The Executive Functions of the brain are responsible for coordinating almost all of our interactions with the outside world.  When you stop and think about it, it’s pretty amazing.  We take in sensory information through our eyes and ears, and if our frontal lobes are working optimally, we STOP AND THINK before we act.  In a split second we analyze the current situation and what it demands, drawing on memories of past experiences and considering possible future consequences.  Then our “Mission Control” center of the brain guides us in how to respond to the situation at hand.

We make sure we PAY ATTENTION to the right things for the right amount of time – sustaining our efforts even on dull, tedious tasks for as long as needed to complete our goals.  Yet we’re able to easily SHIFT GEARS and transition to something else if that’s required.  Our WORKING MEMORY helps us keep track of what we’re doing while we’re doing it, and we can SELF-MONITOR how we’re doing as we go along, making any needed course corrections to stay on track.  We ORGANIZE our time and space and materials so that our efforts are efficient and productive.  We INHIBIT any IMPULSES to just act on whim, and we CONTROL our EMOTIONS, so that these things don’t lead us into temptation or trouble.

In short, we’re able to use our internal control mechanisms (the EF part of the brain) to regulate our behaviors so we can attain the outcomes we desire – whether it’s good grades in school, good plays on the ball field, or good family and peer relationships.

Except for when we can’t.

Some kids (and adults, of course), have a type of organizational blindness, or as Dr. Russell Barkley is fond of saying, “temporal nearsightedness.”  These kids, with EF deficits, can only see or relate to those things near in time to them.  They are too often driven by their immediate needs, and have difficulty delaying gratification, seeing the big picture, or working in an organized way towards a long-term goal.  They aren’t as readily motivated by those far-off rewards that drive much of our daily behaviors (“study now to get good grades to get into a good college to get a good job to live happily ever after…”).  The one thing their daily lives are marked by is their consistent inconsistency!

Kids with EF deficits struggle with mental control panels that go offline at the darnedest times – like during the morning rush to get out of the house, or when it’s time to work on a big school project or when they need to follow through on multiple directions or keep up with their chores or keep their mouths shut when someone else is talking.

Executive Functioning involves an intricate set of control mechanisms that most of us take for granted to get through our busy days successfully.  Yet it is important for a whole host of struggling kids (with or without such labels as ADHD, ODD, OCD, Bipolar, Asperger’s, Tourette’s, etc.) that we don’t take these skills for granted.  We need to stop and accurately assess their EF profiles.

Only when we really know what a child’s specific strengths and weaknesses are, can we empower that child, along with his or her parents and teachers, to adapt and thrive.

It’s critical to gain a careful and compassionate understanding of how a child is able to function most successfully – at home, school, and life.  Under what circumstances is the child able to use which internal skills and external resources to succeed?  When and how does the child do his best work; when and how does he perform most poorly?

With a realistic appraisal of a child’s EF profile, we can target skills, supports, and interventions that will have a maximum impact on improving that child’s quality of life.  And providing relief for his family.  And for his teachers and classmates.  It’s a win-win-win situation!

Look for more information on what the “Top 10 Executive Functions” are and “How to Assess Your Child’s EF Profile” on my blog site in the coming week.

And look for my upcoming webinar series on “How to Improve Executive Functioning for Any Child.”

There can be many frustrations for students and teachers when a child has significant deficits in the brain’s ability to inhibit impulses (delay gratification) and sustain attention (stay focused and follow through on tasks).  For many kids with ADHD or other Executive Function Deficits, this is exactly the problem – being able to internally control one’s actions – consistently and independently.  They can do it sometimes, but not all the time.  And that can make parents, teachers, and kids crazy.  How to minimize the wear and tear of daily life with ADHD, and maximize the child’s chance for success?

The first few steps involve adjusting your mindset.  As the responsible adult, your attitude and orientation to the child will go a long way to helping them manage this condition.  Without a positive mindset, all the well-researched and clever behavior modification techniques in the world won’t amount to a hill of beans.

1.    Start with an Empathic Understanding. Realize that this is a very real, albeit invisible, neurological disability.  With a disability perspective, we can regain a sense of compassion and empathy for the child’s daily struggles.  Doing so, we can more easily forgive the child, and ourselves, for not always being perfect.  And this will free up energy that we’ll need to deal with the very real behavioral challenges that result from executive function deficits.

