Our son started high school this fall. Always been a straight A student with no effort. He’s a deep thinker and can analyze issues and provide unique insights. He has a specific interest in behavioral economics – he listens to all the podcasts, has started reading Thaler’s work etc.
However, he is extremely disorganized. Has a mild case of ADHD though we haven’t tested as we fear the label. To give you an example, he can leave his bag behind at the gate and board a plane. He has lost countless items, can’t organize a workplan – really just so behind in one aspect of life and so much ahead in another.
Since he started high school, he has put in the work but he forgets to turn in his homework. So he has got a string of Fs and is hovering barely above a 3.5. He is a good at test taking and is pretty much a straight A student when you look at just that. His teachers are unforgiving and to some extent, we let him manage that. But it’s finally getting to him that he is not doing well and is affecting his confidence.
I doubt he will string together good grades. He probably would do well on the SAT/ACT. While it is too early to worry about any of this, I just think he’s not going to get into a college where he can meet his intellectual peers and grow from there. I feel like that’s such a disservice to his talents but I don’t know what I can do about it.
This is my DS. Low GPA almost solely due to flaking on homework. We had the whole neuropsych workup done, but it didn’t help much because he attended a parochial hs, so they weren’t required to provide any accommodations. We tried EF coaching, meds, close oversight, no oversight, nothing really helped. He’s having his best year yet, and we’re hopeful maturity is fueling that. He’s a senior now, with a 3.0 GPA and a 32 ACT, who wants to be an engineer no less. He has decent ECs and applied to a realistic list of schools, for the most part. We are confident he will have several choices. Not the most prestigious school for sure, but any of them will provide a good education. There are smart people at every institution; your son will find them!
Agree fully with the former post - get the diagnosis and help.
My son is extremely bright but had great difficulty with executive functioning. It was/is much more serious than your situation. Everything for him was a challenge, even with meds, accommodation, and therapy.
He had a LOT of trouble in high school, and yes it greatly affected his confidence. But he worked his way through it, and I’m glad to say he is now in grad school and doing well. It’s still not easy, but time has definitely helped.
My best advice, looking back, is to understand that he is facing challenges that other kids do not, and he needs your support. We questioned our son about things that I now regret very much. And when we talk about it now, I can tell it still hurts him very much that we often didn’t believe him. If I could do it over, I would make sure I backed him up more.
I agree, get him diagnosed (your general pedi can help you, and the school can do the psych testing for free, although they’re less likely to diagnose him than a private psych would), and get the accommodations in place. Things like permission to turn in work late (and you’re gonna have to help him keep organized on it), teachers giving him their notes for class lectures if he has trouble focusing long enough to take notes for 45 minutes straight, extra time on tests, selective seating in the front row, they all can help.
It sounds to me as if he’s got a wonderful early intense interest in an unusual field for mid teens - so encourage it! Have him take the free online courses in economics on the website modernstates, and the CLEP exams for them too (it’s all free). And if he exhausts that, then have him continue economics courses at your local college - many of them will allow high school students to take one course a semester for free. You think that the prodigy math geniuses at top IVY schools all were straight A students in English and History, too? It sounds as if your young man could be the kid who applies to top schools for economic theory, having already taken eight or more college level econ courses before even applying. They don’t get many like that. If his SAT scores are high, and his grades aren’t terrible, they’ll take him.
Be happy. He may have found his calling, and if this interest passes, I’m sure another will quickly take its place. Get him the support he needs, encourage him, and know that executive functioning in these kids improves with support structures (habits and routines and checklists) and with age, as the brain continues to mature into the early twenties.
I echo all the above. And would even challenge you – why fear the label? There really isn’t stigma, and I suspect you are already on the way to appreciating that it really is a learning difference, not disability.
In addition to testing and accommodation (and maybe meds) I strongly urge you to get executive functioning tutoring. My ADHD son had tutoring 3x a week in 9th grade, 2x a week in 10th, 1x in 11th and then none his senior year. You want your son to learn techniques for dealing with his ADHD in college and beyond, where there are fewer or no accomodations. Set him up to function without the supports – eventually!
My son had a low gpa that improved over time, and scored very high on the ACT. He wrote about his ADHD in his essay (in the context of his hard manual labor summer job). Because of his profile we applied to 4 reach schools, 2 match and 4 safeties. He got in everywhere but 2 reaches. I would not have believed this possible when he was in 9th grade.
Also, the testing will help you understand his difficulties. Otherwise it is all to easy to say “What do you MEAN you forgot to rewrite the paper???!!! How could you forget?” (are you incredibly lazy being the unspoken subtext). That is super damaging to bright kids who want to do well.
Finally, my son had a lot of physical symptoms related to his anxiety due to not doing well in school – migraines, stomach aches etc. Just something to keep in mind for your son.
Some tips like post it notes, various alarms to remind him. My D20 uses her smartphone for reminders- to schedule doing and turning in work. An executive function coach, even informal/free- to come up with calendar time management strategies is helpful.
Getting a part-time job helped my D20, though he may need to wait til spring or even summer once grades are back on track.
