Smart But Scattered

Does your child struggle to get or stay organized? Is homework a battle you dread every day? Prepare yourself to support your children for the Back to School season with this interview with Dr. Richard Guare. He's a neuropsychologist and board-certified behavior analyst focused on autism, learning, attention, and behavior disorders, and acquired brain injuries. He is the co-author of Smart But Scattered: The Revolutionary Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Define executive skills in a way that makes sense to a parent or caregiver who is unfamiliar with the term.
• Why are these executive skills essential for school success and independence?
• How does early childhood trauma, neglect, or prenatal substance exposure delay or disrupt a child’s executive skill development?
• What kinds of executive skill delays are common in children who’ve experienced foster care, adoption, or early adversity?
• How might a parent or caregiver begin to see a child’s delays in executive skill deficits in school?
• Define the strengths-based approach to teaching executive skills. 
• How can we structure our homes and daily routines to best support what our kids will face during the school day?
  • And practical strategies for supporting your student after school?
• What language can parents and caregivers use with our kids, and with teachers and support staff, to frame a child’s behavior in terms of execution skills vs. defiance or distraction?
• Why is it important for parents and caregivers to understand their own executive skills strengths and struggles?
• Top “takeaways” you want to encourage and support parents and caregivers to consider.

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Creating a Family. Talk about adoption, foster care and kinship
care. I'm glad you joined us today. My name is Tracy Whitney and I'm your host for
this hour. I've been a content manager with CreatingaFamily .org since 2016 and I'm
excited about today's episode to learn about executive function skills and how we can
support our kids to succeed in school. Our guest today is Dr. Richard Gwear. He is
a neuropsychologist and board certified behavior analyst who previously served as the
director of the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders at Seacoast Mental Health
Center in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He has also been a consultant to schools and
agencies in programs for autism, learning, attention and behavioral disorders and
acquired brain injuries. He has co -authored with Dr. Margaret Dawson several books,
including the topic of today's podcast, a book called Smart But Scattered, The
Revolutionary Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential. He also co -authored the
book Smart But Scattered Teens with Dr. Dawson and Colin Gwear. So welcome,
Dr. Gwear, and excuse my stumbling over all of that. That's quite the mouthful of
accomplishments that you've got there. Thank you very much. It's nice to be here.
We're really glad to have you here. I'd like to start the conversation with a basic
working definition of executive skills. And if you could do it in a way that helps
parents and caregivers who may be unfamiliar with the term, some way to kind of
wrap their hands around it. There are a couple of different ways of thinking about
executive skills. I guess the most direct way is to think about them as the chief
executive officer of the brain. In order for us to get things done, executive skills
direct virtually all of our activities, problem solving, writing,
any of those kinds of things. The Center for Developing Childhood Harvard describes
those skills as the ear traffic control center of the brain. So if that gives
people a sense about what that's about, that's essentially what it is. And why are
those skills essential for school success and independence in learning? Well,
when you think about what's involved in school success, particularly as children
progress through the school system, things like planning, organization, time management,
particularly sustained attention, behavioral control, all of those skills come into
play in school and really do determine whether kids are going to be successful or
not successful in their school environment. In addition to that, there's good evidence
now that, at least in the early preschool years, executive skills are associated with
reading and math literacy so that they have a direct impact on academic skills as
well. Okay. So how does a child who's experienced early childhood trauma neglect,
prenatal substance exposure, or those delays or disruptions, how do those impact their
ability to develop those executive skills? Well, there are two issues there. One of
them is that trauma, early neglect, high levels of stress,
particularly chronic stress, actually affect brain development specifically, in
particular, the prefrontal cortex, development, the prefrontal cortex, and that area of
the brain for 25 to 30 years is critical in the development of executive skills.
It really is the kind of primary control center in the brain for executive skills.
So you have that kind of neurobiological impact on the brain, and in addition to
that, If that trauma or neglect or chronic stress is ongoing,
then it also interferes on a kind of moment -to -moment basis with utilization of
those skills, because it tends to preoccupy children in dealing with those kinds of
stressors, and they're able to devote less attention to their executive skills.
So their little brains are focused on surviving and not necessarily on new skills.
That's right. That's particularly important. It's a survival skill and it also limits
their time horizon. They tend to be vigilant of their current environment and their
time horizon shrinks down so that they're able to deal with the immediacy of the
environment and getting their needs met, but any kind of longer -term planning is
really, really difficult for them. As children grow and develop,
that longer -term planning, going from hours to days and later in school into days
and weeks and weeks and months, becomes particularly important. If your time horizon
is quite short, then you never really get around to be able to develop those kinds
of skills. So in addition to long -term planning or even short -term planning,
what other executive skills do you see commonly impacting children in this demographic
of adoption, foster care, kinship care? I think probably the one that's most evident
to parents and will be evident early on is probably in terms of emotional control,
emotional regulation, because that's an early emerging skill and it's oftentimes a
direct response to stress, to being able to manage problems in a situation.