2.    Recognize Strengths and Weaknesses. Recognize that kids with ADHD are not solely defined by that condition, any more than a child with diabetes is solely a diabetic.  Each child also has a unique set of other personality characteristics – both strengths and weaknesses that need to be taken into account.  Does the child have a high IQ or generally smart problem-solving abilities.  If so, this can obviously be an asset that can be put to good use.  But it can also be a liability if we then expect the child to consistently show their bright mental abilities all the time – that’s not going to happen with ADHD.  Does the child also have significant anxiety that affects their functioning?  Is there some major family or environmental stress affecting performance?  Maybe the child is also oppositional and defiant or irritable and depressed?  Is the child socially precocious and pre-occupied (the “social butterfly”) or socially immature and odd (the “class clown”)?  Each of these will affect the exact nature of how we prepare a successful support program for a particular student.

3.    Stop saying “He’s capable, but…”. Rather than thinking and asking, “Is he capable?” it is much more useful to consider “How is he capable?”  Focus on when he is MORE capable and when he is LESS capable.  That is, carefully consider “Under what circumstances does this student show his best behaviors and under what circumstances does he show his worst behaviors?”  Then, let’s follow that starting point to grow the positive times (recognize, praise, celebrate, and replicate them!) and shrink the negative times (define, ignore, punish, and replace them!).

4.    Accept Our Own Limitations. In any given situation, there are always things you can control, and things you can’t control.  If we spend all our time thinking about, worrying about, and talking to colleagues, friends, or anyone who will listen about all the negative problems that are so frustrating because they’re beyond our control, we diminish our own power.  Same circumstance, but you focus on the parts you can control, then you feel more positive and empowered, and you are spending your energy far more productively.  Do what you can, earnestly and full-heartedly, and let go of the rest.

Remember, we can only set up the situation with more or less effective expectations, and follow through with more or less effective consequences.  We cannot totally control the student or MAKE him/her behave a certain way.  The child always has a choice.  When we remove our need to totally control the child or the situation, we release added pressure that is counterproductive.

Next week, we will address how to assess the situation accurately, so you can set up your ADHD behavior management plan for success.  The foundation of this house, however, begins with a positive and realistic mindset.  Let’s make sure our foundation is rock solid before proceeding.

I met with a team of middle school teachers recently who were livid.  They had a very bright student who was “marching to the beat of a different drummer” in a way that was highly frustrating and disruptive to their classes.  Even though they reported that he often appears “lost” in class and there “seems to be a huge disconnect” with him, they still felt like his lack of listening, following directions, and following through on assignments was often “just a bunch of attention getting behaviors.”  After many months of his intrusive questions, dawdling and fidgeting around when doing independent seatwork, and repeatedly having late or missing assignments, they were convinced that “he’s doing a lot of this on purpose.”“He’s really smart, we see what he’s capable of, but he acts so stupid or clueless at times to try to get out of doing it.”  “It’s mainly attention-getting behaviors.”  “He is choosing not to do his work.”  “He can do it, but he just won’t.”

The teachers were understandably concerned that he was going to have a very hard time making it in high school.  And they were just exhausted by trying to figure him out.  What would motivate him?  What could get him to comply and to stay on task? To perform up to the potential they saw in him?

Welcome to the world of kids with executive function deficits.

Say what?!

The command and control center of the brain, located primarily in the frontal lobes, is responsible for the “executive functions” of paying attention, organizing, planning, managing time, initiating and following through on tasks, working memory, self-monitoring, impulse control, and emotional regulation.  Whew!

Our neurosciences are exploding with new research findings that are helping us to understand the critical nature of this part of the brain.  And the executive functions are increasingly critical aspects of human functioning in a rapid-paced, multi-tasking, information-overloaded society.

Imagine being really smart at understanding or knowing a lot of information, but unable to consistently “show what you know.”  Imagine not being able to manage the input and output channels of your brain so you can process and produce information as efficiently as others expect.

Imagine having all this horsepower under the hood of your car, but the control panel on the dashboard often goes haywire, and you just can’t control your speed or direction without frequent daily little glitches.

How frustrating would it be to be that student?  And to be that student’s parent or teacher?   I can tell you from dealing with these frustrations every single day in my consulting practice – very!

These kids are often diagnosed with one of the Attention Deficit Disorders, Autistic Spectrum Disorders, or Anxiety Disorders (including Tourettes and OCD), but they all have the same basic challenge: how to regulate their impulses and emotions in a way that gets them successfully through the demands of a typical day at school and home.

