Teaching Your Child Executive Functioning Skills
Are you familiar with the term executive functioning? It is the “mental process that enablessomeone to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully” (Center on the Developing Child, 2012). As such, these skills are an important part of a child’s ability to listen to the teacher, follow directions, pay attention, and sit still during a lesson.
Sounds like a primer for school success, doesn’t it? Are you an organized individual? Do you plan well for on-time arrivals, for your various responsibilities, and for household tasks so that your children know what’s expected of them? Do you build margin into your day for those unexpected interruptions? Are you training your preschooler to follow 3-step directions? Have you instructed your children on their chores, so they need only a few reminders after much training? Do charts help with organizing these tasks? Do you have a specified place for bookbags and lunch or snack boxes? Do you have an established after school routine? You should not need to constantly give reminders once you establish and practice these procedures. But practice, you must, until habits are established.
I’ve heard parents marvel at Redeemer teachers, sharing complimentary comments related to routine, classroom systems, expectations, and orderliness. These comments can be traced back to the skill of the teachers as they train their students in the art of executive functioning. For example, as students come to morning assembly, they know what to expect, and it’s the same routine daily: pledges, singing, prayer. When finished, each class proceeds in a quiet line led by the teacher. Upon entering the classroom, each child has been trained to hang up his bookbag, sit down quietly and wait for instruction. School boxes are neatly positioned at the table where each student sits. The morning routine has been established by the teacher at the beginning of the year; the students know what to expect, and how to follow those procedures and appropriately respond. Raising a hand to speak provides an orderly learning environment and assures students of their turn. Snack time and closing routines are well-established at the onset of the new school-year and rather than needing to address these instructions daily, the teachers have spent days and perhaps weeks establishing these patterns so now, most students need little instruction on the routines. And consequently, their brains are free to learn – that’s key!
Do children come by routine and organizational skills naturally (this executive functioning thing)? No. They must be explicitly taught. Concisely, the key to success in executive functioning is being organized to carry out tasks. In the school setting, so much emphasis is placed on academics. But until systems and routines are put into place, a student spends brain power and energy on those basic organizational skills rather than on paying attention to the teacher’s instruction and teaching. Side note: when your child matriculates to another school, I hope you will ask your tour guide if their teachers teach executive functioning skills. They should applaud you.
Do some children seem to learn these executive functioning skills more easily and readily than others? Yes, but ALL children can be taught. It will take training, practice, persistence, patience, and consistency in your expectations, along with the investment of your TIME for success to happen. However, it is time well spent not just for teachers, but for parents, as well!
Next week, I will be addressing the skill of self-control as a foundational skill for teaching executive functioning. Please check it out.