But later on, and not too much later on, sustained attention, response inhibition,
the ability to inhibit impulses, working memory in particular and working memory so
that working memory is a pretty critical skill as far as school is concerned because
it means the ability to be able to follow directions, keep things in mind. But it's
also the ability to recollect past experiences where you've been able to negotiate a
situation and bring those experiences forward so you can apply them for problem
solving in current situation. Those skills in particular are affected, along with
flexibility. And so when children are under stress, one of the ways to manage that
stress is to create an environment for themselves that's as in their head,
as predictable and as unchanging as possible. And so if a situation arises where
they have a solution in mind to a particular situation and it doesn't work for
them. They have a great deal of difficulty coming up with a kind of plan B in
that situation. - So what are some specific ways that we as parents and caregivers
might start to see the evidence of those delays when our kids get to school?
- Well, I think probably the first way that you know about them is that teachers,
although teachers may not be necessarily familiar with the concept of executive
skills, they will certainly be aware of the characteristics of executive skills in
terms of the way that they manifest as far as behavior is concerned. So one of the
early ones that we hear from teachers all of the time is response inhibition and
emotional control. So the capacity for kids to be able to manage impulsive behavior,
for example. We hear that from preschool teachers and certainly from kindergarten
teachers. And my wife was a teacher for 47 years, taught primarily elementary -aged
children in kindergarten through third grade. And within days of having kids come
into a classroom, she was able to identify kids who are gonna struggle more with
those particular behavioral manifestations, the emotional control, the response and
admission, but also sustained attention since that it's an early, it's an early skill
demand that are required by kids. And then as they get a little bit older, now
time management, being aware of time deadlines, of being able to get ready,
for example, on time for recess, being able to organize your materials and keep
track of them, those types of skills. And so parents will often hear from teachers
fairly early on that relative to other children in the class, you know,
your child might be experiencing that. I think that the way that parents might see
that is when kids come home from school. And particularly if they're having struggles
at school, oftentimes they will bring that kind of stress home with them.
And so, you know, you might see reluctance to go to school, you might see them
complaining about what the expectations are and so forth. And so, those kinds of
areas are particularly evident, I think, early on to parents, as well as parents own
awareness of having to constantly prompt those skills. I need you to pay attention,
you know, I need you to control your behavior a little bit better. And so if
parents find themselves constantly reminding their children of basically what are
behavioral interventions, then it's something of a tip off about the potential for
executive skill challenges. - So we would be hearing teachers saying things to us
like he never raises his hands, he just blurts it out, or he can't sit still in
his seat when we're doing circle time. Morning meeting is so hard for little ones.
Talks too much in class.
Okay, I might be guilty. I spent a lot of my time sitting in morning meetings with
kids, trying to get them to be their behavior a little bit. Right, right. So talk
to us a little bit in your book. You called it a strengths -based approach to
teaching executive skills. I'd love to hear more about that and why you see it so
important to helping our kids learn these executive skills. I think for all kids,
but particularly for kids who come out of these kinds of backgrounds and have
potentially experienced trauma and already come into the situation with potential
challenges in terms of executive skills, I think one of the critical issues that
you're trying to do is build a sense of confidence and a sense of competence in
kids and focusing on what they're able to do and what works for them as opposed to
what they're unable to do and kind of constantly correcting their kind of behavior,
is not an effective way to build that sense of confidence. I think the other thing
that we're aware of is that fundamentally all children and adults,
but children going through developmental stages, their goal is to develop a sense of
autonomy, a sense of competence or mastery, and a sense of being able to relate to
other people and to have other people to relate to and in order to do that you
really do need to focus on what they're able to do and providing opportunities for
them to be able to exercise those kinds of skills so that they gradually develop a
sense of confidence about their ability and are more willing to take on things on
their own. You know, if you think about it, if I go into a situation and I'm
routinely failing at that situation, then eventually, and it doesn't take very long,
my goal is to avoid those kinds of situations, either to actively avoid them or to
passively avoid them and simply not participate. And so if we want kids to be able
to actively engage in a learning process, that it really is critical that they have
some confidence in those abilities to begin with, and understand that they can manage
the tasks that they're going to be asked to manage. So we're wanting them to have
a taste of success that kind of sparks a craving for more success. And that kind
of taste for success, again, particularly for this group of children, is particularly
important. And it's already something of a challenge for parents and teachers to be
able to build that sense because they're likely coming into those kinds of
situations, you know, having some sort of struggle already. So it really is important
to, as much as possible, make that situation a positive experience for them,
one where they have decision making and some sort of choice and control, and where
those decisions and choices are successful for them.
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see you over there. Thanks and let's go back to the interview now. So can we talk
a little bit about structuring our homes and our daily routines to best support the
challenges our kids may face during the school day, because it is, for many of our
kids, an extraordinarily difficult day that they have to repeat,
what, 180 times across the school year. So how can we best support them at home?
- I think that probably one of the most critical issues at home are the ability to
establish routines and schedules.
The predictability, I mean prediction is control for most people. If you know what's
coming, if you know what the expectation is, then you feel as if you're in much
better control in those kinds of situations. Even in situations where you may not
like what's coming, but at least if you know what's coming, it gives you the
opportunity to prepare for it. But in terms of structuring routines and schedules for
children in the home situation. Starting with the morning routines, for example,
you know, we spend a lot of time working with children on smooth morning routines.
