Always running late? Struggling to listen, pay attention to, and understand other people when they are talking or giving directions? Trouble getting started? Don't know where to start? Trouble staying on task? Trouble figuring out why something didn't work? Disorganized? Messy?
If you answered yes to these questions, you or your child may have difficulty with your executive functions. These skills hep us have sustained and selective attention, allow us to divide our attention, and shift when necessary. They comprise our working memory and our ability to update our working memory. They also allow us to inhibit our reactions/actions/behaviors. Executive functions help us develop goals and recognize what we need. We use executive functions to develop the language needed to plan, organize, and explain ideas, goals, solutions to problems, etc. They are also what we use to initiate and maintain persistence, while allowing for flexibility when things change. Finally, executive functions help us to monitor what we are doing, appraise what we are doing, and provides us with the awareness to analyze.
I have seen an increase in Executive Dysfunction in elementary age children since the beginning of virtual school. I am not sure if virtual school has made it more difficult for children to develop the executive functions, or if it has only highlighted difficulties in this area because children have not had the visual and physical cues that typically happens in face-to-face instruction. Usually, children can use these environmental cues to support their executive dysfunction. When those cues are gone, these students may appear lost, not paying attention, lazy, behavioral, etc. Executive Dysfunction also becomes more apparent in the 4th and 5th grades, when expectations are increasing and more independence is required. It is best to help support students with Executive Dysfunction when problems first arise, so that by the time they are in older grades they are not having significant academic issues.
Speech therapy can help students become aware of their strengths and when they may need to seek more support. It is important that therapeutic tasks are real-life and hands on, not merely worksheets. Virtual speech therapy can provide this! Science experiments and cooking are GREAT ways to address these skills!
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