Jessica Blasik, M.S.Ed.
Lisa Pass, Ed.S., NCSP

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Understand some neurodevelopmental reasons why children and adolescents may struggle to stay organized
Identify some of the most common Executive
Functions and how they influence behavior
Determine you and your child’s EF strengths and weaknesses
Learn a problem solving technique to use to plan and implement your own behavioral interventions at home

Executive
Functions: mental processes that control and regulate behaviors and abilities
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Orchestra Conductor/CEO
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Organization
Planning
Initiation
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Shifting
Working Memory
Emotional Control
Self-Monitoring
Inhibition

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Neuronal pruning (decrease in gray matter) occurs as brain becomes more “hard wired”
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White matter increases as associations are made throughout the brain
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Skills and behaviors practiced consistently during late childhood and early adolescence have a higher probability of being hard-wired into the adult brain

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Some evidence that gifted children have larger parietal and frontal lobe areas
 fMRI studies indicate that gifted children may have more efficient connections between frontal lobes and other areas of the brain (including emotion centers)
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More widely spread activation when problem solving

Brain activation in gifted (a) and non-gifted (b) students
Mental rotation task

Asynchronous
Development: uneven intellectual, physical, and emotional development.
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Most noticeable in individuals with higher IQs.
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Some cognitive abilities may be much more developed than others
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Executive Functions normally develop at different times, so may appear asynchronous

-“My teachers saw me at once backward and precocious, reading books beyond my years and yet at the bottom of the Form. Winston Churchill
-“The servants all thought that young
Isaac was foolish, and his mother did not know what to do with him…”
-“I used to take these maths tests which were supposed to be done in one period and it took me not just that period but the next one, which was a play period and sometimes the one beyond that…”
Roger Penrose, Cambridge Math
Professor
From Isaac Newton, The Greatest
Scientist of All Time

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Complete the Executive Function Parent and
Student Questionnaire
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Score Each Section
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Higher scores indicate particular strengths, low scores weaknesses
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Write down the three highest and three lowest scores to get a “profile”

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Were there any surprises, either for your profile or your child’s?
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Were your profile and your child’s profile the same, or different?
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How might the differences or similarities between your profiles effect how you work with your child?

How do these profiles effect family functioning?
Let’s take a lesson from the Hecks

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When your strengths are your child’s weaknesses
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Collaborate with child to get buy-in
Be creative in using your strengths to enhance their skills
Make a point to identify where you are weak and your child is strong to maintain morale
When needed, lend them your strengths

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When your weaknesses are similar to your child’s weaknesses
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Collaborate with your child
Brainstorm solutions together
Share stories from your past as lessons
Get others to help

Executive
Functions: mental processes that control and regulate behaviors and abilities
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Self-Monitoring
Organization
Initiation
Shifting
Planning

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Recognizing what is going on inside one’s own mind, body, environment, relationships.
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Involves self monitoring and metacognition related to:
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 tasks and environment interpersonal awareness own performance

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What adults can do to help
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Align external demands with internal desires
Set small, attainable goals for each activity, task, or class
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Student based suggestions
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Have your child learn to check in with him/herself by asking: What am I doing right now? What am I supposed to be doing right now?

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The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials
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Examples
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Cleaning room
Keeping binders neat and organized
Organizing thoughts onto paper
Keeping track of assignments
Taking effective notes

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Strategies for Keeping Things Tidy
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Use a bin system or folder system
Take a picture of what “clean” looks like
Break down into manageable, small steps
Getting Thoughts on Paper
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Cognitive Mapping
Keeping a daily and weekly planner
What Parents Can Do
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Collaborate with students when developing a strategy
Be flexible and ready to brainstorm
Make it fun, whenever possible
Prepare to choose your battles

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“Constantly late for school, losing his books, and papers and various other things into which I need not enter– he is so regular in his irregularity in every way that I don’t know what to do.”
Winston Churchill’s Principal

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The ability to begin a task or activity and to independently generate ideas, responses, or problem solving strategies
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Getting going, getting started on tasks
Knowing where to begin, what to do, who to ask
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This is NOT non-compliance or disinterest in the task, its not knowing where to start

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What adults can do to help
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Additional verbal and visual prompts
Demonstrate the first problem of a work sheet
Break tasks down step-by-step to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed
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Write them down on index cards or in a notebook
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Student based suggestions
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Have your child create “to do” lists or create
“cookbook” with lists of steps for each activity
Organizing thoughts before beginning an activity

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The ability to move freely from one situation, activity, or aspect of a problem to another, in reaction to internal or external cues
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Making transitions
Tolerating change
Flexible problem solving
Switching or alternating attention
Change focus from one topic to another

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What adults can do to help
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Consistent routines, schedules, and activities
Make minor changes and help your child respond
Use visual organizers and planners to represent the sequence of events throughout the day
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Student based suggestions
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Slightly alter the order of everyday activities
Working with two or three familiar activities and alternate them
Practice solving problems in different ways

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The ability to manage future oriented tasks
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Anticipation of future events
Setting goals
Developing appropriate sequential steps ahead of time
Determining the most effective method or steps to reach a goal
Keeping track of time and steps to complete tasks and reach goals

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What adults can do to help
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Have binder with steps for activities, assignments, tasks
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Ask questions like: how long do you think this will take you to finish?
Demonstrate ways to plan
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Discuss plans for the day; think out loud and model planning with multiple steps
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Student based suggestions
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Practice setting a goal and lay out steps to reach the goal
Involve your child in planning events, such as birthday parties, cooking dinner, or scheduling activities

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Teach deficient skills rather than assuming they’ll develop naturally
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Consider developmental level in your plan
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Use your child’s innate drive for mastery and control
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Over-ride the desire to quit
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Celebrate successes!
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Take a deep breath: stress decreases frontal lobe activity

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Identify a problem behavior
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Set an overall goal and several smaller benchmark goals
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Outline steps needed to reach the goal
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Turn steps into a list, a checklist, or short set of rules
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Supervise and Reward
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Fade Supervision and reward

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Well thought out rewards have an energizing effect on behavior
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Not a bribe, but a way to help a child gain motivation when it is not yet internal
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Not meant to be permanent
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Should be collaborative with child, and open to adjustment throughout
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Can be tangible, or intangible
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Needs to be consistent

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Problem solving practice in groups
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Re-watch the Hecks, choose one character, and take 5 minutes to use the problem solving model on the worksheet to define the problem

Books
Late, Lost, and Unprepared by Joyce Cooper-Kahn & Laurie Dietzel
Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson & Richard Guare
The Organized Student: Teaching Children the Skills for Success in School and Beyond by D. Goldberg
Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties by G. McClosky, L.
Perkins, & B. Van Divner
Websites
LDonline.org
http://www.ldinfo.com/executive_functioning.htm
InterventionCentral.com