Organizing the Racing, Cluttered Mind

1. Organizing the Racing, Cluttered Mind Jessica Blasik, M.S.Ed. Lisa Pass, Ed.S., NCSP

2. Where are We going?Learning Goals: • Understand some neurodevelopmental reasons why children and adolescents may struggle to stay organized • Identify some of the most common Executive Functions and how they influence behavior • Determine you and your child’s EF strengths and weaknesses • Learn a problem solving technique to use to plan and implement your own behavioral interventions at home

3. The Human Brain: The basics

4. Executive Functions • Orchestra Conductor/CEO • Organization • Planning • Initiation • Shifting • Working Memory • Emotional Control • Self-Monitoring • Inhibition Executive Functions: mental processes that control and regulate behaviors and abilities

5. Brain development childhood through early adulthood(Thompson PM, Giedd JN, Woods RP, et al., 2000; Shaw, Greenstein, Lerch, et al., 2005)

6. What does All This mean? • Neuronal pruning (decrease in gray matter) occurs as brain becomes more “hard wired” • White matter increases as associations are made throughout the brain • Skills and behaviors practiced consistently during late childhood and early adolescence have a higher probability of being hard-wired into the adult brain

7. Neuropsychology of Giftedness • Some evidence that gifted children have larger parietal and frontal lobe areas • fMRI studies indicate that gifted children may have more efficient connections between frontal lobes and other areas of the brain (including emotion centers) • More widely spread activation when problem solving

8. Gifted Brain (Boyle, cunnington, Silk, Vaughan, et al., 2005) Brain activation in gifted (a) and non-gifted (b) students Mental rotation task

9. Asynchronous Development • Most noticeable in individuals with higher IQs. • Some cognitive abilities may be much more developed than others • Executive Functions normally develop at different times, so may appear asynchronous Asynchronous Development: uneven intellectual, physical, and emotional development.

10. Asynchronous Development of Executive Functions -“The servants all thought that young Isaac was foolish, and his mother did not know what to do with him…” From Isaac Newton, The Greatest Scientist of All Time -“I used to take these maths tests which were supposed to be done in one period and it took me not just that period but the next one, which was a play period and sometimes the one beyond that…” Roger Penrose, Cambridge Math Professor -“My teachers saw me at once backward and precocious, reading books beyond my years and yet at the bottom of the Form. Winston Churchill

11. Inventory • Complete the Executive Function Parent and Student Questionnaire • Score Each Section • Higher scores indicate particular strengths, low scores weaknesses • Write down the three highest and three lowest scores to get a “profile”

12. Thought Questions • Were there any surprises, either for your profile or your child’s? • Were your profile and your child’s profile the same, or different? • How might the differences or similarities between your profiles effect how you work with your child?

13. The Family dynamic How do these profiles effect family functioning? Let’s take a lesson from the Hecks

14. When you have different profiles • When your strengths are your child’s weaknesses • Collaborate with child to get buy-in • Be creative in using your strengths to enhance their skills • Make a point to identify where you are weak and your child is strong to maintain morale • When needed, lend them your strengths

15. When you have similar profiles • When your weaknesses are similar to your child’s weaknesses • Collaborate with your child • Brainstorm solutions together • Share stories from your past as lessons • Get others to help

16. A Few Executive Functionson which to focus • Self-Monitoring • Organization • Initiation • Shifting • Planning Executive Functions: mental processes that control and regulate behaviors and abilities

17. Self Monitoring • Involves self monitoring and metacognition related to: • tasks and environment • interpersonal awareness • own performance • Recognizing what is going on inside one’s own mind, body, environment, relationships.

19. Self Monitoring Interventions • What adults can do to help • Align external demands with internal desires • Set small, attainable goals for each activity, task, or class • Student based suggestions • Have your child learn to check in with him/herself by asking: What am I doing right now? What am I supposed to be doing right now?

