No Parent Left Behind column on organizing priorities

The Suburban News published this article in 2007

I can't organize my priorities
Many students who perform below their abilities do so because they cannot organize their priorities. I see students struggle to prioritize their daily assignments and their long term projects. They spend three hours working on a small writing assignment worth 25 points and then blow off the big 200 point paper we've been working on for a month. Before you bang your head-and your child's head- into a wall trying to explain why one course of action is more responsible than another, consider the most current brain research.
During adolescence, the brain undergoes its second major developmental spurt, and the development occurs from back to front. What this means is that the prefrontal cortex, the area that instructs us to delay gratification and consider consequences, is the last part of the brain to mature. This lack of good judgment may be one explanation why otherwise smart teens get themselves into trouble. Furthermore, because teens do not have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, they rely more on the amygdala which is the emotional center of the brain. This may be a reason teens are more impulsive and emotional than adults.
So when your child organizes his priorities in bizarre order, it may be because he is not able to determine importance and organize accordingly. If your child is not equipped to make good judgments, then it follows that he would be happy for you to help him, right? Wrong. Studies by Harvard neuropsychologist Deborah Urgelun-Todd found that young teens often mistake fearful expressions as anger, confusion or sadness. When a parent is exhibiting fear (which parents of teens exhibit a lot), the teen may incorrectly interpret that expression as hostile and turn on his defense mechanisms, usually anger or apathy.
So should we let our kids off the hook and blame biology? No, but knowing a child's biological limitations can help parents adjust how they deal with their kids when their grades suffer from the inability to prioritize. Parents can help their children manage their time by helping students start a point log. A point log should be located somewhere in the front of the notebook where it is easily accessible. As teachers pass out each assignment, students should write the name of the assignment and the total possible points for the assignment. Teachers correlate the difficulty of projects and the time they expect students to work on those projects with points. When students are working on various assignments in the evening, they can plan how much time they should allocate to their assignments based on the point values.
Caution: Do not ask your child to share what he earned on every assignment. Try to keep the focus off the grade. Focus on the success YOU are seeing in his attitude, his efforts, and his commitment to school, not the number of questions he got right on a test. The grades will come eventually. Be positive about the reading improvement you are seeing. Take every opportunity to give him a quick complement about his notebook or how you are so proud of the effort he has been making (even if it is slight at first). Your child will interpret any slightly negative gesture from you as nagging. He will think you are angry and then come up with a million reasons why he has made you angry. "No matter what I do, it isn't enough," is a comment I hear from a lot of my students about their parents. Those comments become great excuses to plunge back into apathy and stop trying at all.
Contact the teacher about his progress if you need to know numbers, but don't involve your child in that part of the communication. Let him come to you and show you his grades as they improve. If he thinks you are spying on him, he will think you don't trust him and you don't think he can do it on his own. Ask the teacher to email you with any positive feedback about your child's behavior in class or on assignments. When you get a good report from the teacher, then involve your child. Tell him she contacted you because she is proud of his progress and is excited to see him working so hard. The positive feedback will do much more good than the negative.