slow work completion at school

First, I am both a parent and a teacher. I truly wish I had known more about behavior management then because I enabled my son a whole bunch. (He was and is way more capable than I gave him credit as his ultimate protector.)

At this time, I’m dealing with trying to undo 15 years of behaviorist rewards that I did buy into as a mom. Be careful of rewards for anything other than very, very short-term use. As a teacher, I advocate that the reward is the work well done and the chance to relax at the end of the task. That is the real world approach—people have to get some work done before. That doesn’t mean I might not send a persistently off task student for a couple of laps around the hallway to clear the cobwebs, but no social time/recess until some small objective is accomplished. I might break it down into small tasks and provide a place with very tight supervision until *some* task is finished. Using a timer helps students gauge time.

Perfectionist or not, I’ll wager than your child knows he is not getting the work done and is serving his own agenda. Unless there is some kind of retardation, that is generally the case. Teachers didn’t get to the classroom without some training in breaking down assignments and giving careful directions. (Despite current public opinion.) All of us just want to serve our own purposes (agendas). Why should kids be any different? The alternative has to be a little uncomfortable otherwise we seem to be cozy doing what we want to do.

Boy, all I can tell you is that a “behavior mod” program very similar to this taught my older son with processing speed issues only one thing. That he would never again get to have recess. He knew he couldn’t complete the work in the time allotted, so simply gave up. As far as bringing work home is concerned, I bought into it for a while and tried to enfoce it at home. We ended up with 3 hour crying jags before touching a pencil to a paper.

He ended up in such a state of anxiety that he was having night terrors before I realized that the school doesn’t necessarily have all the answers and took him for an outside evaluation. I was smarter with my younger son, and took him for an outside eval BEFORE I added to his stress by pressuring him outside of school.

Perfectionistic tendencies can be just that or they can be perseverative behavior that is a sign of bigger underlying problems. I can’t urge you strongly enough to get a provate neuropsychological eval with someone with a really good reputation. In the mean time, I’d suggest asking the teacher to back off and accept what he CAN get done. When you know more about how he thinks and processes information you’ll be in a better position to figure out how to get him moving forward more effectively.

Karen

Hi Susan, I usually agree with what your posts and have learned a lot from reading them. But in this case, I have to disagree. There are certainly kids such as you describe. But there are also others, like my older son, where pressure is absolutely counter productive. Pressure got him in such a state of anxiety that we were asked by the school to have him tested to make sure he wasn’t having absence seizures. He wasn’t… he was simply overwhelmed.

And he’s certainly not retarded, his IQ is in the high-average range, but he’s NLD, and has extreme issues with processing speed. We’ve learned through the years (he’s now in 6th grade) that the more you push him, the more anxious he becomes and the less work he can complete. Do the counter-intuitive thing and take the pressure off, and he has the freedom to relax, take the ball and run with it.

Now we’ve found that my younger son, though not NLD, has an even larger gap between IQ and processing speed scores. He’s a different kid, and actually need a little more of a push than his older brother, but it needs to be a very careful push or he falls apart. We’ve had to put him on meds for anxiety for him to be able to handle school at all.

I know my kids aren’t “typical” (if they were, I probably wouldn’t hang out on these boards!) but I have to believe they aren’t the only kids with this profile. I just won’t be part of torturing my children emotionally again without having all the facts. (THEN if it turns out that they’re just slacking, I’ll sit on them harder than anyone else!)

Karen

I didn’t say pressure…I give as much time as it takes to do a simple, little task w/teacher present. It is called out lasting a behavior.

You have every right to disagree w/me. I would have disagreed w/me, too when my son was in school. I’m paying the price now. I was convinced then that he was being pressured and emotionally mauled by the school. He will openly admit now that he played me often and well. Time will tell for you, too.

A teacher can give time, time, time until the student decides to do the task assigned. This doesn’t have to involve pressure, in fact the more loving and empathetic one is, the better the result.

My gut feeling is that Karen R. is on track with the anxiety thing. He has had many evaluation tests both private (I paid for) and public school, both of abilities and achievement testing. He has always been about one year behind his age-peers, starting from the Batelle evaluations at age 3 1/2 (when he was scoring at about 18 months-age abilities) through the Peabody, WISC III and the WIAT. The WISC III, at age 6, all I recall is that the scores were so very staggered, with a score of 20 (yes twenty) in Language, and a score of 160 in Geometrics. The other scores were all over the place. The average was 92. The most recent test done was the WIAT, it showed his scores as grade equivalent at about Grade One, 5th month, reading comprehension, etc. I recall the private psychologist stating (when he was 5 1/2) that he was possibly NVLD, but the school does nothing with this “label”. I had to get him classified as SDD-to-OHI (Other Health Impaired) for him to get Resource Support Services.

