Everyone uses executive functions everyday for various reasons. Before going to bed each night, many adults set an alarm clock to 6:00am so that they wake up on time. This is an executive functioning skill. Children who are able to sit and listen to their teacher explain long division are using executive functioning. Even the teenager who gets broken up with by their boyfriend or girlfriend uses executive functions before choosing a new boyfriend or girlfriend in the future.
A general definition of Executive Functioning
So what is executive functioning? Executive Functioning (EF) is a series of skills that children and adults use to monitor, maintain, and/or change their behavior from a moment to moment basis to ensure they are behaving in an expected and acceptable manner. EF is considered an overall term with many small skills within it that are individually very important but not mutually exclusive.
The following list is a series of EF skills that focus on a person's ability to use different thought processes. These are important for adults as well as children to know how to perform.
Planning - the ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task. There is also a component or prioritizing what needs to be done and in what order.
Organization - the ability to design and maintain a system for keeping track of information or physical objects (e.g., books, papers, other materials).
Time management - the capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate time to different tasks, and how to stay within time limits or deadlines.
Working Memory - the ability to hold information in mind while performing complex tasks. It typically involves drawing on past learning or experience to apply to the current situation or experience.
Metacognition - the ability to stand back and take a birds-eye view of one's self in a situation. It focuses on the ability to say "how am I doing?" and "is what I'm doing working?"
In addition to using the above thought processes to think about what is occurring in our environment, we also have to use a series of behaviors that help guide us physically toward achieving a goal (short term goals or long term goals). The following is a list of specific EF skills that are behaviors known to improve goal achievement.
Response Inhibition - the capacity to think before you act. This ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows us the time to evaluated a situation and how our behavior might impact it.
Emotional Control - also referred to as self-regulation, is the ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behavior.
Sustained Attention - the capacity to attend to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue, or boredom.
Task Initiation - the ability to begin a task, without undue procrastination, in a timely fashion.
Flexibility - the ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes. It involves adaptability to changing situations or conditions.
Goal-Directed Persistence - the capacity or drive to follow through to the completion of a goal and not be put off by other demands or competing interests.
How do we learn EF skills?
So how can I help my child or student to improve their EF skills if I see they are struggling in the classroom or at home? It is important for you to know that the growth and development of EF skills progresses throughout childhood and into adulthood. Many scientists have estimated that woman's EF skills are not fully optimal until they are in their late teens. For men, they are thought to not have fully developed EF skills until they are in their middle to late twenties. This is because scientists have linked EF skill development with the growth of the Frontal Lobe, a large structure in the front part of the human brain. As a matter of fact, it is located directly behind the forehead of the skull. As this part of the brain develops and matures, so does the ability for the child to use the above EF skills in school, at home, while playing sports, hanging out with friends in the community, and eventually in their work place.
Model, Model, Model:
From an early age, the best way to help children learn EF skills is to MODEL, MODEL, MODEL. Often times I tell parents and teachers that they are the executive functioning for their child/students. That is to say it is the parents' and teachers' job to help young, young children to plan their day (e.g., nap time, bed time, meals), organize important materials (e.g., toys and homework), and remember important information (e.g., doctors appointments, the peer who they often do not get along with, etc). By doing this, the child begins to see the importance of these skills because it helps to create a predictable and generally safe environment.
As children get older, they can take on some of these responsibilities. For example, a three-year-old can be expected to remember they need shoes and socks on before they leave the house. They can also remember where their backpack goes when they come home from preschool. However, it is probably still wise to help your child remember they need to wear warm clothes on a cold day and lighter clothes on a hot day or what time they need to go to bed and what time they should get up in the morning.
Give Choices when appropriate:
As the opportunity presents itself, give your child choices. This is often something children strive for at preschool/early elementary age. This is actually a typical developmental stage for children. This is because they are struggling with the idea of feeling like they can and want do things on their own (autonomy) versus knowing they are a kid (cognitively and physically) which prevents them from doing some thing independently (inferiority). To help kids feel like they have control in their environment and what will happen next, offer choices. For example, when it's cold outside, lay out two or three clothing options that you find acceptable then ask your child to pick out one of the options. This way both your parental need of clothing your child appropriately is met and the child's personal needs for controlling different things in their world are met.
Routines:
Setting up a daily routine or set of routines is very important in the development of EF skills. Helping a child learn to do the same things, every day, will help them know exactly what they need to do to the point that they remember and won't need help with it anymore - increasing their independence.
For example, a morning routine may look like the following:
1. Wake up
2. Go to the bathroom
3. Brush teeth
4. Get dressed
5. Eat breakfast
6. Get backpack
7. Get in car and go to school
For example, an evening routine may look like the following:
1. Go upstairs
2. Brush Teeth/Go to the bathroom
3. Put on PJs
4. Lay down in bed
5. Read two books with mom/dad
6. Go to sleep
This very basic, simple list can be easily written out on a sheet of paper or white board for kids to see. It can also be represented by pictures for children who can't read yet.
Family/Classroom Meetings:
Often times, a family or classroom can be a very busy place. Many activities are going on on a daily basis, many feelings are occurring in the family or in the classroom for different reasons. With this in mind, having organized family or classroom meetings can be used to help people (particularly little people), to stay organized. Meetings can also help little children have a bigger voice amongst a crowd of people.
Great ways to initiate the start of meetings would include establishing rules for what meetings will look like:
1. One person talks at a time
2. Everyone has a chance to talk
3. Only supportive words, no put-downs
4. Meetings every sunday at 5pm
After establishing rules, have a few meetings where only the adult runs the meeting. Things to talk about can change week to week but can include any or all of the following topics. This list is not exhaustive!
1. Schedule for the week (e.g., sports/rec. events, field trip schedule, school tests or events).
2. Family Chores for the week.
3. Things happening in the house/classroom that are positive.
4. Things happening in the house/classroom that are negative.
5. Goals for improving the functioning of the household/classroom for the next week.
Once an adult has run a few meetings (1-3 meetings), let a child/student run the meeting. From there, allow children and adults in the family to rotate running the meetings. It will give everyone ownership of the meetings and make all parties involved feel like they are important. Checkout this website on positive discipline for more ideas, strategies, and testimonials about family meetings.
Give Access to Tools for Organization
There are numerous tools out there that help students/children to stay organized and focused while completing work or even doing leisure activities. These tools are important because they help children remain focused on their learning or actual activity rather than getting frustrated trying to find materials they need for a given activity or task. Below are some examples of tools for classrooms or at home:
2. Classroom calendar
3. Planners
4. Visual schedules for daily routines
5. Notebooks with dividers
6. Accordion Folders
7. Backpacks
8. Timers or clocks to ensure children can monitor time relative to progress
9. Space dedicated to learning, homework, and general work production (e.g., homework stations)
Learn to cook simple meals
Learning how to cook is a great exercise in EF. The act of cooking takes a variety of important mental processes including, but not limited to, planning the recipe, organizing and obtaining all the needed ingredients, following directions correctly, and noticing if you are being successful or things need to be different in order to be successful. Help your kids learn EF skills by starting with simple meals that don't take a microwave or oven - Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, custom trail mix. Move from there to supervised use of recipes requiring the microwave such as soup, popcorn, etc. See the link here to check out different recipes to try.