Are they able to get up in the morning? Are they able to go through their self
-care activities? Are they able to get dressed? And if you can build a sense of,
again, confidence and competence in their ability to be able to manage those things
and give them some control over those kinds of situations, that's really critically
important. For younger children, that's a matter of not just telling them what the
routines are, but providing a variety of prompts in the environment. So we're big
fans of developing things like visual schedules, of rehearsal strategies going through
in the morning, of if parents are amenable to it of letting children choose what
activities they'll engage in first in the morning, not necessarily, you know, TV, the
mornings don't start off with TV. Right. But, you know, would you like to get
dressed first? Do you want to do your kind of self -care routine first? Do you want
to have breakfast first? And so establishing that kind of routine creates a smooth
beginning of the day, which is really particularly critical. If you think about, and
I'm sure every parent has gone through it where you're struggling with your kids in
the morning, they're not on time, they're having difficulty getting ready, you're
worried about transportation, whether they're gonna make the bus or whether they're
gonna get their rides or not and so forth. And that leads oftentimes to conflicts
between parents and kids. And so when they finally do get out of the house, they're
already stressed to some extent. And in some cases, either unhappy or angry about
the situation that they've been in already, and that will carry over into a school
environment. So that's one thing in particular. And that's why we start with morning
routines. Similarly, after school, when kids get home, do you have a kind of an
afternoon routine or activity? You know, do kids come home and have a snack, do
they come home and take care of their, you know, backpacks and lunchboxes first and
so forth? Do they start on when they were a little bit older, they start on
homework right away? Or how is it that you want to arrange that? And again, a lot
of that is about taking into consideration what the child would choose to do and
what's comfortable for them, not as a parent, just making this kind of free for all
and letting kids decide whatever they want to do. But giving them some choices in
terms of that kind of laundry list of things that have to be done, letting kids
make some decisions about that. And then the other critical part is establishing a
structure and routines around the expectations for kids. So we talked about morning
routines, for example. A lot of that starts off with parents initially helping kids
get their rooms organized so that eventually they can dress themselves, knowing where
clothes are, having labels on, for example, labels on closets and drawers about what
contains what here, your socks are here, your underwear is here, and so forth.
That's really helpful for kids, but that's really for parents to begin that kind of
provide that kind of structure and organization. We think about that in terms of
kind of environmental modifications, where you're looking to modify the environment in
a way that simplifies the demand for the kids. And then gradually, over time,
you can begin to fade those kinds of supports. But initially, the more supports that
you can put in place to minimize that demand on the executive skills for kids,
so that the critical issues, as I say, getting dressed, going through routines and
stuff like that, all of that is well organized to begin with. And so that's another
area that's really critical. In the afternoon, similarly, you know, do kids know
where and do they have some sort of a prompt, like a visual schedule or a list
about where their backpack is going to go, what they need to do if they're carrying
their own lunch, what their homework area looks like, you know, what kind of how
well -organized as their homework area. And then time schedules, having some sort of
a time schedule. We use scheduling apps with kids. We also use simple things like
timers with kids. So they're aware of the fact of when something needs to get done
and that when those deadlines come up, that they're able to shift from one activity
to another to begin the new that they were expected to do. - And you talk in the
book a little bit about ending the day with peaceful nurturing transitions. Before we
get to that part where we're having this peaceful nurturing end to the day,
I wanna put a plug in for structuring your nighttime routine to also include what
you need for the next day. - Yes. - Pack as much of your lunch as you can the
night before. Get your backpacks ready the night before. Lay your clothes out the
night before. Those kinds of preparatory actions can help them start to organize
their brain tonight for what they need to do tomorrow. Absolutely. And again,
that fits into that category of both an environmental modification that parents are
helping kids learn. But eventually, if you think about it, what that allows kids to
be able to do is think well ahead of the time that something has to be done and
getting themselves organized so that in the morning, there's much more automaticity to
their behavior and much more just running through the list rather than having to run
around and look for clothes or running around and looking for shoes or sporting
equipment later on and so forth. But were you a fly on the wall in our house this
morning.
I was a fly on the wall in my own house for a long time. Yeah. Where's my phone?
Where's my backpack?
So talk to us a little bit about those peaceful nurturing transitions to bedtime.
