highly variable and dependent on lots of factors but I'm curious. The DD I had tested is doing well and probably achieving more highly than would be predicted by just her FSIQ of 138. But she's got a high WM (141) and is very organised and methodical.

In other environments though, I come across kids who are amazingly gifted but very disorganised and distractable. Their potential is obviously huge but I'm wondering what happens to them? They can't all be "absent minded professors". Presumably some find alternative paths to organisation etc whereas others end up with partners who help with the day-to-day stuff?

Any ideas? I'm genuinely curious.

Well now there are so many technological things available.

There's an app for that...really, there is.

Just think...calendars, alarms, timers, lists, maps, photos (my son takes photos of all sorts of stuff and then has information at his fingertips).

I was one of those children in elementary school. My EF developed substantially during adolescence, but I still have issues with organization and distraction to this day. I am a patent lawyer, so much of my work is done by myself (not too many group projects), and my office is tolerant of uneven production on a day-to-day basis as long as things are getting done on a month-to-month basis. Plus I have a paralegal who keeps track of due dates for me, although I have developed a calendar/reporting system that makes it relatively easy for me to report to my supervisor each week about what I have accomplished.

Generally, I have to make very small steps toward achievements, and I take a long time to solidify habits of organization. It has been about a year and a half since I resolved that this time I was going to develop a habit of flossing every day. It was not easy, but I have managed to successfully add that to my evening routine. It would be a disaster if I tried to add four or five habits at once - one at a time, and several months to solidify, before I try the next.

You talk about supportive partners, but my biggest challenge with my husband was to get him to stop "helping" me by moving my glasses or my other stuff. I have exactly one place where I put my glasses when they are not on my face, and most of my other belongings have a similar rigidly defined home (which may or may not make any sense). There was a certain amount of yelling before we managed to reconcile our policies about objects.

Following! This is my kid in a nutshell. I do believe he is an exact replica of my husband, who had a VERY hard time growing up, but in his 20s really blossomed and is now and incredible and incredibly well-functioning human being, working as a graphic artist at a major movie studio. He still has a LOT of what I would call sensory issues, but he manages them pretty well and is a wonderful father as well. I look to him for hope when I'm despairing at my son's behavior.

Based on observing this sort of adult in DH's family, my family and, errrrr, the mirror -

First, a fair number of them DO become absent minded professors. Or they take similar sorts of positions in corporate R&D departments.

Many also use their ideas and partner up with a few more organized folks (there's a reason they call those folks EXECUTIVEs) who help them found a business to develop it. Silicon Valley is awash in these folks, and I imagine there are other, similar regions of the country. It's interesting to note that start-ups without good EXECUTIVEs to move things along often flounder despite their brilliant ideas/products.

Second - EF does improve both because the mind develops and because the person escapes from settings where instant compliance with seemingly arbitrary rules puts such a heavy strain on whatever EF skills do exist.

I still recall being flummoxed on a daily basis for the entire year my elementary school teacher insisted kids had to have a color coded system for their subject notebooks. Why was red science? If we were going to have a color for science, surely it should be blue or green. Oh no, I left orange at home and now I don't have my social studies homework. Couldn't I just use one notebook with colored dividers. No, I suppose not... And on and on in my mind, every day. I wasted so much of what little EF I had on trying to follow the color rules (and the many other "organization rules") that I had little left for actual school work.

Anyway, in the inimitable words of Monty Python, "I got better," with better meaning both better EF and a better setting for what I was good at. Most of these kids will, too.

Sue

My husband's father is brilliant in certain ways (i.e. mechanically, visual spatial) but is very limited in EF. I know because we just had to go to his house and literally shovel full two large constrution dumpsters that we rented. Their house was so packed full of junk that it would have been impossible to even get a realtor out there to look at it. In forty years, he hasn't thrown anything away. We opened about 70 old paint cans that were piled up in the basement, hauled about 19 old broken down chairs out of the attic, etc. I believe he always planned to fix these chairs (a few at at time as he acquired them from passed-away relatives) but forgot they were there. He didn't care that we were throwing things out. The problem was that he is so poorly organized with such poor planning ability, things never made it out to the garbage can or to the goodwill. The good news is that he has stayed employed and made a reasonable living (fixing machines in a die casting plant), the bad news is that his money management is so poor that they are on the verge of retiring and filing backruptcy. Mother-in-law is just as bad, or worse. I believe that if he had married a highly organized wife (and vice versa with MIL marrying a highly organized husband), things could have gone better for them. The question is, how many people are willing to put up with it?

