I have this kid...

In My Humble Opinion
21

The short version is that yes you would getting some professional input. (Although I would not suggest a child neurologist as first line, more like a child psychologist or neuropsychologist.)

What’s on the possibility list for that description with nothing else to go on?

Maybe he really can’t do better. Some kids have the social and verbal skills that make others think they are overall smarter than they are, but measured overall IQ is surprisingly lower than one would have thought.

Maybe he just does not care about school or academics. There certainly are kids who are smart and have focus but who are not interested in applying those smarts and focus on school subjects. When they care they do better. These kids are often accomplishing very interesting things on subjects outside of the class.

Of course ADD-I (Attention Deficit Disorder Inattentive predominant type) is on the list. Very high on the list. The sketch as presented is pretty much the classic presentation. As much as many kids are overlabelled as ADD many with ADD-I are never identified and just quietly fail. Teachers are pretty quick to identify the disruptive child as ADD, not the inattentive ones so well. They have no major issues with impulse control and do not act out. They are often often very creative and have great senses of humour. They have many strengths. But focus on any one subject for any length of time is not among them. They can even do fairly well in the lower grades if they are overall smart enough - using a third of their focus on the classwork at hand is enough - but they pretty quickly get to the point that they need to be using more of their focus on the single subject for a sustained time in order to not get lost when they get to middle school and beyond. Usually a parent can recognize a similar pattern in themselves or in one of their sibs.

Learning Disability, depression, drug use, frequent petit mal (absence) seizures … sure all part of the list of possibilities, even if the story as told so far does not suggest them to be very high on it.

Meanwhile the school skills focus should be on the skills and habits not the grades. He gets some token for having done some X amount of schoolwork per night whether it was assigned or not (not that much assigned then review or preview) and has to demonstrate evidence of having done it. Assignment book ideally signed off on by teacher and checked by you and him showing you where in his folder he has put the completed work. Many schools now have the assignments on line to. Tokens for those tasks too. Privileges such as electronic entertainment device time are earned with those tokens and the amount it takes is a negotiated contract.

22

What DSeid said.

This is exactly what my teachers always told my mom too. “Could do much better” was on every single report card. In my case it turned out to be ADD-I. I am/was pretty well socialized so I wasn’t too disruptive, but boy, I just have no executive function.

23

Just a reminder that sociable and engaging does not necessarily rule out depression. People who are depressed are sometimes extremely careful to hide their symptoms. I’ve had clinical depression nearly all my life, and I’ve still heard from others how happy-go-lucky I’ve seemed.

24

I did so bad in 7th grade my parents sent me to Catholic school for 8th because they thought I was undisciplined. I was soon asked to not return and performed only slightly less abysmally when I returned to public school for the second half of 8th grade. I kicked ass in high school.

Long and short I just didn’t give a rat’s ass about 7 & 8 (ages 12-13). I also don’t have very much memory from that part of my childhood. And I wasn’t doing any drugs. I am insane, however, and was probably just starting to “bloom” at about that age, so maybe I was depressed, or just really really unimpressed. How’s his relationship with mom? Sometimes kids get to thinking about stuff and it can really use up their runtime.

25

I was about to chime in with this thought. monstro beat me to it!

Here’s a wiki on that: Executive dysfunction.

(ETA: Not sure if this is a consideration for children. I was under the impression that it’s something that tends more to develop in older people.)

26

As others have alluded to, teachers often miss ADD in the quiet kids, as it falls beneath their radar of who is having difficulties. Without the hyperactivity factor, these kids just look quiet. Lots of ADD kids have no difficulties whatsoever as long as it’s something they’re engaged in, but give them something they aren’t at all interested in doing and their minds just wander away. Just like ordinary kids, but to an extreme degree. Monstro’s instruction lists are a very good and recommended way of helping ADDers through their chores.

ETA: Boy, did I post this too slowly! Five other people just said the same thing as this, only better!

