Executive Function: How to Build the Skills Schools Ignore

If a kid can play video games and focus in that sort of environment, then they can focus in class, too. If you wanted to see how strong somebody was, you wouldn't have them lift a pencil. I think the most important thing to know is that, like any muscle, the executive functions grow and can be built over time. You have to give your kids the opportunity to struggle and fail when they're home around you. That's when you want them to fail. Every child wants to be successful. Those that aren't just haven't figured out how to do it yet. We first realized Charlie had executive functioning challenges in the public school system when we realized he had tons of missing assignments and we had no idea about that. At public school, it was hard for my teachers to understand why I was struggling on assignments because I presented a version of myself that was highly articulate and high-functioning. And when I struggled to turn in my assignments and to get started on larger assignments, it came off as lazy. Or as if I wasn't trying, when in reality, I didn't have the support I needed to complete these assignments. We felt like every day we had to be involved or else he was not going to succeed. And that's not good for a high school student. First of all, he should be not requiring his parents' help as much at that point. So we had to step in and really be tutor, teacher, as well as parent. And that kind of ruined the parent-child relationship because it created a lot of strain. It just seemed like there was no way out and the homework kept piling up. And it was incredibly difficult for me and I was very frustrated with myself. As I knew I wasn't necessarily living up to my potential and I didn't have the support I needed from my teachers to reach that potential, I understood what I was supposed to do. But there was a bit of a disconnect between what I intellectually knew to be true and what I was able to accomplish. Traditional school is one size fits all and it did not fit Charlie. If you've ever met a student who's bright, curious and full of potential, but constantly losing track of assignments, overwhelmed by big tasks, or melting down when things don't go as planned, you've seen what executive function challenges can look like. Dr. Damon Korb is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician and the founder of the Center for Developing Minds. He's the author of Raising an Organized Child and a nationally recognized expert on executive function, parenting and neurodevelopment. With nearly 30 years of experience, Dr. Korb blends neuroscience, compassion and practical strategies to help kids thrive. Dr. Korb, welcome to the show. My pleasure. It's good to be here. Executive function might sound like a very clinical term, but for families it plays out in really everyday ways. Can you define executive function for us? So the executive functions kind of work like an air traffic controller. What an air traffic controller does is it decides who takes off when, how fast to go, how slow to go, which runway to land on. If something's not working in one place, you have to shift gears and move to another. The executive functions, they help you initiate, they help you plan in time and space. They help you shift gears from one thing to the next. They're responsible for impulse control and self-monitoring. So they do a broad range of functions that help kids operate and execute in their everyday life. And that's one way to look at them, but I like to look at kind of the underlying process that guides those. And the working memory is a huge factor in dealing with things that take two parts of the brain at the same time. They're like your mental whiteboard, which allows you to hold on to one piece of information while thinking of something else. When you're planning, you're using hindsight and you're using foresight. So the executive functions control your ability to take perspective, to grasp the big picture, to show insight, to anticipate, to plan. All of these things that are really important that you'll need in the adult world someday. So that holistic definition of executive function for families that hear that their child is struggling with executive function might sound overwhelming for them. What do you want every parent to know when they first hear your child has executive function challenges? Well, I think the most important thing to know is that, like any muscle, the executive functions grow and can be built over time. I wrote a book called Raising an Organized Child. And in that book, that's what we talk about, is how do you, from infancy all the way through adolescence, how do you help build the executive functions in children? Because these things continue to grow into your mid to late 20s. And there's five themes that I talk about in that book, is be consistent, introduce order, give everything a place, practice forward thinking, and promote problem solving. And I teach those things through everyday life. I teach those things through play and we teach those things through regulating and doing the things that kids can do at their own level. In second grade, they can make their lunch, right? That's how we build executive functions. Yeah, I love that. I love thinking about it as a muscle that you can continue to build over time for parents. I think that's really helpful to hear. Dr. Korb, when we think about traditional school environments, why can they be particularly challenging for students with executive functioning challenges themselves? Well, you know, so much depends on a good teacher. But it's harder to be a good teacher when you have 30 kids because children need individualized support. And when it comes to executive functions, executive functions are kind of a silent disorder or a silent dysfunction. People can't tell. In fact, I think the range of kids, if you take a typical seventh grade class, the range of executive functionalities probably range from that of a typical seven-year-old to that of a 16-year-old. And yet you can't tell. And so there's so much going on. There's so many shifts. There's so many plans that they have to make in school that for some kids that becomes overwhelming. Yeah, so I think that will hit home for a lot of families that are listening, right? Because it can mask a lot of different things. And knowing that a