As Russell Barkley says, for many of them, it’s not a matter of knowing what to do, but doing what you know.  The breakdown is at the point of performance – especially when independent functioning is expected.  Self-control – inhibiting impulses, delaying gratification, sustaining attention and effort (especially on dull, tedious tasks that hold no intrinsic interest for the student) – is the very nature of the deficit.

Much of the cause is genetic and biochemical – a neurologic developmental delay in self-regulation.  Yet it certainly can be exacerbated by the environment – either aggravated by stress or inadvertently reinforced by adults and peers who feed into it.

Regardless, having executive functioning deficits may be an explanation for poor school performance, but it is never an excuse.  These students, just like any other students, need to be held accountable for appropriate behavior AND supported in a way that gives them the best chance to do so.

It is this critical balance between empathy and accountability, encouragement and enforcement, that will help make or break these kids.

Not one of them wakes up in the morning and says, “I can’t wait to screw up today!”  They are sick and tired of messing up, being corrected multiple times a day, and feeling like a failure.  Especially when they know better and at times can actually do better.  But the deficit is in maintaining consistent controls, and that’s what makes parents and teachers and these kids so crazy.

That’s also what often leads to the secondary problem of oppositional and defiant behaviors (often adding Opposional-Defiant Disorder to the diagnosis).  All too often, it becomes a vicious, downward spiral (especially in middle school and high school where the demands for independent functioning and the expectations for greater self-control increase tremendously).

In the coming weeks, we’ll focus on practical solutions and specific strategies for managing kids with a variety executive dysfunctions.  Stay tuned to learn how to boost your child’s ability to: get organized, plan ahead, stay focused, use time wisely, follow through on tasks, resist impulses, and stay in control of emotions.

The Olympics are in full swing again.  It’s so fascinating to listen to the stories of the world’s top athletes, what it takes for them to fulfill their dreams, and then watch them go for it.  The thrill of victory… the agony of defeat… the human drama of athletic competition.  No guarantees, just like in life.

And just like most anything else in life, sports can serve as a vehicle for raising healthy, happy, well-adjusted kids, or serve to crush their spirit and sense of well-being.  It’s all in how we approach it – in both our words and deeds – that can make all the difference.

Here’s my list of the top 5 life lessons that youth sports can teach our kids – when we “keep it real” and don’t get too carried away with grandiose visions of pro careers.

1.  The play is the thing. The only reason to play the game is if your kid loves it and it’s fun.  There is no sense in doing it for any other reason.  For some kids, this will be recreational or intramural play, for some it may involve all-star travel teams.  It’s all good – as long as it’s being done because the child enjoys it and wants to do it.

Follow your child’s lead.  Provide as much support to following your child’s passions as you comfortably can.  Two keys here – you’re following your child’s dreams, not pushing him into yours.  And you’re balancing the family commitments of time, money, and energy in a way that feels best for everyone.

Here is a question that can help you make a more conscious choice for your family.  On the whole, is your child’s participation in this sport more energy-gaining or energy-draining? Your gut instinct will tell you whether to keep going with more active participation that is FUN or cut back to allow more breathing room for the rest of life.

2.  Persistence and perseverance, not talent, will prevail. While your child’s involvement still needs to be fun, that doesn’t mean sports – or life – is always a simple walk in the park.  To get to the good stuff, we have to work at it: practice, persist, and persevere through mistakes and injuries and embarrassments and slumps.  These are all part of the game.  It’s the person who develops the self-discipline to keep going, even when the going gets tough, that gets to enjoy the sweet taste of success – at whatever level that may be.

3.  Focus on what you can control, and do the best you can at that. You can’t control the outcome, only the input.  You’re responsible for your actions, and that’s all.  Focus on the little things that count, doing things the right way – within the rules, fundamentally sound, over and over – that’s what will bring you successful results.  If you spend your time worrying about the weather conditions or what your opponent is doing or how the officials are handling calls, you are distracting yourself from the only thing that really matters – how you choose to respond to any of it.

Don’t keep comparing yourself to the other guy (whether its teammates or opponents). Focus only on your vision of how you play your game – with your own strengths and abilities and determination – then do it.  Play your part the best that you can. The rest will take care of itself.

