Executive functioning skills are a set of skills that help one to plan, organize, and prioritize tasks successfully. While the number of executive functioning skills is not defined, these include skills that help each individual to get things done and manage their day-to-day activities efficiently. Planning, organization, time management, and self-control are just a few of the executive functioning skills to name.
Children aren't born with these skills, but they are born with the ability to develop them. As they progress through the various developmental phases, their brain undergoes transformations that make them capable of learning these skills. Therefore, providing a growth-promoting environment at home is essential for building and honing these skills. Lack of support can seriously delay or impair skill development. This article will look into some of the effective executive functioning activities to help your child build the skills at home. Before that, let's understand the key stages of brain development that your child goes through from the time of birth to when their brain reaches its complete maturity.
How do executive functioning skills develop in your child?
Understanding executive functioning skills in detail
As mentioned earlier, executive functioning skills are a set of metacognitive skills learned over time and enables one to plan, prioritize, and efficiently manage tasks and goals. Popularly recognized areas or brain functions that contribute to executive functioning skill development are: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. These functions work individually and in coordination for successful application of executive functioning.
- Working memory governs our ability to retain information and supports learning, reasoning, and comprehension.
- Mental flexibility helps in shifting between different mindsets, tasks, behavioral responses or even approaches to problem solving.
- Self-control enables one to focus attention and block out distractions.
Development of executive functioning across different ages
Firstly, it is important to understand that executive function skills develop differently in everyone. This is because children's brains develop at different rates, and they experience mental growth in short spurts
Babies are developing executive functioning skills as soon as they are born. When a newborn starts to recognize comforting faces or shows preferences for certain activities, these are signs of working memory taking form. Infants and toddlers between the ages of one to three years start developing the ability to focus attention and stay on a particular task. They have a basic ability to shift their attention, but this becomes more developed as they grow. Preschoolers in the age group of three to five years start shifting from one task to another more easily. It is also at this age when children start exhibiting basic organizational skills. This can be as small as arranging toys or books in a particular manner on their own.
During the early school years between the ages of six to nine, they start organizing and prioritizing more important tasks such as choosing between homework and play. It is during this time that executive functioning skills related to academic work, such as working memory, planning, organization, etc., develop significantly, enabling them to memorize, prioritize, and learn new things. As your child proceeds to middle school and high school years, they start developing critical thinking skills. This stage in their development lasts until their brain reaches its complete potential (and ideally, a human brain fully develops by the age of 25). But for ease of discussion, we can break this phase even further down into two: middle to high school years and adult years.
Even at the very beginning of the middle school years, they become capable of considering multiple perspectives and approaches to problems. Extracurricular activities, exams, advanced curriculum, and exams are introduced as they become highly capable of prioritizing and planning their day-to-day tasks at this stage. Most of the rapid development occurs in your child, which is also why this stage of development is the most crucial part out of all the developmental phases.
Significance of executive functioning skill in middle school
Let's look into detail the changes that happen during middle school years that make it the most significant time for executive functioning skill development.
In addition to the higher-order thinking or critical thinking skills discussed above, your child becomes capable of adjusting to complex schedules, changing classes, and increasing independence as their capability to develop organization, planning, and prioritization skills is at its highest potential.
The same can be reflected in the shift in curriculum and approach as your child enters middle school. An abundance of independent work, self-learning, introduction to abstract concepts, and increased after-school activities demand honing executive functioning skills for attaining academic success. Middle school is a prime time when targeted support for executive skills lays important groundwork for later stages of learning, independence, and well-being.
Executive functioning skills in learning and development
Strong executive functioning skills are the foundation for academic success. They equip your child to remain organized, focused, and goal-oriented. Whether it is planning assignments, initiating exam preparation, managing time well, or staying laser-focused, executive functioning skills are what make your child capable of learning and managing priorities effectively.
Transitioning into teenage years adds an additional layer of responsibility as it demands middle schoolers to be capable enough to set their own goals and initiate the steps to achieve these goals. At this stage, the responsibility of finding a sense of direction, setting goals, and deciding how they want to do it lies solely with them. Parents and mentors could provide guidance, but sustained efforts towards goals and seeing projects through to completion are crucial sets of skills your child should be honing to be successful in school and beyond.