What do those things look like that would specifically help us parents bring the day
down and keep connection and attachment a priority while still helping them think
towards tomorrow. - I think that one of the things that you're looking for, you
know, all of the time is, what do kids prefer in terms of their kind of, I mean,
you'll have observed as a parent, what kind of, and most of us, you know, early
on, we establish, you know, nighttime routines with our kids. You know, my daughter
is 31 years old now. And, you know, we were just talking the other day where she
has a one year old and she was talking about, you know, songs that we sang to her
for the longest period of time and she sings those same songs, you know,
to her son now. So having those kinds of really memories with kids, but also
favorite objects, you know, whether that for younger kids, whether that's, you know,
blankets or a stuffed toy or my granddaughter who's four years old now has a frosty
the snowman that, you know, is kind of her companion that she carries with her all
of the time. And so I think having those kinds of transition objects for kids that
really helped them identify, but also establishing that kind of gradual calm down
routine so that if we're going to do, you know, for evening routines in particular,
if I'm going to think about evening routines, what I want to do is get through the
half dues first. And so I would prefer to do those as early as possible, you know,
going through the organization in terms of materials that are going to need for the
next day, going through what the nighttime routine is in terms of toothbrushing and
those types of things. And then thinking about calming activities,
I mean, probably one of the best, you know, both for kids, cognitive development,
but also for them to be comfortable over time is reading to them at night. You
know, so making things like, you know, when I watched my son, like my wife and I
did it with our son and our daughter, both for years, where the last thing we did
at night was we had a list of books that they had picked out from the library,
or when they were younger just picked out from a stack of books, what do you want
to read? How many books are we gonna read tonight? And taking the time to read
those and really making that a kind of just enjoyable interactive time for you
together. And also, if your kids seem distressed or seemed distressed to you during
the day, again, before I would probably get to the reading, I would just ask them
about that and trying to have a conversation about, is there anything I could do to
help you? You know, would you like to talk about it a little bit? Just so that
they know that you're sensitive to the things that you've observed with them,
whether they've been vocal about that or not, and that you're aware of being able
to read their kinds of emotions, it will make them feel better to know that other
people are reading their emotions, particularly obviously caregivers and parents,
and being able to offer help. And again, if they don't want it, they don't want to
talk about it and so forth, it's fine. But at least having that available to them,
it really is a kind of critical issue. And then moving on to that kind of
transition of stories and then songs and then that kind of gradual withdrawal from
the situation and, you know, so that kids can get to sleep. - Yeah, I think we've
got an epidemic in this country of not prioritizing healthy sleep routines. We
certainly don't always do it for ourselves as adults. And when we don't do it as
adults, our kids are not gonna do it either. And so developing very intentional,
peaceful nighttime routines that are absent of screens and give us time to unwind
and kind of come down. One of my favorite things in the world is to read in bed.
And I've observed over the years that my kids at various stages and ages have
developed the habit of reading in bed as well. And it's just a great way to take
all my body systems down and then my kids see, well, there's a tool here.
We can take our body systems down too. And they're all older now, so they do it
themselves. But yeah, that's great. Yeah, I think one of the other things that we've
noticed about that, in fact, we mentioned in the book, my senator wrote a chapter
on the impact of technology, research out there, looking at young kids and screen
time and how much it's really pretty remarkable the amount of sleep disruption that's
caused by screen time before bed. I mean, both in terms of the time,
but also in terms of the quality of sleep. I mean, well -documented, you know, in
kindergarten children and preschool children. And so it's, I think it's important for
parents to be aware of that. And I was also obviously for parents to be aware of
their own screen time. I mean, it's model of behavior of parents. And so if So if
they see us pretty much glued to our screens all of the time where those are
phones or computers and so forth, then, you know, we're not modeling the healthiest
of behavior for them, particularly at certain times of day. Yeah. Screens are an
ever -present issue for parents across the board.
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so much.
So let's talk a little bit about some of the practical strategies that we can
implement in our home. I'm not the only parent that has struggled with the homework
hour and the challenges that homework can present. It's not just homework, obviously.
It's long -term projects. It's long -term assignments, you know, book reports where
you're reading the book and then you've got this long -term project of wrapping it
all up into a final report. Let's talk a little bit about how we can support our
kids to succeed in those and that gradual building of skills that we want to see
them develop. Well, I think we talked a little bit about that already in terms of
establishing routines for schedules and areas that are organized and well set up in
terms of homework. You know, they don't have to be elaborate kinds of spaces, but
at least places where kids have a chance to keep their materials organized, where
they've got all of the kind of resources that they would need to be able to do
their homework. So that's one. I think the other thing that concerns me and where
we see the greatest pushback with kids about homework is they're either not knowing
how to do a task or not believing they know how to do the task. And so a lot of
the hesitation that comes for kids around homework are, I mean,
that's certainly one of the areas. And it really is a mismatch between the child's
skills, the assumption that somehow these skills are independent on the part of a
child. I mean, obviously, unless you're one of those parents who is constantly
helping your child. Most of the time expectations for schools is that kids are gonna
do homework and they're gonna do, that the tasks are well matched to the skill set
of the kids and the kids are gonna do their homework independently. But in fact,
that's oftentimes not the case, in part because teachers don't necessarily get the
opportunity to see whether these kids are completely independent in terms of being
able to do those kinds of skills. So whether it's actually a skill deficit or
whether it's a confidence deficit in terms of kids feeling like they don't have the
skill to be able to do this, I think that's one area that needs to be addressed.
Another area is we find this particularly with writing tasks when kids get a little
bit older. But not, they're not that old. I mean, you know, now the expectation is
that kids are going to start doing writing, you know, was early a second grade in
kind of story development. But by third and fourth grade, you know, they're expected
to be able to manage things like writing, you know, a paragraph, given a topic,
writing a response, you know, to some sort of topic that's given to them that's not
necessarily in their wheelhouse. And writing in particular demands a pretty high level
of executive skills. I know my son, who ironically at this point is co -author on
four of the executive skills books, he struggled and he and I struggled together
when he was in fourth grade and fifth grade around writing topics.
