Faya and I talk about and plan for executive function skill building every day, together and with others. We talk about it with parents across NYC and the world. We talk about it with psychologists, psychiatrists, and therapists. We talk about it with school faculty and Learning Specialists. We talk about it with our own family members. And we talk about it with our private tutors. In fact, we’ve been talking about it for over 25 years as professional educators. And we think about it ourselves every single day. As adults with ADHD, strong organizational and study skills saved us from otherwise drowning as students, but it took constant effort and intention.

In New York City, an onlooker might think we’ve gone mad with all the talk, marketing, and hype surrounding executive function coaching. It trended in the early 2000s, it became particularly trendy around 2014/2015, and over the last 4 years, unfortunately, we think a lot of people have lost sight of what’s sensible and useful. It seems like everybody claims to be an executive function coach – educator, therapist, life coach, or entrepreneur in this space. Some people purport to have “degrees” in Executive Function Coaching. Some professionals purport to have fixed, off-the-shelf curricula that are “guaranteed” to fix executive function issues. This space has become the wild west, and we caution you to be discerning and careful.

To level set, there isn’t a single human being who wouldn’t benefit from having an Executive Function Coach. Every developing child and young adult, by default, needs help to develop and enhance executive function skills because the part of the brain that controls these functions – the prefrontal cortex – continues to grow until at least age 25. For people with clinically significant ADHD, this growth may be delayed up to 3 years, taking them to age 28. And when I worked for Time Warner’s Human Resources division as a Talent Development specialist, we had this support available for employees and executives spanning their entire career trajectory from first-year employees to the C-Suite executives. We just didn’t brand it as “executive function coaching.” Instead, we called it “Executive Presence Training” and “Leadership Development”.

As entrepreneurs and Learning Specialists ourselves in our mid-40s, we know from personal experience that there’s always room for continuous improvement when it comes to effectiveness and enhanced organization. As each of us matures and takes on more responsibilities, the need to create, refine, and recalibrate organizational systems – both digitally and concretely – is never ending. These accomplishments build confidence and lead to each future success we have.

Here are five (5) truths and one (1) lie about Executive Function Coaching that are highly overlooked:

Truth #1: It requires both student and family engagement.

Engage in courageous conversations and a 360 process if you really want to tackle executive function coaching. For our students in grades preK-12, executive function coaching requires a thoughtful analysis of existing systems, routines, and pain points specific to the student and the family’s experience related to these challenges. A 7-year-old, for example, naturally has executive function challenges, and those matters cannot be “fixed” without family involvement and consideration of the environment and systems at large. It’s also important to remember that executive function challenges exist on a continuum from age-appropriate challenges to clinically significant executive dysfunction.

To effect change, there has to be a willingness to engage in thoughtful and sometimes challenging conversations in order to get at the root cause of the observed difficulty. There can’t be any magical thinking that a few lessons are guaranteed to “fix” any organizational challenge forever. With executive functions, the beat just keeps marching on as life continues to demand higher performance from us, so you have to be clear about what you’re prioritizing and focusing on, which also means tactically ignoring other things in the short term. Parents also have to own their part in it. Executive function coaching really requires a consult model and partnership; and it cannot be entirely outsourced.

Ideally, the work ought to happen in the space where the student has to perform. It’s an extra challenge to “plan for what you’re going to do” in the space where you aren’t actually going to do it. Then you have to have a system for remembering what you committed to and implementing it at some later point. The younger the student is, the bigger the ask that is, so a family must be cautious about the approach they’re going to trial.

Experts can mean well, but each family has to think carefully about their definition of success, which requires partnership and open dialogue. And lots of people who aren’t experts give advice with the confidence of an expert, so families need to be discerning when they assess and select a partner for this work.

Truth #2: It has to be relevant and meaningful.

Delivering targeted minilessons and making use of meaningful, real-life work and authentic tasks is the most effective way to build executive function skills on an individual basis. No one curriculum in some fixed order is going to get the job done. And the job is never actually done. Which is exactly why the coaching should be driven by specific, measurable goals. As goals are achieved, new ones can be created. Two or three goals at a time should be the maximum because building new routines and habituating them is not easy to do. Taking on too many goals at once is a setup for failure.

Students are most likely to engage and buy into this work if they see its usefulness and real-life connection. If it’s too abstract or cerebral, they often lose interest and/or don’t generalize discussions to the actual daily work. If it’s disconnected from the work that’s actually on their plate, then they often just see it as another meeting that isn’t adding value, which can lead to resistance or conflict. You can indeed kill two birds with one stone in this instance, and Executive Function Coaching that is integrated with academic coaching (e.g. remediation, acceleration, or maintenance) is the best way to achieve it.

