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How Google can help you get stuff done

Students (parents and teachers) here I have some great tips for you, especially if you tend to have a lot of missing work and feel overwhelmed by school. You’ll need a gmail account. I will show you how to make school a bit easier to manage so you have more free time and fun time, and less stress.

🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Subscribe, like & comment to support my work. 👉 Share: To support me, please *CLICK* at the bottom to share on FB or Pinterest. ✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers. 💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate? 🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF. Hey, what’s up students? My name is Seth Perler, and I am here today to help make your life easier. What I’m going to show you today has to do with a Gmail account in Google. And if you have a Gmail account, you can do this. Otherwise, you can do it on some other program that’s similar, you can probably find a workaround. But the idea of what I’m going to teach you today is going to make your life simpler, easier, and less stressful. Therefore, you have more fun, more freedom, and will help you not only now with school life, but also to have a better future, because it’ll give you some tips for how to organize some stuff. Now, before I get started, the first thing I want to say is, as I show you this stuff, students, a lot of you, if you struggle with this thing called executive function, which is what I struggle with and what all the students I work with struggle with. If you struggle to get things done, you have a lot of missing work, late work, zeroes, incompletes, you’re always trying to get caught up and you’re just in that cycle. If that’s the case, then as I show you the stuff, you’re going to be resistant, meaning I’m going to say something, and you’re like, “Oh, Seth, I don’t need that, oh, I can keep it in my head.” That would work for other people, but it wouldn’t work for me. I want you for just the duration of this video, to have an open mind. Whatever I teach that you like, use it. Whatever you don’t like, don’t use it. Or whatever you like, use it but adapt it to you. The second thing is I talked about a thing called Frankenstudy. Frankenstudy is this idea that sometimes your parents, or teachers, or coaches, or tutors, your friends, schools, they’ll tell you this is the way to do it. This is the way to do the three-ring binders, or folders, or planners, or whatever. Look, you may need folders or binders or something to manage papers. You may need some sort of a planner system, but the way you do it, when people are like, “This is the best way research shows blah, blah, blah.” Look, research may show that, but that may not be for your brain. So always go back to Frankenstudy, which means to customize, tailor, personalize your systems to you. You can go say, “Mom, dad, I don’t need to do it this way. I need to do it.” But you do need to do it though. But you need a reliable way, a reliable way. So your way is reliable, and customize it to you. You know your preferences and your needs. So I’m going to go ahead and get started here. What you’re going to need is a Gmail account. And I’m going to show you a couple of things. You may want to pause the video several times as I teach this today. Basically, here’s a Gmail account. And in this email account, I just have the black theme on so if it looks different from yours, that’s why. What I want you to do is go over here, and there are some buttons over to the right. There’s the letter B, which is your name, your account. These nine dots will show you all of the different things that you can access in Google. Your calendar, your YouTube, your Gmail, and everything. Then you have the calendar here, something called Google Keep, something called Google Tasks, and your contact. What I want you to do is click on Google Tasks, and this is a task list. I’m going to show you how to do this task list right here. So again, you click on the blue dot, Google Task, it will open it up right there in your Gmail. I don’t like it open in my Gmail, because when I’m working in email, I don’t want to see all that stuff. So what I do is I go to a calendar, here’s the calendar that I have set up for you. I’m going to run through a lot of tips here, so get ready to hit pause. If you want to implement these, the first thing I do is I often will help people set up these different categories of calendars for yourself. One for school, family, fun, for me. I do guitar, so you can do your hobbies, important things that would be like appointments, then I don’t usually use these reminders here. And then wellness, that could be fitness, workouts, sports, whatever. So anyhow, these are the general categories I usually set people up with. And I usually will make the school one be red, because it signals to the eye that it’s important. So red is an alert color, and I want that for things that are not done. Then, what we can do is we can close this here, and we can make it look nice and big. And then what I want to do is I want to go over to the task list over to the right. When I open up this task list, it’s going to show me some tasks. I’m going to show you how to do that in a second. Before I do that, let’s look at the things that I put on the calendar for today. So today’s the 21st. But let’s say, oops, let me click on the today button because I lost it. Let’s say that on the 22nd there was an MLA paper due and on the 24th, there’s a math exam. Here on the 19th, there was something for social studies due. Let’s start with the social studies, notice that this is green. That is because if you right click, this was the default color. But let’s say that I turned it in. When it’s done, it’s not done. I always say when it’s done, it’s not done. When it’s turned in, then it’s done. So a lot of my students have a lot of missing work. A lot of my students, they’ve done their work and they forgot to turn it in and got a zero on it. And sometimes they even got it done on time and get a zero or 50% off because it was turned in late. So we don’t want to do that. Basically you right click on it, and you can change it to green and that tells me that I turned it in, or you can go into ‘Edit’ and you can change the color here in order to show the different colors. So I like that’s green because I don’t have to worry about it. However, I have an LA paper due tomorrow, and that is red and it says that there’s a note next to it. So I always put the thing short. I don’t write Language Arts, I don’t write English, I don’t write, you know Mrs. Smith’s class. I write just LA or M for math, or SCI for science, or SS for social studies like I did here. Bio for biology, whatever. I always use shorthand, but we want to see what it is first. LA, math social studies, I want my eye to notice that first. I always use all caps too, so that my eye can have an easier time seeing it. Now it says that there’s a note. So if I edit it, you can see that here’s where the descriptions go. And that’s where notes go, here’s where you can add the location of a Zoom room and stuff like that. Now, this one says math exam note. And let’s say I put a note down here. So oftentimes, in the notes, I’ll show you something similar in a second, but here, you can add in the link to your class, you can add in the link to the PDF for the study guide, or whatever. So if I have note here, that means that I have notes down here, and you can add tons of notes down there, even for a research paper, you can add notes down there. But now what I’m going to do, we have three items, this one’s done, these two are not done. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to open up the task lists. Now before I go into why this is important, let me say this. When I teach students planning, and this is going to drive some of you nuts, and the reason it’s going to drive some of you nuts is because you’re smart. And you know that you want to do the least amount of work possible for the greatest effect. That’s smart, right? Usually it is. But when we cut corners, what’s called cutting corners, it becomes bad and not the smartest thing. So on guitar, if I want to do there’s something called economy picking, if I want to pick really fast on a song and make my guitar just sing and I want to pick really fast, I want to move as little as possible, I want to use as little effort as possible on guitar. If I am swimming, or running, or doing a sport, I want to use as little as effort as possible to win the game or to to do the move I’m trying to do. For example, on swimming, you know, maybe I want to put my hand in this way to grab the water, I don’t want to confuse you here. The point with the fact that you want to take shortcuts, and cut corners is smart. But in some cases it’s not. And here’s what I’m getting to. When I’m teaching students how to use calendars, I teach them how to use it. I don’t care if it’s paper, or digital. I’m showing you on Google Calendar right now, I love Google Calendar, but you can use a mix of paper and, and digital. But whatever you use, it is important to have a large monthly planner that tracks all of your work. And it’s important to do what’s called a ‘Daily Plan,’ meaning making a plan every day. You’re like, “Yeah, but Seth, I can just click on the portal and it’s all there. It’s all listed, all my missing assignments are in one place in bubble lists.” And if you want to have a successful future life, where you really are in practice of doing things to help accomplish your goals, you will be able to do anything, any goal you have in life if you can plan well. If you can’t plan well, you’re going to limit yourself. You’re going to have less freedom, less fun, and more stress when you get older. You’ll have more freedom, more fun, and less stress when you get older. So practicing this daily planning now is important. So now let me get back to it. Basically, if you see here today in this thing, so I’m going to close it now. Now let’s say we have our calendar here. I want I keep this open on my own calendar. This is called today, and this shows everything I have to do today. And let’s say this one is fun. Maybe for fun, I want to research a guitar amplifier, oh and I am learning to kite surf. So maybe I’m researching harnesses, maybe I have one category called fun. But I also have one called ‘Today.’ Now notice this M urgent. That means math urgent, LA urgent that means language arts urgent. And then maybe I have some other things. So first, let me show you how to use this real quick. So basically, what you’re going to do is you’re going to pick a task, let’s say that we have a new task. And let’s say that that task is to send a check. Let’s say it’s to send a check to some organization for some reason. So I’m going to add the task, send cheque to whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, bah bah, bah, bah. So that’s how you add a task. Now, let’s say that the most urgent thing in my life today, the most important thing in my life today, is to get that LA paper turned in. Then I have to study math, then let’s say I have to deal with my inbox. I know there’s some important emails in there. Then I want to take a break and clean my room and move a little bit. Maybe I need to send that check, but maybe I don’t need to send it until tomorrow or the next day, but it’s got to get done at some point. Maybe checking my grades should be done today but doesn’t have to be done today. Maybe my history project could be done today. In that bio lab, let’s say that I got to get that by lab done. So here are the things. The nice thing about this. You want to plan your day, every day. Listen, you want to plan your day every day. I don’t care if you use a note card, I don’t care if you use this Google Tasks, Google Keep, I don’t care if you use Trello, or Asana, or some other task management program. I don’t care if you use my Daily Sheets or the Notepad. But every day you share sticky notes, you should plan your day, think about it. What do I have to do tonight? What’s everything I have to do tonight? And here’s the problem. Students that I work with who struggle with executive function will say, “I don’t have anything tonight.” And what they really mean is, “I cannot recall right at this moment that I have any homework right now.” And they’re not thinking about “Do I have any long term things I’m supposed to be working on? I can put those off. Do I have any responsibilities I should work on, I can put that off? Do I have to check my inbox, or my portals, or things like that. So they’re just thinking about these urgent things. That is not a good thing for the brain, because it gets you into a lot of last minute stuff, and then you’re always doing your projects last minute and there’s a lot of stress and lower quality associated with that. So anyhow, you want to plan your day, figure out what you got to do each day, pick which order is important. Now that it’s an order, I know all I got to do is look at everything. So let’s say I finished my math. Boom, done. Finished my LA. Boom, done. I dealt with my inbox. Boom, done. So those completed tasks, it will record for me if I want, I don’t like that. So what I do when they’re done is I delete it. I don’t ever want to think about it again. Now, here I leave it social studies because it’s due. So here’s the social studies, do your history project. Let’s say it was due last week, and it’s done. I would leave it here, but I would delete it from here, personally. You can do whatever you want, but I’m just showing you how I like to do it. So anyhow, now let’s look at this bio. Notice their details here. Why? Because you can click next to it and you can edit it. So in the bio lab here, I can even put a PDF. Here’s a link, here’s the day, here’s the things we need to do. Email my group, just scheduled time, yada, yada, yada. So it’s pretty cool that you can schedule these sub tasks inside of that too. Then the last thing I want to say is that, when you open this up originally, you’re going to notice that your calendar looks like this usually. And that is not the best way for my eye to see the calendar. So I tell people what we want to do is see the month view the people that I work with. With executive function stuff, the month view is usually the best view because you can see month by month. People who I work with don’t see what’s coming up, they’re only interested in what’s urgent. Like I said before, that’s what my brain works like. But we have to work with a brain and tell the brain, “Look, I’m the boss, not your brain. We’re gonna do things the right way. We’re not going to be resistant to everything. We’re going to try to get things done.” Anyhow, my name is Seth Perler. Thank you so much for listening. If you like what I’m doing, go ahead to SethPerler.com, you can subscribe. Give it a thumbs up on YouTube, leave your comment. What do you think of this? Do you have any ideas for that sort of a thing that makes life easier, less stressful, more fun, more free for how you manage your projects? I mean, do you use sticky notes or anything creative? How do you? What ideas do you have for people about how to manage this stuff that you don’t want to forget and get zeros on all the time? What ideas do you have for us? Be well, be safe. Have an amazing day. Have some peace of mind, peace in your heart and some joy today. Take care.