27

Sounds like my teenaged son after he had a stroke, which affected his executive function. I would get to a neurologist and get his brain checked out.
On the other hand, he sounds like a lot of teen aged boys who don’t have brain tumors or Arterio-Venous Malformations or anything.

28

At least in Ohio, and I would imagine in other states, too, as a teacher you can’t technically mention ADD as a possible explanation or diagnosis to a parent. This is a big no no for the teacher to diagnose.

29

26 years ago I had young man as an employee (17 or 18) in my retail store. He was clean cut and affable and would work well if supervised, but if unsupervised or out of sight for just few minutes he would utterly zone out to the point you would go in the back and he would be standing there staring into space. He knew he had a problem and so did his parents.

I don’t recall what his diagnosis was, but it was mental/neurological issue it wasn’t drugs.

30

My son had similar behaviors at that age. Sweet, kind hearted kid, with great social skills and very bright, but if you put a book in his hand he just zoned out.

Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, Inattentive type. He flew under the radar because he didn’t act out, he just zoned out and quietly daydreamed.

We got him on a low dose ADD medication, and I realized that he was a kid that didn’t learn by reading textbooks, he learned by TACTILE methods.

We bought our son a simple cookbook, and ask him to make easy recipes for the family. It involved a degree of organization, following an ordered list step by step, and attending to the food as it was cooking. But it offered immediate gratification when he pulled a finished cake out of the oven.

And he learned that the most popular kid is the one who can whip up a tasty treat and serve it to his friends.

He struggled with many of his classes in high school. Some of his tests had to be modified for his ADD issues. But he got involved in band (was the band president in his senior year), and was VERY popular and well liked.

He’s almost 21 now. He is working full time, making $15 an hour at a manufacturing plant. He will be starting his college classes this spring, which he will be paying for with money he earned and saved. He studied hard and finally got his drivers license (after failing the written test the first 4 times). He saved up and bought his own motorcycle. He studied hard and became a certified life guard and worked at the Y for several years. He has moved out into an apartment with friends.

He still doesn’t like to read books for pleasure. And he still loves to cook.

31

So, people with the other type of ADHD, the inattentive type, are you really unable to account for why you’ve just been sitting there doing nothing like the OP’s son? If I spaced out, I could tell you what I’d been thinking about at the very least, or what I’d been distracted by/just had to do instead of what I was supposed to be doing. If he can’t account for the time (rather than just won’t) I’d be concerned about seizures too.

32

Executive dysfunction, likely clinical depression, is my extremely amateur diagnosis.

33

I have to say, your description of your son “losing time” to the extent that he doesn’t even realize you’ve been gone for an hour, is very concerning to me, and maybe I read too much Oliver Sacks but I heard “seizure disorder.”

Its a misconception that seizures always or usually involve collapsing and thrashing around.

34

But the episodes* appear *to not happen when he is otherwise engaged and interacting with his family … only when he is trying to focus on schoolwork or left alone. Partial seizures (absence or otherwise) being that selective yet frequent enough to interfere academically are hard to imagine.
Arrendajo, did you son have a sudden change from a different baseline?

35

If it were just laziness I’d attack that with the same state of mind. If he doesn’t finish something then extra work is assigned. It means babysitting what he does but if he’s truly lazy then the least amount of work is the work assigned up front.

If it’s not laziness then the coming years are going to be quite the eye opener when the teenage attitude settles in.

36

I could never (and still can’t) account for where the time goes, if I’ve spaced out. Not because I’ve thought of nothing, but because I’ve thought of four thousand things. No one was particularly dominant, and it would take half as much time to list them all. I’ve heard it once described as having a tv in your brain with the channel constantly changing, which resonated with me. You can flip channels for half an hour and never actually watch anything.

I don’t space as long as I did when I was young, but I’m in my thirties now and have a fully mature brain, so I can control it better.

