Our younger son is having a lot of trouble getting assignments done this semester. He’s in a program that requires plenty of papers, and several have been late. He also forgot to make up a test that happened when he was absent. I know there’s a tendency to slap a " disorder" diagnosis when a kid is having problems with school. However, he had some of the same issues in middle school and was able to work around them. Also, one of the possible symptoms is having trouble telling stories; he’s actually off the charts good at that.
My instinct tells me that it’s something to keep an eye on the first half of his sophomore year. If the problems persist, we may need to think about testing.
There was a lot less work, so it caused less of a problem. His grades were good enough that the occasional missed assignment could usually be absorbed. The program he’s in now has a ton of papers and projects. It’s a lot for someone who admittedly has never liked school very much. He’s giving it one semester next year and dropping out of that program if it’s too much. He definitely won’t be the only one if he does. He’s staying in because they do a lot of things he finds interesting (a documentary competition, for one thing; kids from this program have won a lot of national awards in the competition.)
Any tutors around who can work not on the material but on organizational strategies?
The concept is, for example, to teach how to break the big papers and projects into their bite sized pieces, realistically estimating how much time each bite sized bit will take, and how to place them on a reasonable timeline along with other obligations that leaves room for unforeseen problems.