In addition to learning-based abilities, executive functioning skills also aid lifelong emotional-social well-being by managing one's emotional impulses.
Executive Functioning Activities to Improve Learning
As mentioned earlier, executive functioning skills are a set of metacognitive skills learned over time and enables one to plan, prioritize, and efficiently manage tasks and goals. Popularly recognized areas or brain functions that contribute to executive functioning skill development are: working memory, mental flexibility, and self-control. These functions work individually and in coordination for successful application of executive functioning.
- Routines: It provides a framework to structure both daily activities and long-term planning of projects and assignments. Consider starting with a fixed routine for after-school hours and a flexible routine for weekends. Slowly, you may introduce structure to the weekends with lessons for an activity of your child's interest or private tutoring for a challenging subject.
Familiar routines empower them to independently initiate necessary steps without needing constant reminders. Routines can also strengthen their procedural memory, making them capable of recalling the requirements and next steps to fulfill a task (writing assignments, solving math homework, etc.). Consider using a checklist as it could help your child ease into the process of working within a routine.
- Rewards: For younger kids, rewards can increase their motivation to achieve academic and behavioral goals. Rewards also provide targets to plan, monitor, and evaluate progress towards mastering goals. While younger kids rely on external motivators like rewards as positive reinforcement for desired actions, older kids are less likely to be motivated by external rewards. Instead, they rely on words of appreciation and parental check-ins to stay motivated. Something as simple as telling them you appreciate all the hard work they're doing can be impactful for older children.
- Planners: Calendars and planners are the greatest and most effective tools to teach organization and planning to your child. Having all assignments, activities, and due dates in one place provides structure and clarity. Beyond planning and organization, planners can also aid in teaching time management and task prioritization by facilitating time allotment for various tasks throughout the week. Having a consistent planning system helps middle schoolers build numerous executive skills critical for success in more demanding academic schedules.
- Physical Activities: Exercises get blood flowing into the frontal lobes, which improves focus and the ability to direct attention. This blood flow to the prefrontal lobes is supposed to stimulate brain growth. Switching between physical and mental challenges trains the brain to adaptively shift its thinking, allowing your child to develop problem-solving skills. This is also the reason why including time for physical exercises of any form, such as sports, swimming, hiking, martial arts, and dance, is highly recommended for children of all age groups.
- Explore Learning styles: Your child may be familiar with conventional learning techniques that heavily rely on memorization techniques through repetitive practice. Chances are that your child may not be compatible with the particular learning style that they are currently exposed to. Introducing your child to other modes of learning opens up their perspective and helps them find their preferences. Being exposed to various modalities (visual, auditory, hands-on, etc.) also enhances their ability to adapt their approach depending on the task and encourages independent learning at the same time.
- Modeling social behavior: These are examples of responses to various social cues/triggers that require controlling impulses. When parents interact with empathy, flexibility, and calm emotion regulation even during challenging situations, children tend to mimic a similar response while dealing with emotional overwhelm or other triggers. Creating a supportive home environment where positive social modeling is frequent and consistent helps transfer these skills to your child.
How to Teach Executive Functioning Skill to Your Child?
Understanding the development or delay in the development of executive functioning skills in your child can be difficult for parents with limited resources at home. Serious delays in the development of more than one of these skills can hamper their potential growth. You can always check for early indicators, but fully grasping the degree of development appropriate to your child's developmental stage can be a challenge.
Crimson Rise programs offer elaborate coursework that begins with building foundational skills after individually assessing the executive functioning level of each student. Our approach relies on strengthening executive functioning skills to direct students towards finding their passion and developing interests based on their core strengths.
Check out the stories of our students who went from struggling to manage their time to accommodating more extracurricular activities in their schedule and identifying potential career paths in less than 2 years.
Book a free consultation with our academic expert to know what your child may actually need to level up their executive functioning skills.
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