Month: October 2017

Does your child have:

• Trouble organizing themselves?
• Trouble prioritizing tasks or even starting them?
• A hard time regulating their alertness, and staying focused?
• Trouble with frustration and keeping emotions in check?
• Trouble recalling information even though it was just given to them?
• A hard time controlling his or her impulses?

If you answered yes to several of the questions above your son or daughter may have an Executive Functioning disorder.

According to Understood.org  Executive Functioning is a set of mental skills that help you get things done. The ability to recall the steps needed and in what order, to get the job done.  These skills are controlled by the frontal lobe of your brain. Executive function helps you manage time, pay attention, get things started, switch focus, plan, organize, remember details, avoid doing or saying the wrong things, do things based on your experience and multi task.

Now that we know what it is, let’s look at some ways to help your child recall and organize the information correctly.

Chore chart

Make sure you put the chores in order that the child will do them each morning to get ready for school, after school, and before bed. You can make your own or buy them at the dollar store, or go all out and buy a Melissa and Doug chore chart.

Before School	After school	Before Bed
Go to the bathroom Make and eat breakfast Brush teeth Comb hair Get dressed Make bed Pack lunch Pack books and items for school in bag Screen time until time to go	Unload back pack Snack 15 free time Home work Any chores they might have free time until dinner	Pajama’s Snack Read for 20 minutes Guided meditation app 10 minutes Go to bed

Color Code Everything

I mean everything from their tooth brush, electrical cords and water bottles to their underwear.  The most important thing about color coding is it has to stay consistent to help.

At Home

• Having a color coded calendar will help your child be prepared for the week, day, and month. Each person has a different color for their activities, and has a separate color for things the whole family does together
• Different colored boxes or bags for seasonal stuff like flip flops, winter gloves, snow suites, sunglasses helps everyone find and put away things easily.
• Tooth brush, and holder spot, tooth paste, shampoo if it is different than yours.
• Underwear, socks for example growing up I had solid colors and my sister had prints.
• Put fancy tape or electrical tape on electronic charges so there is no mistaking whom it belongs to. I have even gone as far as putting matching tape on the electronic that goes with the cord in my own collection.

 At School

• School subjects should be different colors and the color code the stuff that goes with the subject ie, math – calculator, eraser, pencil, geometry set. You could go even as far as getting matching colored bracelets to the subjects and when homework is assigned put that bracelet on and then have them write the homework in his or her agenda.
• Another good idea is to have what the teacher said in the agenda in one color and what parents said in another.
• Using color coding system for notes can be very helpful also for all children. Having the main topic highlighted one color, sub topics another, terms and vocabulary each different colors from the rest.
• Having a color coded to do list for your child and separate them into to do today, this week, this month or do first, second, third.
• If there is more than one thing on your child’s to do list let them take it with them to help them remember what they were to do next.
• Having a two sided luggage tag on the zipper of their back pack with one side with the stuff that goes in the bag written on it and the stuff that comes home on the other, each written in different colors.
• The “to home and to school” folders for all their work, newsletters, permission forms, and lunch order forms, which many elementary schools are already using.
• Having two sets of text books one for home and one for school because your child most likely will forget to bring the text book or bring the wrong one home.

Check out my post  where I look at some tips to help build executive functioning skills by working on short term memory boosters.

When I am working with kids I have to think outside the box because most of the time they have just finished school and the last thing they want to do is sit at a table and do some more “work”.  I am going to give you some tips in making things fun and tons of examples that may not work with your child but might allow you to springboard an idea of your own off of them.

1) Work with the Child’s Interests

I don’t know how many times I have made obstacle courses into superhero training exercises, or had princess hair salon for a desensitization program.  If they are interested in trains find math problems with trains in them or have Thomas whisper the answers to your child.

2) Use Movement

While teaching some of my client’s phone numbers we have written each number on a square of paper and taped it to the wall and thrown a ball at it as we said the numbers, written it with sidewalk chalk and jumped on each letter as we said it. I have taught kids the letters in their name by having them try to make them with their body and the muscle memory helps them remember it. Another good example would be putting puzzle pieces on the floor and the child has to scoot over to one and bring it back and put it on the board. I have also done this with letters in their name, or pictures aimed at articulation.

3) Take the Pressure off the Child

I like to have their toys do the work or their imaginary friends. Do you think Mater could find the picture that matches this word?  Or have the child teach their stuffy how to do something. I often use puppets when asking kids questions then it is the puppet that didn’t know and not the child. I always reassure the puppet it is alright if they don’t know because the practice is how we get better.

4) Make it Multisensory

I have the kids find the sight word in the rice box, make the letter with the proper formation with wiki sticks and then print it on the chalkboard and then erase it with a small sponge. Not only is it multisensory it is also a ton of repetition. I have used playdoh for letters. I have often used obstacle courses and put a fine motor (pennies to collect and put in the piggy bank), letters, sight words, or drawing in the obstacle course. I have made cheerleader cheers for all kinds of thing the kids have to remember, phone number, address, and/or their full name.

5) Use the Teachable Moments

There is nothing better than teaching a child in the real-time, or as it applies to their life. They will remember it better when they realize how it is useful or applies to them.

