Executive function explained and demystified
By Malynn Kuangparichat, Psy.D., J.D.
You know that your child is wired differently. He struggles with completing or handing in assignments on time. Exasperatingly enough, he spends more time complaining to you about doing homework than it would actually take him to do the homework. When he comes home from school, his backpack is exploding with a mess of papers, folders, and pencils. Maybe you notice that his thoughts are all over the place when he’s trying to explain something to you.
As a parent, you want to see your child pursue his goals to the best of his abilities, but his time management, task initiation, and organization skills are inhibiting his ability to show his true potential, and causing your child to function from a place of stress.
What’s more, kids who struggle with executive functioning are labeled as lazy, messy, unmotivated, disruptive, or forgetful. But what they’re really struggling with is time blindness, future thinking skills, self-directed talk, and sustained attention to non-preferred tasks.
Why does my child with ADHD struggle with executive functioning?
Before we dive into why your child struggles with executive functioning, let’s define executive function.
Executive function is the mental and cognitive abilities that we use to actively pursue our goals. Think of it as the manager of your brain. It’s telling you how to manage your time, prioritize tasks, organize your materials, and visualize what it looks like to get something done.
Specifically at Chesco Well-being, we assess for these 10 executive function skills:
- Inhibition: self-restraint
- Self-Monitor: awareness of the effects of behaviors on others
- Working Memory: ability to hold and manipulate information in mind
- Verbal working memory: your inner dialogue
- Non-verbal working memory: mentally picturing things
- Shift: ability to move freely from one activity to another
- Initiate: ability to independently begin a task and engage in problem-solving
- Plan and Organize: ability to manage current and future-oriented tasks
- Organization of Materials: ability to maintain orderliness of work, play, and storage spaces
- Task Monitor: ability to monitor performance on tasks
- Task Completion: ability to complete tasks appropriately in a timely manner, which is likely influenced by deficits in executive skills such as working memory, planning, and organization
- Emotional self-regulation: using inhibition, self-awareness, and both working memory skills to process and change how you feel about things
Since ADHD is an executive function deficit disorder, you can see why your child with ADHD struggles with the above skills.
Problems with executive function skills can manifest in a variety of ways in your child’s daily life. For instance, problems with inhibition leads to impulsive behavior. Another example, problems with self-motivation lead to incomplete homework.
You can go through the following list to see what types of skills are impacted by executive function deficit disorder (there is some overlap with the above list):
- Time Management
- Task Initiation
- Metacognition (thinking about your thinking)
- Organization
- Emotional Regulation and Flexibility
- Persistence
- Planning
- Self-Restraint
- Sustained Attention
- Stress Regulation
- Self-motivation
- Self-awareness
It’s important to note that none of us are born with executive function skills. Rather these skills are learned, and are fully developed by the late teens or early twenties.
Knowing this, individuals with ADHD have a 3-5 year delay in their abilities to develop these executive function skills. That means a third grader with ADHD could be working on executive function skills typically learned in kindergarten or first grade.
Ultimately, identifying your child’s areas of need is key to achieving their personal and academic best, and positively influence their school life and beyond into adulthood.
Testing is Crucial For Successful Treatment Goals
To help your child with their executive functioning skills, the first step is to get them tested. Psychological screeners or evaluations help to identify the underlying diagnosis and concerns.
Consequently, testing will tease out whether someone truly has ADHD and Executive Functioning concerns versus another mental health concern that is impacting their daily activities. For example, testing can help uncover if procrastination is due to the inability to sustain attention or anxiety and/or perfectionism.
In essence, accurate diagnosis is critical to developing treatment goals that addresses the underlying mental health concerns and skills needed for daily functioning.
So if you’re looking for support for your child, make sure to consider a specialist who provides testing to uncover the underlying diagnosis and concerns, thus prompting the appropriate treatment plan and skills implementation.
How to Improve Your Child’s Executive Functioning Skills
Choosing and implementing interventions to improve your child’s executive functioning skills is not a one-size-fits-all deal. You’ll want to make sure the approach and strategies align with your child’s specific areas of need.
Firstly, people are more willing to take action when they know the reasoning behind it, and this is no different for our youths. In other words, give your child tangible examples of how improving their organization, time management, or any other executive functioning skills will help them in their personal and school life.
Additionally, invite your child into a collaborative effort rather than taking an authoritative approach. This approach will empower them, and ultimately lead to long-term success when improving their executive function.
For a parent who doesn’t struggle with executive functioning skills, it may seem obvious how to keep a backpack organized or hand in assignments on time. However, let’s remember that we’re not born with executive functioning skills.
These skills need to be explicitly taught, especially for kids with ADHD.
While they have so many strengths like creativity and hyper-focused attention to preferred tasks, kids with ADHD have challenges with self-directed talk, non-verbal working memory, and measuring the passing of time.
Given the challenges, it’s important to teach them exactly how to stay organized, initiate a task, or remember when to hand in an assignment.
For instance, if your child is constantly missing school supplies, then teach them step-by-step exactly how to replenish school materials in their backpack. You can use scaffolding strategies such as self-reflective questions and visuals to help your child gain independence in the learned skill.