I don’t believe he is manipulative. How could a baby be manipulative in being unable to hold it’s own bottle and lift it to his mouth? I don’t believe he was being manipulative in “refusing” to walk until he was 2 1/2 years old. He just could not. No muscle tone! I believe he was unwilling to “speak”, until he was exactly 3 years and 11 months old (his first words were “What’s that noise? It hurts my ears.”) because he wanted his words to be perfect –and they were!

I do believe his brain works in a circuitous route. There are no thinking short-cuts in his head. I do not know how to “speed it up” and the teachers do not either.

Same here: Dx of anxiety disorder, early childhood dx of developmental delay. Slow to learn anything. Also became learned helpless because no one gently and lovingly and firmly held him accountable for anything in school and I was primarily responsible.

No one can make this call (or many others) without knowing your child. I’m here to tell you another side to this story. Then you will make what you feel is the best decision for your child. I hope it is a better decision than many I made for my child. (Hindsight is always 20/20)

Something—even if small—has to get done in school or the child makes no progress. I don’t believe in sending stuff home besides family reading practice. I believe in making sure we have an assignment on the child’s independent level (that may be the missing part at your school), even if it is only one problem, and setting the goal to do that assignment. Then we celebrate the heck out of the achievement. This is where true self-esteem comes.

It isn’t mean and hateful, however, it does require that the student do an assignment at their independent level. It also requires that they work at something in guided practice and pay attention to modeling sessions.

Maybe you guys are visualizing the days when we were in school and the teacher intimidated you into getting busy. This should be very calm and non-threatening. Carefully planned. Lots of LD kids don’t get the cause & effect part of work completion.

I see too many LD kids drop out of high school. The averages are very high. Something different need be done at an earlier age when the stakes are low. We don’t always see the stakes as low—sometimes missing one or two recesses seems like the world’s end. I thought so, too. Thought it cruel and unusual punishment for this little guy who needed his recess so much. He ultimately caught on and worked it for all it was worth. We all do that.

As I said before, I realize that different children need different approaches. In my older son’s case, he definitely wasn’t “playing” anyone. He doesn’t have the cognitive ability to play games now, let alone as a first grader. Nor is it likely that a child could easily fake night terrors that leave him shaking and screaming in terror, and from which he can’t be woken up without putting him in the bathtub. (BTW, he wouldn’t even remember these in the morning) The night terrors disappeared when we and the school staff backed off.

Now in 6th grade, without pressure (or what ever term you want to give it) from me or the school staff, he is going in early for help, missing out on art, music and shop so that he can have those periods for academic support, and staying 4 days a week for afterschool “homework club” _all his own decision_. He’s working his butt off and at the time of supplementary mid-term reports last week, was earning a B or better in every (regular ed) class.

Could he be doing better if we pushed him harder? I somehow doubt it.

My only points were:

1. Children are not all alike
2. For SOME, pressure is counter productive
3. Learn all you can about what’s going on with your kid before deciding one way or the other.

Karen

You wrote about your child that: “[he] will spend a lot of time erasing his perceptions of “mistakes” so that no one can see the “wrong effort”. Erasing work that is not seen as perfect is a classic obsessive-compulsive disorder(OCD) behavior. Kids with this type of OCD will never finish their work no matter how much time they have. I agree with Karen this needs further investigation, possibly with a neurologist. OCD can result from strep infections (see work of Susan Swedo at the NIH) so one twin can have it and the other not. It can be addressed effectively through a combination of medication and cognitive behavior therapy.

I thank you both for your earnest and heartfelt responses. It is obvious to me that you both have experienced much in your parenting and teaching lives. I will reflect on your thoughts and hope to contribute to the best plan for his academic success. I will carefully consider both perspectives while planning with his teachers.

Hmm, wonder if that has anything (related) to do with my need to wash my hands 20 times a day?

This IEP seems pretty standard to me but I’m not impressed with it. To me, it skirts the issue rather than addresses it. If, as you say, your son is a perfectionist, the IEP seems to ignore that issue entirely. It assumes he can be induced to not be a perfectionist by stickers.

Perfectionism is a real thing. It isn’t addressed with stickers. (Does your son like stickers that much??) Telling him the time assumes he already knows how to gauge himself - that would be remarkable at his age. It assumes he can look at the clock - without being reminded to - and signal himself to pick up the pace… but the pace isn’t the problem, is it? It’s the perfectionism. How does he just cast perfectionism aside?

