Transcript: #102 v2
Welcome to my Pop Up podcast. I'm Dynell Garronn, an educational therapist helping teens who have anxiety, depression, or ADHD graduate and helping their parents find simple ways to support them in school, hold them accountable, and maintain their connection. You know, it wasn't too long ago that I was floundering, devastated by son's struggles with school and mental health, and I felt completely at a loss.
Fast forward many years, tears, blow ups, and shutdowns, and you'll see my confident, competent young man who knows who he is, who takes good care of himself most of the time, and who still doesn't like school, but knows how to navigate it without being overwhelmed. And if you eavesdropped on our conversations today, you would mostly hear connection, respect, and a real partnership.
It's been a journey, and I'm here to share what has worked for us and what works for our clients. If you're parenting a teen who has a diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, or depression, and you're absolutely determined to give your teen every possible opportunity to succeed in school, and you're trying desperately to understand and meet their needs, you are in the right place.
My goal is to give you concrete, actionable steps that you can implement right away to support your teen in school and so you can relax a little bit and enjoy parenting this special young person whom you love with every fiber of your being. So wherever you're listening from, welcome.
Let's jump in.
Welcome back. Today we're going to talk about executive functions, and I'd like to give a shout out to Christina in our community. I asked what information would be helpful, and she replied, I'd like to know more information about executive functions and how to help my son. I'm at a loss.
Well, this episode was inspired by your question, Christina, and I thank you so much for letting me know what information would be helpful for you. Now, when talking about executive functions today, I have three very specific goals. Number one, I want to share a bit about what they are and how ADHD in particular impacts executive functioning.
Goal number two is to go under the hood to really look at how lagging executive function skills impact school success. And goal number three, I want to give you seven things that you can do at home to support your teen in school.
Number one, what are executive functions and how do they support learning?
I like to think of executive function skills as the orchestra conductor of the brain, coordinating all the movements, making sure that everything is working smoothly, and that the music is absolutely beautiful. Another way to think about it is executive functions are the CEO of your brain, making sure that all of the different departments work together so that they can efficiently get things done.
Now, as it relates to learning, I'm going to group them into three big buckets. And the buckets are number one planning, staying organized, and time management. Bucket number two is all about impulse control and self regulation. And bucket number three is cognitive flexibility. And this is a big one, and we'll come back to that.
So let's look at bucket number one planning, organization, time management. When a young person exhibits good executive functioning, they're able to break down assignments and create plans to meet deadlines, manage their time effectively, keep up with their material and their information, and they can establish goals for themselves and work consistently toward those goals.
Now, bucket number two impulse control and self regulation. When a young person demonstrates strong executive functioning, they're able to control behaviors and reactions, ignore distractions, stay on task, and really do hard things with a certain amount of calm.
Bucket number three cognitive flexibility. When a young person has good executive functioning here, they can smoothly switch between tasks, see things from different angles, take on another person's perspective, and they can more readily adapt to new situations.
Let's talk about the impact of ADHD on executive functioning. Research suggests that executive functioning in a teen who has ADHD lags three years behind their chronological age. Three years. So what does that mean? A college freshman who's what, 18/19 years old? They may have the ability to plan, stay organized, regulate their behavior, resist impulses…
They may be able to do this along the lines of a 15 or 16 year old, and they're in college.
What about a 14 or 15 year old? If their executive functions lag three years, we may be talking about a skill set that is more akin to an eleven or twelve year old student, but this child is in a high school environment. So you see, there's a lot to consider when our teens struggle with executive functions.
So bucket number one planning their work, staying organized, managing their time. Bucket number two regulate their behavior and their attention and their level of alertness, and resist impulses. Bucket number three is, be flexible in their thinking, in their actions, being able to take multiple perspectives and adapt to change.
Thinking about these buckets and thinking about your young person, where do they tend to struggle the most? Take a moment and maybe just reflect on that.
I've given you an overview of how executive functions impact learning. I want to go a bit deeper and look at what a young person. Let's call her Rachel. Let's see what Rachel might go through during the school day. Okay. And Rachel embodies the characteristics and experiences of many of the students that I've worked with and also the characteristics and experiences of my own son, who, as you know, has a diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, and depression.
Now, Rachel is a 15 year old student who struggles with limited executive function skills. Rachel has a really hard time staying organized, managing her time, and completing her tasks. So come into the building with me, and let's walk down the hall to Rachel's science class. Today in science, they're doing a lab.
So let's talk through what might be challenging for Rachel in today's class. Well, first of all, because she has poor planning skills, she might struggle to gather the necessary materials. She might also not be clear about the sequence of steps required in the experiment. She probably has a difficult time organizing her thoughts.
Rachel also struggles to remember instructions, and this is probably because of a deficit in working memory. So she forgot some critical instructions, which means she's executing the lab incorrectly. Now. Oh, my gosh. In class, something just happened unexpectedly.
Rachel is really struggling to come up with plan B because she lacks cognitive flexibility.