4.  We’re all different, we’re all the same. Every person has strengths and weaknesses.  Every person has value.  You won’t accomplish anything meaningful in life without recognizing your interdependence with others – whether on your team or in your community.  Whatever gifts and limitations you have, it’s important to realistically recognize them, and play the hand you’ve been dealt as best you can.  It’s equally important to appreciate the strengths your teammates have to offer, and to accept their limitations as well.

Leverage this diversity of talents.  Find ways to work together, complementing one another, to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.  “Team chemistry” starts with respect for each and every individual on the team, being combined with a loving commitment to one another to work towards a common goal.  Harnessing the power of mutual respect and commitment is a recipe for fulfillment that works in families, schools, teams, or organizations of any kind.  It is truly a life skill worth developing at an early age.

5.  It isn’t always fair – and that’s okay! Don’t expect your coach, your teammates, the referee, or yourself to be perfect.  Sometimes the best player doesn’t get to start.  Sometimes the referee blows the call.  Sometimes the clock runs out, or someone slips, or you take your eyes off the ball for just a second.  Sometimes it just sucks.

And it’s still a beautiful game – whether we’re talking a sport here, or life itself.  It’s all good, because there’s always a lesson for us to learn.  It’s how we respond to adversity that shows our true character.  After a loss, a penalty, a setback of any kind, are we still supportive of our teammates, good sports to our rivals, respectful to authority figures responsible for enforcing the rules fairly, appreciative of our coach’s intentions to get the best out of us, and forgiving to ourselves when we make a mistake?  Learn from it, and let it go.  Get ready for the next play, and keep on going.

Keep these tips in mind and you may not get your kid to the Olympics, but you’ll be well on your way to helping him or her come out a winner in the game of life.

The Solutions

So, given these major contributions to youth violence, what can we do?  The answers are simple enough to state.  The key is whether we have the political will as a society, and the personal resolve as our children’s caregivers, to practice what we preach.  I sincerely pray we do.

1. Listen, empathize, and connect with your kids. Be open and available to hear your child’s feelings and frustrations.  Let children know that their angry or anxious feelings are okay to have, no matter how intense or unusual they may seem to you.  Show your kids – with calm, casual, and frequent conversations – that you’re there for them.  And you’re willing to try to understand their thoughts and feelings.

2. Teach safe, smart coping skills. Then remind the children that there are better and worse ways to express those feelings.  It’s what you do with it that counts.  There are lots of smart choices (talk it out, write it out, exercise it out, play it out) that are safe, and there are lots of poor choices (aggressive, acting out).  Keep reminding children that they have choices, and there are always consequences that go along with their choices.  Encourage them to make the right ones.

3. Be a positive role model. We must practice the right choices ourselves if our words are to have any influence on kids.  We must strive to constructively express our angers and fears in the home, workplace, and community.  We must think consciously about what entertainment we consider worth watching.  If we don’t practice what we preach, how can we expect our children to?!

4. Enforce your limits. As parents and teachers, we must keep rewarding pro-social behaviors and punishing antisocial behaviors.  Constantly.  Firm limits need to be clearly stated and consistently enforced.  Aggressive behaviors should not work for the child, but against him.  Earning – or withdrawing – privileges that the child enjoys in his daily life is often most effective.  Just remember, effective consequences must be meaningful for the child, and doable for the adult. You can fill in the blanks from there.

5. Limit access to violent media. For most kids, like most adults, some exposure to violent entertainment isn’t going to lead to the person acting violently.  The key here is in the frequency and intensity of the violence, along with the child’s ability to distinguish fantasy from reality.  Simply put, what percent of your child’s social diet is filled with electronic media (TV, videos, games, internet), and what percent of that is filled with violence?  If more than half their free time is consumed with violent fantasy and gaming, then clearly there’s greater risk of a child acting out in similar ways.  Just don’t allow it.  Redirect your child to other forms of entertainment and socializing.  Why wouldn’t you?

6. Prevent access to weapons. Finally, any guns and ammunition anywhere near kids should be kept under separate lock and key, with only responsible adults having access to these weapons.  Children and adolescents’ access should be under strict adult supervision only.

While we can’t completely guarantee anyone’s safety, we can go a long way towards reducing the risk of youth violence by seeing that these 6 simple steps are taken each and every day.  Certainly our kids’ lives – and our own – are worth it.

News headlines about youth violence sporadically rear their ugly head, as they did again this week about a 12-year-old boy who faces adult murder charges for allegedly shooting and killing his pregnant step-mother-to-be following some disagreements.

