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–Prepare–

Decide What you Want to Change

Steps of Preparing:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Before we can make a change it is important that we decide what to change.  Have a conversation with your child about the purpose of making a change.  Make sure you allow time and opportunity for your child to provide his perspective. Remember, both you and your child must see the value in making a change. Together, establish the general skill/behavior you would like to change.  Clarify why making this change is important from your perspective as a parent.  But, also take time to guide your child to an understanding of why making this change is important from her perspective.  Then, decide if you will both make the commitment of time and energy necessary to make the change happen.

Maybe you and your child already have a good idea of what you want to change. If so, you are ready to move onto the next page. Maybe you are unsure what exactly you want to change and that's okay. We can select to make changes for many different things, but some of the most common areas that require attention are outlined in the next few pages.  Before we move on to set a goal, let's take a look at some of the common "executive functions" that require change and other areas of difficulty highlighted by PBIS world.com. For more information about "what executive functions are" click here.

Develop Your Plan Around an Effective Strategy

Once you identify your area of concern, you can begin creating your plan to meet your goal. It is important that your plan is built around an effective strategy.  Below we provide some resources to help you identify some possible strategies.

  • Select an area of concern in the table below. Each the table below you will find links to pages with strategies to target various areas of concern.

Task Initiation 

Vigilance to Task

Procrastination – The ability to begin a task or activity and to independently generate ideas, responses, or problem solving strategies.

Causes and Strategies

Organization

Resource Management

The ability to create and maintain a system to keep track of information or materials.

Causes and Strategies

Working Memory

Attention Control

The ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. Example: while doing a mental math problem (no work paper), working memory allows you to hold the numbers in your head while you perform some simple math operations.

Causes and Strategies

Goal-Directed Persistence

Vigilance to Task

Having a goal, resisting distractions/ competing interests, follow through to the completion of the goal.

Causes and Strategies

Long-Term Projects

Resource Management

Like Homework, long-term projects are multi-facetted skills that require multiple strategies and goals for success.

Causes and Strategies

Emotion Control​

Emotion Regulation

The ability to manage emotions to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behavior.

Causes and Strategies

Homework

Vigilance to Task

Turning work in on time is a multi-faceted skill that requires multiple strategies and goals for success.

Causes and Strategies

Sustain Attention

Attention Control

Ability to pay attention to a situation or task despite potential distractions, fatigue, or boredom.

Causes and Strategies

Metacognition

Metacognition

The ability to "think about your own thinking." Includes self-monitoring and self-evaluative skills.

Causes and Strategies

Time Management

Resource Management

The ability to estimate how much time you have, how to allocate it, and how to meet within deadlines.

Causes and Strategies

Response Inhibition

Attention Control 

Avoiding Temptations – Ability to think before you act, resist the urges to say/do something (Allows time to evaluate).

Causes and Strategies

Download the file for an e-book that provides more information about the executive functioning areas above as well as strategies for addressing these areas:

  • Vigilance to Task

  • Resource management

  • Attention Control

  • Emotion Regulation

  • Metacognition

I'm Still not Sure What my Primary Concern is...

This resource may help if you are still unsure of how to specify what your concerns are.   Although the interventions on this site are school oriented, it does provide a more extensive list of behavioral and adjustment concerns along with a link to the descriptive characteristics for each.  It can serve as a good resource to help you identify your area of concern. 

I Know What my Primary Concern is, but I Don't see it Here.

Don't see a concern you are looking for in the list on this page? No problem! Contact us so we can assist you with ideas and strategies. We will also add it to the website to better help our website, knowledge base, and future visitors.

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