traditional classroom might have 30 to 40 students at a time. And there is that distinct, that's a large range of abilities and challenges. Parents might say for their child that is maybe struggling with executive function, that he's not trying. You know, that maybe he's lazy or she's lazy or some of those types of things. So why are executive function struggles often mistaken for lack of motivation, let's say? So kids with executive functions have what I call output failure. They may know a lot of things, but it's very difficult for them to show it and to show it on a consistent level. So they may do their homework, but forget to turn it in. They may have great ideas, but have trouble organizing their thoughts and putting it on paper. They may have the ability to hyper-focus on their interests, but have incredible difficulty focusing on things that are less motivating and less interesting. And so from an outside untrained eye, it does look like laziness, but there's always an underlying neurodevelopmental explanation. Kids all want to be successful. It's just many or some haven't figured out how to be. How does that play into it then in terms of, you said output, in terms of teacher's expectations of turning things in on time, sticking to deadlines? You talked a little bit about kids wanting to do well, but what we're getting here at is that they might grow frustrated or they might be met with challenges in which they're not seeing the same level of success as their peers. Tell me a little bit more about how executive dysfunction might impact a student's ability to regulate their emotions at school, possibly. So first we have to think about how do people regulate their emotions, what goes into that. And when we're talking about regulating emotions, the first thing is to be able to anticipate what's coming up. Nobody likes surprises, and if the day is full of surprises, there's a lot of potential frustrations that can happen. And kids with executive functions are particularly weak at forward thinking, thinking ahead, what it's going to be like. They may turn the TV on at 5.50 and then get upset at 6 o'clock when they're called for dinner because their show isn't over. But we dinner at 6 o'clock every single day, so why are you upset? It's because I haven't anticipated that outcome. So one reason is because they're not very good at anticipating, we have to teach them how to think ahead and how to anticipate. The second reason is once that conflict happens, they're not very good at shifting. So we have to teach kids how to shift. It's kind of like if I'm watching TV and my kids come in and change the channel, flips me out, drives me nuts. But if they come in and say, "Hey, in two minutes can I watch something else?" Yeah. I'm sure, of course you can because I'm never watching anything good. I'm just, you know, I want to don't change my channel. I'm in charge of changing the channel. And that's, some kids really have a hard time with that. They don't like when the outside world shifts their mental channel. And the third reason is you have to be able to control your emotions. And kids with executive dysfunctions have poor impulse control. But that impulse control can be physical impulse control. It can be verbal impulse control, but it can also be emotional impulse control. And so they flood with emotions when things don't go the way they expect. And they often don't expect because they didn't anticipate correctly in the first place. And anticipation, is that just timeline or is that also anticipation of the consequences of either doing the thing on time or not doing the thing on time? It's even so much more than that. Anticipation can be how do I anticipate you're going to react when I say what I'm about to say. Can I take your perspective? Is it, can I, how do I anticipate the timeline? How do I anticipate what's going to be on the test? How can I predict what the teacher is going to put even though it may seem obvious to 28 kids? It's not obvious to you. It's all of that. It's being able to think ahead, take perspective and see the big picture. Now, first I will say, very proud middle school teacher. I know not everyone loves teaching middle school, but I absolutely love teaching middle school. But wow, the backpacks and just the organization and everything else, you know, that, that came up for my kids at that time. I just think, I think about what you said earlier that they want to be successful, but to be tuned into some of those underlying needs of the kids is just so important. So translate now to the classroom, Dr. Corbin. I'm a teacher, I have my, my class of 30 kids. What do I do first when I have a student that I have identified as having executive function challenges? Well, maybe before I answer that, you can answer this question for me. And maybe you're not allowed to. But I, I, I believe that all middle school teachers have a secret pact that they have to get every kid ready to be independent by the time they enter high school. Because they push kids so hard. And the fact is some kids are going to bloom at that time and some kids aren't. And for those kids that aren't, they're constantly not turning things in. They're getting in trouble because things are late and it's really, really frustrating for those kids. Yeah, yeah, I definitely, I empathize with that. And on two, in two different ways, one in the academic side of things, right? Through those, those, the tests, the assessments that, you know, we had to, we had to be sure that they were prepared for. But then, yes, society, all of the emotional things, all of the expectations of achievement that come with rising up into high school. Yeah, we definitely thought about that, you know, absolutely. And it, and it could have appeared as pressure for many, many of my kids. Absolutely. The, the, so the, to answer your question about what can teachers and schools do to, to help support kids with executive functions. One is consistency. So being consistent. That means consistent in terms of the rules and the expectations. Being consistent in the tone that you use so that you don't react to everything that they may do right or wrong. Kids like consistency. The second thing is to prepare them. So schedules, routines, previewing, warning, all that stuff helps kids kind of figure out which channel they're supposed to be on so they can shift their own channel. Then