First, ask them to think about what they will need for school at the beginning of each month. Then provide a visual checklist with steps and materials to help scaffold their learning.
With the visual on hand, coach them on how to check for and replenish missing items so they’re prepared for school (e.g., paper, notebooks, folders, and pencils).
Essentially, you’re creating systems collaboratively with your child, scaffolding their learning, and providing ample practice sessions so that they learn to create their own systems and move toward independence with their developing executive functioning skills.
Deciding on the Best Intervention For Your Child
There are many different options for getting intervention for your child, including additional support from a school counselor, specialized coaching services, therapy treatment from a clinician, and parenting support at home. Find out what services are available to your child, and decide which intervention best suits your child and their needs.
Finding a Specialty Coach For Your Child to Improve Executive Functioning Skills
If you’re looking for a specialist to help your child with executive function, then you may want to consider an Executive Function coach who works specifically with kids. These coaches generally provide in-person or remote services. During coaching sessions, your child collaborates with a coach to set task-oriented goals, and learn tools, strategies, and systems to meet their goals. Additionally, your child will practice these strategies until they’re able to use the executive functioning skills independently.
Seeking Therapy For Your Child to Improve Executive Functioning
While there are some key differences when looking at coaching vs therapy services, just like an executive function coach, your child’s therapist identifies goals and establishes new skills to meet those goals for your child.
Besides the similarity in goal identification and skill introduction, with therapy, the approach to reach those goals is different.
For instance, while coaching sets task-oriented goals to improve your child’s executive functioning skills, a therapist sets emotion-oriented goals. This means that instead of introducing systems to help with the mechanics of a behavior, a therapist presents techniques that address the emotion behind the behavior.
Therapy can also be past-, present-, or future-oriented whereas coaching is only future-oriented. To elaborate, therapists work on redefining your child’s emotions and perceptions of themselves. They dig into the mental state, and address any emotional barriers that can also help with improving executive functioning.
Parenting Kids With ADHD and Executive Functioning Concerns
No matter what interventions you decide upon, keep in mind that the parent-child relationship is vital. Fostering a loving and nurturing relationship with your child builds a strong foundation for effective and lasting executive function interventions.
Provide a supportive home environment for your child, and bond over enjoyable activities like baking, board games, mini-dance parties, or family reading time. In our home, we enjoy hiking and playing outdoors in nature together. Not surprisingly, focusing on a positive relationship reduces stress and builds trust that will encourage your child to practice their executive functioning skills with agency and success.
Tips to Boost Your Child’s Executive Functioning Skills
As a parent of three kiddos, I know what it’s like to want to help your child succeed, but also know that it can be stressful teaching your own child. As such, I’ve put together a list of tips for you as the parent to support your child at home in a way that helps you keep your cool, and sets your child up for success.
First things first, let’s reduce stress.
Keep in mind that reducing stress not only makes learning more manageable on both sides, for parent and child, but also increases success rates for building independence.
That’s why it is key to maintain a positive relationship with your child by prioritizing relationship building activities.
You can calm the brain with mindfulness activities for your child such as breathing exercises and other calming activities.
Empathize With Your Child
It’s important to normalize, validate, and empathize with your child, on a consistent basis, before jumping into practicing strategies and systems.
When your child knows that you understand their strengths and struggles, they will be more willing and motivated to work on skills that are particularly challenging for them.
Also, try to avoid skirting around the issues. Kids intuitively know when you’re not acknowledging the root causes of a problem just to spare them the uncomfortable conversation.
Your child knows what she or he is struggling with, and normalizing talk around the issues with ADHD and executive function by acknowledging and validating your child’s feelings makes your child feel seen.
Build Independence
Ultimately, you want your child to gain independence in the use of their executive functioning strategies and systems. For starters, teaching the skills explicitly helps your child understand the steps and thinking involved to improve their executive functioning skills.
Gradually, you’ll want to scaffold their learning by asking instead of telling them what to do. For example, ask them, “What can you do next? What are some steps to help you? What can you try?”
Most importantly, have your child practice to build towards independence. You’ll want to monitor practice sessions so that your child is practicing correctly. Remember, practice doesn’t make perfect – practice makes permanent.
Essentially, teach the skill and support skill building until it becomes second nature to your child.
Plan For Physical Activity
There is a growing body of research, including this 2016 research study showing that physical exercise helps improve executive function in kids with ADHD. To get your child moving, integrate physical activity into their week with after school programs, outdoor activities, and mini dance or movement breaks.
Harness the Power of Visuals
Use visual and tactile learning to support your child’s ability to improve their executive functioning skills. Many studies have shown that visual learning is superior to auditory learning in terms of memory recall.
Think about this scenario.
Let’s imagine you need to remember and recall a 7-digit phone number. If you’re given the phone number through spoken word, and you’re allowed to orally practice repeating the number a few times to remember it, you might be able to recall it within 5 minutes of being told the number. But, half a day later, you most likely won’t remember the number anymore.