20. Organization • The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials • Examples • Cleaning room • Keeping binders neat and organized • Organizing thoughts onto paper • Keeping track of assignments • Taking effective notes

21. Organization Intervention • Strategies for Keeping Things Tidy • Use a bin system or folder system • Take a picture of what “clean” looks like • Break down into manageable, small steps • Getting Thoughts on Paper • Cognitive Mapping • Keeping a daily and weekly planner • What Parents Can Do • Collaborate with students when developing a strategy • Be flexible and ready to brainstorm • Make it fun, whenever possible • Prepare to choose your battles

22. Organization • “Constantly late for school, losing his books, and papers and various other things into which I need not enter– he is so regular in his irregularity in every way that I don’t know what to do.” Winston Churchill’s Principal

23. Initiation • Getting going, getting started on tasks • Knowing where to begin, what to do, who to ask • This is NOT non-compliance or disinterest in the task, its not knowing where to start • The ability to begin a task or activity and to independently generate ideas, responses, or problem solving strategies

24. Initiation Interventions • What adults can do to help • Additional verbal and visual prompts • Demonstrate the first problem of a work sheet • Break tasks down step-by-step to reduce feelings of being overwhelmed • Write them down on index cards or in a notebook • Student based suggestions • Have your child create “to do” lists or create “cookbook” with lists of steps for each activity • Organizing thoughts before beginning an activity

25. Shifting • Making transitions • Tolerating change • Flexible problem solving • Switching or alternating attention • Change focus from one topic to another • The ability to move freely from one situation, activity, or aspect of a problem to another, in reaction to internal or external cues

26. Shifting Interventions • What adults can do to help • Consistent routines, schedules, and activities • Make minor changes and help your child respond • Use visual organizers and planners to represent the sequence of events throughout the day • Student based suggestions • Slightly alter the order of everyday activities • Working with two or three familiar activities and alternate them • Practice solving problems in different ways

27. Planning • The ability to manage future oriented tasks • Anticipation of future events • Setting goals • Developing appropriate sequential steps ahead of time • Determining the most effective method or steps to reach a goal • Keeping track of time and steps to complete tasks and reach goals

28. Planning Interventions • What adults can do to help • Have binder with steps for activities, assignments, tasks • Ask questions like: how long do you think this will take you to finish? • Demonstrate ways to plan • Discuss plans for the day; think out loud and model planning with multiple steps • Student based suggestions • Practice setting a goal and lay out steps to reach the goal • Involve your child in planning events, such as birthday parties, cooking dinner, or scheduling activities

29. So, now what do we do? • Teach deficient skills rather than assuming they’ll develop naturally • Consider developmental level in your plan • Use your child’s innate drive for mastery and control • Over-ride the desire to quit • Celebrate successes! • Take a deep breath: stress decreases frontal lobe activity

30. Teaching Executive Skills • Identify a problem behavior • Set an overall goal and several smaller benchmark goals • Outline steps needed to reach the goal • Turn steps into a list, a checklist, or short set of rules • Supervise and Reward • Fade Supervision and reward

31. A note about rewards • Well thought out rewards have an energizing effect on behavior • Not a bribe, but a way to help a child gain motivation when it is not yet internal • Not meant to be permanent • Should be collaborative with child, and open to adjustment throughout • Can be tangible, or intangible • Needs to be consistent

32. Vignettes: • Problem solving practice in groups • Re-watch the Hecks, choose one character, and take 5 minutes to use the problem solving model on the worksheet to define the problem

33. Suggested Resources Books Late, Lost, and Unprepared by Joyce Cooper-Kahn & Laurie Dietzel Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson & Richard Guare The Organized Student: Teaching Children the Skills for Success in School and Beyond by D. Goldberg Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties by G. McClosky, L. Perkins, & B. Van Divner Websites LDonline.org http://www.ldinfo.com/executive_functioning.htm InterventionCentral.com