I haven't read this book, but it comes highly recommended from pros I know. Thought it would be worth posting about. It's supposed to include practical interventions for high functioning kids who have executive function deficits. These deficits come along with ADHD and autism.
Executive Skills in Children and
Adolescents, by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare (The Guilford Press, 2003).
I haven't read this book, but it comes highly recommended from pros I know. Thought it would be worth posting about. It's supposed to include practical interventions for high functioning kids who have executive function deficits. These deficits come along with ADHD and autism.
Executive Skills in Children and
Adolescents, by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare (The Guilford Press, 2003).
What are Executive Function skills?????
The down and dirty:
*Planning and prioritizing
*Organization of materials and time management
*Following directions
Executive Function deficits become a huge disability for upper grade schoolers, middle school and high schoolers.
Interesting...
I've always had a problem with prioritizing things. I tend to do things like post on message boards when I should be working, or, as a child, read and write about my interests rather than class assignments. It got so bad that I failed out of high school as a teen, despite high aptitude (as indicated by SAT scores and such).
At work, I try to plan and design. I'm a software engineer, and as a group, we're supposed to do much up-front design, documentation, and specification, but usually we just end up with some crude documents that tend to become inaccurate as the software is actually written (due to unforeseen design or implementation issues), and no one seems to ever really want to ensure that the design, on paper, stays in line with the implementation. This is actually a big problem with the software industry as a whole and is why the deliver of software on time and on budget is still somewhat difficult to ensure.
My house is a often a big mess because I just can't stand "picking up" - I leave things out all the time, forgetting to put things away until 'clutter' has accumulated, at which point, I tend to procastinate about picking it up!
The girl's mom's like this too - she's even worse with the clutter and ornazation skills!
I can't make a bed very well, nor can I wrap a Christmas present, lol!
Oh, here;s one more :) - anyone watch Mark Burnett reality shoes (Survivor, the Apprentice, etc.)? They often have "challenges" on these shows - competitions where the teams square off against each other. The rules of the competitions are explained at the beginning, complete with visual aids, but I can NEVER understand the rules until the competition is well under way. I always wondered if I'm the only one that fails to comprehend the rules of these competition, or if that's just the nature of these shows!
OTOH- My comprehension of written language is very good. I'm self-taught software engineer - been doing it for 15 years and work for a huge corporation writing commercial software - but I never went to college for it - I just bought books and read them. I'm terrible at oral instruction, but give me a book and some time to process things, and I can work at a very high level.
Are these "executive functioning" problems? Thing is, I'm aware of these problems, and can actually perform if I really try - it ends up being more of a motivational thing, because I'm always drifting off towards my current interests, being pulled away from what I should be doing by what I want to be doing, and not dwelling on the consequences of my action (or lack of action).
Anyway, I'm not trying to make light of these problems - I really do sometimes wonder if I have some of these AD/HD/ASD traits, and the list posted above really seemed to clarify another trait, or set of traits, that I may in fact have - executive functioning. I always thought that had to do with buttoning shirts and such. Didn't realize the range of presentation of these defecits in older folks. Thanks, Karen!
Cool - thanks Karen. I probably would do that, except that I actually don't feel "impaired" by these traits and they are tolerated in the odd-ball universe of software engineering (and I'm afraid of taking medications). I feel that some of them are strengths, actually - being able to focus on one topic to the exclusion of almost everything else is useful when learning about a new subject. I'd guess that most of the engineers I work around share many of these traits.
I DEFINITELY could have benefitted from someone recognizing these traits in school, though - high school was a DISASTER for me, academically!
I think you're right, though - I once had a psychologist suggest that I might have AD/HD as I was picking their brain about some of the problems that I had as a child.
Interesting.