we want to push kids at the level that they're at. We have to figure out where each individual child is and, and give them challenges, but don't hold their expectation too high because when that happens, kids, all of us, we give up. And then, and then engage them through creativity and imagination and collaboration because all of those things exercise and build the executive functions. So the executive functioning or EF has been a buzzword that's sort of been floating around for some time now, especially in the education world. And I think teachers mean well when they're trying out new strategies. Absolutely. Can you think of a strategy perhaps that we should rethink or stop doing in schools when we're thinking, hey, this is going to be the magic bullet of solving executive functioning challenges for our kids? Well, there's two answers that I have to that. One is just from a big picture. We can't be critical of kids who aren't there yet. It's, it's so defeating for kids who are trying and not understanding how to feel criticized because I had a teacher when I was in fourth grade who used to put everybody's name and how many assignments they had missing on the board in front of everyone. And I can remember the kid, Mike, I won't say his last name, that had by far the most. And I feel for that kid, you know, with hindsight, how, how, how embarrassing that was. And so much of it had to do with this kid was just chaotic and disorganized and wasn't there yet. The other thing is to know that there's not one thing. So often, you know, starting in middle school, we give the kids these planners and we say, you know, if you fill out the planner, everything's going to work great. But the reality is, is some people use planner. I think planners are great. I encourage teachers to encourage that, but it's not what everybody needs. And in fact, in families, what I often encourage is, is for them to have what I call State of the Union meetings where they meet every Friday night and the kids responsible to give a three-minute presentation of here's what's working, here's what's not working. Here's what I plan to do about what's not working. And if they come up with a plan that is even borderline reasonable, you go with it. Because the act of learning how to solve your problem and figure out what works for you is so much more important than just being given a planner. That process, I think, is critical. That reminds me of CEO Alan Mullally. It's talking about his family and they would call them actual business reviews for the families. And they would do it during laundry folding time. They had a family of six kids. Everybody would meet downstairs and fold laundry. And he asked his kids years later, like, why did you continue to attend these business review meetings as a family? He goes, well, dad, that's when you handed up the allowances. And incentive helps. But I love that they were folding laundry because we would do that at our meetings. And I'm like, sit still, stop moving because we have five kids, right? And sit still and stop moving and stop doing this. But laundry, they were all having to do something. So they were captive. I like it. Well, your kids are older now, but we'll figure out something for the grandkids. Perfect. I mean, and there are so many real world examples that I can think of. We had a student at Fusion, I remember. She came in and what helped for her was a whiteboard in her room at home and weekly check-ins with a teacher. I do remember that that helped. Even we saw fewer missing assignments, but again, it wasn't perfect, but it was progress for her. So just a whiteboard where she could kind of write some things down and organize herself in her own way and then have those weekly check-ins with a teacher meant progress. Not perfection, but progress. I had a patient who said to me that the teacher always calls for our homework at the B&E class and it's gone by the time they call. It's in my backpack. I can't find it. It's disappeared. And he said, if I could just come to school and drop off all my homework for the day at the office, I think I would do better. And we said, well, let's try to make it happen. And that's what he did. He came to school, handed it to the person in the office, and that person sorted it into the teacher's boxes and it all got turned in. And his grades literally went from C's and D's to A's because... Someone was flexible. Somebody was flexible, right? I love that. So when I meet some families, whether it be middle school or high school, oftentimes the parents are saying, hey, my kids should be able to track these things on their own. You know, they're at that age where I want to be able to take a step back. But unfortunately, what I'm hearing is that the families, our role is to continue to support if we do exactly... especially if we do identify there's a specific challenge in executive functioning. So give us some tips for some parents to be able to start building that base at home so that the kids find success when they enter the structure of a school day. So I think the most important thing here is to know where your child is at and then push them forward a little bit. So, you know, when they're in kindergarten, they're picking out their own clothes. And it won't have to always match, but good job. You're picking out your clothes. That's great. When they're in second grade, they start making their lunches and packing their own lunches. When they're, you know, in high school, I want kids waking themselves up. Parents shouldn't be waking their kids up. And if they're late, then they got to come up with a strategy to get up on time. And you keep going through these things till they figured out. But when parents do these things for the kids, they take away the child's ability to exercise that muscle, that muscle that grows. And it's like mentally sitting on the couch all day. Mom will take care of it. I don't have to do it. So it's real life things. If they want certain foods in their lunch, that means by Sunday, they got to tell their parents what ingredients to get at the grocery store. It takes planning and we have to hold our kids accountable for things that they're capable of doing. It makes so much sense. If I want to be the healthiest version of myself, I want daily movement and go to the gym, you know, lift it. It will take some walks, figure out how I can practice