The math and writing work does actually require related executive function skills – initiation, time management, sequencing, sustaining attention, regulating emotions, delayed gratification, and tenacity. Moreover, an admissions or college planning process as well as test preparation is absolutely a useful vehicle for executive function coaching if the explicit intention is set. These are processes that require project management skills, which is another way of talking about executive function skills. When you plan with the end in mind (aka backmapping), you’re engaged in executive function work. They’re not separate nor disconnected things. That’s one of the biggest things people are either not understanding or losing sight of. Everything we do all day long — from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep — is directly tied to our executive functions. How smooth or chaotic each day feels to use has quite a lot to do with your executive function skills.

Getting out of the blender and into the helicopter is not easy to do and requires careful planning. At companies, leaders schedule off-sites for this sort of thinking and planning. Our students, unfortunately, rarely get to attend an off-site. At best, you have school breaks to tackle this work, but that’s highly unpopular and in direct competition with family travel and holidays. Because there’s basically never a perfect time for this work, it’s the can that gets kicked down the road until the challenges and/or conflict can’t be ignored any longer. But then it’s like trying to turn a barge rather than a jet ski.

Executive functions are the foundation to the house you’re building. They need to be cultivated over time, slow and steady. That’s the best approach, which is why “maintenance tutoring” – often referred to as once-weekly ongoing tutoring – has historically been the traditional model that we’ve engaged in over the years. But the pandemic upended many things, and the last 4 years have left many families engaged in whack-a-mole interventions and/or unnecessarily siloed work, which is exhausting, frustrating, and expensive. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Truth #3: Cohesion and consistency are essential.

Explicit and intentional cohesion between adults and professionals working with a student and their family is mission critical. Lacking cohesion is exactly the opposite of demonstrating strong executive function skills. The left hand must know what the right hand is doing, and both little kids and teenagers need this supervision, accountability, and cohesion to be effective in the work and tasks for which they are responsible on a daily basis. Without cohesion, our very bright but disorganized students are certainly smart enough to be able to work the adults in their orbit and avoid uncomfortable work or routines. Think about it: You can meet the trainer at the gym once a week, but doing cardio and core work throughout the week independently, without accountability, is unlikely to be successful. The expression “it takes a village” is really true. Students need coordinated support and reinforced messaging from the adults in their lives, which includes parents, nannies or caregivers, teachers, school learning specialists, and, possibly, coaches, psychologists, social workers, speech therapists, occupational therapists and other professionals. Quarterbacking these teams isn’t easy for parents to do alone.

To this end, consolidation is certainly preferable in order to limit the number of professionals with whom a child is meeting each week. Having too many cooks in the kitchen can cause confusion, exacerbate the stress you and your student are already feeling, and could actually be diminishing your child’s confidence without your realizing it. If a child or teenager is experiencing executive function challenges, and you live in a city like NYC, buzzing around town and transitioning too often from one environment to another can be really triggering and exhausting, which actually draws down attentional resources, which can increase emotionality and fatigue while decreasing executive function effectiveness. It’s the exact opposite of what anyone means to do.

Truth #4: Keep it as simple and as concrete as possible before you go digital.

Technology has its place, but often we see it as the problem before it can eventually become part of the solution. Both little kids and teenagers love access to mobile phones, tablets, and computers, but their knowledge and effectiveness with organizational tools is not generally where they have technology prowess. Email management, digital calendar management, school portal management, and Google Drive management is not glamorous. Therefore, it is not typically where students want to spend their time nor is it where schools do all that much to teach explicit organizational lessons related to technology use. So, when your student doesn’t respond to your calendar invite or email message, please don’t act surprised. Most are oblivious to these tools and responsibilities. They don’t need them because they have you. And their teacher is uploading all of their homework to the classroom portal. In fact, students need to have an active part in this process, but many don’t see the point (yet!), and they’re neither being explicitly taught these skills nor being systematically held accountable for this level of organizational work.

You have to crawl, walk, then run. Remember when your classroom teacher used to make you take out your planner and write down your homework? Or when a list went on the refrigerator with a magnet? Or when a homework folder, Trapper Keeper, or binder, went back and forth from school with physical papers in it? We need more of that to be happening again.

Both children and teenagers benefit from support making a plan, mapping out the schedule (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, and semesterly), subtasking bigger projects or assignments into smaller parts, prioritizing assignments and tasks, considering time estimates and then tracking progress and accuracy, and defining what “done” means with proofreading tools, self-assessment tools, and/or other guidelines to ensure they’ve done their best work. They also need to understand the basic architecture of various organizational systems, which includes some practice with alphabetizing, considering the purpose of a file name, developing a paper organizational system so that they can grow into a digital file system that makes use of folders, labels, archiving information in sensible ways, and storing information securely.