Never fear the label – remember that you’re labeling the PROBLEM, not the PERSON.
My DS is very much like yours, though he his labelled to the gills and, because of those labels, he has gotten tremendous support throughout his academic career. He’s currently a HS senior (3.5 wGPA and 1370 SAT) and has already received multiple acceptances and merit awards, something that never would have happened without the label (and subsequent support).
Often, the diagnosis is a relief! It helps to understand that this is not simply about trying harder and that it’s not about being “not smart.”
With the diagnosis comes strategies. Meds may be an option but your kid might be able to come up with ways to deal with this without them. (Mine did. His choice.) While it’s not a perfect analogy, it’s like telling someone they have diabetes. With that understanding, they can modify their diet. Some may need insulin but some may not. But they won’t be having doughnuts for breakfast!
Get him help sooner rather than later. I have ADD and executive dysfunction, which was undiagnosed until I had a breakdown my first year of college and failed a class my last quarter. My grandfather is a psychologist, so he tested me and has been treating me using neurofeedback. It’s been extremely effective and I’m so much happier with it instead of meds. I would highly recommend neurofeedback for treatment of ADHD - just make sure you visit a psychologist, not an occupational therapist, with several years of experience with neurofeedback.
Keep in mind that your son will need nudges and support in staying on track - that’s one thing that I try to get my family to help me with. I can focus better with the neurofeedback, but I have to work really hard to stay organized and on-track. It’s not one-and-done, you’ll need to check in with your son from time to time to catch anything he might be missing.
Remind him that things will get better. He’ll have bad days and good days, but things will get better, and he’ll learn how to manage his attentional issues. Ask him how you can best help him; he’ll appreciate it and will know that you are supportive. Also make sure to assure him that there’s nothing wrong with him - he just needs some extra support from time to time. Sometimes my mom makes my ADHD out to be a bad thing, and I don’t appreciate that because I know its not bad, it’s just something I have to work on managing.
@user_572388 They exist. We used one for a short time. I was impressed at first – it all sounds great and looks good on paper – but it didn’t seem to help my son, and it was crazy expensive, so we stopped.
@taverngirl Thanks for the response. I’m assuming they just teach motivational and organizational skills? Nothing that parents can’t help children to take initiative on?
Books by Dawson and Guare can show you how to approach improving EF skills.
3.5 is not “low gpa”. My middle son is a freshman as well and yes, middle school was easy for him and high school he has to put in effort and turn assignments in and he too has tanked his grades a bit. While scary for me knowing this will be part of his permanent record, he will have college options no matter what.
My oldest does have ADHD, lacking EF skills, social immaturity, and learning disabilities. We had his neuropsych testing repeated at age 17. He found it interesting to truly see how his brain works and how he will learn best. It made him feel less of a failure and more accepting that this was simply his own biologic makeup. He discovered he has to be taught in a certain way to best learn things thus he ended up at a tech school for college. They have small class sizes and his major will require lots of repetition and hands on learning which works great for him.
@user_572388 - Yes, parents can help, but often kids work better at this if someone else is in charge. Remember, the Resource Team at his school exists solely for the purpose of helping students master the skills that they need. Mom & Dad have a bazillion other items on their plates.
The only reason for getting a dx is if it gets him tools that help him get by in the near term.
Look at all the above stories, and realize that it’s not necessarily that there is something wrong our kids- a LOT of it is that we are trying to make everybody dance to a single tune- and that tune is not a natural one for adolescents.
Many of these ‘problems’ improve dramatically, or even resolve, with old-fashioned maturing- and from moving into arenas where success is measured differently than a school classroom, where the needs of the school system, not the needs of developing young adults, are paramount. The things that measure success in high school are often very narrow and incremental- and are not the same as those that measure success for adults.
With time, he will get better at some of the organizing and forgetting things- but, he will probably never be very good at them. It will just matter less as he charts his adult path. One of my collegekids* has known since she was pretty young that she needs to get herself to jobs that come with PAs asap
See if the two of you can team up to find ways to help him get through- and try and find places where he can be successful from time to time. It can be as small as working out that teacher X ‘gets’ him and that teacher Y gives fewer small daily assignments- and helping him get more of those teachers. Look for ways to work with hime (finding new checklist systems to help protect him from himself, etc), rather than you fighting with him to try to be something he isn’t. Knowing that YOU are on his side and see these HS hurdles as an arbitrary and tedious part of his world that have to be gotten through to get to the more fun part of college, not as things that are a meaningful judgement about him, can do wonders.
*who has left her suitcase behind at the gate not once, but twice. Btw, she thrived at a UK uni, where admissions is based on standardized tests (APs mostly) not GPAs, and where you only study the field you are interested in.
Its only going to get worse from here unless you step in and do something. As others said, get a professional neurospsych evaluation, followed by specific recommendations with an IEP.
Since your son is already in high school, trying to get accommodations for standardized testing (ACT, SAT) will be viewed with skepticism if done at the last minute. If you wait until 10/11th grade to ask for extra time/accommodations, you will likely be denied. So this is another reason to get started now.
There is a subforum here for LD/ADHD, definitely take a look