breathing, like all of those things and create habits that can then develop into that muscle memory. Absolutely. And the confidence that says, I can solve a problem, right? I can, if I'm at a sleepover and I'm not happy, I can solve a problem because I've solved other problems before. Yeah. And that, that in and of itself, I think is so important because it's when we teach, I think, some of those foundational tools that can really take, take our students with these challenges through not only school, but a lifetime, right? It's like building those, building those skills and those habits that can be long-term for them. So Dr. Korb, one of the questions that often comes up and situations often comes up with our students at Fusion is the transition from high school to college, especially for those students that are struggling with executive function challenges. So how did those challenges show up during the transition out of high school and what support do students need as they step into a college, university or any plans that they have post graduation? Well, let me start off with a story of a disaster and then walk you backwards and then we can come back forwards to healthy. I had a patient who showed up after their first year of college had failed out of a very good UC school that they got into. So they were obviously a bright person, but they couldn't make it to class. And, and so they failed the first semester and the second semester, the father's solution was to drive two and a half hours on Tuesday morning to wake their child up for class on Tuesday morning. And then the father would sleep in the dorm room between the two roommates Tuesday night and Wednesday night. So he could wake his student up Wednesday morning and Thursday morning to get to class. And I guess at some point the family realizes this wasn't attendable and we had no judgment, but that's hard to sustain. Right. It's hard to sustain. And so we, we, you know, when I met the family, what I learned was, you know, when this kid would get a bad grade on the test, mom would call up the teacher and plead to let them do a retest. When this kid was studying for the SATs, parents would spend hours studying for the SATs with them. They got him into a school that he wasn't mature enough to go to. And they thought that that was it. He's 18 now. We got him there and games over. And it's not. You have to give your kids the opportunity to struggle and fail when they're home around you. That's when you want them to fail. Because otherwise they're just, they just won't be ready. So often, I often say that when kids are little, your job as a parent is to be the coach. You call all the plays, you teach all the lessons. And as they get towards middle school, you become more of a general manager. You talk about the direction of the franchise. The franchise needs to move in the direction of more homework, you know, spending a little more time on exercise. But by the time your kids in high school, ideally, you're taking on more of a consultant role. I'm here if you need me. Let me know if you have questions, but you have to give them the space to struggle and fail. And so your question asked a little bit about readiness and launching. And I talk about the five H's, health, hygiene, homework, household, chore, and having a social life. And if your kids can accomplish those things, they're probably ready. That means health, exercise, sleep, nutrition, hygiene, take showers, put on deodorant, brush your teeth, do your homework relatively independently. You're always allowed to ask for help. Help is okay. But you should be the one asking, not people coming in and helping you. Exercise health. I mean, we said health, hygiene, homework, household chores, helping out a little bit or having a job, and then having a social life. Because all of those things don't benefit you in the immediate, in the immediate sense. They all have long term benefits. I put on deodorant, not because I stink, but because somebody might think I stink. I can't smell my own stink. I do my homework because someday it might help me get into college or it might help me learn something. So if your kid is doing those things, that means they've learned or their brain has grown to the level that they are now forward thinking. They're thinking ahead and they're ready for college. I love that. Tea that conversation up for me just a bit. So you're a parent and you have a child that is leaving high school to go to college or maybe even junior or senior year. What does that introduction sound like of the five H's? Golly, ideally, you don't even have to talk about the five H's. Those are just natural things that you're letting your parents do. Now, sometimes I do have a kind of, let's just deodorant, it's fun to talk about. I mean, I talk about sometimes with kids in my office, I talk about the poop experiment and the poop experiment was done with medical students and what they did is they had medical students poop and they put their poops in a brown bag, 20 different poops, and then they would have the medical students smell every single poop and rate them from one to ten stinkiest to least stinkiest. Oh, wow. And across the board. I would hate to have been in that. No, it's not. That sounds right up my mouth. Well, we were medical students and we were hungry and right. And if somebody was giving us $20, right, I'd do whatever. Okay. 20 of you. Yeah. So what they found is every single medical student across the board rated their poop as the least stinky without knowing. And so when we're talking about forward thinking, we're talking about we do things because we may not recognize it now, but it's going to help us later. That girl or that boy may want to sit next to you because you don't stink. And so those are the conversations we have. We have real conversations about the practical applications and how it's going to affect them. I love that. I love that. And that's why I asked because those are conversations. Even as a teacher, I remember it's like, how do I navigate this conversation with my student who needs to pay more attention to their hygiene? You know, it is an everyday thing. Absolutely. The middle school classroom. Yeah. Those are some stinky classrooms. What I'm hearing is like this ability, a lot of executive functioning is the ability to predict the future. And I'm borrowing a lot of this