Parents, STOP asking about grades

Parents, we often ask our kids about grades and if they have homework, but if we’re honest, these conversations often don’t really help much. So what can we do? Is there a better way to think through things so we can have better conversations? In this video I break it down so you can feel empowered to approach these things in a way that helps your child a bit more.

🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Subscribe, like & comment to support my work.
👉 Share: To support me, please *CLICK* at the bottom to share on FB or Pinterest.
✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers.
💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate?
🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Parents, we are well-intentioned. We want our kids to do well, we want to be happy, we want them to have good grades, because there is this idea that if our kids get good grades, then that means that they’re getting a better education. If they’re getting a good education, then that means that they’re going to have a good future. That’s the idea. But is that really the reality? So we’re so focused on this parents, in this video, I’m going to break this down for you. This isn’t the end-all-be-all video, but I’m going to give you a framework to think through this stuff in a different way than you might be used to thinking it through and in a different way than culture might encourage us to think it through.

My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach based out of Maui. I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a good life. And these kids, they struggle with grades, but are they really struggling with grades? No, they’re struggling with the things that create good grades. So what is that? What does that mean? So I’m going to give you some ideas here and I’m going to get into some of the executive function things last. So basically, what I’m suggesting to you is that in the conversations, we want to change the conversation. We often have these conversations, “How are your grades?” First of all, it starts here, we say things like, “Do you have any homework tonight? What do you have for homework tonight?” “I don’t have anything to do.” “You don’t have anything due? Are you sure you don’t have anything to do? Are you positive?” “Yeah, leave me alone. Get off my back, stop bugging me. Stop nagging me, stop lecturing me. I’ve got this, why don’t you trust me,” blah blah blah. So our kids have these sort of resistances that they’ve built in these excuses, these ways to push us away at those times, a lot of kids do. And we’re trying to ask because we want to know what’s going on so that we can help them. Then we really want to trust them. And we’re like, “Okay, fine, I trust you.” And then the same cycle happens if you kid started with executive function, you know, the same cycles happen at the end of the semester, you see, everything’s falling apart. The grades have taken a nosedive, and there’s a lot of zeroes, missings, incompletes, late work, and stuff like this.

So then we want to help them the next semester, we say, “If you get straight A’s, I’ll give you 100 bucks,” or so this reward or that reward. “If you get all A’s and B’s,” blah, blah, blah, “For every A you get,” blah, blah, blah, “For every F you get, here’s this punishment,” blah, blah, blah. We have that sort of mindset. I know not all of you do this the same, but I’m just saying that the mindset is, is we want to find what’s going to work. So we’re thinking essentially, forms of punishments and rewards. And then we also want to use logic and reason and lecturing, and nagging, and bugging, and helping, and supporting, whatever we call it. But we have these ways of trying to use logic with them, thinking that if we can just be logical with our child and tell them how much easier their life would be if they got good grades, and if they just did what they needed to do it. That logic, you know, “If you just try a little harder,” blah, blah, blah. And that stuff misses the point. So what I’m going to challenge you about here in this video is stop asking so much about grades, stop asking so much “Do you have homework?” think about the questions that you’re asking. But then, think about what you really want to be asking, and what’s really important to you. So I’m going to give you a framework here to help this out. And believe it or not, I’m going to talk about executive function with this stuff, last. So what I want to challenge you to do is change the conversation to stop asking so much about grades, and change the conversation more about asking about the things that get the good grades. Now, first of all, you should know something about me. I don’t believe in letter grades. I think they’re morally wrong. I think they’re archaic. I think they’re outdated. I don’t think they tell us the information we think they’re telling us, but they exist. And our kids are in systems where they exist. So knowing that, let’s think about this. What are the things that give them good grades? And are those things valuable? Well, yes, they are valuable because they have a lot to do with the things that people will need to be able to do in order to accomplish any of their goals in life. So the things that help them get good grades will help them with other goals in life. I will explain momentarily.