First graders often don’t know when they need help. They’re still learning that. This IEP assumes he already knows when he needs help and is only reluctant to ask. He should be offered help at this young age. At least for a while, he may need some one on one at school or home while he works. He needs a gentle voice dissuading him from the constant erasure that he does and assuring him that mistakes are ok. He needs someone to direct him to do the hard parts first, not last. But most of all he needs help and guidance away from his perfectionism which the IEP as written isn’t giving him.

Good luck

>> Something—even if small—has to get done in school or the child makes no progress. I don’t believe in sending stuff home besides family reading practice. I believe in making sure we have an assignment on the child’s independent level (that may be the missing part at your school), even if it is only one problem, and setting the goal to do that assignment. Then we celebrate the heck out of the achievement. This is where true self-esteem comes.

It isn’t mean and hateful, however, it does require that the student do an assignment at their independent level. It also requires that they work at something in guided practice and pay attention to modeling sessions.

Maybe you guys are visualizing the days when we were in school and the teacher intimidated you into getting busy. This should be very calm and non-threatening. Carefully planned. Lots of LD kids don’t get the cause & effect part of work completion. <<

But, Susan, you are assuming that all teachers are as insightful and experienced as you are. My son’s 4th grade teacher was much the way you sound. She could play him like a finely tuned violin. She knew just when to push and just when to back off. He made astounding progress in her class.

The year before, he was in the class of a kind teacher, who like me, got talked into believing that he was capable of doing work he clearly was not prepared to handle independently. (by a very poor SPED teacher whose contract was not renewed, funnily enough) We bought into “insisting” that he do this work, and turned him into an emotional basket case.

His 4th grade teacher was wise enough to guide _US_ through getting him back on track. That included a period of backing off to _below_ his capability level for long enough to prove to him that he _could_ do the work, then slowly increasing demands until he was working pretty consistently to the best of his abilities. I learned a great deal from her.

>> I see too many LD kids drop out of high school. The averages are very high. Something different need be done at an earlier age when the stakes are low. We don’t always see the stakes as low—sometimes missing one or two recesses seems like the world’s end. I thought so, too. Thought it cruel and unusual punishment for this little guy who needed his recess so much. He ultimately caught on and worked it for all it was worth. We all do that. <<

I would never have stepped in for one or two recesses. When I found out what was going on, my son had not been out to recess, nor had he had computer access in MONTHS. Clearly, this was not working as a motivator. He was simply a very sad little boy who had “adjusted” to the idea that he wasn’t ever going to get to go to recess. He didn’t even think of telling me about it, because he didn’t know this wasn’t OK. I found out about it from another source.

And interestingly, his 4th grade teacher didn’t keep him in ONCE all year. In her class, by mid-year, he was completing most non-coloring/cutting/pasting class work, and ALL homework almost independently. He never once missed a due date for a book report. Though this required some “project management” between the teacher and myself, he went from needing minute-by-minute hand holding for the first book report, to only needing reminders to get the work done toward the end of the year.

I’m not at all suggesting that bright LD children shouldn’t be taught to work, and work hard. I’m saying that SOME teachers (and I’m sure some parents as well) set the bar so high that the child learns to give up without trying. This is not the same as learned helplessness.

Incidentally, we requested this same gifted 4th grade teacher for our younger son. If anyone can teach him how to write, she can!

Karen

I think that’s the important thing. Just DO consider that there are a number of possible reasons for a problem, and a number of possible approacches to solve it. Make sure that you feel that you have the right answer for your particular child!

Karen

But also remember that perseverative tendencies can be seen in a lot of disorders without it being full-blown OCD too. My NLD son can be very perseverative at times, but he is not OCD.

Karen

I think you saw through the fog and got it. I know you are right about gauging time, as he does not yet know how to gauge the passage of time even while preparing himself for school. He has always asked me, daily, upon getting into the van, “Am I cooperating, mom?” with such sincere hope for approval, that I cannot even imagine him being devious/manipulative enough to think purposefully of avoiding the steps involved in getting ready. He just cannot keep them all in his head and go to the next one, no matter how many times I say it, remind, remind, say it again. I use a lot of two-step cues. He still struggles to stay on task.

I have spent so many homework hours telling him (and his twin) NOT to erase the mistakes, it is incredible. They will sneak the pages out, after they are done with me supervising them, and surreptitiously erase! Then giggle to each other, “I did it! I made it look neat!”

Regarding stickers: no, he doesn’t care, but he does like to earn the prizes which an accumulated sticker sheet gets him. I think he gets too many prizes. (One a week).

If anybody has any hints for modifying this behavior, let me in on the secret.

