Sleep is critical for our executive functioning. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teenagers need between 9 and 10 hours of sleep a night. However in the foundation’s 2006 poll of over 1,500 6th through 12th graders and their parents, 45% of adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 were getting less than 8 hours of sleep per night. Getting enough sleep is vital because recent studies have linked sleep problems to obesity, aggressive behavior, learning and memory issues, as well as anxiety and depression.
Knowing adequate sleep is a huge part of executive dysfunction, I admit to being very excited when I discovered that a parent in one of my family coaching sessions was an M.D. who specializes in sleep disorders. I really wanted to pick his brain so I asked him, “What advice do you give to get a good night’s sleep?” He shook his head and said it is easier to tell you what not to do. He confirmed that the use of technology just before bedtime is a real source of sleep problems, but what he said next surprised me. Parents may be getting their children to bed on time only to have them awakened in the middle of the night by friends texting or calling on their cell phones! It is not like the old days when the family phone rang in the middle of the night and alerted the parents.
This is a big problem for some kids. The 2011 Sleep in America Poll discovered that 18% of teens, 13 to 18, are awakened by their cell phones at least a few nights a week. The doctors solution? Keep your teen’s cell phone at night. I would add that you should let your teen alert his or her friends that this is going to happen so friends learn it is pointless to try to call each other in the middle of the night. This is one of those times it’s definitely okay in my book to take some heat by setting boundaries for your child’s welfare.
At a recent group class an eighth-grader responded to the question, “What’s been working well?” He told us that going to bed earlier had helped. He said it was easier to get up and that his days are going better. That was an important insight for this young man. Help your children develop good sleep hygiene. Set bedtime for 9 hours. Stop screen time at least 30 minutes before lights out and snag those phones before they go to bed. Their executive functioning will improve.
Many of the parents who call me are concerned about their very bright child who is performing below expectations. These children have been identified through testing as being talented and gifted because of high test scores on standardized IQ measurements. There is often pain and frustration in the voices of these parents. Why is their exceptionally smart child not living up to his or her potential in school? These underachieving students are often labeled “unmotivated” and “lazy.”
I strongly identify with the children of these parents because I was one of those underachieving students. I too struggled with a lack of time awareness that affected my productivity. For most of my adult life I described myself as an underachieving procrastinator. That changed when I learned about the connection to my brain’s wiring and getting things done.
What is my first advice to these frustrated and concerned parents? Pause, and take a deep breath. There is hope! Next, stop thinking of your child as being unmotivated. Banish from your mind the connection between your child and the word lazy. Your child most likely has executive functioning deficits in the prefrontal cortex of their brain. This area of the brain, the front of our brain, is the last part of our brain to develop. In fact, it doesn’t become fully matured until somewhere between 25 and 30 years of age.
Under achieving children are suffering tremendous guilt and a low self esteem because of their struggles with getting things done. These negative emotions create barriers that can make it hard to get them to even try to use effective strategies to help themselves. They can hide behind a mask of bravado that looks like they don’t care about school or getting good grades. They may even loudly claim that they don’t need help.
To get past these self-imposed emotional barriers is the challenge that the Sklar Process™ takes on in the first couple of hours of the course. By providing information about the brain, executive functioning, and learning, you remove the guilt and open up the possibility of hope, of being able to successfully meet the expectations of those around you. With that lowering of defenses, then you can teach the effective external strategies that are needed to support the growing brain to get things done. Educating oneself about the brain and executive functions is the place to start changing your relationship with your struggling gifted child.
