Executive Skills- had to practice what I teach

NOTE:  not for the weak at heart or for parents that don't like to see messy rooms.  

Executive skills coaching /therapy takes a child's strengths and weakness's in mind when working toward the ultimate goal of improved achievement at home and at school.  Executive skills are those frontal lobe skills.  In children with ADHD, studies have found that executive skills may lag by as much as 5 years.  Wow.   Here is the list of executive skills.  Want the definitions?

Response Inhibition   

Working Memory          
Emotional Control
Sustained Attention
Task Initiation
Planning/Prioritization
Organization
Time Management
Goal-directed persistence
Flexibility
Metacognition

I got a good dose of using my training last week when my son got really upset at me and completely wrecked his room.  He threw everything off the bed and shelves and threw in the floor.

a wrecked room for sure

I knew he did it just to show me that he was upset (and probably to make me mad), but you just have to stay calm in these situations and use it as a teaching moment!  Believe me, when a room is this messy, it takes all of my energy to stay calm!

My 7 year old kiddo has weaknesses in response inhibition (impulse control), emotional control (overly emotional to situations), task initiation (getting started), and organization.   With this being known, I knew why he wrecked his room.  And, he told me "look what you did".  So, I calmly told him, "No, you did this.  Now what are you going to do about it?".  He was hoping that I was going to clean up his room and I calmly told him that the choices were to A) clean up his room as it was before or B) I would clean it up.  If he chose B) then it would be cleaned up by me throwing whatever I wanted into the trash.   Key to these choices is keeping a calm voice void of any emotion.  Its just matter of fact.  There was obviously a lot of fussing on his end (and regret by this time) but he understood the simple choices he had.  Plus, he knew that from previous situations that I meant what I said.  There would be no negotiations (and luckily I had plenty of time to stand firm since it was a weekend). 

Knowing that I wanted him to be successful and that he had poor task initiation and organizational skills, I modified it for him.  First, he was given help to make his bed (task initiation) so that his stuffed animals could return to the bed.  Being very visual, I knew he'd need reminders of what to do in a visual format.  Then, he was given three steps to complete on his dry erase board:


"  Put books in bookcase"
"  Put nerf guns in red bucket"
" Put animals on bed"

Note that I also put a visual reminder of where the books went (see above).  I didn't do the task for him, but just modified it some to help him to have more success on his own.


I let him know that when he was done with those three tasks that he could call for me and I'd offer him some help on the next task.  I turned on his music (this is soothing for him) and left his room calmly.  


About a full hour later, I heard him say "Mom!  I'm done with my work.  I need help."  I went back into his room and he had completed all of the tasks I wrote out for him.   He had begun his next task of picking up at least 500 baseball cards that were scattered here and there.  He asked if I'd put the marbles away and I agreed to help him with the marbles.  We brought out a trashcan and he made the choice to throw out things that he didn't need.  At this point, he was very calm and organizing his room was very organizing to him.  It wouldn't have done any good at all for me to be harsh or to say "no, I won't help you at all.  You made the mess, now you clean it up".  I certainly felt that way, but I knew that he'd not succeed at the task, and I wanted him to be sucessful with cleaning up his room.  These are skills that are needed for a child!

I talked to him candidly but without disappointment or harshness about what had happened once he was very calm.   We talked about and wrote down some better choices for sharing his emotions in the future.  This was a most interesting way to spend a weekend morning, yet, I think we made some progress for the future.  Parents, stay strong! It is worth the results to put in the hard work now!

And, you might just end up with a room cleaned by your own child!