Executive Edge: Ten Principles for Improving Your Child's Executive Skills

Ten Principles for Improving Your Child’s Executive Skills

By now, you may have some understanding of how crucial executive skills are in helping children meet the demands placed on them in school and at home. These skills are the mental processes that allow us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. By forming a clearer picture of your own strengths and weaknesses as well as your child’s, you can better understand how to leverage those strengths and tackle any challenges. Much like building a muscle, practicing executive skills is essential for helping your child become more independent and successful.

Following are ten principles, based on Smart but Scattered by Peg Dawson and Richard Guare, to support the development of executive functioning skills:

1. Teach Skills Explicitly Rather Than Expecting Them to Develop Naturally
   Just as not all children learn to read through exposure alone, executive skills often need to be taught directly. Games, routines, and structured supports can all help teach these skills gradually. For example, if your child struggles with organization, practice with smaller tasks such as organizing their desk or backpack before tackling more complex routines like homework planning.

2. Consider Your Child’s Developmental Level
   We wouldn’t typically expect a 5-year-old to pack their school lunch or a 10-year-old to pack for a week-long camp independently. Understanding age-appropriate expectations will help you set realistic goals and provide the appropriate support for your child’s executive functioning development. This is especially important for children with developmental delays or conditions like ADHD, where skill acquisition may not match chronological age.

3. Move from External Supports to Internal Control
   All executive skills training starts outside the child. For example, when teaching road safety, you may initially cue your child to look both ways before crossing. Eventually, with practice, this becomes an internalized habit. Begin by changing things outside your child—such as providing reminders or breaking tasks into smaller steps—before expecting them to manage independently.

4. Modify the Environment, Task, or Interaction
   Adjust the environment to set your child up for success. For example, if your child struggles with focus, consider a quieter workspace. If emotional regulation is an issue, supervise playdates more closely to offer support and guidance in real-time. Tasks can be simplified and adapted to suit your child’s developmental level.

5. Use, Rather Than Fight, Your Child’s Drive for Mastery and Control
   Harness your child’s desire for independence by giving them a say in how tasks are completed. Allow them to choose the order of chores or practice a difficult skill in smaller steps, gradually increasing the challenge. Creating a structured routine helps children understand expectations and fosters a sense of control over their environment.

6. Match the Task to Your Child’s Capacity to Exert Effort
   Some tasks take more efforta than others. If a task is beyond your child’s current capacity, break it down into smaller steps and build up from there. If it’s a disliked task, find ways to make it less aversive or introduce small rewards to encourage persistence.

7. Use Incentives to Augment Instruction
   Incentives can be as simple as praise or as tangible as extra playtime. While we want children to eventually be self-motivated, using incentives to build habits and skills can be an effective strategy. The key is to place the incentive after the task is completed to teach the child to delay gratification.

8. Provide Just Enough Support for Success
   Determine where your child can succeed independently and where they need help. For example, if your child struggles with a certain homework task, support them by guiding them through the first problem and then letting them attempt the next one on their own, stepping in only as needed. Make the first step of the task seem less daunting creating a sense of accomplishment. 

9. Keep Support and Supervision in Place Until Mastery is Achieved
   Don’t withdraw support too soon. It’s easy to assume that because your child has successfully completed a task once, they’ve mastered it. Instead, continue to monitor and provide guidance until the skill becomes habitual. Gradually reduce support over time, ensuring they’re still able to succeed on their own. If you were sick and needed to take antibiotics and you were starting to feel better you would not just stop taking the required dose would you?

10. Fade Support and Supervision Gradually
    Think of learning to ride a bike: you don’t remove the training wheels and stop holding onto the seat all at once. Instead, you gradually let go, allowing the child to find their balance. The same approach applies to executive skills—fade support slowly, ensuring your child is confident and capable at each stage before reducing help further.

Remember, the key is not to focus on what your child “should” be able to do at their age, but rather to meet them where they are developmentally and build up from there. It’s about progress, not perfection. With patience, practice, and the right strategies, you can help your child develop the executive skills they need to thrive.

For more information on developmental expectations and tailored strategies, please refer to the attached resource on age-appropriate executive skill development from Smart but Scattered Kids.