What could we do during development to positively impact executive function skills?

EF skills must be taught, just like school subjects, and that changing the environment can make things easier for kids. How could adults help teach a weak executive skill while also adjusting routines, classrooms, or homework to better fit a child’s strengths and challenges?

How are your own executive skill strengths and weaknesses influencing the way you respond to your child's challenges and what is one thing you could do differently to better meet your child's needs?

What are some experiences you have had in which you used practical applications, positive reinforcement, and other motivational strategies with someone? Did it work? How can you improve?

Question:

How can you use the questionnaires provided in the chapter within your role at your job?

How can we transfer these strategies into the school building and our classrooms to best aid students in developing their EF skills?

What does the real world application of this look like in your schools? Discuss what strategies you use for prevention as well as intervention? What could you implement tomorrow that would be helpful?

Ellen Gilliland - when you breakdown tasks/goals - creating more opportunities to experience success and building confidence

We have weaknesses too - being honest with students about that

Need for parent education around EF

Understanding own EF helps better understand students

1. Adults can remember 4-5 items in their working memory at a time. This can be increased by chunking information.  However, children’s working memory is more limited. This skill has to be developed. 

2. Cueing works as a reminder and organizational tool.  However, don’t rely on a child’s statement that they have followed the cue. 

3. Making eye contact, minimizing distractions, having the child repeat back what is said, as well as teaching the child the concept of “offloading” - key ways to help build working memory in everyday situations. 

Question: 

How do working memory weaknesses impact a student’s ability to follow directions?  What role can school counselors (or other staff) play in supporting this executive skill?

Question: What games might be useful in supporting this skill in the classroom or school counseling setting?

Think of a child (or yourself) and some tasks that you do that are boring. What are some interventions that could be implemented easily and be the most useful in the classroom to help them (or you) increase the attention time limit? Or if you have seen success already, what did you implement to help?

2. “Name It to Tame It”  - The power of naming feelings and giving them the emotional language. Opening a dialogue. 

3. Intervention plans - Gather stakeholders and use the template to write out goals, design intervention, skill, procedures and incentives.

4. Be consistent and make sure you have a plan to follow up

How can you use the Name to Tame It strategy in your work?  What strategies are you already using to prompt emotional regulation and how could you build upon it?

• This helps them exercise executive skills (planning, goal-directed persistence, metacognition).

• We want them to eventually be able to apply this problem-solving approach independently.

• When children are consulted and viewed by their parents as collaborators in the process, they bring ideas that we have not considered.

Question:

How can we use these plans designed for parents and adapt them into tier 1, 2, or 3 instruction/intervention for students?

Question:

Are you a "go with the flow" type of person or do you constantly find yourself "thrown for a loop" (even in the most routine or over-planned moments)? If you can flow, what techniques can you share with those of us who get thrown? If you find yourself with little flow, what can you do to help yourself reframe in those moments?

Question: Who do you know who always underestimates the amount of work they have and the time it will take to complete and overestimates the time they have for preferred activities? What strategies have you tried or what new ideas do you have to put a plan in place to support a student who is a professional procrastinator?

1. Start small and set your child up for success. Parents can make simple environmental changes, use positive motivation, and scaffold tasks into manageable steps or games to support success without overwhelming their child.

   
   

2. Choose the right routine to tackle first. Focus on a daily problem that either causes the most stress or is small enough to allow for quick wins. Give your child a choice of what to tackle first and/or target a routine that will allow for shared responsibility of implementation.

   
   

3. Target key executive skills through routines. Identify the executive skills underlying your child’s challenges; improving one routine often strengthens multiple executive skills at the same time.

Question:

When we think about “doing the minimum necessary” to support children, where is the line between helping and over-supporting?

Question: How does school culture either support or hinder student organization? What barriers prevent us from implementing student organization consistently?

Question: How might challenges with planning and prioritizing be misinterpreted as lack of motivation or effort, and what practices can teachers use to better recognize and support students with executive functioning needs? What is one classroom routine, tool, or strategy you could implement to help students practice planning and prioritizing, and how might you measure whether it improves student independence?

2. If you’ve tried everything and exhausted all options with not much improvement, then what? Sometimes children have more challenging executive skill problems than parents are able to handle on their own. We can turn to licensed clinicians such as psychologists, social workers, or mental health counselors to help us. The title of the professional doesn’t matter as much as the orientation and scope of the clinician’s practice. They should use either a behavioral or cognitive-behavioral approach and be experienced in parent training. Those clinicians focus on identifying the specific environmental triggers (antecedents) that contribute to the problem behavior and the way the behavior is responded to (consequences) then help the parent alter the antecedents, consequences, or both.

3. Thoughts on Medication

Why? Stimulant medications help with ADHD by controlling symptoms and increasing time management and goal-directed persistence. Medications for anxiety can help with emotion control. Medication can help, but it should not be the first step or used alone because, when combined with psychosocial or behavioral interventions, dosages can often be reduced, and success rates are higher. 