Now, first of all, think about yourself. If you were trying to get something done, and you were being asked as an adult, you were being asked to do something, what would help you do that thing? Okay, let’s say you were going to be graded on something that needed to happen, what would get you that A? Alright, so first of all, meaning and purpose is the thing that you’re being asked to do meaningful. Does it matter to you? Is it purposeful to you? Are you concerned about it? Is it a value of yours? How often do you as an adult, do things that you’re told to do that are not aligned with your values? Our kids are in a system where they’re told, “Take this class with this teacher and do these things. If you do these things in this class with this teacher, regardless of your relationship with the teacher, your relationship with the content, and your relationship with the task you’re being asked to do to prove that you are learning and the thing you’re supposed to be learning. Then we will reward you with these things called grades, these letters, these numbers, right? So we need to be asking ourselves, how much meaning and purpose is in it? That’s what we ask ourselves. So if we want our kids to be getting good grades, they should be engaged in activities that have meaning and purpose, right? The other thing is the relationship. How is your relationship with the person who’s telling you to do it? If your boss is telling you to do it, your spouse, your friend, you know, the government if you get a parking ticket, or a speeding ticket, or this, that or the other? And if you have a teacher, is that a teacher, you’re crazy about or a teacher you don’t feel cared about you? The relationship is very, very, very important to our ability to do the things that need to be done.

What is your relationship like with your kid when you’re trying to help them? Let’s look at that, okay. You can say things like, a lot of times we’re telling our kids advice and what they need to do, but we want to change that conversation more to be something like “How can I be helpful?” Using reflective listening, making it more of a cooperative experience, rather than a top-down experience. That is going to help them do the things that they need to do. Our kids need to, and you would need to, in this type of situation, feel seen and supported and accepted. And a lot of times these kids, especially the ones that struggle with executive function, feel like they can’t do anything, right. Nobody sees how much effort they’re putting in. So how can we do that? And when they feel more seen and supported and accepted, they can have more buy-in and ownership. How much buy-in do they have to what they’re doing? How much ownership do they have and how they’re learning and what they’re learning? Okay? How about their interests, and their passions, and their curiosities? How much are those things involved in what they’re learning and they’re being asked to do to get good grades? How about their talents? Or their gifts? Or their strengths? Are those being capitalized on in the learning environment and the things that they’re supposed to be doing to get good grades? And how about experiences of feeling successful? They’re supposed to be doing these things for the class, are they feeling success? Does it feel like the efforts that they’re doing are being noticed? That it feels successful. For most of these kids, it feels daunting, feels like they can never do enough. It feels like anything they try, they don’t do it right. And it gets harder and harder as they get older, and they get more and more disengaged and frustrated from this stuff as they get older, a lot of them, a lot of kids that I work with.

So you know, what gives kids that success experiences in a classroom? Well, the right pacing, sometimes the pacing is off. It might be too slow, might be too fast, whatever. What’s called differentiation, is the teacher differentiating well for different needs. Are they being rewarded for their growth and their effort rather than points for compliance? Then we want to look at engagement. How engaging are the things that we’re being asked to do that get them the grades? Okay.

Now, those are some things that we want to be thinking about. So we’re saying, “Do you have homework? Are you doing what you’re supposed to be doing? How are your grades? What’s going to get you better grades?” Well, those are some things to consider. But then, we also want to consider executive function skills. So rather than saying, “Did you do your homework? How are your grades?” things like that. Say, “How’s it going with planning? How are your planning skills?” Do they have the planning skills to be able to plan their time, and prioritize, and focus, and block out? Like, how’s the planning? Really? Do they know how to actually sit down and make a plan for the day? How to use a planner for their weekly and monthly tasks, things like that. How are their organizational skills? So, “How are your organizational skills? How is your organization going with your backpack? In your folders?” It’s not just trying harder, like these are skills. Planning and organizing are skills. Do they have the skills to organize their locker, their desk, their folders, their backpacks, their stuff? If they’re not organizing it, the skills are not really there, even though they may do it sometimes, it’s really not a skill that they’ve really integrated into a good way. How about skills for advocacy? “How’s it going, kiddo? How are you doing advocating for yourself asking for help, being honest with the teacher, letting people help you, receiving help? How are these sorts of skills going?”

“Hey, kiddo, how is your electronic world, like your portals? Do you have the skills of checking your portals regularly and effectively? Do you check your grades in a meaningful way on a regular basis? Do you deal with your inbox on a regular basis?” These are things we didn’t have to deal with as kids that they have to deal with. “However, the skills around that? How are your skills for maintaining this?” sit at what I call a Sacred Study Space (SSS), a great study space. “How are your skills for being able to focus and remove distractions? How are your skills for your study habits? How are your skills around self-care? Taking care of your sleep nutrition, exercise, fitness movement. Your self-care, teeth brushing, things like that? And how about your ability to declutter, and minimize, and have a clean slate, you know, with the stuff that you have with your electronic world, with your backpack, your folders, how is your ability to manage these systems?”

The point I want to leave you with here parents is that we want to really consider and contemplate the conversations we’re having with our kids. We often default to what seems to make sense, which would be “How are your grades? How’s your homework? What do you have for homework? Are you sure that’s all you have to do?” And we get into these sort of repetitive, automatic, robotic conversations that aren’t really helping anybody, they’re not really helping anybody. We may be able to apply pressure in the short term to get our kids to do what we think they’re supposed to be doing. But is that really giving them the skill sets to be able to navigate school, and life, and do what they need to do? So we want to change the conversation, stop asking about grades so much, and ask more during the process of what are the things that need to happen to get them good grades. And then we don’t really even worry about the grades, because they take care of themselves. Once our kids have the skills to do the things that need to be done, the grades take care of themselves. They start improving, things start getting easier and more manageable for our kids. Because we’re really focusing on supporting them to develop the skills that enabled them to do that, and those executive function skills, and relational skills, and the other things I mentioned earlier, will help them when they’re adults, to be able to achieve their goals, go for their dreams, go for things that are important to them, and be able to really have a more meaningful, purposeful aligned life with who they are.

