Executive Functioning

Executive Function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. The brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses.
(Harvard University – Center for the Developing Child).

Executive Functioning Video

Strategies

• Take step-by-step approaches to work; rely on visual organizational aids.
• Use tools such as time organizers, computers or watches with alarms.
• Prepare visual schedules and review them several times a day.
• Ask for written directions with oral instructions whenever possible.
• Plan and structure transition times and shifts in activities.
• Model Higher Thinking Skills – judgment, prioritizing, setting goals, providing self-feedback

Managing time

• Create checklists and “to do” lists, estimating how long tasks will take.
• Break long assignments into chunks and assign time frames for completing each chunk.
• Use visual calendars to keep track of long term assignments, due dates, chores, and activities.
• Use time management software and apps.
• Be sure to write the due date on top of each assignment.

Managing space and materials

• Organize work space.
• Minimize clutter.
• Consider having separate work areas with complete sets of supplies for different activities.
• Schedule a weekly time to clean and organize the work space.

Managing work

• Make a checklist for getting through assignments. For example, a student’s checklist could include such items as: get out pencil and paper; put name on paper; put due date on paper; read directions; etc.
• Meet with a teacher or supervisor on a regular basis to review work; troubleshoot problems.

  More executive functioning strategies you can implement at home:
  Executive Function Strategies for Kids | Understood – For learning and thinking differences
  7 Ways to Teach Your Middle School Child Organization Skills | Understood – For learning and thinking differences

Resources and Additional Resources 

• Harvard University – Center for the Developing Child
• • Helping Children with Executive Functioning Problems to Manage Physical Impulsiveness
  • Helping Children with Executive Functioning Problems Stop Irritating Behavior
  • Helping Children with Executive Functioning Problems Turn In Their Homework
  • LDonline.org – What is Executive Functioning?
    For strategies to help children with Executive Function Disorder, also excerpted from Late, Lost, and Unprepared by Joyce Cooper-Kahn, Phd. and Laurie Dietzel, Ph.D., go to:
  • Executive Function Fact Sheet – Information from the National Center for Learning Disabilities
  • Children, Self-Control and ‘Executive Dysfunction – a newspaper article by the Voice of America
  • Lazy Kid or Executive Dysfunction – suggestions for teachers on handling students with executive functioning
• Mind in the Making
• Understood
• Vroom