Let me share a basic run down of the 11 key Executive Skills at a very basic level:
1. Impulse control - being able to think before acting, or resisting the urge to do something
2. Working memory - ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks
3. Emotional control - managing emotions and being able to complete tasks or reach goals (while managing those emotions)
4. Sustained attention - keeping on task despite distractions, fatigue or boredom
5. Task initiation - ability to being projects without a-lot of procrastination
6. Planning/prioritizing - being able to make a plan to reach a goal or finish a task
7. Organization - ability to create and maintain systems to keep things in order
8. Time Management - recognizing time is important and being able to guess how much time you have, how to allocate it, and how to stay within times and deadlines
9. Goal-Directed persistence - completing a goal or job with an end goal in mind (ex: finishing schoolwork to earn a break/recess)
10. Flexible thinking - ability to revise plans or deal with obstacles or setbacks or new information. Being able to adapt to change
11. Metacognition - to be able to look at what you've done or completed and self evaluate (ex: How did that really go? Can I make it better? How am I doing?) - critiquing own personal performance
As you can see, and probably see in yourself or your children or someone you know as you read through those, there are multiple ways a person can struggle. Someone who has strong EF skills can do all of these things, and all of these things at the same time in some cases. What seems like a no-brainer to one, is a real struggle to another.
In my own family my one son has poor impulse control (which has resulted in some safety scares), has poor working memory (which may or may not be a learning disability for him), has poor planning/prioritizing, organization and metacognition skills. And the others aren't necessarily strong, but compared to the listed they are strong-er. :) Has this made it easy for us to work with him? Not always, but has learning about these, diagnosing, and seeking resources and additional helps helped? Absolutely. We have strategies in place that are ever changing, but also very helpful.
My other son is almost an exact opposite in some ways, yet struggles in the same weakness. He has very weak emotional control, sustained attention, task imitation, planning/prioritizing, organizing, time management, and metacognition as his top weaknesses. On top of it he has a fairly extreme (to me) Sensory processing disorder which is in some ways why some of his skills are weak. We work with an OT, and other people in order to help him know and feel good about himself and succeed academically and socially. It's alot of work, but knowledge is power. Knowledge has brought for me a significant amount of patience and love for my children. Without the "diagnosis" I was just constantly irritated and mad.
Homeschool has been a wonderful choice for us because of alot of these weaknesses. If he were at school I would be doing equal amounts of work to help him fit into the academic world, or more work for that matter! This way we have learned and sought strategies to provide a safe, loving, and accepting atmosphere for his learning (I say his, but I mean both of my boys for sure).
Myself: I have impulse control weakness but I have learned how to control it. I would say I have working memory problems because of my own educational experience. I have attention weakness if something isn't entertaining to me (and find myself bored easily and zone out if that's the case), I have great task initiation but not always great follow through on my ideas, unless it's very exciting to me. I have had to self teach myself how to be a flexible thinker - that is a definite weakness for me that I have to work hard on. So there you have it! It doesn't make me a bad person, it makes me aware of my shortcomings and strengths and gives myself an opportunity not to be hard on myself.
Last thing I wanted to share was a graph given to me at a recent talk I attended at the Alberta Children's Hospital regarding executive functioning:
So this chart was an exceptional addition to my knowledge bank. This chart is based on a "neurotypical" person. If your child has ADHD or autism, etc, they still can/do learn the skills, but just imagine the chart essentially the same, just dropped down lower than the one above.
In this chart we see that from BIRTH to age roughly 25 we are learning and developing our Executive Function skills. Yes theres a sharp incline of learning from 0-8, where it levels off, but we are still improving our "proficiency" til mid 20s. At that point it levels off for long time and it isn't til early/mid 30s where they start to ever so slowly weaken. So, when we joke and laugh about how we keep forgetting things, or managing time becomes harder the older we get, or we become more rigid in our thinking, etc, its actually true! Here is the proof (I believe this study was done at Harvard University)!
As I said, I really enjoyed this chart, it made me feel better about myself LOL. An interesting thought the speaker shared was that if we don't use it, we will lose it. It's important we always put a valiant effort into our skills and weaknesses.
So there you have it. This is my basic understanding of Executive Functioning weakness. I have read some excellent books on the topic, one being The Impulsive Disorganized Child. It has been my most favourite and applicable to our lives. I did read "Smart but Scattered" - I just found it more dry so I didn't get much out of it. Another excellent resource for raising kids has also been "Raising Human Beings" - teaching me how to more appropriately communicate with my kids and foster a 'compatibility' with them.
https://www.amazon.ca/Impulsive-Disorganized-Child-Functioning-Difficulties-ebook/dp/B00UVPG8KU/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1