37

My friend recommends this book Late, Lost, and Unprepared by Joyce Cooper-Kahn on helping children with executive functioning.

Even if he doesn’t have ADD, it’s a good start for discussing with him the steps which are required.

38

When I wool-gather, I don’t know where time goes. I don’t black out or anything, and I doubt this happens with the OP’s kid either. But I can easily lose track of time when I have brain fog. I don’t even have ADD (I do have some co-morbid conditions that have overlapping symptoms, though.)

I am betting it’s a combination of normal teenaged indifference and some neurological thingie. If he were an adult and his daydreaming kept him from getting to work on time, he’d no doubt be a little more concerned about it because his livelihood would be on the line. But cleaning one’s room doesn’t carry the same sense of urgency. So of course he’s going to be more vague when asked what happened. He’s also only 13-years-old. It took me a couple of years to be able to describe brain fog to my doctors, and I was a grown woman at the time.

39

Thanks for this book suggestion! I have a nine year old son who is similar to the OP’s in some ways, but not in others. He is, as monstro describes, a wool-gatherer (my husband is the same way, and has learned to compensate more as an adult). This book looks like it will be helpful. I’ve been reading this thread with great interest - I’ll probably ask his pediatrician about this at his next appointment.

40

Thank you all for your suggestions and words of support. I gave this some thought last night and read them again this morning.

To answer some of the questions you’ve asked:

Yes, I’ve tried lists of simple chores. List do work but I have to be there to supervise and remind. If the list is too long, he goes off track and time passes without the list being completed.

I’ve set time limits, eg. do X, Y, Z in the next 30 minutes. Then walk away and come back to not having it done about half the time and when it is done, it’s not done as well as it should be. (Note: I’m not talking military precision inspections… I’m talking, “You see that crumpled sheet of paper on you floor under the chair? You do? So why is it still there and why didn’t you see it when I asked you to clean your room?” Ans: “I dunno” <shrug>)

So lists help, time limits help, but not consistently over time.

Supervision helps but he’s 13 and should be completing these tasks on his own without me standing and pointing at every darn thing not done.

Someone asked about family issues. There are none to speak of. His mother and I separated and divorced ten years ago when he was only 3. He doesn’t even remember all of us living together. So to him, the two homes are an everyday normal thing. He has all the comforts he could possibly need or want at both places. We have 50/50 shared custody and the kids spend about 50% of the time with each of us in any given week. We only live two miles apart so shuttling them to&fro is minimally disruptive. I know that his mother has the same experience and frustration with him as I do, so it’s not a question which roof he happens to be under at that moment. He’s an equal opportunity slacker. :slight_smile:

Suggestions of ADD-I, ADD, executive dysfunction, minor seizure disorder and drug use are, I suppose, not completely out of the question. Though I feel like they become less and less likely as you go down the list. Again, not completely discounting them. Just making a gut judgement based on what I’ve experienced with him.

I actually did get that book, “Late, Lost and Unprepared”. When things began to get particularly bad in grade 7, we set him down and helped organize him with homework agenda habits, In folders, Out folders, where things go in the binder and how to quickly find them. It did help somewhat. He was even excited about using the same system again at the start of grade 8. But, as with most good study habits, it requires him to actually WRITE THINGS DOWN and DO THEM. Something he often fails to follow through on. So it all goes by the way side.

As someone just recently put it… it all seems like an extreme case of wool-gathering. Malingery. To a large extent, it’s probably to be expected of a 13 year old boy. I’m sure his body chemistry is all gone wild. But I see other kids his age seemingly better able to cope with the same challenges. Naturally I want to see my own son do just as well. I see that on some level he is aware of the issues and he does struggle to deal with them but then fail. It’s hard to watch and even harder to be at a loss as to how to help. So all this advice has given me something more to think about and consider in terms of the experiences you’ve described and where he happens to fall on the spectrum. I will regroup my thoughts and consult with behavior specialists and see where that takes us.

Thanks again, all.