I thought I had my EF weaknesses covered - the kind of job where the software keeps track of my due dates for me, yearly reports and enough time on my own I the office to get to grips with the filing system without embarrassing myself (but oh, how I wish I had a paralegal for myself to keep me in order instead of just "bits" of several for diverse tasks). The important stuff in my house (medical stuff, clean laundry, clean dishes, healthy food under control. My DH on my page. But then DS started elementary school and the amount of colour coding off exercise books, folders, craft stuff, letters home etc. etc. drives me insane. Drives him even more insane, of course, particularly if he is again of of the few (or the only) kid who didn't do or doesn't have xyz. I remember I thought by middle school all this was easier because the separation of subjects made more sense, and the academic stuff began to actually count. Except for having to actually write down his homework, I am thinking DS8 isn't spending an ounce of energy on actual schoolwork.

Agreed. EF is related with HD. The US Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health offers this abstract.

Another article by the US Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health discusses findings relating incarceration with EF: Prison Brain?

I think suevv hit on a key issue about being able to choose your environment. If I understand the theory, so much of EF weakness (and ADD impacts) relate to the inability to pay proper attention to tasks which are not intrinsically motivating (which is of course what makes these gaps look so terribly volitional, but that's another rant).

Kids have so little ability to choose and shape their environment. As adults, many of us find jobs that draw on our strengths and minimize the destruction caused by our weaknesses. We find partners who can handle the tasks we can't. When we don't.... well, then you have blackcat's example - and, as a for instance, the vast number of other Americans who can't dig themselves out of unmanageable debt loads. I would speculate that gifted adults may have a distinct advantage over most low-EF people, in often having access to a much wider array of career choices and far more ability to mould our environments to meet our own particular needs.

Warning: soapbox..... This is also why I get so frustrated by teachers and family members who constantly dismiss DS's learning needs by insisting that "He MUST learn to get along in the real world." Well, actually, mostly, no. I am quite confident that the moment he is allowed to escape his public school box, he will put himself into a reality of his own choosing - and it will NOT involve spending all day every day trapped in a room with people with whom he has no shared interests, listening to a one-way drone of highly linear, repetitive, shallow and slow-moving information about things he knew years ago and don't interest him even vaguely. Your reality, lady, not his.

Unfortunately, if he spends all his time learning to cope with *their* reality, he will be utterly unprepared to take advantage of eventual opportunities to create his own - opportunities that require him to still be excited about learning, to see joy in math, to be able to persevere in hard problems and not collapse with anxiety and avoid everything that isn't easy.... All the stuff I beg and beg them to allow him to be able to do, but which I'm always told are special treatment that would keep him from "learning to get along in the real world."

BRAVO!!! Yes, yes, yes.

DH is PG and still struggles with EF. When I first met him, he coped with things by putting post it notes ALL over his apartment and office. But now he has apps for everything, and an awesome secretary to keep things straight at the office.

I am an entrepreneur because I could not stand water cooler talk and drama.

I read her post and ElizabethN and I are kindred spirits. My DH is Mr. Organized. I always felt like it was a fatal flaw for me to be the opposite of that, then I realized I'm totally wired for "absent minded professor" (in fact my dad was one) and so it's all about strategies for compensating for that - when necessary.

I have decided that I will start teaching my kids (or continue to) all the compensation strategies I have learned (action lists, flylady, etc.) We all use tools, the important thing is to figure out which ones you need.

PS and everyone in my genetic family is self employed….

Agreed.

We may need a thread for soapbox and pet peeves, etc. We could post our "classics" there.

Platypus101, what a lovely way of putting this!

I completely agree. DD is a mix of DH (not so good with the EF) and myself (completely in love with the EF and basing a career on it) I should point out that I was a late bloomer and was completely hopeless through high school and even into college.

This means that her EF is spotty, high where she has interest and low where she doesn't. We've found that she does better in educational environments where they are more focused on academic results and less focused on fussy organizational stuff (color coding, etc.). If the EF serves the academic results (like how to break a large assignment into smaller chunks, how to organize thoughts in writing, and how to do good research) then I don't mind them specifically teaching those skills. However, I find many schools simply glue a bunch of meaningless organizational techniques onto whatever they're doing without a lot of thought. I organize stuff for a living, but organizing for organizing's sake isn't really meaningful. You organize to reach a goal or end or you find supports to organize for you (tools, partners, environments).

Platypus101, absolutely. I do not want my children growing thinking "I have to fit in". I want my kids to learn to use their strengths and then use any organizational tools they need to bridge the gaps and get them where they want to go.

Yes, Yesss, Yesssss!
Pet peeve! Together with "he must learn to work with people of average intelligence, he'll have to do it all his life." Sorry, lady, not as equals on a team, he won't. Non gifted, but bright, highly educated experts in their field? Right. But that's it.