I mean, it became a real kind of, I'll be honest with you, it became a real kind
of battleground for me with him about those kinds of tasks. And,
you know, at the time, I was convinced that he had the ability because if he knew
a subject and knew what he was writing about and liked the subject, he was very,
very good at writing about it. But if you gave him a topic that he didn't know
something about, it really, really put an enormous strain on his ability to generate
information. And I at the time, and I've certainly learned over the years what an
error that was on my part, I took that as an issue of him not wanting to do it
versus couldn't do it, when in fact he couldn't do it. And I've seen that with as
math complexity increases, particularly as kids get into higher order math, you see a
similar kind of thing where there are multiple complex steps to the process and
simply are unfamiliar with that. So I think it's really important, and that's not an
area that, I mean, parents can help in that area, but I think it's important for
parents to recognize and understand that that's one of those areas where you may
need to approach the school and either request an assessment or at least make
teachers aware of the fact that what they believe is a skill that the child has
that in fact, the child isn't nearly as proficient at that skill as teachers would
imagine and that it causes problems in terms of homework. And then there are the
other kinds of issues that come up with homework. you know, does the task, I mean,
you know, think about for any of us, does the task look like it's overwhelming, you
know, like it's gonna, oh my God, this is gonna take forever. And forever might be
in their context because they've already spent seven hours at school. That's right.
So forever of 40 minutes at home does in fact feel like forever to them.
Absolutely. So one of the, and in the book we've talked about, you know, different
kinds of environmental modifications. But task modification is a real critical issue
there. Is there a way to break down the task into much smaller blocks of time,
much smaller component pieces, and understanding that following a schedule of brief
task break, brief task break, brief task break is fine, particularly in subjects
where children are struggling. You struggling. And oftentimes you'll be able to find
out from teachers, but you're able to find out from kids themselves. I mean, we ask
the question, I often ask the question for kids, how effortful is this task for
you? So go down a list of subjects and which subjects do you like best? Which
subjects do you like least? On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most
effortful, one being the least effortful, which of these tasks is most effortful. At
eight or nine years old, kids are very, very good at the perceived effortfulness for
them of those kinds of tasks. And so we use those kinds of scaling methods as a
way to say that this perceived effortfulness on the part of the task is going to
make this for the child for whatever reason, whether this is a skill issue, whether
it's a task initiation issue, whether it's a state detention issue, it's going to
make it much more difficult for them to be able to accomplish this task. And so
the question then is, how do I modify the task or how does the teacher modify the
task to make this more doable for the child? So if a task is a 10 on the scale
of effortful for a child, maybe incorporate more breaks, maybe incorporate breaks that
are very fun and rewarding for them. Well, you've got to be a little bit careful
about the very fun and very rewarding because you run into that problem of if the
reward is highly prized. For example, I've worked with parents who've let kids take
breaks using video games. Let them get them off the games. You do have to be
careful. We followed more of a first then kind of a routine where if you complete
x amount of this task, then you can do such and such, but being careful about what
those payoffs are for the task, understanding that you're going to have to transition
back from a more preferred task to a less preferred task. And it's already a task
that's somewhat aversive to them. Yep, I can see that. So the situation can't seem
too rewarding. Otherwise, - It's very difficult to get a background. - You'll never
round them back in. That makes sense, that makes great sense. And you mentioned
earlier, fourth or fifth grade is kind of an age at which, you know,
eight or nine, fourth or fifth grade is the age at which a lot of kids are
starting to be very aware of their own abilities and their own skill set for the
tasks, but I also find it interesting that that's the same age at which rigor
changes dramatically in the curriculum and that's frustrating as a parent sitting here
watching that happen. We have six children and I've seen it happen with all six
where right around fourth grade when the rigor changes, their sense of self shrinks
feeling for one it was math for another it was reading feeling like these tasks are
never I'm never going to taste success at this task because the rigor has just now
outstripped my ability and just kind of rounding them back in to say, okay, well,
you had great success at this task last year and it doesn't have to be exactly the
same as last year, but let's see what we can build on from last year. Yeah, I
think that that really is kind of critical and particularly as you mentioned, when
kids are transitioning from one grade to the next, you know, when you're going from
like fourth grade to fifth grade, particularly if middle school starts in fifth grade
or fifth grade to sixth grade, if middle schools are starting in sixth grade, those
kinds of transitions, they're difficult for a variety of reasons. You know, first of
all, the nature of the academic tasks themselves changes. And so a lot of math
programs, for example, there's a kind of an elementary base to a math program. And
then there's the complexity of the math changes. Writing, as I said, becomes,
and particularly writing to prompts the teachers provide, becomes a very critical
issue. And of all of the academic skill or all of the academic tasks that are out
there, writing demands probably the highest level of executive skills of any of those
kinds of tasks. And so all of a sudden expecting proficiency at that kind of level,
if kids have struggled already or if up until now they've been writing about
subjects of their own choice and suddenly that choice has taken away from them,
that's really difficult. The other thing that happens in that kind of situation is
that teachers' expectations change as far as executive skills themselves. And so,
again, starting at that kind of four, five or five, six transition, The expectation
is that kids are going to take on their own self -management and they're going to
more and more be independent, you know, so to speak. And that really does create
difficulties for kids who are struggling with executive skills. My son has a lifelong
attention disorder. He, bright kid, did well out -school,
but going through that transition from elementary to middle school were the demand
for him to be able to manage his own behavior, to manage his own time, to manage
the organization, so forth, put a significant strain on him, independent of the
academic demands. The other thing that kids are coping with,
depending on the school system, is now they're going from the expectations of a
single teacher to the expectations of multiple teachers, and in doing a lot of our
presentations, it's always been interesting to us that while, for example,
middle school teachers understand or appreciate the need to have consistency with
these kids, no middle school teacher wants to give up his or her particular
organizational system. And so, you So you end up with five or six teachers and kids
having to adapt to five or six organizational systems and five or six different sets
of expectations, which again is on top of the fact that you're placing more burden
on executive skills as it is, that makes it particularly complicated for those kids.