I was an ICU nurse for many years, it became an ingrained “habit”. Compulsive handwashing, that is! :)

School is a group process. School asks a diverse group of children to move in unison with each other.Some children, for whatever reasons, have trouble keeping pace with the group. Some move ahead, some fall behind.

Perfectionism doesn’t serve well in school as it slows down a child - who is yet expected to keep up with the group. Perfectionism is subject to the same methods of being modified as any other behavior. Can we eradicate the desire to do well? No, nor should we. Can we help the child to understand that doing well doesn’t mean being ‘perfect’? Sure.

That needs to be addressed by a caring teacher as well as by his caring parent. He needs to be helped to feel safe enough to not be ‘perfect’. He needs to be helped to understand that it’s ok not to be ‘perfect’ and that’s it’s ok to make mistakes. As a teacher, I’d start by letting him erase all he needs to and then when he’s feeling good, once, just once, I’d ask to see a paper without any erasures on it. Then I’d heap praise on the dear child and point out how much more time he has when he does not commit it to erasing and give him something very fun to do with that extra time.

But you are really saying several things in this post. You’re speaking to his perfectionism but also speaking to his inability to gauge time and to issues with staying on task. That is very different from perfectionism. They can co exist in the same child but they are different things entirely even though they produce the same result - he won’t get his work done on time with the rest of the group.
It’s a ‘double whammy’ so to speak.

The ability to stay on task is an internal thing. Stickers or prizes can’t really touch it. Stickers can’t activate a ‘stay on task’ button. If only it were that simple… Besides, it sounds as if your dear son would willingly stay on task if only he could.

We’re nto all ready to do the same things at the same time. I’d suggest getting hold of Dr. Mel Levine’s book called Educational Care. A bit dry, it can have good suggestions in there.

Some schools use the egg-timer approach to staying on task and sometimes it works well. You might try an egg timer at home for morning tasks just for a start and keep using it only if it causes no stress and helps to solve the problem.

Good luck.

I recommend buying a “Time-timer” —it is a timer that shows in red time remaining—in a visual way, so you don’t have to read the minutes. As time passes, the red area disappears. It comes in a small size and I found it effective with my child.

My son did this too—basically he was unable to produce work at the quality he wanted. I have seen this tendency disappear since we did Interactive Metronome. This program improved his small motor skills so that his handwriting is much more typical of kid’s his age.

Interstingly, it had no effect on his drawing ability. His therapist says that is connected to visualization with him. He still does the erase thing with drawing.

For my son, anyway, it was not anything like OCD but rather lack of skills and frustration with that.

It is very hard sometimes to sort out the reasons why kids do things.

Beth

Karen,

I have to strongly agree that a punitive approach is the wrong way to go with these kids.

My son is extremely motivated. He currently has a teacher who uses a punitive approach. He is quickly becoming a child who is somewhat less eager to please and to succeed. He is for the first time experiencing anxiety related to school which is unfortunate as he has shown much improvement in academic areas.

I believe maintaining a high level of expectation in the absence of punitive forms of discipline. This is especially true of children who are perfectionists and already apply substantial pressure on themselves.

For these children success is the best motivator. Punishment is the absolute opposite of success.

These also come in a large, classroom size that the teacher could use for everyone.

First, convince them that you won’t ask ‘em to do anything they can’t do.

That’s what I learned in my teenage years teaching kids to swim — that you could take forever getting past the fear. If you asked them to do pitifully easy things for the first couple of days, they came to trust you. By that second week, I could ask most of them to do the unthinkable — that back float.

IT works with teaching at school too.

It may horify some people, but I learned a LOT of what I know about kids by training many, many horses. You can’t MAKE a 1200 lb animal do anything he doesn’t want to do. Youve got to gain his trust and convince him that it’s his idea to work for you ;-)

Karen

Take a look at www.ascd.org/readingroom/edlead/0111/tannock.html IT looks at metacognitive strategies for teachers working with students with ADD/poor working memory/poor self-regulation including poor sense of time. It’s not about lowering expectations, it’s about a different type of teaching at school and at home for these kids.

Karen,

I learned this from dealing with adults. I think people think adults should be able to take critisism but they are worse than kids. When helping an adult modify they way they work you have to let them come up with the answers. You can’t just tell them they got it wrong. I think this is even easier with kids. They are so used to being told what to do that when someone actually asks their opinion about how they could improve a process, by asking probing questions, they feel important and jump right into it.

Adults are far more suspicous and resistant.

I have to think horses too, have less baggage than the average adult and are therefore more eager to accept change if approached in the right way.

The anxiety must be dealt with first or none of this behavior will go away. It interferes with planning - loosely described as the ability of a person to begin to work. Perseverative behavior can be the cause of this and, with preemies-at least the ones I’ve worked with - that can ring true. OCD tendencies and anxiety are a package deal.

