In Attention and Executive Function
By Connie White
Children with executive function issues may have problems paying attention, organizing, planning and prioritizing tasks, switching focus, regulating emotions, understanding different points of view and self-monitoring. Three of the main areas of executive function are working memory, cognitive flexibility (also called flexible thinking), and inhibitory control (which includes self-control). (Team Understood, 2019)
- As parents, it is often difficult to know how to best help our children who struggle with these difficulties as related to school work. As a starting place, we must remember to allow our children to accomplish tasks on their own with as little help as possible. Being careful not to do too much or too little, but rather being gently supportive, will help them build and develop their executive function skills. We must model these skills, be attentive, and be prepared to intervene when frustration begins building. A few of my favorite suggestions are to:
- Create a regular place and procedure for doing homework that is clear from distractions.
- Teach children to create checklists and learn how to plan for upcoming tasks: What will it look like? What do I need to do? What materials do I need? Organizers are a great tool for this.
- Break larger tasks into smaller chunks. Encourage your child to follow harder activities with ones that are more interesting or rewarding to keep them engaged.
- Have your children practice difficult information through multiple modalities. This may include reading it, writing it, saying it, hearing it, and using gestures and movement.
- Encourage your child to create index cards and practice retrieval of essential information. It is also helpful to break worksheets into section blocks.
- Teach positive self-talk phrases and praise successful work efforts descriptively and sincerely. Consider calming manipulatives if needed. (such as fidget spinners)
- Decrease impulsivity by having your child mark out wrong answers instead of circling the correct answer.
- Encourage your child to use diagrams, models, and “notes” to complete their work. A concept map or graphic organizer will help your child understand how parts of a problem relate to the big picture.
- Ask your child to “do something” with the learned information or apply it to a real-world application.
- Show a completed example or model to provide greater understanding of the task.
- Use a timer and a beat-the-clock system to motivate completion of a reasonable task.
- Encourage students to check off completed items from the visual checklist.
Executive function issues are often inherited but as adults, we typically learn to manage ourselves. We establish external reminders such as phone or computer alarms, we count to ten when we are frustrated or we may set up automatic bill pay to help us remember to pay our bills on time. The good news is that since executive function strategies can be learned, approaches such as those listed above can and will help your child experience increased learning success.
