Guilford Publications Smart But Scattered: The Revolutionary Executive Skills Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential

This book is recommended reading if you're struggling to achieve academic successes with your pre-adolescent. Usefully, it points out that any executive skill deficiencies your child might be experiencing are probably experienced by you as well and that gets rid of those uncomfortable feelings when you notice your child doing exactly the same dumb things you did and still do. For example, I used to be shy of asking for help and I was told by a teacher that he is too. The book spills over with advice, anecdotes, warm-hearted stories of overcoming executive skill deficit and is laid out a bit like a text book. It's a large format and resembles those for Dummies books except the cover isn't such a bright color. It scans a long period of childhood, 4 to 13 years old, but I didn't become aware of it until my DS was 10. It's very good on verbal scaffolding where you look at details which might seem trivial but if you explain slowly why we do things the way we do, kids will understand. I think this is an important book.

Haven't waded through it all because there's quite a lot to read.What is extremely useful is that it has questionnaires that elicit both the parent's and the child's cognitive strengths and weaknesses. And then individual chapters telling you how to develop those executive functions.Now I know why my daughter and I argue a lot. Our brains are wired differently, so skills that I could do with my eyes closed, she finds impossible and vice versa. If you suspect that you and/or your child are ADHD/Autistic, this book can help you.

I read only some pages and really liked it. Bought it for a parent because of her troubled daughter. Never had a feedback from the parent

The principles delivered in this book are good. However there is far too much waffle in my opinion. It's a hard slog to get through it all. The author's main points could easily have been covered in a book half the size.

An interesting read