Youngsters with weak task initiation also often have weak sustained attention—not only are they slow to get started on homework, they also are likely to quit before it’s done. These children generally have weak goal-directed persistence. However, we’ve found that if goal-directed persistence is a relative strength, we can encourage the child to use that skill to override his weaknesses in task initiation and sustained attention. These are the kids we can spur on to get their homework handed in consistently if we tell them that they can earn points for handing in homework on time and, once they have enough points, they can buy that video game they’ve been hounding us about.
Peg Dawson and Richard Guare in Smart but Scattered