However, if you were shown the phone number on a dial pad, and were able to practice dialing the number a few times to commit to memory, you’ll most likely remember the number on a shorter and longer-term time frame.
In other words, we remember better, especially for kids with ADHD, when we can learn through seeing and touching than relying on just hearing.
There are a plethora of ways to integrate visual and tactile learning for kids including spatial movement that create long-term success for skill building. Try sketching, doodling, full body gestures, moving around the room with “learning landmarks,” and having tactile materials or even creating a checklist with textures to combine visual and tactile learning.
Develop Time Management Systems
Your child with ADHD perceives time differently – known as time blindness, he or she isn’t able to sense the passage of time. This makes completing tasks with deadlines difficult because they struggle with estimating how long a task will take, and how much time is left until a deadline.
As such, use some of the tips below to develop time management systems for your child.
- Use a timer. Timer apps on tablets or smartphones usually include a visual graph to show how much time has passed and how much time is left. For a more tangible method, you can buy a physical timer that visually shows how much time is left.
- Track time. For planning purposes, start recording how much time it takes your child to do certain tasks like homework or playing a game. While there are many free time tracking apps available on your digital device, you can also use a simple baking timer.
- Create a playlist. Curate a list of enjoyable background music that lasts 20-, 40-, and 60-minutes long. This is a creative alternative to using a timer.
Set Short and Long Term Goals
When it comes to setting goals, think about setting long-term goals that can be broken down into smaller short-term goals. And, in the spirit of collaboration and motivation, it’s best to set these goals with your child.
For example, a long-term goal may be having responsibility for turning in homework assignments on time. With that bigger goal, you can set shorter-term mini goals such as learning to set a timer, organizing materials for homework, and completing the assignment.
Again, with your child, write the goals into “I will be able to” statements so they know exactly what they’re striving for. For instance, “I will be able to track my time on the tracking app each time I do reading homework.”
Estimate how many weeks it will take your child to learn, practice, and achieve independence for each goal. Then pencil in the estimated accomplish dates on your child’s calendar so they can get a sense of the bigger picture and build confidence incrementally with the short-term goals.
Once you’ve set and scheduled the goals, you and your child can come up with rewards, ranging from small to big, when each goal is reached. For my own kids, a reward might be a special mom or dad trip to the local ice cream shop.
Absolutely celebrate each small win along the way.
Teach Proactive Communication Skills
As you help your child build towards independence, you can also teach them to advocate for themselves. Empower them with language so that they can proactively ask for help when they need it, at home or school.
Use a Planner
With the many different types of planners available, find a planner that works for your child. You may want to customize your own so it’s visually easy for your child to fill in daily, weekly, and monthly assignments and important dates.
Get the Support Your Child Needs to Improve Executive Functions
When it comes to ADHD and executive function concerns, reaching out for professional services, whether coaching or therapy, can make a huge difference in your child’s abilities to thrive personally and academically.
At CCWB, we specialize in psychological testing to identify the underlying causes of executive function concerns. This allows our trained clinicians to address your child’s emotional and mental health needs that may be affecting their daily life and the implementation of executive function skills.
Research Studies
Bigelow & Poremba. Achilles’ ear? Inferior human short-term and recognition memory in the auditory modality. 2014 Feb 26;9(2):e89914. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0089914. eCollection 2014.
Di Lernia D, Serino S, Pezzulo G, Pedroli E, Cipresso P, Riva G. Feel the time. Time perception as a function of interoceptive processing. Front Hum Neurosci. 2018;0. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2018.00074
Gloede & Gregg. The fidelity of visual and auditory memory. 2019 Aug;26(4):1325-1332. doi: 10.3758/s13423-019-01597-7.
Lindner, Katie; Blosser, Greta; and Cunigan, Kris (2009) “Visual versus auditory learning and memory recall performance on short-term versus long-term tests,” Modern Psychological Studies: Vol. 15 : No. 1 , Article 6.
Disclaimer: The contents of this blog does not constitute a clinical relationship or replace the need for professional services.
Contact Us
Need more support for your child? Chester County Well-Being (CCWB) provides a range of mental health services to ensure we meet our community’s needs. We serve youth and families in the Chester County and greater PA area. Reach out to us here.
Our specializations for youth and families include:
- AD/HD
- Parenting Support
- Stress Management
- Family Counseling
- Therapy for Depression and Anxiety
- Self-Harm
- Perfectionism
- Autism spectrum disorders
- Addiction & Recovery
- Conflict Resolution
Teletherapy
In addition to in-person services, Dr. Malynn Kuangparichat provides high quality and secure telepsychology services in participating PSYPACT states. All other clinicians offer teletherapy services for the state of PA.
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About the Author
Malynn Kuangparichat (Psy.D., J.D.) is founder and psychologist at Chester County Well-Being.
She has a collaborative approach that results in highly tailored evaluations intended to meet her clients’ unique needs. She focuses on an individual’s strengths, which are integrated in the practical, personalized recommendations identified by the findings of an evaluation.
In her free time, she enjoys running, spending time with family and friends, and getting ice cream or doughnuts from the local shops.