I’m working with a child who’s a little older than “Involved’s” son, but he was also an identical twin born a little bit premature. In the past, I worked with another child with exactly the same profile except that this boy was VERY preemie. Both boys exhibit similar academic, social and motor features. In fact, I did a little research at one point on the learning difficulties of preemies and found a checklist that both boys fit to a tee.

Both have strong sensory integration difficulties. Academically, it’s evident in poor handwriting, but also poor planning (that’s why he can’t get the work done), poor sequencing, visual-motor difficulties (have you taken your son to a developmental optometrist? ABSOLUTELY do this) - eyes “bounce” all over the page making it hard to keep one’s place, and both boys also exhibit perseverative tendencies. Both are anxious. One races through work out of an anxiety that he won’t have the time to get it done, whereas the other puts it off out of an anxiety that he also won’t be able to get the work done. Neither seems to have any concept of time.

In working with each of these boys, one of the first things I’ve done is to make a daily planner for them. Because they’re older and have homework, I include all the time during their waking hours. They need to see a visual representation of time broken into chunks of, say, half hour intervals. I have plugged into those intervals the work that I’d like each child to do. I’ve also used a timer with the boy who has trouble getting started. I use an analog, as opposed to digital, kitchen timer so he can see the passage of time on it.

Both boys have great trouble writing. This involves lots of planning - putting the pencil down here, sliding it to here, picking it up, putting it down there, etc. Tons of planning. It involves fine motor control - not a quality known to be the forte of many premature kids. It involves sequencing - again often problematic in kids born premature. It involves being able to control one’s eyes, to have them relaxed enough to not be bouncing all over the page. That’s a lot of control that many kids who were premature struggle with. No wonder he’s afraid to begin!

How is his fine motor control? Does he press down hard and break the pencil tip? Does he write too lightly? Sensory integration issues here. You can buy, with some searching out, carpentry pencils that are round as opposed to rectangular. They rarely break their points and they write not too light nor too dark.

I THINK I understand what Susan Long’s driving at when she says not to pamper him but I also think that until certain of his tendencies are addressed professionally, you’ll get little work output from him no matter what kind of privileges are removed. I’ve worked with one of my boys for 5 years. He came into the first grade class happy and delighted to be in school but fell apart as the year went on and he was unable to meet the demands. It took much work, and lots of intervention and creative solutions to get him back to liking school.

The very worst thing for him, or any kid whose struggles include sensory integration difficulties, is to remove recess or any physical activity. In fact, just the opposite will help. He should be encouraged to move more frequently. He should have something like therapeutic putty to manipulate to stimulate him. Get the book “The Out-of Sync Child” by Carol Stock Kranowitz. Since so many premature kids fall into this category, it would be good for you to familiarize yourself as much as possible with the various interventions. I’ve seen very good results in quite a few kids who’ve worked with sensory integration experts. You mention OT but didn’t state if this was their expertise.

He certainly DOES need to be given very short tasks that he’s capable of doing so that he doesn’t get into a habit of not producing. The trick is to figure out exactly what he CAN do on his own and there’s the rub. If there are perseverative OCD issues (common among the preemie population), then nothing’s going to work till they’re addressed. He doesn’t like being this way.

Where do you get these? They’re exactly what I’d like to use. I recommended in my above post that an analog kitchen timer be used but this sounds much better. Parent/teacher stores?

YEs, these do sound better. The ticking of the regular kitchen type timers drive my “SI kid” nuts.

Karen

My daughter, also has global LD and I have followed this “slow work” post all the way through.

She makes excellent grades, but it takes a long time to get anything done. We have run the gamut of private intervention, including SI OT and I believe we are at “this is as good as it gets”. It is MUCH improved and I think most of the rest will have to be dealt with in accommodations.

Writing is the biggest problem. She has the form correct, beginning middle and ending, good lead in, etc., but just the bare minimum of words.

My problem is that she is such a perfectionist that, alth the teacher will say she can do only the “odd” or “even” numbers in math, she wants to bring her book home and do the rest as homework! Aaargh!

It’s her “own” standard, not anyone else’s. Any suggestions?

n/t

While this twin may have any number of neurological reasons why he can’t complete first grade work, take a look at
www.ascd.org/readingroom/edlead/0111/tannock.html This is an excellent description of children with working memory/slow processing problems and what to do in the classroom.

Thank you for this information, I did not know that such a product existed. I have purchased one and plan to teach the concept to my child before I send it to school. I have also contacted his teacher about doing that.

Thanks so much for the help!