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 to Do?
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.
Supporting Executive Functions with Seeing My Time
Underachieving 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 Seeing My Time 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.
David Allen presents an awesome organizational system in this book. With just a little up-front effort, anyone really can become much more in control of his or her life. I wouldn’t say that GDT has changed my life, but I’m definitely less stressed now that I follow the system.The only problem is, Getting Things Done is terribly painful to read. The problem stems mainly from the fact that there are about fifty pages in the book that contain real information. The other two hundred pages are–no joke–almost word-for-word rehash of those fifty pages. If I had a dime for every time Allen wrote, “Your brain is like a computer. If you fill up its RAM with the things you have to do, you don’t get anything done,” I seriously would have recouped my investment in this book. I didn’t appreciate that I had to search through the entire book to find just a few pages of original wisdom.If you’re interested in this system–and, again, the system really is great–I recommend you check the book out at your local library. If you later feel as though you need the book as a reference, you can always buy it. And if you do read this book, don’t feel bad if you skip most of the introduction and all of the last section (which read almost like a fifty page ad for David Allen’s consulting services) and if you skim most of the rest. I promise: You’re not missing much.
Part of GTD is having a reliable reference system so you are comfortable putting things away and getting them off your mind. This is the place for things in your day that do not require immediate action but need to be kept and organized for future reference. TheBrain becomes your trusted source for any material or ideas you might call upon or need at a later date. You can drag and drop files and add ideas for future reference knowing you can activate them at any time when needed.