And again, you'd hope that teachers would be flexible enough to give that some
consideration. But, you know, as I say, when we've done middle school presentations
and middle school consultations, when we talk about that, everybody thinks that
they've got the best system. I'm not going to change you, change. I understand that
on the one hand, on the other, it really does create some pretty significant
difficulties for kids. Hey there, sorry to interrupt again, But I wanted to say that
we are really proud of our library of 15 free courses, made possible by our
partner, the Jockey Being Family Foundation. If you go to bit .ly /JBFsupport,
you can build your toolbox of parenting skills for free. That's bit .ly /JBFsupport,
B -I -T dot L -Y slash J -B -F support. Thanks,
and we hope you enjoy the rest of the show.
So let's talk a little bit about the language that parents and caregivers can use
with our kids and also when we're interacting with our children's teachers that will
frame our kids' behaviors in terms of their executive skills versus maybe the lens
of defiance or distraction or disruption. One of the reasons why,
in your opening, you mentioned executive function skills. If you search the internet,
for example, if you look up executive functions, you'll find just literally probably
at this point millions of references to executive functions. When we started writing
about this, we were deliberate in our choice of the word skills versus functions,
and part of the reason why we're deliberate in terms of our choice about skills was
so that parents and ultimately kids would understand that that's what these are.
They're not unchangeable functions, they're not personality characteristics, they're
simply a set of skills like any other skill, and with practice, you can get better
at those kinds of skills. And so our goal was to reframe the expectations around
these skills so that people would see them as things that you can work on and
things that you can improve rather than some defining characteristic of your intellect
or some defining characteristic of your personality. And so I think that that's one
critical issue. The other one is that this notion that skill versus will,
thinking about skill versus will and that children will do the best that they can
do. We live in our work by that principle.
So when somebody mentions to us that kids are unmotivated or kids are lazy or kids
are defiant and again you tend to, you don't, not that you never hear them at an
elementary level, but as kids get older, you hear those terms more and more often,
and they're certainly more prolific in middle school and particularly high school. And
one of the difficulties that creates is that it sets up an immediate conflict
between the adult and the kid about what the expectation is,
because is because now, this is something in the adult's mind that the kid has
complete control over. And if they chose to do something different, they could simply
make that choice. And the problem with that is you're stuck at that point and
there's no place to intervene. This is gonna come down to a battle of wills between
you and the child. And you just don't wanna be there. Because there's no,
first of all, there's no answer to it. Other than you saying to the child,
well, if you just wanted to do what you could or just do it, or if you were more
motivated, you knew it. None of that is gonna make any difference whatsoever,
nor does it give the student any real hope in terms of being able to get past
this particular problem. And so Our inclination is all of these times,
look at this as a skill versus a will issue. And I'll give you one exception that
I mentioned already to that, and that's where the child might have the skill, but
the effortfulness of the task is such that it's still an impediment to doing the
task. I mean, you know, it's funny, I think about this, just to use this example
all the time. My wife and I share household chores. I'm happy to do the dishes.
Actually, I'm happy to do the dishes, wash the dishes, load the dishwasher, unload
the dishwasher, all of those kinds of things. I hate washing windows. And I know
how to wash windows, but on an effortfulness scale, washing dishes is a one or two,
and glass cleaning is an eight or nine at least, and maybe more. And so I will
actively avoid that task because of the effortfulness of it. Interestingly enough
though, if I look at this even as an effortfulness issue, the fact of the matter
is I've still got an intervention to do. If I make the task, if I make the
effortful task short and I simplify the task for myself, so not only do I not have
to do it, I can do a particular segment of the task and then get away from it,
over a period of time, I can build that skill to a point where I can reduce the
effortfulness of it. There's interesting, again, neuropsychological and neurological
research out there about this, where people looked at, if you reduce the level of
difficulty of a task, and you have people practice it in very,
very small steps, The perceived effortfulness of the task drops over a period of
time, as does the amount of energy required in the brain to accomplish that task.