Very well put, thank you. I understand DS8 and myself better now.

There are a lot of jobs out there that require a lot less EF than being a student where you need to juggle 5-7 different subjects at a time. With multiple assignments due at all sorts of different times. When I worked as a computer programmer, I worked on ONE thing for months. Sure I there were different aspects to what I was working on but that was part of my complex design for the program and not really the same skills as trying to keep multiple projects going simultaneously.

There are many jobs out there from Engineer, Computer Programmer, research scientist and artist. That is just to name a few. And yes these jobs do require some level of organization but many of these people with low EF are capable of learning/follow some basic organizational skills certainly enough to keep up in a job where they are interested.

On the other hand to be a good teacher/administrator in a regular b&m school requires a lot of organization & good ef skills. Thus the people teaching our kids see organization as a very important skill because they themselves would be lost without it.

Well, IMO, children that are fortunate enough to have adults around them to teach them coping skills and scaffold their school experience and "keep them in the game" can grow into successful adults (like those giving excellent advice on this forum). Unfortunately, I've watched several PG and HG people grow up in families that either did not provide this kind of support or it did not work for them. Many went down a different path. The path goes something like 1) poor grades in school due to not turning in work or not fulfilling requirements 2) school counselor interprets this as "bright, but troubled" or "not really gifted" 3) student guided to remedial classes resulting in even greater boredom and cycles back to step 1 until the end of high school 4) student is always the smartest in the room, while both bored and disinterested, and displays unwavering snarky cynicism to one and all (thus alienating teachers and students alike) 5) student does not go to college because school is "stupid" and "pointless" 6) adult works series of low income jobs, gets fired often, plays a lot of video games, watches tons of movies, or reads a lot of books, and is bitterly dissatisfied with their life. Throw in some drugs or alcohol to blunt the pain and you get a serious mess. A variation on this theme is going to college and underachieving there due to a lack of EF and then proceeding to step 6.

Ouch. Sorry to be so negative, but sadly, I've known quite a few people who are now in their 40's-60's who've gone this route. There probably are people who do get it together later in life, but my life path has not intersected with theirs. A few EF challenged gifted adults I've known have life changing experiences after high school like joining the military, marrying a super organized, super involved spouse, or some other major event that provides or requires external organization and the opportunity to learn how to make it internal. These events seemed to occur when they were between 18 and 25.

This, to me, is why it is so important to help our gifted kiddos acquire the EF skills to "stay in the game" and have the chance to find that special situation that works for them.

I don't think we know how to raise EF any more than we know how to raise IQ:
Individual Differences in Executive Functions Are Almost Entirely Genetic in Origin

Shoot, in many of those fields companies will provide high-EF colleagues whose sole job it is to keep track of the moving parts and mundane details that detract from coding, engineering, or research time. Which is how I have a career.



This is astute. Really, really useful point.

Actually, I disagree: this idea is framed here in too extreme a way to be true to my experience. It's fun to think that the world will just make a path for geniuses, but I've seen brilliant people flame out because they can't organize themselves. (Some of these are people who go to grad school but spend much too long there because they can't get it together to write consistently, people who are considered by their colleagues to be a pain in the neck because they don't contribute practically to the running of the lab, and so forth.)

I do not consider the acquisition of EF skills a waste of time at all.

The idea that the person should spend time in an otherwise inappropriate learning environment to get EF skills is of course ridiculous. But it is a separate issue from learning the EF skills.

As to Bostonian: one may be born with a particular set of predispositions for EF, but one can learn strategies for managing. What you're born with is not who you are in this regard.

Hey! I resemble that remark!

I do agree that teachers sometimes overvalue organization because it is very important to their jobs. But our DCs still need to learn enough organizational skills to function within an organization, feed themselves, and pay the rent on time.

I think one problem they (teachers/schools) have is doing school wide or classroom wide systems with no flexibility for individual differences. Looking at you 3 inch white binder required by middle school until I pitched a fit after the major disaster when son dropped it in the rain (not the first time he had dropped it and everything spilled out).

I think teaching systems for managing organization is fine if you teach a main system but provide options...

Like you will need to keep a calendar/agenda...There are several ways to do it....app on your phone/tablet, agenda that the school provides, or some sort of adapted alternative that you come up with. Keeping the information in an organized way is non negotiable, how you do it is your choice. Not sure try each way for two weeks and then decide...