Anyhow, I hope that’s helpful just to consider the questions that you’re asking and the conversations that you’re asking. Again, this is not the end-all-be-all video, but I just want to plant that seed to get you off this video thinking “Hmm, okay, cool. I like that. How can I? How can I change the conversation? How can I change the conversation?” So if you’re going to take anything away from this video, pull out a sticky note and jot down “How can I change the conversation? And is the conversation really getting me what I want?”

So my name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach based out of Maui. I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so they can have a good life. If you like this, share it with somebody. Leave a like, comment. If this helped you, help me support me, and support people who need to hear this message. My site is called SethPerler.com. I have a bunch of freebies there for parents and teachers. If you’re interested, go over there. Subscribe, do the stuff. Have a fantastic day. And I really want to wish you some peace of mind and some joy today, and some connection with your child and your family. Take care.

One Strategy for When Your Kid Doesn’t Want Your Advice

Parents, if your child doesn’t want to hear your advice, no matter how hard you try, the key is often in “securely attached relationships,” or you can Google “attachment theory”. Here I detail one great strategy sent in by a parent who follows me. She writes,

My favorite take-away (from Seth’s video last week) was hearing you really explain the “wait time.” I’ve heard you reference that before, but you really clarified that the wait time is extra-critical after their response. I can wait so long for that first response, and I know I fail to wait after it. I’m going to try that this week. Here’s a strategy I’ve been using to build safety and connection with my teen (introverted, stressed, not doing well in school, etc.) When I knock on his door I ask, “red, yellow, green?” If he gives me a red light, I immediately close the door and walk out. If he says, “yellow”, I know that means I can say one thing or ask one question, maybe two. I’ve yet to get a green, but what has happened is that he now comes out of his room more or makes a comment to me if I’m in the hallway. I am taking those as “green” lights, or at least a more open yellow. ” I’m going to be practicing all these other strategies, but this week I’m going to really work on “wait time.”

🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Subscribe, like & comment to support my work.
👉 Share: To support me, please *CLICK* at the bottom to share on FB or Pinterest.
✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers.
💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate?
🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, parents, what’s up? It’s me, Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach out of Maui, and I hope you’re having a great day. Look, parents, the problem is that a lot of times parents are working, you’re working with your child and you want to help your child, but your child does not want to hear it from you. So they don’t want your advice often, and you know that you want to be able to connect with them. You want to be able to help them. The problem is, and this is for moms and dads both, when you’re trying to help your child, especially your child who struggles with executive function, and is really struggling with school for a while, it doesn’t matter if they’re an elementary school or college, what can happen is when you’re trying to be helpful, what your child hears is they hear you nagging them, or bugging them, or annoying them, or lecturing them, or giving them unsolicited advice. So you’re trying to be helpful, but what they are hearing or what they’re experiencing are those sorts of things. And unfortunately, those sorts of things are doing the opposite of what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to create connection, and you’re trying to be helpful and give advice that they can implement so that you can help them help themselves. Right.

So that’s the intention. But what often ends up happening is that it can create more distance, and it can create more resistance. It doesn’t help them actually take action, which is what you’re trying to get them to do is to get them to take action for their own well being. So it doesn’t end up doing that unless they’re doing it just so that you stop bugging them, which isn’t a good thing to continue doing. That’s not good for the relationship. It’s not good for anybody. And it’s not good for their agency and their independence to be making choices on their own. Anyhow, I got this email from a parent last week that had a pretty incredible tip about this. I’m going to show you that email right here. So the first thing in the email is the parent says that their favorite takeaway, so I did a vlog last week on communicating with your child, “my favorite takeaway was hearing you really explain wait time. I’ve heard you reference that before,” because I talked about all the time, “but you really clarified that the wait time is extra critical after the response. I can wait so long for that first response and I know I failed to wait after it. I’m going to try that this week.” So what I was talking about was a bunch of relational tools, and wait time is one relational tool. What happens is that we, as parents with our kids, we are reactive. You say something, they say something, you say something, they say something, nobody’s hearing each other. It’s almost a script, right. One thing that helps is wait time, is when parents learn to really wait, pause, don’t go so fast. Once they respond to you, is to wait. Now, this is complicated. I’m not gonna explain this all in this video, but that’s the gist of it. So you ask your child something, they say something, and you wait, they give you a better response. And you wait even more, and you say “I’m listening, I’m still listening. I hear you, I really want to understand you.” So we’re not going to that reactive response that we usually do. Now, when your child is introverted and quiet and doesn’t talk much, it’s really hard and it can take a long time. But that time after is the magic time. When you’ve asked them what they thought or about whatever issue you’re talking about, they give you a response, you pause a little bit, they give you a little bit more of a response. Then after that, you keep pausing, and you practice this maybe multiple times. Keep implying “I’m listening, I’m open, I’m here for you. Tell me more, I’m really trying to hear you.” That is where the magic happens. So when I’m working with kids, the first response is usually called an ‘unconscious response.’ We’re telling people what we think they want to hear a lot of times, a lot of times it’s not a mindful, present thoughtful response. So we want to give wait time.

