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I get calls all the time from parents with children who are very intelligent, but who are “not living up to their potential.” These young people (and their parents) have been chastised for years by teachers: “You’re so smart, we know you can do the work if you’ll just try harder, you should be at the top of your class.”

“We’ve tried everything,” they tell me. “We’ve taken every fun thing we can think of away from him; his bedroom is basically just a bed and a bureau at this point.” But still, nothing has worked.

Why? Because doing well in school doesn’t only require intelligence. In fact, it doesn’t even mainly require intelligence. For most of a child’s schooling, executive functioning skills matter more than intelligence.

What are executive functions? They are like the brain’s secretarial skills; they help us plan a project, organize our materials, and see the big picture; they help us get started on the work when it’s time to begin, and sustain our attention when things get tedious. There are many different executive functions, and a person may be highly intelligent, but have below-average executive skills, or even have a disorder of executive functioning.

Let’s say your intelligent child has poor executive functioning. I’ll bet he has a low homework average. Most middle and high school teachers don’t grade homework on content; it’s not how well you did it, it’s your ability to do it in a reasonably neat, legible fashion, on time, and then be able to find it again when it’s time to hand it in that matters. Oh, it also helps if you are able to persist at a boring and unrewarding task.

Okay, well, what about tests? Intelligence should really count there, right? Well, this is where high-intelligence, low-executive-functioning kids do tend to bring their grades up a bit. But tests take executive functioning, too. A lot of it. First you have to remember that you have the test so that you remember to study. Then you have to know how to study. You have to have a study plan, and follow through with that plan. Then, during the test, you need to read the directions carefully, sustain your best attention and focus, and remember to check your work for careless mistakes. All of these are executive functions. What’s more, they’re all different executive functions. Your child could have done really well at six of them, but got a C on the test because he struggled with just one of them.

Well, how about class participation? My brilliant kid just has to be a better contributor to class discussions than Mr. Organization in the next chair, right? Well, at 4:00 p.m. in my office I will really enjoy talking to him, but in that 8:00 a.m. world history class he is half asleep because he was up until midnight last night trying to finish a paper he forgot about until the last minute, or even just because he can never fall asleep before midnight no matter how tired he is. (Executive functioning disorders are highly correlated with sleep disorders. So is being a teenager.) Nothing says “bring my class participation grade down 5 points” to a teacher like that jolt awake your kid keeps doing every time his head drops into sleep.

“What’s wrong with our schools?” you may well ask. “Shouldn’t intelligence matter more than organizing your binder?” Well, school is preparation for adult life, and the truth is, adult life requires executive functioning. Kids with low executive functioning are the least prepared for life; they become adults who let unopened mail pile up, who are always late to everything, who miss important deadlines at work, and drive their spouses crazy. They are less likely to finish college and more likely to divorce. There are a host of other bad outcomes they are more likely to find themselves in, too, but in the interest of keeping you from jumping off the parental cliff, suffice it to say your child’s poor grades are a warning sign. He isn’t just losing at a game not worth playing.

What is to be done? Don’t throw your hands up yet. Luckily, executive functions can be learned. They are habits, and as any New Year’s resolver can attest, habits aren’t easy to change, but with determination and guidance, these students can learn the habits of successful students, improving their grades and their self-esteem in the process.

That’s where I come in. I coach kids like this and help them to understand their executive functioning profile, implement new and better systems for school success, and maintain these systems until they become habit.