And just in case anyone is wondering...science is green, math is blue, reading language arts is red, history is purple, black (or could be a picture folder like a kitty or super hero) is a folder for miscellaneous notes to and from school like flyers and forms and newsletters, Orange is foreign language and yellow is elective..I don't know why but those are the right colors and. Don't try to convince me otherwise!

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.

Working on EF skills with these kids is a good idea. They will need it, can't keep a job if you don't show up on time. But it does seem realistic to realize that we aren't going to turn them into super organized & efficient but we can help them become into good, competent and interesting adults. A combination of accommodations and remediation seems like it's more likely to work in the long run.

The situation with many gifted kids isn't that their EF is very low, but rather not on par with the rest of their IQ. Teachers/schools don't always recognize that just because you are gifted intellectually you might not be average in learning organizational skills.

My point is that the intense organizational needed to keep track of 6-8 classes at once skills needed for B&M junior & high schools aren't necessary the skills they kids will need in a job. But they are quite likely to be ones needed to get through university and get that job. There are alternatives particularly at the university level. There are universities that teacher one subject at a time, for one month rather than the traditional semester system. Most of the local universities here in CA run on a quarter system (3 quarters make a normal school year) and thus students take 3-4 classes per quarter rather than 4-6 per semester.

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.

My pet peeve was our school organizer that was "recommended' the kids purchase in junior/high school. Until I got a good look at it.. It was the worst organizer EVER. Four times as big as needed, lots of junk on sidebars including ads, pages of extra information my kids never looked at. Hard to find the page for the current day/week. And since it was so big, a pain to bring everywhere and have available when you needed it. I don't know how anyone used that organizer effectively. Started buying my kids an inexpensive & plain planner instead.

One year I designed and produced a unique planner for my son for those very reasons and because there wasn't enough space to write the info they wanted written down. I printed it out and had it spiral bound at staples. I was going to market it to special Ed markets.

Such interesting replies!

I'm grappling (obsessing) w this issue right now. For my DS, the biggest hurdle isn't the organizational system per se, but how to teach him to remove assignments from the binder and place them wherever they go to be graded.

I know others have had the "completes but doesn't turn in" problem. Any advice? Because I'm not there to help in that (maddening) instance.

As for EF in general--I agree it's really important for any person to develop these skills to be functional. A psych I spoke with said that anxiety can elevate neurotransmitters (think: procrastination, working under deadline pressure), in effect the brain creates its own stimulant. But it comes at a great emotional cost and the product suffers. I see this in my own life--but with my son, anxiety tends to shut him down completely.

You can put it into the 504/IEP that he scan/email work immediately upon completion. A regular check of the online gradebook with counselor or special ed staff as backup. And possibly the accommodation that lateness not count against, though I have mixed feelings about that one.

If I understand correctly, Platypus101 was speaking of a child being denied access to higher level curriculum until EF skills are mastered, whereas DeeDee's child is subject accelerated in math and receives IEP/504 remediation/supports/accommodations for EF skills? Therefore it would seem that there is agreement in principle, that access to higher level curriculum ought not to be withheld until EF skills are mastered?

This ability to develop calls to mind ideas presented in Carol Dweck's book, mindset.

My DH has poor EF skills and it has hindered him in the workplace. He is by no means a failure, but with his IQ things could have gone better. Just being honest.


DH is ABD (all but dissertation) in his field (he left with a master's) due largely to this.

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.


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.

I think this is a difficult thing to predict. First, there is no evidence that executive functioning skills should be anything other than age appropriate regardless of IQ, there is no research that indicated that the two are correlated. Secondly, EF continues to develop well in to the twenties, as many of these skills deal with frontal lobe development. So unless you are comparing EF skills in the late twenties it is a pointless endeavor. Also, people often think of motivation as EF, maybe it is and maybe it is not, but a parent wanting a child to do something is not the same as a child wanting it themselves;).

Absolutely. My DS is extremely motivated…to learn more about Minecraft . School stuff? Not so much.

Try minecraft as a bribe: twenty minutes of homework earns him twenty minutes of minecraft...worked *great*'for us for violin practice!

This is me, too. Though it has worked out better for me in the workplace - external controls for task initiation and task completion, unlike academia....I still remember being so desperate in my first real job (doing real stuff as a lawyer that made a difference to people as opposed to being a research assistant at uni) I phoned my mom from my desk! She listened to me whine about how hopeless I was at the bureaucratic stuff and was sure to be transferred into the outbacks the told me "you know, this is stuff one can learn. And you will." Not she never contradicted my saying I was hopeless.

I manage to be good enough these days, but compensate a lot with sheer brilliance. Ahem.

Tigerle - my son needs to get more exercise, so he gets Minecraft time for swimming lengths.. so far it has worked very well