When is medication warranted? Consider whether the attention disorder is: affecting the child’s ability to make/keep friends, affecting their self-esteem, affecting their ability to learn, affecting their overall emotional adjustment (when the amount of effort needed to make good grades is too much, stress, not sleeping, etc). Also consider the severity of the problem. 

Questions? 

1. When the executive functioning intervention isn’t producing improvement, what questions should we ask about the intervention itself (expectations, supports, motivators, consistency) before deciding that additional support (such as outside professionals or medication) may be necessary?

2. What are some ways to discuss the positive effects of medication with a parent? (ex: he raised his hand 4 times today vs. he’s acting better).

2. Executive skills are "situational." You cannot teach a student to be organized in a vacuum or during a summer workshop and expect it to stick months later in a different environment. Skills must be taught in the moment and in the specific context where they are needed (e.g., teaching locker organization at the locker). This can be worked on in school by providing explicit instruction in the moment that allows the student to practice the skill exactly when needed.

3. Homework is rarely just about the subject matter; it is a real test of task initiation, sustained attention, and working memory. When a student fails at homework, it’s often a breakdown of the process, not a lack of knowledge. Success requires a "School-to-Home" bridge. Using the book’s Homework Plan ensures that parents and teachers are speaking the same language and using the same tools to support the student’s underdeveloped skills.

4. The book moves beyond theory by providing concrete tools for the common challenging points in a student's life. High-level planning (like writing a research paper) is overwhelming for a student struggling with executive skills. We can use the book’s provided templates and rubrics for long-term projects and study habits to assist these students. These tools act as an "external brain," breaking down complex, multi-step tasks into manageable, bite-sized actions.

Discussion Questions

1. If we view executive function deficits as a skill deficit in the brain's management system, how does that change the way we handle 'laziness' or 'defiance' in our classrooms?

   
   

2. If we view middle school as the 'Perfect Storm' where demands increase while support decreases, what is one specific 'scaffold' or template from the book we can implement immediately to catch students before they fall?

1) Metacognition is the awareness that you have thoughts and that you can use those thoughts as tools to understand the world and yourself, solve problems, and make sense out of things.

2) In order to intervene with a student who is having difficulty with an aspect of their lives, it is important to establish a behavioral goal, develop interventions, and explicitly teach those interventions.

3) Students will need external supports such as cueing or checklists to help them improve their metacognitive skills to improve behaviors.

4)Students in middle school are developing new metacognitive skills and may have increased focus on conformity. Students have not yet realized that just because others CAN think about them doesn't mean that others ARE thinking about them. This can lead to lots of anxiety and feelings of self-consciousness in middle school (and beyond).

Discussion questions:

1) When a student is struggling with behavior or decision-making, how can we move beyond simply correcting the behavior to explicitly teaching the metacognitive strategies the student needs?

2) What external supports (such as checklists, prompts, visual cues, or reflection routines) could help middle school students build metacognitive awareness and reduce anxiety related to peer perceptions?

As educators, how can we help a child increase their goal-directed persistence in the school setting?

·  Many children struggle with time management because they underestimate time, procrastinate, or get distracted.

·  Children need explicit instruction and support to develop time awareness rather than being expected to learn it naturally.

·  Breaking large assignments into smaller steps with time limits helps children stay organized and avoid feeling overwhelmed.

·  Adults should provide external structure at first (reminders, planning help) and then gradually reduce support as the child becomes more independent.

·  Practice in everyday routines (homework time, chores, planning activities) helps strengthen time management skills.

Question: What are helpful strategies that school staff could use to help students make time more concrete?

1. Technology itself is not inherently good or bad.
Its effects on children depend largely on how it is used, how much time is spent using it, and what activities it replaces. The real concern is often the loss of time for sleep, physical activity, social interaction, and other important experiences.

2. Technology can interfere with parent–child interactions.
The chapter introduces the idea of “technoference,” where parents’ use of phones or devices disrupts interactions with their children. Children notice when attention shifts to a device, which can increase frustration, emotional reactivity, or disruptive behavior.

3. Technology affects lifestyle factors that influence executive skills.
Screen time can impact important areas linked to executive functioning, including:

• sleep quality

• physical activity

• nutrition

• social interactions

• participation in hobbies and hands-on learning

4. The biggest concern is time displacement.
Excessive technology use may reduce time spent on activities that build executive skills, such as physical play, real-life social interaction, exploration of interests, and focused schoolwork.

5. Parents should actively guide technology use.
The authors recommend educating children about digital media, monitoring online activity, discussing risks and benefits, and creating a family technology plan that sets clear expectations for when, where, and how technology is used.

Discussion Question

How can parents and educators balance the benefits of technology with the need to protect time for activities that support executive function development, such as sleep, physical activity, and face-to-face interaction?