Another reason ADHD is so confusing is there’s much more to it than just a deficit of attention and hyperactivity. Those of us who struggle with ADHD often have trouble with executive functioning.
Brain researchers have identified executive functions as a set of abilities that help us manage our time, energy, resources, and talents. These skills help us execute the tasks we need to accomplish to experience success. In other words, these are the skills that help us to successfully get things done.
The good news is that executive functioning weaknesses can be addressed! Read on to learn more.
Many have compared the executive functions to the CEO of a company: these skills help us efficiently and effectively manage all our other abilities. Over the years, researchers have identified specific cognitive processes that are necessary to successfully execute daily tasks. Each child, teen, and adult may have a unique set of executive skill strengths and weaknesses. Understanding your and your child/teen’s specific executive skill strengths and needs can help you better understand how to help.
Internationally known expert Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D. (2012) has defined executive functions as “self-regulation across time for the attainment of one’s goals (long-term self-interests) typically in the context of others.” This simple yet complex definition elegantly emphasizes the importance of starting productive behaviors and stopping unproductive behaviors to set and achieve goals while staying connected to others.
Here’s my simplified definition of executive functions:
Depending on whose research you read, there are anywhere from 5 to 20 executive functions. I have settled on 11 executive skills, and I’ve put them into three categories.
Attention Management
Sustained attention, working memory, and organization have a tremendous impact on success in school, on the playground, at work, and in life. Read more here.
Time and Task Management
Time and task management involve everything you need to think about and do to complete tasks: manage your time and priorities, plan and start tasks, and persist to complete tasks. Learn more here.
Self-Management
Self-management involves the executive skills that are necessary to stay on track in life and then get back on track when we have lost our way: Self-Monitoring, Response Inhibition, Social Cognition, Cognitive Flexibility, and Emotional Control. Read more here.
Good News about Executive Functions!
Children, teens, college students, and adults can benefit from developing executive skills utilizing research-based practices developed by educators at the New Hampshire Center for Learning and Attention Disorders, the Research Institute for Learning and Attention, and the University of Toronto. For over 20 years, these groups have shown that executive skills can be improved in children and teens using a variety of approaches.
We offer help for children, teens, and college students all year round!
We provide students tools and strategies based on the research completed by educators Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D., Rosemary Tannock, Ph.D., Peg Dawson, Ed.D., and Richard Guare, Ph.D. Click the links below to see how we have integrated this research into the following solutions and services.
Student Success
Stop & Think for impulsive elementary through high school students
Emotional control and counseling methods
Adults can also benefit from executive skill strategies!
Adults can benefit from Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to develop executive skill strategies as shown by clinicians and researchers at Mt. Sinai in New York and Mass General Hospital in Boston over the past decade.
For more information, go to our page on Executive Functioning Help for Adults.
Need Help with Executive Functioning?
Contact us to make an appointment to see how we can help you or your struggling loved one develop improved executive functions.
Click here to see the research sources for this article.
© 2009-2019, Monte W. Davenport, Ph.D.
