How "Thinking Out Loud" Can Strengthen Your Child's Executive Function Skills.

Have you ever thought about the fact that when you plan outings for the day, before you even walk out of the house, you have already mentally gone through the whole process in your mind. What am I talking about?

Let's say you have a doctor's appointment at 9:30am. It takes 20 minutes to get there. You are hoping to be there at least 10 minutes early to fill out any paperwork. No, don't worry this is not going to be a complex word problem... In your area, rush hour goes til around 9:30 am so there still could be some extra traffic on your drive. You give yourself a 15 minute driving cushion. Now you know that you need to leave the house by 8:45am to ensure you get to your appointment on time, even though it is only 20 minutes away.

You have already walked yourself through potential delays and setbacks in your mind to adjust your leaving time and ensure you get to your appointment on time, before you ever walked out of the house.

If you add an extra stop for a morning beverage of choice on the way (mine would be hot cocoa!), you know that you'll adjust that leave time even earlier.

So, what's actually happening in your brain while you do that?

Well, a lot. But a big one is...

1. You are self regulating. Your working memory is holding that information in your brain and you are adjusting what needs to happen in real time.

For many of us, it is so automatic to make tiny adjustments throughout our day based on events and timing to ensure we pick up the kids on time, put the chicken in the crockpot early enough to eat dinner at a certain time etc etc etc. It goes on an on.

So what happens when we have a child who struggles to self regulate and has weak working memory skills?

Keep in mind that Toddlers are still learning these skills. They are not really capable of self regulating (yet) for more than a few minutes, so we do it for them.

School age kids- This might look like a fidgety child who's backpack is a blackhole and comes home telling you they didn't get any homework in any class. Let me be clear, they aren't lying to you and probably believe they didn't have any work. Their working memory couldn't hold on to that information long enough. Or maybe they remember there was something, but didn't think it was due tomorrow or didn't remember to bring home the workbook to do the assignment.

High schoolers- Similar things as school age but compounded because there is a bigger workload and bigger expectation to have stuff together. This student might know they have a big assignment but think they can do their 25 page research paper overnight. Deadlines that are 2 weeks away are going to feel like months away. They have gobs of time. Students presenting this way may need their work broken down more and have more frequent due dates to help them pace themselves on a big project.

In all of these examples, I wonder if those children even realize what their end goal should be. Do they know what they are actually trying to accomplish? How do we support that working memory and offload some of that disorganized information in their brain and make it more accessible to them? It is a skill that doesn't necessarily come automatically but can absolutely be learned and taught. I will definitely be talking more about this in the future.

As parents, one simple, yet helpful strategy is to model that thinking out loud. "Okay so I need to go to the grocery store, but first I need to drop off Kai at soccer at 3:30 then pick up my library books on hold and make sure I'm back for soccer pick up at 5." These things may not seem related, but the are. Definitely.

For a child getting ready in the morning, it might look like "Okay, after breakfast, I need to go upstairs and brush my teeth. Mom said fresh underwear and put on the clothes we laid out on my chair last night. Then I need to grab my lunch and backpack to be in the car by 8:15am. Wow, that's a lot to keep in their working memory and the school day hasn't even started yet!

A visual schedule can also help offload this. If you haven't signed up for emails, sign up now and you can get a free visual schedule right to your inbox.

If you want to learn more about this, check out any work or information by Sarah Ward MS, CCC-SLP. She is a speech-language pathologist who specializes in executive functioning training/work and talks about this process. I had the privledge of hearing her present years ago and it was life changing in how I started doing therapy.