Unlock Your Brain’s Full Potential: The Surprising Truth about Learning Executive Function Skills
Importance of Executive Function Skills:
Executive function is responsible for impulse control, working memory, and the cognitive processes involved in planning and decision-making. Executive function is necessary in every aspect of life, although deficits in executive function skills may be the most prevalent in one area of your child’s life. In school, children who lack executive function skills may collect missing assignments, misunderstand instructions, get detention regularly, or perform poorly on tests. In social settings, a lack of executive function skills often presents as interrupting others frequently, being insensitive to other’s feelings, holding inflexible viewpoints, or missing scheduled plans.
For your child to succeed academically, socially, and in their future careers, they must develop executive functioning. The good news is that no one is born with executive function skills. Executive functioning is developed in childhood and adolescence, and research shows that there are proven methods to develop these skills.
Improving Executive Function Skills:
Add structure: Incorporate structure into your child’s life through sports, organized activities, routines, and reminders. While your child is doing homework, try setting timers to help them learn to work for 20 minutes at a time, then take a 5-minute break. Your child may also need accountability to ensure they get back on track after their 5-minute break, even if they’ve set a timer for themselves.
Establish consistent routines: Help your child set morning, after-school, and nightly routines incorporating planning, organization, exercise, and sleep. Routines provide predictability and repetition, giving your child more free time and reducing overall stress. If your child struggles to stick to their routines, try making a physical list they can follow until they’ve got it down.
Plan ahead: Help your kids plan out their week, taking into account school work, extracurricular activities, and personal time. This helps your child learn to manage their time and learn how to adjust their plans when necessary. We recommend sitting down with your child every Sunday to help them anticipate family and social events, extracurricular activities, school assignments, and upcoming tests and projects for the week.
Break down large tasks: Understanding what it means to “finish the science project” requires breaking down the project into each individual step, knowing how to complete each step, when to complete each step, and how long each step will take. After breaking down the task with your child, help them incorporate the steps into their weekly plan.
Provide accountability: When your child gets distracted, help them get back on track. Encourage them to take responsibility for their actions and offer constructive feedback while empathizing with their struggles.
Model good behavior: Children learn by observing the behavior of those around them. By maintaining healthy routines, such as a balanced diet, adequate sleep, and focused workspaces, you can help your student do the same.
Conclusion:
In the short term, developing executive function skills will help your child create strong social connections, do well in school, and make the varsity sports team. In the long term, your child will need these skills to save for a house, start a business, or get a job promotion. Just like other life skills, executive functioning takes time to improve. Your child’s growth will not be linear, which sometimes can be frustrating. Finally, many children respond to coaching differently from a mentor rather than a parent. Please get in touch with Untapped Learning with any questions about how to support your child best.
At Untapped, we help students develop executive function skills and help them reach their goals. Visit https://untappedlearning.com to learn how we can help your student.
For More:
