Smart but Scattered Teens

The "Executive Skills" Program for Helping Teens Reach Their Potential

By: Richard Guare PhD, Peg Dawson EdD, Colin Guare

Narrated by: Abby Craden

Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

If you're the parent of a "smart but scattered" teen, trying to help him or her grow into a self-sufficient, responsible adult may feel like a never-ending battle. Now you have an alternative to micromanaging, cajoling, or ineffective punishments. This positive guide provides a science-based program for promoting teens' independence by building their executive skills - the fundamental brain-based abilities needed to get organized, stay focused, and control impulses and emotions.

Executive skills experts Drs. Richard Guare and Peg Dawson are joined by Colin Guare, a young adult who has successfully faced these issues himself. Learn step-by-step strategies to help your teen live up to his or her potential now and in the future - while making your relationship stronger.

Additional supporting documents for this title are available for download after purchase.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2012 Richard Guare, Peg Dawson, Colin Guare (P)2015 Audiobooks.com Publishing

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What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This does not translate well to audible. There are charts and questionnaires you don't get to complete.

Preferred reading for anyone dealing with teens

Great content. Good mix pf research, with good examples and concrete tips.

The speaker is a bit slow and that can get annoying. I listened the whole book on 1.25x.

Other than that, awesome read!

This book cured my insomnia!

I purchased this book as an audio book. The narrator has less personality than Siri.

Empowering information

I would recommend this book for any parent who wants to help their child develop strong executive skills - even if they aren't struggling. This work helps parents distinguish between motivation and the skills needed to carry out plans effectively and independently. The collaborative approach advocated is likely to reduce conflict and increase empathy. The only slight downside is that I found the voices of the parents and teens (as created by the narrator in the vignettes) to be somewhat stereotypical - and for a teen who is listening, that could be irritating.

Vocal Growl

What made the experience of listening to Smart but Scattered Teens the most enjoyable?

The information was fantastic.

What didn’t you like about Abby Craden’s performance?

Her vocal growl is very irritating it shows a laziness in her presentation it is there in the text throughout and especially when she is reading quotes which might not have been so bad. But the consistancy of the growl was just bothersome. She is a fine reader if she could just loose the growl.

Any additional comments?

The information and PDFs for this book are tremendously helpful. I highly recommend this book for all parents who see their child starting to have trouble in Junior High.

Helpful

Recognize my weakness are apart of my children's genetic make up.

The narrators voice is annoying and confrontational although the book is packed with wonderful material

A needed guide for Parents who deal with children with needs

It is an absolute must to have a printed book and a strongly recommend the Kindle App or device to follow a parent who has professional needs to listen to the book once and follow with the app. I plan to listen and do what is need a total of three times so that I may fully grasp and implement my assets and my deficits. It should be a must to have the audible app and kindle together for moderate to complex lifestyle changes that may forever change my parenting skill for the parent I have always wanted to be for me and my child. LW

Good source material for raising kids.

Our son has been given the term gifted after seeing a psychologist for over a year and his IQ is "north of 150" as she put it. But, as she also put it, "Gifted is not a gift".

While our son is a brilliant writer, actor, and person at the age of 13, he is also "scattered". Items forgotten at school, at home, what takes other kids 20 minutes may take our son 2 class periods. He is so brilliant to talk to that a fellow actor, who happens to be the husband of a local school principal and played our son's dad in "A Christmas Story", tried to "draft" our son to come to their school and was pretty agitated when we turned down the offer. He is so impressive, right up until it takes him all weekend to complete homework.

That is where this book comes in. Tips to help your child move faster, remember items, etc. The book covers a lot of issues, so not all will apply to your kid, but it was applicable enough to ours that I would recommend it.

Great information, wrong narrator

What did you like best about this story?

This is an excellent book for parents of teens with ADHD. It's especially useful for parents with ADHD to help their ADHD kids. Audiobooks work extremely well for many of us with ADHD.

Would you be willing to try another one of Abby Craden’s performances?

The narrator as the voice of an exasperated mom down, it would be fine for fiction but non-fiction needs a different narrator or at least tone down the growly vocal performance.

It's packed with good and helpful information

I struggled to finish the book. It its packed with information that for me personally would have been easier to follow with a physical book. I personally didn't like that the chapter's didn't have titles and while listening you become aware that the chapters are off... in audible a chapter 24 is really a chapter 21 in context to audio. making my note taking confusing. However it is packed with lots of interesting, good and helpful information that can help you and your teen.

Initially engaging but goes quickly downhill

For most people this may well be an interesting and useful guide - for me, a non-North American, both living with and having ADD in the family the book feels preachy - the tone of the writing felt patronising and the delivery was near robotic - again this is to my ears, others will probably enjoy Abby's performance.

The content seemed to be straight from the obvious end of the 'what should I do?' response list - it may help those completely overwhelmed or dumbfounded by encounters with those at the fringes of the neurodiversity bell curve, but the advice is so basic that I felt compelled to return this purchase for a refund.

There are better books out there which cover the same ground. The key takeaway from **any** of these should be that everyone is different and what works for one person / family / situation likely won't work for all others - teens (especially boys) are a challenge and all we can do is try to support them ad explain why they may be struggling in certain situations - add ADD or ADHD and it doesn't matter how motivational you may think you are being, only patience and learning how to help will really provide any long term benefits.