We can’t know all the specifics of this particular tragedy.  But we can use it as an opportunity to shake ourselves awake again.  We must not just ask “Why?” and forget about it, but rather focus with steadfast commitment on what we all can do to prevent such senseless acts of violence.

The Problem

Juvenile violence erupts not from a single cause, but from many causes.  Simplistic blaming of one factor or another is pointless.  Instead, research has repeatedly shown that several major factors often combine to lead to youth violence.

1. Strong feelings and poor coping skills. Children act out violently when they feel intense anger, anxiety, or hopelessness, and when they have little other coping resources available.  Violent acts occur when a child has poor impulse control, poor judgment, or poor abilities to think through alternative ways of expressing their upset feelings.  Often these acts are desperate attempts to gain control in an environment the child sees as hostile and beyond his or her control.

2. History of aggression. A violent youth has often gotten away with or been rewarded for low-level aggressive behaviors.  That is, the child has gotten some desired results – be it possessions, attention, peer status, or self-esteem – from threatening or acting out in an aggressive way.

3. Aggressive role models. If the child hasn’t been directly reinforced for these behaviors, they may have witnessed others succeeding with violence.  They may have directly experienced violence in the home or community.  Or they may have been exposed to high doses of violence in the media.

4. Media overload and desensitization. The odds of youth violence increase when a child’s social life is overflowing with a media diet centered on violent video games, movies, and internet sites.  Over time, the child becomes numb to the real pain and suffering associated with actual human violence.  They become desensitized to it, and real shootings can become surrealistic extensions of video game adventures.

5. Access to weapons. Finally, violent injuries and deaths increase remarkably when children have easy access to lethal weapons.  The easier the access to guns and knives, the easier it is for senseless, stupid mistakes or misdeeds to occur.  This isn’t a moral or political argument; this is a simple, common sense fact.

Happy Ground Hog Day!  Are you kidding me?  No, here is central Pennsylvania – that’s still a big deal.

One of my Penn State graduate students actually had her parents come visit from out of state to be at Gobbler’s Knob at dawn this morning to see Punxsutawney Phil’s prognostication – a longer cold winter, or a sooner spring thaw?

(Sorry, word has it, he saw his shadow again – six more weeks of winter.)

So what?  Well, one of my all-time favorite movies is Ground Hog Day.  My wife and kids and I curl up with blankets and pop corn around this time every year to watch it – which we did again on Saturday night.  Why do I love it so much, and why the heck am I writing about it now.

Well, I did another one of my favorite parenting programs last night, “Finding the Time to Enjoy Your Life and Your Kids Again!”  We spent the evening taking inventory of what’s most important in your life, and how you can find the time for it.  And it got me to thinking…

Bill Murray found one way to enlightenment in this farcical, yet philosophical, romantic flick. He was forced to live the same day over and over again until he learned his lesson – found his truth – and starting living it in earnest.

What would you do if you had only one day to live over and over again?

Maybe you’d act out at first with wild fantasies, naughty or crazy or whatever – just as Bill does.  Then you might get bored, or depressed, or desperate for a spell.  Eventually, if you’re lucky, you’ll come to realize that life doesn’t have much meaning if we’re in it just for our own gains and needs.

It means a whole lot more when it’s shared with others – when we can give, lovingly of ourselves to others, and rejoice in regular (not necessarily random!) acts of kindness – just for the joy of it.

Now, a subtle part of the movie is that Bill has to go through a cleansing period, a period of self-care and self-development, before he has strengthened skills that he can then put to good use serving others.

This is just like my prescription for less stress and more life satisfaction in the T3 Family Wellness Program.  Before you can effectively call TIME OUT to resolve conflicts with your kids (or anyone), you need to share enough positive, fun TIME IN with them to build loving relationships.  And you can’t do that, if you don’t take enough TIME OFF to re-energize yourself, first.

To produce good output – parenting or otherwise – we first need to have good, quality input to fill our souls and our minds with the beauty we want to see in our kids and in our world.

So during this mid-winter pause – for some a time of silly celebration – let us also use it for a time of brief reflection:  What would I do if I only had one day to live?  And why am I not living my life that way now?  What am I waiting for?!

No time like the present.  Take a deep breathe.  Think about what matters most to you today.  And live it. Go love someone.  Just for fun.  Ground Hog Day is as good an excuse as anything!