from my friend Brandon Tessers who happens to be a therapist too. Predicting the future, again, the consequences of, hey, you don't put on deodorant. Guess what? People aren't going to want to hang out with you. But oftentimes when I think about the conversations that we have as parents or as educators with our kids, it's oftentimes we make the consequence of not doing the thing so great. Like if you're not turning in your homework, then you're not going to get good grades. And then if you don't get good grades, you're not going to get into a good college. And if you don't get into a good college, you're going to be living in my basement until you're 45, right? That means nothing to them, right? They're 12. When I'm 45, I'm going to be dead when I'm 45, right? And so we continue to manipulate the value of doing the thing, right? And so can you reframe that for us, especially with families that are dealing with challenges with kids with executive functioning challenges? So a lot of what I do is I restate what they did and I ask them how it's working. I notice that you stayed up late last night and then you got to school late. How's that working for you? What's your plan to fix it? I just kind of, I stayed it and I show curiosity. How are you going to, what's your plan? How are you going to solve this? Not, I'm going to wake you up every morning and I'm going to do this and if you don't get up on time, then I'm going to take away your phone and it just doesn't make sense. You have to show confidence that they can figure this out and not panic that the end of the world is coming because they're getting to school 10 minutes late. But I think that that's a big crux of the conversation with parents of what do I allow a kid to fail on on their own versus, you know, what's rubber versus what's glass? If I drop it, if it's going to shatter or if I drop it, it's going to bounce back. What do I allow them to fail? What do I allow my kids to fail on on their own? If only it was that simple, I could say you can fail on this, but you can't fail on that. You don't push your kids harder than they're capable of being pushed. So when you, if you're, if you're setting your expectations at an appropriate level, then you let them fail on all those appropriate level things. But you don't let your 16-year-old drive on the freeway if they clearly haven't proven that they're ready to drive safely in the neighborhood. So, you know, you protect them from the really big things, but the being late for class or they're not turning in homework, you don't accept it. You sit down with them every week and you make them talk about it and you emphasize the importance of solving it, but you let them struggle with it. The last thing you want is for your child to get into the best college and not be ready. Because those are the kids that are the young adults that I see in my practice struggle the most, that have gone to college, they fail their first year and they come home and they think they're stupid even though they're brilliant and they think they're they're miserable and worthless and and they don't want to come back because they feel like all they have is their friends there and when they come home all they have is none of their friends because their friends are off at college and it takes a couple of years to rehabilitate those kids. You want them to go at their level and they'll get there. Yeah, right. Teaching confidence and keeping curiosity and connection in mind, I think that's so important. Also, I feel like as parents we sort of have to check ourselves a little bit, right? Because all the time the world is going to be vastly different for my my little ones when they are in high school, right? And for our kids now they're experiencing something that's so fundamentally different than what we experience that staying curious and asking questions and you know the a theme that has run through all of our podcasts is the connection over correction, right? Those small reminders as a parent can not only impact your relationship but change the trajectory of confidence for your child and that is I mean that's massive. Right, that's massive. Right, right, right. It can be really easy to miss progress when you're looking for big milestones. What does real progress look like for a student who's working on their executive function? So it's just those things we talked about. They're wearing a jacket on a cold day, right? They're making their lunches. They're getting home by the time they tell you they'll get home. They're doing their homework when they say they're gonna do their homework. I encourage kids once they get to be teenagers to learn how to upward manage and that's a term in business that we talk about managing your boss, right? And so because kids think parents can read their mind and they can't and so what I tell the kids to do is that I let kids know that if you're 10 minutes late to come home, your mom has spent 10 minutes thinking you're in a ditch on the side of the road somewhere. That's what happens because we all have a little bit of what I call parental PTSD by the time not to make light of PTSD but we've been through so much with our kids that when something's not going the way we expect it brings up our trauma and so kids have to teach parents how to back off and they do that by telling them what they're gonna do and then doing it. "Mom, I'm gonna come home and watch TV for an hour and then I'm gonna get to my homework and I'll have it done by six o'clock." Great, but if kids come home and sit on the couch and are watching TV, mom's like, "Oh my god, when's she gonna do his homework? We're gonna be up late again and it's gonna be miserable but you have to just let them know what you're thinking." So Dr. Korb, I have a four-year-old and when I had my son who is now two, I saw that my daughter, I found her to become really dysregulated and she was throwing tantrums, she was hitting and this was a 24/7 thing and it was really challenging for me as a mom having my newborn to tune into her needs at that time. So I've started to become pretty frustrated and dysregulated myself and I really tried to, I think, sort of force expectations, I think, upon my daughter at that time and I know this is a story in emotion that a lot of our families can empathize with. What is the difference between allowing her to have these big emotions that