Executive function is a hot topic everywhere. I do a lot of presentations around the country, often for school districts, and I see first-hand that so many educators are trying to address this issue with kids in school. Even with the best intentions, though, we are often getting it wrong. I get this–it took me a while to find my way to techniques that actually support executive function. But now that I have found methods that work, I am absolutely going to speak up about the things that don’t. Our kids deserve our best.

(Hint: None of them are the BRIEF)

Executive function is a hot topic everywhere. I do a lot of presentations around the country, often for school districts, and I see first-hand that so many educators are trying to address this issue with kids in school. Even with the best intentions, though, we are often getting it wrong. I get this–it took me a while to find my way to techniques that actually support executive function. But now that I have found things that work, I am absolutely going to speak up about the things that don’t. Our kids deserve our best.

Even after years helping kids grow and develop their executive function in my speech-language therapy practice, I’m still amazed by how fundamental EF skills are to day-to-day life and learning. As I often say, they’re the foundation for ALL conscious learning. They’re also critical to social interactions. In this article, I’ll tell you a bit about why executive function is so important. I’ll also teach you an easy way to get started cultivating the executive function skills with the kids in your life.

I love reading. I’m always in the middle of reading something, usually something about the brain or something that reminds me of our capacity to be amazing. Not only do I love reading, it’s gotten me where I am today. Most of what I learned about executive function, I got from reading. Not from grad school, not from seminars, from books and applying what I read in those books in therapy.

People often ask what my recommendations are, and I’m more than happy to list some.

We all face disruptors to overcome on the way to our goals. You want to eat healthier, but at the moment, that cookie just looks too good to resist. You decide to read a book, but suddenly it’s midnight and you’ve been watching YouTube for four hours. Succeeding at a task despite disruptions can be difficult for adults. It is extra hard for kids. And it is exponentially more difficult for kids whose executive function isn’t working optimally. A disruptor can completely derail a good moment or a good day.

In my last blog post, How to Study Effectively, I explained that retaining information in our memories has as much to do with output activities as input activities. If your study habits are all about staring at a book or a screen and listening to someone else talk, you’re not likely to retain what you learn. Output activities are where you regenerate that information or use it in a new and creative way. In this blog post, I’ll provide some examples of output activities I teach my kids and my clients to help them retain what they are learning as effectively as possible.

When we think of studying, the first thing that comes to mind is often what goes into our brains: the facts, the techniques, the information we need to learn. We picture a student at a desk poring over a book or listening attentively to a teacher. This idea of studying misses huge and important components of effective study. Basing your study habits only around input could seriously impede our kids’ study habits.

A few months back, I wrote a post that absolutely blew up my Instagram feed. Of all the posts I’ve written, it didn’t surprise me that it was the one that broke the internet. It’s the kind of story that keeps me going every day, that reminds me that a child’s success is directly proportional to our willingness to not give up.

Effective self-monitoring and self-regulation empower children to take ownership of their learning. You may not know it, but those skills are part of a healthy executive functioning system. In this article, I explain some basics of executive functioning as key to understanding self-monitoring and self-regulation. Then I provide tips for developing these important skills that I have honed over thousands of hours of my highly successful therapy practice.

Planning is the first step in my 4-step therapy framework for improving executive functioning.

Planning as a therapy method is working together with the child to create a plan for the activities we’re doing in therapy or the activities the child will encounter outside of the classroom.

The skill of planning is the ability to create a plan that works for you.