The Dysfunctional Executive
Dear Doctor,
We have a sixth grade boy who can’t keep up with anything.
He is very smart, but he loses his homework, can’t find assignments he has completed, forgets to look in his back pack, and is always getting notes sent home about work he hasn’t completed.
He loves to read and will stay up all night, if we let him, with a book. We do not know what to do for him. The school does not think anything is wrong but that he is just lazy, and we should be firm with him.
Trying
Dear Trying,
Your son is not lazy. He will not prosper from "firm" treatment.
He has a problem, some of which is not of his making. Presently, we refer to such children as having an "executive dysfunction."
Terms have come and gone, but this is the current one, and I think it will be with us for a while. It means that the very highest centers of the brain, usually the prefrontal lobes, are not helping, just yet, with such tasks as organizing, prioritizing, and having the more complex aspects of memory work.
Attention problems also come under the larger concept of executive dysfunction. The schools, in my opinion, probably contribute to the problem. They do so because the current passion in education is on projects and group work. For many kids this is great.
For others it does not provide what a youngster needs, namely considerable teacher guidance and teaching and reteaching strategies for organization. Often the task gets passed on to parents, and they become homework police and part time planners. Pressure from both school and home more often results in what seems like resistance.
It is usually, at the beginning, simply being overwhelmed. Start by having an evaluation. Chances are your son is bright, maybe very bright, but he is organized like a wind in Kansas. He needs strategies and structures. The school needs to make this his primary curriculum.
One cannot learn anything if one cannot have the basic discipline of intellectual organization. I recommend a book. Dr. Mel Levine’s "The Myth of Laziness" will bring your son to mind. Also, do a search for "executive dysfunction."
The reading will help up understand. This is only a start. The problem does not go away simply by giving it a name.
Tags: attention problems, executive dysfunction, the myth of laziness
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