are very normal and stepping in to correct her? I'm going to answer your question with another story. Where I work, we had a behaviorist and this was an expert behaviorist who would go out to people's homes and teach people how to manage their kids' behaviors and she would tell me that, you know, whenever I'm places and I hear a kid screaming or crying, I kind of, you know, peek around the corner just to see if maybe they need help or something and she said, "The other day I was in REI and I heard, you know, a child screaming and so my super nanny, you know, radar went off and she wanders around and she sees this kid on the floor underneath one of the clothes racks screaming and crying and the woman is standing there looking at clothes and every once in a while would say, you know, "Let me know when you're okay. Let me know if you need a hug." And she would keep doing her thing and she said, "I went a little closer and it was your wife." And she said, "That was perfect. Your wife was doing it just right." Was that, you know, they're going to get upset and it's okay that they get upset because, you know, they're constantly coming up with things they haven't experienced before. But your job is to teach them how to be calm and to relax and that takes practice. It takes every night, you know, at bedtime learning some relaxation techniques that they can use later in the day. But you can't all of a sudden in a panic expect to solve it for them. And actually by trying to solve it for them, you're doing a disservice. And kids have to learn the skill. Parents have to practice this skill because as kids get older, they up their game, right? Those emotions get bigger. They say things about you. They use words that they shouldn't be using about you. And you have to remain calm, because by remaining calm, you're showing them, "I'm in complete control. You're out of control, but the world is okay." And I got this and it's going to be okay. Yeah, it's so well said. And, you know, so I'm taking away this reflection of regulating myself, right? And I'm actually even thinking about that moment. It sort of makes me a little emotional, just thinking about that. Because I think it's very true. My daughter at that time, when I was able to regulate myself, I remember looking at her and I remember holding her face and she held my face and we breathed together. And it was at that moment that I realized that she was grieving. You know, she was grieving what was the three of us that was now four. I don't have as much time with mama. And, you know, I think that definitely allowed for more connection, allowed me to see her, allowed me to understand her better and changed our relationship for the better. And you don't have to say, "Don't be sad." It's okay to be sad. Yeah. And it's going to be okay. I'm okay. You're going to be okay. I don't know. My biggest takeaway is I love that I can stay in control by projecting calm. Right. I love being in control. So, Dr. Korb, I think it's awesome what you're telling us, right? Kids need to be able to create their own systems. We can't just necessarily prescribe the systems and habits that work for us as parents or as educators. The kids have to figure that out themselves. However, what do we do about the kids that we completely agree with you that they need to build their own systems, but they just simply won't do it themselves? So, first of all, I want to help people understand that time is a tricky concept. There was a researcher that did a study where they had kids come in and they told them that I just put a cake in the oven. I need you to tell me in 15 minutes, you know, to remind me to take it out. And then they would sit down and play video games together. And they did this with 10 through 19 year olds. And what they found is up until age 16, kids were pretty lousy at remembering a lot of cakes were being burnt. And around 16, they start improving. Girls start improving throughout that age sooner than boys do. But up until age 16, boys were pretty terrible and they continued to improve up into age 19. So, first thing to know is that kids do not have the same sense of time that we have. The second thing to know is that time is a fragile concept. So, every time you say five more minutes and then it takes 30 minutes, you've just blown up their sense of what time actually is. It's really important for us to be consistent about time. Ultimately, time is a sequence. And so, anytime we're teaching sequences, we're teaching that concept of time. So, teaching beginning, middle and an end. First, we're going to do this, then we're going to do that. We introduce what I call step wisdom, that every task can be broken down into steps. And we encourage kids to learn how to break those things into steps. Then as kids get a little older, I ask them to predict how long that might take. So, sometimes what I do is I say, write down your homework, estimate how long before we're thinking how long each of those things is going to take. And then let's time it and let's see. And if we're off, let's talk about why we think we were off. Was it that we just weren't good at predicting time? Or was it that we lost our focus? Or was it because maybe I got distracted? Or maybe I have more trouble with math than I thought I do? But that whole process of thinking about and problem solving around time then makes it much easier for them to later start building schedules. Often, kids don't have those building blocks and we start saying, use a plan or use a calendar. But they don't know what 10 minutes for 30 minutes means. All right, Dr. Korb, now it's time to separate fact from fiction. It's time for some myth busting. You ready? Do my best. All right. Myth number one, kids with executive functioning challenges, they're just lazy or lack motivation. Well, we kind of talked about this and that, you know, every child wants to be successful. Those that aren't just haven't figured out how to do it yet. Nobody wants to struggle or fail. Kids aren't lazy. They just haven't figured out how to be successful. And that's our job. That's our job as parents to kind of coach that. All right, myth number two. So if a kid can play video games and focus in that sort of environment, then they can focus in class too. If you wanted to see how strong somebody was, you wouldn't have them lift a pencil. That's what video games are. They're not