So there's both a kind of neurobiological correlate to that. There's also a
behavioral correlate to that. And so, whether I look at this as a skill deficit or
I look at this as the ability to exert effort in a task, in both cases, I've got
an intervention and the intervention is similar in both. I still need to think about
how do I make the task, bring the task within this kid's particular skill set to
be able to accomplish that task. It's unrealistic for parents to be able to
accomplish those kinds of things, but it's important for them to be able to approach
the school around those kinds of things and make teachers aware of this. But
particularly then, seeking evaluations that might lead to an IEP or to a 504 plan,
because that's the only way that you're going to be able to get the kind of
accommodations and hopefully bring people to some sort of a recognition that this kid
is generally struggling and suffering in this particular situation. And it's not a
motivational issue. It's not a will issue. It is still a skill issue. It's that
filter of can't not won't. Yes, absolutely. That we just try and keep that filter
on all the time. So that brings us to an interesting point that you made in the
book, and I'd love to hear you unpack it a little bit. Why is it important for us
as parents and caregivers to understand our own executive skill, strengths and
struggles, when we're trying to help our kids understand theirs? There are a couple
of issues there. Probably the main one for us and the reason we put it up is
there's a potential mismatch between a parent's skills and hence expectations and a
child's skills and expectations. For example, my son understandably struggles with task
initiation. That's just, it's part and parcel of an attention disorder.
He recognizes it. He's the ultimate procrastinator, it's always been the case.
Task initiation is a strength for me. If I've got something to do, I don't put it
off, I tend to try to get to it as quickly as possible. When I first saw this in
my son, I'm thinking that this is an easy solution to this.
You just need to
you know, recognize, you know, for say, fairly early on, that it just, it wasn't
that easy for him. But in my mind, it comes so easily that I'm going to build
that expectation into his behavior. And now his behavior looks willful rather than,
again, this looks like a will versus skill. Nice. Okay. When in fact, that's not
what it is and so I want to see and parents want to be aware of the fact where
is there a mismatch between their strengths and their weaknesses and what the child's
strengths and weaknesses are so that you don't get caught in that kind of dilemma
of building a set of expectations for your child where they're based on your own
ability but not on the child's ability and so it means understanding those skills
and then being able to step back and say but my kids skills are different in this
area and I need to recognize that my own expectations aren't going to fit for him
or for her. You said there was another reason the first one was the mismatch of
expectations. Yeah the second one is if my child and I have the same weakness then
I'm not going to be a very much very much assistance at all. For example, I'm in
a different room right now, but if I were to go upstairs and show you a picture
of my desk, it's a train wreck.
If my son were to take a picture of his desk, he lives in Rhode Island, it looks
like a similar train wreck. And so, I'm of no help whatsoever to him in terms of
being able to provide any kind of support or organization around those kinds of
things. And oftentimes, if parents have similar skill weaknesses,
it really can be a struggle because, well, I used to say to my kid, you know,
all you need to do is get organized. And he understood fairly quickly the hypocrisy
of that. 'Cause one actually brought me into my into the study and said,
are you kidding?
You know, he was right about that. And when we're working with this population of
kids who, you know, have had broken trust in the past, any of those hypocrisies on
our part can further erode that trust, which then, you know, further erodes the
connection that makes them want to believe in themselves and trust us that they can
believe in themselves. Absolutely. That's Absolutely. Another area, and one that is of
particular concern to us, if a parent struggles with flexibility and emotional control
already, and their kids are going to struggle with those just by virtue of the
experiences that they've had, then it tends to create a style of parenting that's
detrimental to the development of executive skills. So what we know is rigid rule
setting, a real authoritarian kind of style, a kind of lack of emotional
connectedness to kids, really is, it's obviously detrimental to the quality of the
emotional relationship you establish with your kids, but it's also detrimental to the
development of executive skills. And the converse is true. Cohesive families,
where everybody's kind of emotionally supportive of one another, they're on the same
page, particularly around times when kids are going to be angry or frustrated or
upset, which these kids are going to experience fairly often, again, because of the
experiences they've been through. To be able to respond to those in a kind of
nurturing, I'm not saying that you're not talking about abandoning limits setting
here, but being able to respond to them in a way that says, "I get what you're
going through. Understand it. I will be as supportive as I could possibly be about
that." Not only are you modeling emotional control and empathy in those kinds of
situations, you're making the child feel more comfortable and more accepted in that
kind of situation, which again, has been shown to facilitate the healthy development
of executive skills. And so that's one of those areas where understanding something
about your own executive skills becomes particularly critical 'cause it means that you
may have to It's really hard to modify your own behavior in response to what some
of your child's behaviors are going to be. Yeah. If our listeners are interested in
learning more about parenting styles and attachment styles, we do have some great
resources. If you go to the search bar at creatingafamily .org and type "attachment
style," you can pull up the articles and the podcasts that will help you understand
more about your attachment style that comes from your family of origin so that you
can understand how you are parenting and attaching to your children. I think that
that's absolutely critical. My son and I and Peg Dawson, our colleague,
spend a lot of time now training coaches around being able to work with kids and
adults both. And my son has done a lot of work in this area around the area of
motivational interviewing. And one of the things that we've realized over time is
that the critical issue, and I've certainly seen this in my own, in my relationships
with my own kids, but also in working with other parents, your style of
communication with your kids, particularly as your kids hit those kind of between
years and those teenage years is absolutely essential to the maintenance of any kind
of relationship at all. And when kids are on that path to developing their own
autonomy and their own identity, to commit to that situation as a parent with a
real authoritarian style and to try to, it kind of makes this nothing but a
hierarchical relationship or I'm going to tell you what to do and you're going to
do regardless and communicate that is basically incredibly detrimental to the
likelihood of maintaining a good relationship. And again, it doesn't mean not
establishing rules and rules, but it does mean understanding how to go about that
and appreciating the fact that negotiation and partnership, particularly as kids are
getting older, is really an essential component of what a relationship is all about.
