Morning Rush

I know the advantages of planning and execution of steps toward a goal, both from my personal life and also from my training as an educational psychologist. So, providing concrete supports to my kids for what we call executive function, has been a priority for me as a parent. It has also helped save my sanity on more than one occasion. Executive function is an umbrella term for a bunch of different skills that reside generally in our frontal lobe. It includes things like goal setting, initiation of tasks, organization and planning (of time, tasks, etc.), impulse control, and flexibility (of thoughts, emotions, responses). It improves with age, meaning that toddlers and preschoolers have basically nonexistent executive function while teenagers have more developed brains and thus more developed executive function skills. My kids are neither age, and so they fall in the ‘emerging’ zone of executive function. Their brains are still working on growing into the prefrontal cortex and expanding sophisticated neocortical functionality. What that means for me is that they still need regular reminders and scaffolding for how to transition between activities, to ignore the sparkly distraction in front of them in favor of the bigger goal, or how to regulate their emotional experiences so they can stay focused and on task…

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