Why? Why wait time? Because of attachment theory, because of emotional safety. When we wait, and we pause, and we really listen, we’re telling them, “I’m really trying to get you, to understand you. I’ve got your back, I will take time for you. I know sometimes it doesn’t seem like it but I am now taking time for you.” And it might take many times. Days, weeks, or months for your child’s nervous system to understand that it feels safe when you are trying to communicate with them because they don’t feel suffocated. That sense of suffocation when they feel like it’s nagging, or annoying, or bugging, or lecturing, or those things, that sense of suffocation is a constricting sense on the nervous system. It doesn’t feel good. They can’t get away from it and they don’t know where the conversation is going, yada-yada-yada. All this to set you up for what this tool was.

This tool that this parent said, I’m going to show you right now, it’s excellent: “Here’s a strategy I’ve been using to build safety and connection with my teen who’s introverted, stressed, not doing well in school, etc.” So executive function struggles with the not doing well in school, and the emotional regulation, “When I knock on his door and ask red, yellow, green, if he gives me a red light, I immediately close the door and walk out.” What does that do to the child’s nervous system? It tells the child’s nervous system, “I respect your space. Okay, I’m backing off. I got it.” I know what some of you are thinking right now, what if they always do that? Don’t worry, I’ll address that. “If he gives me a yellow, I know, it means I can say one thing or ask one question, maybe two. I’ve yet to get a green, but what has happened is now he comes out of his room more or makes a comment to me if I’m in the hallway, I’m taking those as green lights, or at least a more open yellow.” This is amazing. And I’m gonna explain why. “I’m going to be practicing all those other strategies. But this week, I’m going to really work on wait time.” So the other strategies, were just the ones I mentioned, in last week’s video, I went through a bunch of them.

Basically, the purpose of this sort of strategy is to build connection, build security, not distance, but to build connection. And it can be really frustrating as a parent when you’re looking at your kitchen, like, “If my kiddo doesn’t get this stuff done, there’s going to be consequences, and I know it, and I need to get that moving.” But what you’re trying to do isn’t working, it’s not creating that and you’re gonna have to go back way up and do some healing work here with you and your inner child’s relationship so that they can feel emotionally safe to tell you this stuff. So the purpose of this stuff is emotional security. Now, what’s really cool about what this parent said, is they said they’re taking the yellow as a, you know, they’re basically looking at it as a win, which it is. From where they came from, this was a win. And they’re looking at the yellows, maybe they can ask one or two questions, but you can tell by the way this parent is writing, they’re really being mindful of where that line is. Now, I want to tell you that yellow is gray. And here’s what I mean, I talk about play in the gray, play in the gray, play in the gray. This is learned helplessness, enabling, doing too much for your child, not letting them have their own experience, that’s this side. And then this is a gray area, and then this is called the threshold. This is where if you put your child too far they withdraw from you or get angry at you, they won’t listen to you. So you parents are working in this space. This is where growth happens. You can’t stay in the comfort zone, you can’t stay and learn helplessness land, right? You can’t push them past the threshold all the time because you lose them. So you have this little area of gray. Now her yellow light is the gray. That’s where she knows that that’s where the win is. And she will get to a green if she persists. So what I always talk about is patient persistence and baby steps. This parent is indicating that they are willing to play in baby steps. So this is how I know that, the parent says “I know that if he says yellow, I know that that means I can say a thing or ask one question, maybe two. I have yet to get a green light. But what has happened is that now he comes out of his room or makes a comment if I’m in the hallway.”

Coming out of his room or making a comment in the hallway is a win. Parents, this game of helping your child is played with baby steps. Baby steps win. It’s not giant strides. You know giant strides need to be made, but that’s not what works, sorry. The baby steps are everything. This parent acknowledges, “Oh my gosh, my kid comes out and says something like that, for us, that’s a win.” You have to know when a win is a win, and you have to know how to nurture that win. Then this parent, “Also since I’m going to be practicing all these, but I’m really going to work on wait time.” So this parent understands patiently and persistently. I talked about patient and persistent, patient and persistent. If you want to help your child, you got to be patient and you got to be persistent. Don’t just try an intervention and it works, that doesn’t happen very often. Okay, this is played in baby steps. This is the marathon game, this is the long run, this is not the sprint. We’re looking at the long game with our kids. And I want to tell you that there is hope. If you’re like, “But my child blah blah blah, but but but but but but, we this but we that.” Look, I’ve been doing this a long time. If you patiently and persistently move towards these baby steps and work on the relationship, you will see growth and change. It will feel like nothing’s happening, it’s a millimeter, millimeter, millimeter, it doesn’t look like anything. But just like when you look at how tall your child is, and you stand them up at the door and mark their head. Months have gone by, you can see that it adds up, they’re growing. Same thing. The same metaphor applies here. It is the baby steps, the millimeters, the micro successes. These are everything parents. Do not give up. There’s so much hope, there will come a time when you look back and go, “Whoa, we’re not there anymore. It’s not perfect, but we are not there anymore. We have grown.

