Behavior and Lagging Skills

All kids with ADHD have some executive dysfunction, but not everyone with an executive-function deficit has ADHD (Russell Barkley, “ADHD: Executive Funtioning, Life Course Outcomes & Management”). However, almost every student with an executive-function deficit will exhibit some oppositional or defiant behaviors (Barkley).

When you think about it, it’s totally normal: humans are highly adaptive, and we’re going to try lots of ways to avoid doing things that are hard and frustrating. Ross Greene (Lost at School) describes this as:

“. . . demands being placed on a kid exceed his capacity to respond adaptively. Of course, that’s when all of us exhibit maladaptive behavior. The problem for kids with behavioral challenges (and those around them) is that they’re responding much more maladaptively than the rest of us, and much more often. You see, there’s a spectrum of things kids do when life’s demands exceed their capacity to respond adaptively. Some cry, or sulk, or pout, or whine, or withdraw—that would be the milder end of the spectrum. As we move toward the more difficult end of the spectrum, we find screaming, swearing, spitting, hitting, kicking, destroying property, lying, and truancy.”

• Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, novelty
• Difficulty shifting from original idea or solution/difficulty adapting to changes in plan or new rules/possibly perseverative or obsessive
• Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would require adjusting one’s plan of action
• Inflexible, inaccurate interpretations/cognitive distortions or biases (e.g., “Everyone’s out to get me,” “Nobody likes me,” “You always blame me,” “It’s not fair,” “I’m stupid,” “Things will never work out for me”)
• Difficulty attending to and/or accurately interpreting social cues/poor perception of social nuances Difficulty starting a conversation, entering groups, connecting with people/lacking other basic social skills
• Difficulty seeking attention in appropriate ways
• Difficulty appreciating how one’s behavior is affecting other people; often surprised by others’ responses to his/her behavior
• Difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person’s perspective or point of view
• Difficulty appreciating how one is coming across or being perceived by others

Kids do Well if They Can

“If you know what thinking skills a kid is lacking, you’ll be in a much better position to teach those skills. You’ll also be in a better position to anticipate the situations in which challenging behavior is most likely to occur. If you don’t know what skills a kid is lacking, they probably won’t get taught, it will be much harder to anticipate his worst moments, the kid’s challenges will linger (or get worse), and he will become increasingly frustrated, hopeless, and alienated, just as most of us would if we had a problem no one seemed able to understand and were being treated in a way that made the problem worse.” (Ross Greene, Lost at School)

Treated in a way that made the problem worse? Here Greene is referring to the common adult mis-perception that kids will do well “if they want to.” An assumption made by most teachers, parents and administrators at one time or another. In other words, he is not doing well because he “doesn’t want to.”

This common assumption (usually wrong) causes adults to believe that their strategy needs to be to make the kid want to do well. We then try to motivate him, give him incentives to do well, reward for good behavior and punish bad behavior.

By contrast, the “kids do well if they can” approach assumes our student knows right from wrong, is already motivated, and has had enough punishment. Instead he/she is lacking “thinking” or executive function skills, and our job becomes figuring out what skills he is lacking and teaching those skills.

Now go back up to the list of “challenging behaviors.” Those are the lagging skills we need to teach.