Somehow that experiment is over, and now it's time to write her lab report, or at least draft it. Rachel struggles with recalling data, so she's having a hard time remembering the exact measurements or key observations because she didn't write them down.
Her report? it's not very well structured. It's kind of disorganized. It doesn't have a really clear introduction, methodology, results, or conclusion section. And Rachel is not going to check her work. Her self monitoring skills are weak, and so she's not going to clean it up, which means it's probably going to be turned in with a number of grammatical errors and unclear expressions.
Now, because of all these difficulties, this has been a really long class for Rachel, and she has a heck of a time managing her frustration and her self talk. So she's feeling quite overwhelmed. And that's just one class.
If we follow Rachel to her history class, we'd see similar challenges because Rachel has limited cognitive flexibility. She cannot analyze historical events very well because it's hard for her to consider multiple perspectives. So she tends to work with a very rigid understanding of historical events, and she barely engages in critical thinking.
And if she has to write a paper about what they're going over today, it's probably going to be pretty difficult. So you can see how lagging executive functions makes this school day really difficult. And because this is a global issue, we know it's going to affect more than one subject.
And this contributes not just to poor grades, but to a student's overwhelm their stress, their anxiety, and it even fosters procrastination. Now, here's the good news. With the right supports and scaffolding, Rachel can gradually improve her executive function skills. She truly can. And that would give her a much better, more fulfilling learning experience and, of course, better grades.
But this is going to take some coaching, some skill building, and a real partnership with you and her teachers. So now I'd like to share with you seven things that you can do at home to help your teen if they're having experiences that are similar to Rachel's.
So, number one, let's agree that Rachel's disorganization is not laziness, and it's not necessarily a result of inattention. I mean, the fact of the matter is, she could have received and understood the information quite well, but she just can't organize it. So Rachel needs structures and she needs habits, because this will take the pressure off of her working memory, and it will also take the pressure off of her executive…
Last spring, a parent in our program said to me that she now realizes skill development is how we scaffold lagging executive functioning, and that's exactly what Rachel needs.
Tip number two… you know what Rachel needs? A chance to mess up and regroup without a lot of negative feedback. Why?
Because the mistakes that she's making and the struggles she has in school as a result of executive functioning, she has no control over that. And also because she's not going to be able to change this on her own. So instead of telling Rachel all the things that she's not doing or even telling her what to do, what she needs is a chance to try on a number of different strategies and find what works for her.
Tip number three… I would love it if Rachel's teachers could be very clear in their instructions. And I would really love it if your teen's teachers could help them develop very structured work plans to follow. You know, one of the most important things we do in our program is we keep our kids in action by providing very concrete steps for them to follow.
And by doing that, it keeps them out of this frustration-overwhelm-anxiety loop. A lot of teachers will not provide the level of support that I'm suggesting here. So again, a good training or coaching program can help. And here's my secret weapon checklists. Checklists work really well for teens, and they're especially good for repetitive tasks and for things that could create overwhelm.
To be honest with you, I think every teen needs to have checklists for turning in assignments, because if you did this with your teen, I think they would be surprised to discover that, for example, in Ms. Lombard's class, you only need four steps to complete the assignment. But in Mr. Eagle's class, you have to do six things to complete the assignment. A checklist takes the pressure off of working memory and executive functions, and it helps our teens understand the nuances that make the difference between a C and an A in class.
My kid grew up with checklists. I remember when he was really young, the first time he had to clean the courtyard. Now, the broom was bigger than he was, and he had so much overwhelm, he felt like everything was going to take too long. And the way he was acting, I swear to God, it felt like we were hurting his soul. So what did I do? I created for him a checklist.
Step one divide the courtyard into quadrants. Step two clean one section at a time. Step three come tell me after you clean one section, and I'll give you a treat. Step four once everything is cleaned, put all the tools back. Worked like a charm. So think about checklists. Ask your teen to create their own personalized checklist for turning in assignments, for repetitive tasks, and for things that seem really big.
You want to give them opportunities to lay it all out and then chunk it off one step at a time.
Tip number four… checkpoints. We have to check in with our teens while they're working to make sure they're doing all right. I remember when my son was interviewed, he said, “When my mom started checking on me and not my assignments, things got better,” and that was a wake up call for me.
So in our shop, we use checkpoints as a temperature check, if you will. And this is really important, because if a young person has a history of struggling in school or they're completing assignments that they don't like, it's very easy for them to tip into high frustration or overwhelm or feeling hopeless.
And this is especially true if they struggle with anxiety, depression, or ADHD.
In designing your checkpoint, you want to engage your young person. And the way that I suggest you do that…And this is the way we do it in our shop, is we advise parents to say, “So, hey, how do you want me to check in with you?” And ask another question:
“How will I know if you need some support?” And by asking those two questions, we're doing two things. We're planting two seeds. Seed number one is, I am going to check in with you, so why don't we work together to find out the best way to do that? And number two, asking for help is no big deal. And when you ask me for help, I'm not going to take over. I just want to know how to support you.
Tip number four is time management. And there are a lot of strategies to teach time management. We lean heavily on the Pomodoro technique with reflection. For those of you who don't know what this method is, I'm going to tell you what it is very quickly. It's a work-break sequence.