6) Let Them Be the Teacher

The majority of the kids I work with get tired of always getting asked the questions so there are many times when I take turns with them especially when it is new material. I will ask you your phone number then you can ask me, or “I will do one math question and then you can do one”  I also use the switching off when reading because the whole book can be overwhelming but only a page and a break seem more reasonable.

7) Turn It Into a Game

Sometimes the thing they have to learn doesn’t have to be the game but the thing they do before they get to move their pieces or roll the dice. It is important that the same thing applies to when you have your turn though too. I have turned I spy into an alphabet game in that you have to find something that starts with the letter …… Memory and Go Fish are good for sight words (words to words or word to picture), street signs, community signs, Letters to pictures to name just a few. I have often turned things into a fishing game with pictures, letters, numbers, and words on fish cut outs with fasteners as eyes and magnets on a stick with a ribbon.

8) Work on More Than One Goal at Time

This doesn’t work for all kids but I often combine a lot of programs into one activity, again obstacle courses are good for that. I have put speech pictures between different obstacles in the course, have a thrown ball at the picture section of the course, write a letter of your name at a station in the obstacle course. Puzzles can be down with the pieces on the floor and the board on the table so they have to squat and pick them up to build glutes strength, laid the pieces on one side of the puzzle and have the child cross midline to get them. In the end, you are getting through the stuff faster.

9)Practice Errorless Learning

Errorless learning allows kids be successful, therefore builds their confidence. Errorless leering is designed so the learner doesn’t make mistakes. As the skills are taught, the learner is provided with prompts or cues immediately after the instruction which prevents a wrong answer.

There are some ways to implement errorless learning:

• Adjust your expectations appropriately.
  • Make sure the task is something you are 90% sure the child can do.
• Make sure the learner is clear on what is expected of them
• If needed collaboratively finish the task
• When you see a learner struggling step in and give them hints or do part of it for them.
• Make the task doable
  • There are several different ways to do this, backward or forward chaining, or breaking down the task into smaller parts and only tackling one at a time.
• Anticipate problems before they arise and pre-correct them
  • A good example word be when reading and you see a word that is hard and they may not know say something to the effect of, “ I see in the next sentence there is a tricky word. The word is X. “ or  ”this next letter is tricky, this is how you make the letter X.

10) Give lots of praise for the steps done well

I say this for a couple of reasons. One when a child feels they are doing good they will do more, and it is teaching them to enjoy the process not just the end result. Instilling a growth mindset so as they get older they look forward to a challenge instead of shying away from it.

 

Here are seven easy ways to help your children build memory skills and by doing that their Executive Functioning Skills. Executive Functioning skills are the skills that allow you to get the job done, the part of the brain that helps you recognize and organize the steps to do the job.

1. Visualization

• Have the children visualize what the finished product looks like, and then have them draw it. I then usually have them tell me what they need to complete the task, and then together we put the steps in the right order. Once the kids get really good at it they can do it all in their head and just walk you through it.

2. Have Children be the Teacher

• Your child will really have to understand the information before they will be able to teach it to you. I like to let the kids I work with that have good imaginations teach their stuffed animals, or their imaginary friends. I make toys they like to lug around with them work for me rather than against me.

3. Use Games that use Visual Memory

• Games like Crazy 8’s, Skipbo, go fish, memory, war, and so many more. Any board game will work because they will have to remember the rules, and move to make next. There are lots of games I just make up with the kids that use visual memory like , I draw a simple picture ( two shapes) show them for a certain length or time and then hide it and they have to draw from memory. I am hitting visual memory, motor planning and spacial perception all in one activity. You could do it with objects on a tray and then cover the tray up and have them draw everything on the tray.

4. Encourage Active Reading

• Use things like high lighters on instructions of homework, sticky notes in books, even reading out loud will help the information move from short term to long term memory where your child can more easily access it. I use sticky notes all the time when reading stories for different reasons depending on the child’s goal, sometimes it is to highlight the story line, sometimes to high light character’s feelings, and sometimes we actively guess what is going to happen next.

5. Chunk information into Smaller Unit

• Much like I do when I have big project I break it down into more manageable tasks. With some of my kids I will write the steps on separate pieces of paper for them to put in order, with others I use pictures. I get my higher level kids to come up with the steps and put them in order themselves. I use visual schedules the most because I am sure the majority of my kids can recognize the images and follow them. In my experience older kids benefit from graphic organizers such as webs or headings with various levels of bullets. Chore charts are also something I recommend for many families as they are easy to create if you don’t have the time to do that they are pretty easy to find in a store.

6. Make Learning Multisensory

• Read, write, draw, say it out loud, or do something fun while explaining/practicing the information, this will help store it in the child’s long term memory. Almost all of my kids have done at least one speech program finding pictures in the rice bin, or covering them in shaving cream. I love teaching verbs while on the play ground or during the obstacle courses, their bodies remember it better that way. Another example would be most of my clients have learned their phone number by a combination jumping on the numbers in order like a hop scotch, and throwing a ball at the numbers taped to the wall.

7. Help them make Connections

• Use associations whenever possible to connect different details. For example I like to use rhyming words to go with names of the people the kids see regularly. I am Kit Kat, (all of my clients and co workers call me Kat) and my co worker is Anna Banana. Coaches are often related to the sport they specialize in, or