The #1 thing parents can do to start home education right, even with Executive Function issues

Hey parents, what’s up? It’s me, Seth. In this video, I’m going to talk to you about what I think is the number one most important factor to consider during this pandemic time, when there are a lot of school closures and you suddenly find yourself in a position where you have to homeschool your child.

To me, the most important consideration during this time is the relationship.

What does that mean?

Well, the problem a lot of families are going to have is that once parents step into the teacher role, they feel like they need to get their kids to do certain activities, worksheets, assignments, or whatever else the school expects. Parents start thinking, “Okay, we have to get our child to do these things.”

And in order to get their child to do those things, they’ll use whatever tools they have available. Unfortunately, many of those tools are things they’ve learned from their own experiences or things they’ve seen modeled elsewhere.

Parents may feel anxious:
“We’ve got to get these things done. How do we make it happen?”

So they resort to punishments, rewards, attempts to motivate, arguments, rationalizing, lecturing, or using logic to explain how important the work is.

The problem is that none of these things truly work long term. Even if they work temporarily, what they lack is buy-in and ownership. They lack what’s called an internal locus of control.

What that means is that your child is being told from the outside:
“This is what you need to do.”

It may not be engaging, fun, or meaningful, but they’re being told they have to do it anyway. And of course, their nervous system — just like yours would — is going to reject that.

So what we want to do is start with the relationship.

If you haven’t learned about healthy, securely attached relationships, I encourage you to research attachment theory and polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory talks about how our nervous systems communicate with one another, how we co-regulate, and how we attune to each other.

I know I’m talking fast here, but I really want to convey this important point:
Our nervous systems are always communicating together.

When I say it starts with the relationship, I mean this:

If you’re going to get your child to do these things, they need to trust you.

As an executive function coach, if I’m going to help a student take risks, use a planner, get organized, check grades, email teachers, or work on something they don’t feel like doing, they have to trust me first.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

And right now, many parents are essentially trying to lead a horse to water and force it to drink. We’re trying to get kids to engage in educational experiences that may not feel engaging at all.

So it starts with the relationship.

If your relationship with your child involves a lot of pushback and resistance, and your main tools are punishments, rewards, lectures, nagging, rationalizing, or anger, it’s not going to work long term.

It may get them to comply temporarily just to get you off their back, but it won’t build an internal locus of control. It won’t empower them to move through resistance and take action in their own self-interest for building a better future.

This is a time for planting seeds.

Yes, we want our kids to continue having educational experiences, but we also need to figure out how to help them avoid thinking this is just an endless spring break or summer vacation.

We want them to plant seeds now that will contribute to their education and help them build a great future.

So how do we do that?

It starts with the relationship.

It starts with our children feeling emotionally safe with us and able to communicate with us. That doesn’t mean everything has to be perfect all the time. It can still be messy. There can still be conflict and problems.

That’s okay.

But ultimately, we want to move toward a healthier, more secure attachment and connection with our child.

And from there, we want to develop buy-in and ownership — that internal locus of control.

What does that look like?

Once we’re in a good place relationally, we can start helping our kids take action in their education. But they need to feel some sense of ownership. They need to feel like they have choices, rather than feeling like everything is being dictated to them from the top down.

I’m not going to get into exactly how to do that in this video, but the point is this:

If you, as an adult, don’t have buy-in and ownership over something you need to do — if it’s not meaningful or purposeful to you — why would you do it?

There has to be buy-in and ownership.

So first, we focus on the relationship.
Then we work on helping our kids feel like they have choices and are part of the process.

When they have some say in things, it becomes easier for them to take action. They begin to understand why it matters — not because we lecture them, but because they develop an internal sense that it matters for their own future and life.

My name is Seth. I’m an executive function coach out of Colorado, and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so they can have a great future.

If you like what I’m doing, please share this video, share my work, and give it a thumbs up on YouTube. It helps the algorithm and helps my message reach more families.

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I hope you’re healthy, and I hope you’re safe.

Have a fantastic day. I’ll see you soon.