Yeah, Dr. Ken Ginsburg calls it healthy interdependence. Yes. Yep. Yep.
Let me pause here for a moment and say thank you to Hopscotch Adoptions for
sponsoring this episode. Hopscotch Adoptions is a Hague accredited international
adoption agency placing children from Armenia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Georgia,
Ghana, Guyana, Morocco, Pakistan, Serbia, and Ukraine. They specialize in the placement
of children with Down syndrome and other special needs including kinship adoptions.
They place kids throughout the U .S. and offer home study services and post -adoption
services to residents of North Carolina and New York. You can find them at
hopscotchadoptions .org. Thanks so much. Well,
I would love to hear one or two of your top takeaways from the book that you'd
love for parents and caregivers to consider before we close things out. Sure.
There are a couple. One of them is that in teaching your child any skill,
but particularly executive skills, it's absolutely critical to begin where the child
is at, not where your expectations are. And so this comes out of more of the
behavioral psychology, but we talk about a kid's baseline. What's their current level
of performance in a particular situation?
And once you understand what that baseline is, both in terms of the consistency of
the behavior, but also in terms of the skill level of the behavior, then At that
point, you build your expectation, but your expectation never exceeds initially a more
than 10 % improvement in that behavior, which means that you have to start really
small. And you first of all, if the behavior is inconsistent,
then you don't even think about improvement. You think about the goal is consistent
demonstration of that behavior, and then you begin to think about small steps, but
that small steps issue really is critical. The other critical piece of that is that
this is all about goodness of fit between the task demand and the child.
We talked about whether the tasks are a match or a mismatch for kids. In behavioral
terms, we use the term antecedent control. In our work, we use the word
environmental control, but basically what that means is that you need to look at the
task demand for the child and make whatever modifications in advance that the task
needs to have in order for the child to have a chance of success. You can fade
those supports over time, but that initial goodness of fit and the kid having a
high probability of success, again, builds a sense of confidence and competence that
we talked about. So that's one. The second one is ultimately in executive skills,
kids, they need to own the plan and in order for them to own the plan,
they need to have a key role in decision -making in choice. And so,
The goal isn't to tell them what to do the goal is to get their input about you
can set it You can establish the general expectations for the task But within that
build some decision -making for them and also build the opportunity for them to make
some choices about What comes first what comes next and so because to the extent
that they have Some ownership of the plan to that extent. They're much more likely
to be willing to follow through with the plan. So I'm going to summarize those real
quick. What I think I hear you saying, the first one is parent the child that you
have right in front of you. Absolutely. The second one is be flexible and nimble to
respond to the skills that they have that you can help them build on,
whether it's developing consistency or improving skills. And then the third one just
left my brain. The third one is as much as possible, be proactive versus reactive
in setting rules and expectations. Big proactive does two things.
First of all, when any of us know in advance what the expectation is, that's
prediction. And as I said before. Prediction is control. Not only that,
but when the child goes into the situation now, they already have knowledge of what
the expectation is. My son and I were in the process, hopefully, of writing another
book. My son was the one who pointed this out to me. He said, "In a conflict
situation, the issue is between the child and the limit set, and not between you
and in the child. That's great, yeah. And that really is a critical piece.
I think about the example of if I say to a child, the child says, "I'd like to
go to the museum today." I say, "Okay, you need to be ready by X time in order
for us to get there and to be able to get whatever we need to do." And I provide
the child with prompts and warnings along the way in terms of time and time to get
one minute left. But my goal is not to harass the child.
But I don't want to say something like, well, if you don't finish getting dressed,
we're not going to be able to go to the museum. I don't want to do that. I've
established the limit proactively. I've said what the consequence is going to be that
in order for us to do this, we need to leave by this time. If at that point
point, the child's not ready, then the consequences you simply don't go. And
oftentimes, we feel like we need to protect our children from those kinds of errors
and failures. We don't. Because all it does is bring us into a battle,
whereas the battle needs to be between the child and that particular limit that's
been Right. We can stay out of it at that point. But in order to accomplish that,
you really do have to be proactive and very specific about both what the expectation
is, but also what the consequences are going to be. And the consequences need to be
framed positively, not negatively. So we've said to parents all the time, if I say
to a child, if you're ready on time, we can go to the museum. That's the end of
it. I don't want to start saying things like, you know, if you're not ready on
time, we won't go to the museum, because now I've already adopted a kind of a
punishment stance around those kinds of things. But if I set the limit, then let
the limit go. And that allows us to then be on their team with them in this
struggle rather than butting heads with them. Exactly. I love that. Well,
Dr. Guerra, Thank you so much for all of this excellent information and I think
parents and caregivers are going to find it very equipping and empowering as we
start to think about preparing our kids for the back to school season. I appreciate
your time and your expertise. I hope it's really been helpful. I've really enjoyed
it. I've enjoyed the conversation. I have too. Thank you so much. All right. Thank
you. Take care.