a good challenge of somebody's attention. In fact, they're designed to suck your attention in. They're designed to capture your focus and keep that adrenaline running. So it's not really a measure of attention. What is a measure of attention is going to church and sitting quietly or being able to listen to the soccer coach when they're talking, not just when you're playing or being able to sit and do your homework. Those are real measures of your attention. Myth number three. Timers and planners should be able to fix a student's executive functioning challenges. So timers and planners are great. I encourage parents to use them all the time. But it's important to know that they are not the end all be all of executive function solving solutions. The key is to understand where your child is at and let your child really go through that problem solving process to figure out what strategies work for them. Because we don't all use planners as adults. Many of us do and they work, but some kids have to figure out their own solutions. And that process of learning how to solve solutions or find solutions is the ultimate key to their success. Dr. Korb, thank you so much for coming in today and talking with us. I think so many families out there are looking for answers how to help their child with executive functioning challenges. And I think you've put a wonderful resource out there how to raise an organized child and it's available everywhere that you can check out the bookstores or online. Dr. Korb, thank you so much for coming here today. My pleasure. Thank you very much. Wonder why traditional school doesn't work for your student? Maybe the answer lies in their learning DNA. That's why Fusion Academy created a short quiz to help you better understand how your student learns. In just a few minutes, you'll get personalized insights into your student's unique learning preferences, plus tips to better support them at home and in the classroom. Take the quiz today. It's quick, it's free, and it may just unlock your student's full potential. Visit fusionacademy.com/podcast. That's fusionacademy.com/podcast. We know learning differently requires showing up differently. So here are some tools, insights, and strategies to help. It's time for real talk, real tools. Executive function challenges like staying focused, getting organized, or managing time can derail learning if we don't put the right supports in place. And the good news is even in a traditional classroom, small changes make a big impact. Tools like visual timers, daily agendas, and clearly posted routines help reduce mental load. Letting students check off tasks or use color coded folders can increase independence without needing constant adult prompting. And emotional regulation matters too. Offering a quiet corner, a brain break menu, or even allowing movement while learning can keep students engaged. In Dr. Tamara Rosier's book, Your Brain's Not Broken, she advises instead of forcing a teen with executive dysfunction to just use a planner, reframe the issue. It's not about managing time, it's about managing energy. Students with ADHD or executive function challenges often know what to do but don't have the mental energy or activation to get started. Family tip, help your child map their day by identifying when they feel most focused or drained. Plan high focus tasks like writing or reading during their high energy windows and schedule breaks after. Dr. Rosier explains that emotional regulation is at the core of executive function struggles and often what looks like laziness is actually shame, fear, or overwhelm. Naming the emotion helps reduce it. Family tip, when your child shuts down or procrastinates, try saying this feels really hard. Can we figure out what's getting in the way together? That shift builds trust and opens the door to problem solving. Lena, I got some big takeaways. I think that you offered a lot of great resources but from hearing from Dr. Korb, those are all things that we should try on for size. Oftentimes what I'm thinking is that parents need a partner with their child to be able to just throw stuff at a wall and see what sticks. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I took away a lot from our conversation about just getting started and understanding the fact that progress matters. The connection versus the correction, all of that conversation was to get started, understand what tools you have in your toolkit, try a few of them, and then watch for progress along the way. I feel like I was assigned an assignment notebook. I remember it was like third grade and it's like what we had to keep in there. It was a great tool to just write, okay, what was due the next day. But I think the big lesson today was also leveling that up, right? Similar to what we as adults do in terms of our calendars, we need to figure out how to allocate time throughout the day, being able to practice that skill of prediction to see how much time it's actually going to take to complete those tasks. I think that was a key takeaway of mine too, is how important predictability can be for students who are neurodiverse and have executive functioning challenges. That's a big thing. It's not that they're lacking in their want or need to try. It's really that they're having these challenges at the core of their skill set and things like what you just mentioned really helped. Yeah, it's a great reminder that all kids want to be successful. We just need to be able to help them find the tools to be successful. So when I think about a fusion campus and I'm thinking about the kids working in the homework cafe, they've just come from an hour of class and their job is to work on the piece of homework that that teacher custom designed for that hour, right? And I think about all the strategies that our directors of student life are doing in there, doing the soft executive functioning coaching of like, "All right, what's the priority for this hour? How much time does this going to need to take?" And then they do do that recheck throughout that period to say, "Hey, was that accurate? Where are you at? Where do you need help and resources?" I think the level up is what Dr. Korp was talking about today. How can we get the kids, especially those the ones that were always hesitant to raise their hand in a classroom to go say, "Hey, I need a little bit more help. I need some more resources here to be able to accomplish this within the time that I thought I accurately allocated to this." Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I love, I mean, you mentioned our DSLs, our directors of student life and our homework cafe or our global community. They play such a pivotal role in the lives of our students who struggle with executive functioning because I think that they see them, right? They see them in those in-between times of class or they're trying to organize themselves or trying to use the tools that they have at their access or trying to understand what else they could do. And I think that connecting point, that person who is really tapped into what they need and trying to figure out and try different things like, "Is it a game changer for so many of our kids?" Yeah, that connection, that relationship, understanding what those kids need in front of them. I mean, I think that that's the central theme of all of our conversations so far. Shout out to Fusion DSLs then, global community. When Charlie was at his previous school, one of his challenges was he would get overwhelmed when he would have a big assignment presented and he would, you know, just freeze. He couldn't get started on the assignments at Fusion with the one-on-one teaching style. They could help him get started in small chunks so that things would not seem overwhelming and they would help him through. He therefore developed his own executive functioning skills more by them shepherding him through the process one-on-one. That would never have happened in his previous school. Coming into Fusion was a revelation. I found myself surrounded by people who actively supported me and wanted me to succeed. Teachers who would check in on me and make sure I completed all my assignments. Every single day, we as parents get a report from each teacher. So we really contract how things are going, if there are any challenges. In the public school system, we might not know there was a problem until three weeks later. By then it was too late. By the end of his time at Fusion, the teachers were sending reports, glowing reports every day about what a pleasure it was to have Charlie in class, how excited he was, and his grades were, you know, spectacular. I found myself in a class completely personalized to my interests and it helped me dive back in to how much I love learning. They were able to inspire him and get him to be passionate about subjects again, which he had completely lost in the public school system. That was our Charlie that we had back. At traditional school, I lost my love for learning and at Fusion, I got it back. If your child is struggling with executive functioning in a traditional school setting, don't wait. Find another solution. For us, Fusion was that solution. And now my favorite part of the show were the numbers, the neuroscience, and the public policy intersect. It's time for the research roundup. Did you know that according to Dr. Russell Barkley, executive function deficits are present in up to 90% of students with ADHD? This suggests that executive dysfunction, it's not peripheral, but central to ADHD and should shape how educators and clinicians think about support frameworks. And then second, a study by Best, Miller and Nagliere, which is published in Learning and Individual Differences, found that poor executive function is one of the strongest predictors of academic underachievement. It's not a learning potential issue. It's not an intelligence issue. It's an executive function issue and therefore requires executive function support. Lena, that was my favorite part of the show, that research. What stood out to you? I mean, too often, I think our students are mislabeled, honestly, as either lazy or disorganized, but it's almost as though they are navigating these really invisible obstacles that we can't see, but that impact their everyday immensely. Oh my gosh, yeah, it's like the duck with their super calm on the surface of the water, or perhaps not, and their feet move in a million miles an hour. Yeah, and again, it's like the issue of, I was at fault when I was a teacher and I didn't exactly understand learning differences to this extent, especially with ADHD and executive functioning, right? Oh my gosh, this kid's just a mess. His parents need to do a better job of organizing their backpack before school. All these different things. Now thinking about it, I'm like, okay, what could I have done in the spatial organization of the room? Did I make sure that I had a turn in bin in the same exact spot? Did I make sure that the agenda for the day, not just having an agenda, but also breaking down how each learning activity, how long it would take, so that people be like, okay, so Wang's going to talk for about 15 minutes, but then we get a break and we're going to do something else, right? To things like, hey, was there a predictable order to the class? I'm thinking about like how the episodes of TV that and sitcoms that we all love have a very sort of predictable order to them. Yeah, we'll think about even as a teacher, right? We scaffold. I don't know how often, I mean, it's one of the primary essential tools that we teach teachers in their development, but I don't know that we really talk about why and I don't know that we talk about the importance of scaffolding, especially for students with executive function challenges. Yeah. And what about at home? The predictable routines and scaffolds that we provide during the school week and even on the weekends, right? I'm thinking about, oh, the weekends are a time of relaxation, but are there opportunities for us to say, hey, on Saturday, I know that we have a soccer practice from this time to this time, but what else do you need to achieve during this time and how can we make that into a more predictable routine? Yeah, I love that. And the fact that you asked that question even, I think, was a great takeaway from Dr. Corbiz. Again, a theme. Remain curious, remain connected. Thanks so much for joining us on Learning Differently. We're grateful that you're here doing the work, asking the questions, and showing up for the students who need it most. Supporting learners who think and experience the world differently takes curiosity, care, and corazón because when we understand how they learn, we unlock who they can become. We will see you next time.