The last thing I want to say is this, don’t forget parents, your child is on their own hero’s journey. They’re not on your journey, they’re not on your spouse’s journey, or your other relatives journey, or cultures journey, or society’s journey. They’re on their own hero’s journey. We want them to have certain things of course. We have the wisdom to know when they may or may not be walking into things, situations, that are helping them or not helping them. We have that wisdom, they don’t yet. But they get to build that wisdom. That doesn’t mean just let go of everything and not intervene, but it does mean be patient, let them have their life experience. Be very mindful of when and how you intervene and if your intervention is doing what you anticipate. Again, this type of intervention that we started with here, where they sense nagging, they feel like they’re being bugged, or annoyed, that creates distance and more resistance to doing what we want them to be doing. So how do we create closeness and less friction, less resistance, so that they can do the things that we want them to do to be able to launch a great, great future for themselves while having a great life right now?

My name is Seth Perler. I got a bunch of freebies on my site, SethPerler.com. You can subscribe there, share my stuff. If you like it, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment below. You got any strategies? What do you think? And what do you think of this one? The red light, yellow light, green light. Love to hear what you have to say. If you have any ideas for me for further topics, you can add those in the YouTube comments as well as my blog comments. Have an amazing day. I wish you the best. Take care.

How To Listen To Your Kid

Parents (and teachers you may like this one) here I give you some solid background about listening and relationships, then go into 10 rapid-fire strategies to listen better. Enjoy!

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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, parents, what’s up? It’s me, Seth, with SethPerler.com. I’m an executive function coach based in Maui and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life. And if you want to have a better relationship with your kids, and you want to feel like you can listen to them better, that’s why I made this video. If you’re a teacher, you might like this video a lot as well, because what I am teaching here is absolutely relevant in a teaching scenario. So the first thing that I want to mention here is that what we’re trying to do, is we’re trying to get from point A to B. So I’m an executive function coach, I help struggling students go from point A to point B. I work with families, I work with kids, I work with schools, but mostly the students. And what happens is parents hire me because they want to have a transformation with their child, where the child goes from point A to point B, or the family goes from point A to point B. Point A is where you are concerned about your child, you’re worried you’re noticing that your child is struggling to get important things done. And if they don’t figure this out, they’re going to limit their choices, and possibilities, and opportunities in life. You want them to have a great life now, and have a great future. And you’re concerned. So that’s point A. Point B is they’ve turned a corner, your child has turned a corner. They have what I call ‘good enough executive function.’ You can go, “Ah, my kid’s gonna be okay,” or you the teacher can go “Ah, this kiddo is going to be okay, they’ve got some skills, some executive function skills. It’s not perfect, but they’re going to be okay, they’ve got. They’ve got this, they’ve really turned a corner.”

So that’s the journey we’re on. If we want to be on that journey and we want to help the kids, we have to be good listeners. And many of us, many of us have learned dysfunctional and maladaptive ways of communicating, whether or not we know it, that gets in the way. So the first thing that we have to do is understand that we need to connect with our kids. Connect with our kids. And we need to do what’s called ‘co-regulating.’ Co-regulating has to do with how our nervous systems are always talking to each other. A lot of times when parents and kids are talking, they’re co-regulating, their nervous systems are speaking in emotion and frustration. And neither person is hearing the story or the things that you’re trying to communicate. Neither the child nor the parent are hearing each other. We’re always mirroring our nervous systems. We’re always trying to attune. The more we try to attune, we get in tune with each other, the more we’re going to be able to communicate with our child. We need to feel safe. There’s something called Polyvagal theory that talks about safe and social needs. Essentially, our nervous systems always want to feel safe. And if you feel like your child is not hearing you, and it’s hard for you to hear your child, consider how safe both of you feel. What I mean by that is the nervous system feels safe and unthreatened. Like they’re not being listened to, and so on and so forth.

Alright, so I want to just explain that a little bit by showing you a couple of pictures. We co-regulate all the time, you can look at this picture, you know what this puppy is feeling just by looking at the picture. You know what this child is feeling just by looking at this photo of this child. You know what Michael Jordan’s feeling here in this moment, you know what this puppy is feeling right here. Okay, so we are always co-regulating, we’re all always vibing, our nervous systems are always reading other nervous systems. So as I go through these 10 things that I’m going to help you with here, these 10 ideas for how to listen to your child, know that we’re always co-regulating This is a big part of listening is knowing that we’re attuning, we’re co-regulating, our nervous systems are mirroring each other. Alright, here we go, here are the 10 things.

The first thing that I want to tell you is that the issue is not the issue. Okay? So when you’re talking to your child, or your child’s talking to you about something, oftentimes, when we get stuck in an emotion, the issue that you’re talking about, the words that are coming out of your mouth, is not what’s really going on. So before you can get to the story or the conversation that you’re trying to have with your child, really ask what’s going on here. Step back, what is the message of my child’s nervous system? What’s the nervous system telling me? Not the words that they’re saying, but maybe their nervous system is saying “I can’t do this,” or “This is too hard,” or “I don’t know where to start,” or “I’m feeling attacked by you.” Notice what’s going on in their nervous system, because if you don’t get to a regulated state, you’re not going to hear each other. So if you want to be able to better listen to your child, know that the issue is not the issue. Notice what’s going on with the nervous system. The issue is not the issue. That’s number one on how to better listen to your child. Know that often what you’re talking about is not the actual issue, and start with the issue, then you can get to that story.

