Transcript Organizing the Racing, Cluttered Mind

Jessica Blasik, M.S.Ed.
Lisa Pass, Ed.S., NCSP
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Understand some neurodevelopmental reasons
why children and adolescents may struggle to stay
organized
Identify some of the most common Executive
Functions and how they influence behavior
Determine you and your child’s EF strengths and
weaknesses
Learn a problem solving technique to use to plan
and implement your own behavioral interventions
at home
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Orchestra Conductor/CEO
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Executive
Functions: mental
processes that
control and
regulate behaviors
and abilities
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Organization
Planning
Initiation
Shifting
Working Memory
Emotional Control
Self-Monitoring
Inhibition
 Neuronal
pruning (decrease in gray matter)
occurs as brain becomes more “hard wired”
 White matter increases as associations are
made throughout the brain
 Skills
and behaviors practiced
consistently during late childhood
and early adolescence have a higher
probability of being hard-wired into
the adult brain
 Some
evidence that gifted children have
larger parietal and frontal lobe areas
 fMRI
studies indicate that gifted children
may have more efficient connections
between frontal lobes and other areas of the
brain (including emotion centers)
 More
widely spread activation when problem
solving
Brain activation in gifted (a) and
non-gifted (b) students
Mental rotation task
Most noticeable in individuals
with higher IQs.
 Some cognitive abilities may be
much more developed than
others
 Executive Functions normally
develop at different times, so
may appear asynchronous

Asynchronous
Development:
uneven
intellectual,
physical, and
emotional
development.
-“My teachers saw me at once backward and
precocious, reading books beyond my years and yet
at the bottom of the Form. Winston Churchill
-“The servants all
thought that young
Isaac was foolish, and
his mother did not
know what to do with
him…”
From Isaac Newton, The Greatest
Scientist of All Time
-“I used to take these maths tests
which were supposed to be done
in one period and it took me not
just that period but the next one,
which was a play period and
sometimes the one beyond that…”
Roger Penrose, Cambridge Math
Professor
 Complete
the Executive Function Parent and
Student Questionnaire
 Score Each Section
 Higher scores indicate particular strengths,
low scores weaknesses
 Write down the three highest and three
lowest scores to get a “profile”
 Were
there any surprises, either for your
profile or your child’s?
 Were your profile and your child’s profile the
same, or different?
 How might the differences or similarities
between your profiles effect how you work
with your child?
How do these profiles effect family
functioning?
Let’s take a lesson from the Hecks
 When
your strengths are your child’s
weaknesses
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Collaborate with child to get buy-in
Be creative in using your strengths to enhance
their skills
Make a point to identify where you are weak and
your child is strong to maintain morale
When needed, lend them your strengths
 When
your weaknesses are similar to your
child’s weaknesses
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Collaborate with your child
Brainstorm solutions together
Share stories from your past as lessons
Get others to help
Self-Monitoring
 Organization
 Initiation
 Shifting
 Planning
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Executive
Functions: mental
processes that
control and
regulate behaviors
and abilities
 Recognizing
what is going on
inside one’s own mind, body,
environment, relationships.
 Involves
self monitoring and metacognition
related to:
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tasks and environment
interpersonal awareness
own performance
 What
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adults can do to help
Align external demands with internal desires
Set small, attainable goals for each activity, task,
or class
 Student
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based suggestions
Have your child learn to check in with
him/herself by asking: What am I doing right
now? What am I supposed to be doing right now?
 The
ability to create and maintain systems to
keep track of information or materials
 Examples
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Cleaning room
Keeping binders neat and organized
Organizing thoughts onto paper
Keeping track of assignments
Taking effective notes
 Strategies
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Use a bin system or folder system
Take a picture of what “clean” looks like
Break down into manageable, small steps
 Getting
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Thoughts on Paper
Cognitive Mapping
Keeping a daily and weekly planner
 What
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for Keeping Things Tidy
Parents Can Do
Collaborate with students when developing a
strategy
Be flexible and ready to brainstorm
Make it fun, whenever possible
Prepare to choose your battles

“Constantly late for
school, losing his books,
and papers and various
other things into which I
need not enter– he is so
regular in his irregularity
in every way that I don’t
know what to do.”
Winston Churchill’s Principal
 The
ability to begin a task
or activity and to
independently generate
ideas, responses, or
problem solving strategies
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Getting going, getting started on tasks
Knowing where to begin, what to do, who to ask
This is NOT non-compliance or disinterest in the
task, its not knowing where to start
 What
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adults can do to help
Additional verbal and visual prompts
Demonstrate the first problem of a work sheet
Break tasks down step-by-step to reduce feelings
of being overwhelmed
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Write them down on index cards or in a notebook
 Student
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based suggestions
Have your child create “to do” lists or create
“cookbook” with lists of steps for each activity
Organizing thoughts before beginning an activity
 The
ability to move freely from one situation,
activity, or aspect of a problem to another, in
reaction to internal or external cues
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Making transitions
Tolerating change
Flexible problem solving
Switching or alternating attention
Change focus from one topic to
another
 What
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adults can do to help
Consistent routines, schedules, and activities
Make minor changes and help your child respond
Use visual organizers and planners to represent the
sequence of events throughout the day
 Student
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based suggestions
Slightly alter the order of everyday activities
Working with two or three familiar activities and
alternate them
Practice solving problems in different ways
 The
ability to manage
future oriented tasks
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Anticipation of future events
Setting goals
Developing appropriate sequential steps ahead of
time
Determining the most effective method or steps
to reach a goal
Keeping track of time and steps to complete
tasks and reach goals
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What adults can do to help
Have binder with steps for activities, assignments, tasks
 Ask questions like: how long do you think this will take
you to finish?
 Demonstrate ways to plan
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Discuss plans for the day; think out loud and model planning
with multiple steps
Student based suggestions
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Practice setting a goal and lay out steps to reach the
goal
Involve your child in planning events, such as birthday
parties, cooking dinner, or scheduling activities
 Teach
deficient skills rather than assuming
they’ll develop naturally
 Consider developmental level in your plan
 Use your child’s innate drive for mastery and
control
 Over-ride the desire to quit
 Celebrate successes!
 Take a deep breath: stress decreases frontal
lobe activity
 Identify
a problem behavior
 Set an overall goal and several smaller
benchmark goals
 Outline steps needed to reach the goal
 Turn steps into a list, a checklist, or short set
of rules
 Supervise and Reward
 Fade Supervision and reward
 Well
thought out rewards have an energizing
effect on behavior
 Not a bribe, but a way to help a child gain
motivation when it is not yet internal
 Not meant to be permanent
 Should be collaborative with child, and open
to adjustment throughout
 Can be tangible, or intangible
 Needs to be consistent
 Problem
solving practice in groups
 Re-watch
the Hecks, choose one character,
and take 5 minutes to use the problem
solving model on the worksheet to define the
problem
Books
Late, Lost, and Unprepared by Joyce Cooper-Kahn & Laurie Dietzel
Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson & Richard Guare
The Organized Student: Teaching Children the Skills for Success in School and Beyond
by D. Goldberg
Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties by G. McClosky, L.
Perkins, & B. Van Divner
Websites
LDonline.org
http://www.ldinfo.com/executive_functioning.htm
InterventionCentral.com