So work for 20, take a ten minute break, work for 20, take a ten minute break, work for 20. But on the third set, take a 30 minutes break, and you come back and do that again. What's really nice about this is that it trains our young people to break down their work into 20 minutes chunks.
Some kids can work for 45 minutes. We like to start with 20. And the other piece of this, though, is we're reflecting with our young person by asking them, “So how much work did you get done in this set? Where did you get stuck? Are you surprised? Did you plan it well? What are you going to remember next time?”
Tip number five… find something to acknowledge while your young person is struggling. Let's think about Rachel for a moment. There are so many ways that her day can go wrong, and she's trying to overcome so many obstacles. So Rachel could use some acknowledgement while she's struggling.
Hopefully, she's getting encouragement from her teacher. They're recognizing her efforts and they're offering her reassurances when she feels overwhelmed. And when we acknowledge our teens efforts and their persistence, we're letting them know that we believe in their abilities. We want to acknowledge their struggle and their ability to fight through it.
Tip number six… foster self reflection. Personally, I think self reflection is the quickest path to change. And so how do we do this with our young people? We can say things like, “Hey, I noticed you did X. How did you do that? Or I noticed that you completed blah, blah, blah, what strategies did you use?”
And this is a big one. “I saw you get frustrated and I noticed you calmed yourself down. How did you do that?” This process of self reflection, first of all, we're reflecting on their success, and that breeds motivation. And it's really important for young people to slow down enough to think.And identify, what did I do right? Because then they can replicate it.
And number seven…what do you do when your child just isn't being productive? What do you do if their frustration tolerance is so taxed that they just can't deal in this moment? Well, I'd like to offer you this.
I think what we do is we give them space to express what's going on without trying to fix it. And sometimes we even invite them to take care of themselves before they continue. In our training and coaching program, we pride ourselves on keeping teens in action. Even when we see them down, we'll say, “Whoa, I see you're really frustrated, you good?” “You look kind of stressed, you got it?”
And sometimes we'll even say, “Yes, you are in a rough spot.” And we'll let the silence linger, because sometimes just acknowledging what they're going through without offering to fix it keeps them in action. It says to them, I see you, and I believe you can, and I'm here to help you, and I'm going to allow you to take the lead in fixing this.
Now, if it's obvious that they just can't, you then give them permission to take a break. And you can say something like, “You are really angry right now. Can I help? Or you know what? You're moving around a lot. I think you need to take a break. I don't want to take a break.
Okay.
You seem really angry, and I'm not quite sure that the effort you're going to put in right now is going to get you to that grade that you want. So how about this? Why don't we take a break? Why don't you take ten, go take care of yourself, and then come back and hit it hard?”
So let's recap. Executive functioning, so important. Planning, organizing, time management, emotional regulation, impulse control, our ability to set goals and see them through to completion, all of these are central to our success. And I think it's really important, the more that we understand how it shows up for our teens, the more we can find the right help for them.
My goal in sharing all of this with you is to help you understand. But also I want to pique your curiosity. You know why? Because it's really hard to be curious and judgmental. It's really difficult to be truly curious and angry at the same time. And so the next time your teen struggles with an assignment or with their emotions, and they will, you have a lot to consider.
You have a lot to unpack. You have a mental checklist. You can think about what Rachel is struggling with, and maybe that's what's happening to your student. But you have information to begin to become Is. You can also use this information to have a conversation with your child's. Teacher, and you can use this information to assess what type of skill building, training, coaching, or tutoring is going to work for your teen.
As a mom, I'm inviting you to choose curiosity to understand your teen's perspective before you react. Choosing curiosity enables you to connect with their emotions and their experiences, and that's what opens the door to the kinds of communication and real problem solving we all want to have with our young people.
Last semester, I created a chart showing the chronological age and the executive function age side by side, and I shared it with the parents in our group, and it just fostered so much rich conversation. I encourage you to download that chart and keep it handy. You can also relisten to this podcast or print the transcript, because it has a lot of juicy details that will help you help your teen.
And one more thing before I leave. I just finished an Executive Functions in School series. I'm so excited about it. I've wanted to do it for years and just could never find the time. And in this series, I'm uncovering the ways that weak executive function skills show up in science, math, English and world history.
And it's essentially a checklist of challenges in each of those subjects. You can work through the checklist with your teen, and it includes recommendations that I have as an educational therapist that you can share with your teen's teacher. So look for more information about that soon. And if you want to be notified when it's ready, head on over to my Facebook page.
Dynell ET Dynell Et for Educational Therapist drop a comment on my Facebook page, and I'll make sure to let you know as soon as it's finished.
I hope you found this information helpful and inspiring. Please let me know what you think. Go to my Facebook pageand let me know what you think right. And also let me know what information would be helpful to you. I really want this to be useful. You know what else I want? I want you to worry a little bit less. I want you to get some good sleep tonight. I want you to enjoy your connection to your child and just give them a big hug and high five. And thanks again for tuning in.