All kinds of tools are useful, but trial and error is needed, and then committing to selected tools, strategies, and positive routines is where the really hard work comes into play. For example, a family paper calendar or white board calendar that’s color coded with pencils, pens, markers, or Post-it notes is often still the better solution for children and teenagers, but staying on top of it and recalibrating plans as needed takes daily discipline. Use of timers and clocks is really important, but there are many types, and not all students or ages will prefer the same ones. Families also have different aesthetic parameters, and student and family workspaces ought to be an important consideration from an interior design standpoint.

Truth #5: Physical and digital workstations really matter and both need attention.

Children and teenagers need an appropriate-sized desk dedicated to their work. They need a work space that minimizes distractions and has all the tools relevant to their age and work. Otherwise, they keep interrupting their flow to find the item they need. These items likely include pencils, erasers, and a sharpener as well as pens, markers, crayons, scissors, tape, a ruler, different sized Post-it notes in different colors, and a small white board with expo markers to make a checklist. Additionally, elementary students need access to concrete materials to support their homework, including similar math manipulatives to what they have in their classrooms. Students in the primary grades need easy access to age-appropriate lined paper and/or graph paper.

Laptop screens are really too small for sustained homework and studying. Connecting to a larger monitor (or two) stands to make a huge difference, especially for students in grades 4-12 and college. Monitors can be expensive, but there are a variety of options, and connecting a television with an HDMI cable is a good solution, too, that cuts down on the expense. Notably, it’s hard to proofread on small screens, and it’s harder to synthesize information when you can’t put it side-by-side. It’s also harder to maintain attention and effectiveness during Zoom lessons or meetings without more screen real estate to put, for example, a Google doc, a study guide, and a primary resource document side-by-side for reference during the Zoom meeting. There’s also a lot of eye strain on small screens.

Students still need a printer, too. An inexpensive black-and-white laser printer will do the job. Interacting with real pages and printing them for reference at a student’s workstation is an old-school tactic that remains effective. It’s a good idea to have a cork strip or bulletin board to post reference sheets or assignment instructions. We also recommend having a large white board for planning purposes as well as a large paper calendar or white board calendar.

Realistically, work must be done with both physical materials and digital platforms simultaneously because students have their hands in both. The earlier this work is started, the easier it stands to be. Old habits die hard.

And a lie: Improving executive functions is easy and fast. It’s not.

We have always loved to engage in goal setting, reality checking, and designing executive function coaching in partnership with our students and families to enhance effectiveness. Our teachers excel in this work, too, and our team-based approach ensures that we bring multiple perspectives to our partnership with you. In our experience, great executive functioning coaching is the result of an individualized approach delivered with careful thought, perspective taking, collaboration, practical application, cohesion, consistency, creativity, flexibility, compassion, and patience. We’ve never implemented two programs that are exactly the same!

If it’s not going as you imagined, it’s never too late to make a change. Initiating a change is, in fact, a demonstration of good execution function skills!

We can work with you in any of the following ways:

• Consultation with parents, nannies, and caregivers in order to build systems, select tools, and define strategies to enhance executive function skills at home.
• Review your school documentation – such as report cards and neuropsychological evaluations – and talk with any professionals you’ve identified in order to map out a plan or work with you to coordinate conversations among professionals for enhanced cohesion.
• Help families to create physical and digital workstations.
• Direct work with students, 1:1, at their home to explicitly define goals and build executive function skills in combination with academic tutoring.
• Provide professional development and consultation for a private tutor your family may already have in place to enhance their work with your student.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to discuss your child’s situation and needs in more detail. Difficulty with executive functions can hold many students back from the success they could otherwise achieve in school and beyond. No matter at what point the situation is addressed, there are myriad ways in which to help children, or adults for that matter, become more effective at everything they do. Our team of highly skillful teachers is ready to help!

Scheduling an initial planning meeting (another demonstration of good executive function skills) with me and Faya is usually the best way to get started. While a brief phone conversation is a perfectly fine starting point, it’s a more limited and high-level conversation. We prefer to schedule a 30-minute meeting by Zoom in order to talk more substantively about your family’s specific needs, priorities, and goals so that we can determine possible next steps. We’re committed to developing unique solutions for unique learners!

We look forward to hearing from you!

Warm regards,
Brad Hoffman and Faya Hoffman,
Co-Founders and Learning Specialists, My Learning Springboard