Next, I talk with my parents that I work with about pre-conversations all the time. So parents, if you want to listen to your child better, you’re going to start with a pre-conversation. So what happens a lot of times is that parents will go in and start a conversation with their child and things get heated, or they just get uncomfortable and you’re not getting anywhere. And you have the same conversations over and over and over, and they just don’t get anywhere. We want to start with a pre-conversation. A pre-conversation allows your child to not feel like you’re coming out of left-field. I hear this all the time from kids, their parents are just coming out of left-field. They don’t see it coming. The kids don’t know how long you’re going to lecture them, how much you’re going to nag them, how much you’re going to bug them, how much you’re gonna annoy them, how long the conversation is going to last, where the conversation is headed, and when it’s going to end. And all that abstraction makes their nervous system feel unsafe, which means that they can’t access their executive function well enough to even participate in the conversation. So the issue is not the issue, right? You want to start with a pre[conversation that says, “Hey, I’m gonna let you mentally prepare for this conversation. What’s up, kiddo? I want you to have time to regulate your nervous system, and you’re not in trouble. I’m gonna listen to you. ” It’s something like this, “Hey, I need to talk to you about school. You’re not in trouble. And we’re gonna talk about 7 pm, I’m gonna talk for about 15 minutes. As long as your forthcoming, we’re done at 7:15 pm. Even if I’m not done, we’re done. And I really want to hear you, I really want to listen, I really want to understand you. And you’re like I said, you’re not in trouble, and we’ll be talking then.” So that’s a pre-conversation. There are many ways to do it, but it’s just saying, “Hey, here’s what’s coming. There’s some structure around it, you’re not going to be stuck in an endless loop of me lecturing you, and trying to make you see the light, and trying to use my logic and reason to convince you of something. We’re gonna have a conversation where I’m going to hear you, but I need to share something with you. So that’s number two, if you want to listen to your kid better start with a pre-conversation.

The next thing is called ‘wait time.’ So what happens is we often go back and forth and ping-pong. And I’m speaking very fast. Parents, often, they know their response, and they respond very quickly. And, Alexa off, sorry, I have music playing in the background that was distracting to my executive function there. So where was I, people? Wait times strategy. So I learned this, from George Betts many years ago, all about wait time, but it’s how to really listen and hear and understand your child. This helps with what’s called ‘secure attachment’ so that your child feels more secure with you, more heard by you, you can use eye contact, you can reflect back to them what you hear when you’re waiting, but just don’t respond like a ping-pong ball. Wait, then wait more, let them have time to process. Let them have time to notice that, it says to think through their words and process what they want to say to you, and not to put pressure on them. So when you ask your child something, you’re communicating with them, and it’s time for them to respond. Maybe they give their first default response, and maybe you know, it’s not true, or it’s not well thought out. For example, maybe say, “What do you have for homework?” “Nothing.” And then you go to your ping-pong, your default, “Are you sure?” “Yeah.” “How can you have nothing? You haven’t had any homework for two weeks?” “Just get off my back. I know what I’m doing. I did it all at school,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, this is ping-pong, this is not wait time. So something different, well, I’d probably say, “What do you have homework?” I’d probably approach it completely differently, but that’s a whole nother video. Anyhow, let’s say you’re gonna say that, “Hey, what do you have for homework?” “Nothing.” “I’m listening. Tell me more.” “Well, I have a math thing that…” blah, blah, blah. You’re giving wait time, you know. You need to really give a lot of spaciousness, and I suggest that you start counting in your head. So when you ask your child a question, don’t talk, don’t interrupt. When they respond, don’t just start responding to the response. That’s the magic. Okay? When they start responding, when after they’re done responding, wait even longer, and say, “I’m still listening, keep going.” And don’t stare at them like this. Like, you can give them some space, especially if they’re an introvert and be like, “I’m still listening.” They have to understand that they are emotionally safe to say what they need to say. A lot of wait time. Count how long it takes, you’ll start seeing a pattern. I see kids who it takes them about three seconds. Well, it’s either immediate, about three seconds, about 10 seconds, and then occasionally I’ve worked with a kid where I’ve had to wait 30 seconds or more. But then they eventually say something and it’s so cool. That’s where the magic really happens, then you give that spaciousness to wait. Slow down, parents. Slow down. I know I’m talking fast, but I’m making a video on YouTube here. Slow down with your conversation with your kid. Give some wait time, give some breathing room. 90% listening, you want to do 90% listening, 10% of the talking. Seriously parents. You know I’ve been working with kids and doing this so long, and I see the pattern so much and parents often just repeat the same lectures, and nagging, and things, and bugging their kids with the same stuff. I mean, you could write a script of this stuff and it would be the same script over and over and over and over, month after month, year after year. So, do a lot more listening. Really practice that listening. 90% listening, 10% talking. Really ask your kid a lot more, really spend a lot of time. I just want you to be thinking about that 90% listening. Reflective listening is really a great way to mirror with your kid to attune to them so that they feel listened to. And basically, they’re going to say something to you, and your instinct is going to be to justify that, or explain it, or lecture them, or try to use logic or reason, you know, you’re in this place where you’re trying to use reason. You’re trying to reason with your child, you know, you want them to hear you. But if you want to be a better listener, as a parent, hear them, reflect back to them. You know, they say something to you, rather than you just responding, say, “Okay, okay, okay, hold on. So is this what I hear you’re saying?” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, “You’re telling me this is how you feel, or this is what you think, or this is what you think, I think, or whatever? Is that right?” Your child will say “No, blah, blah, blah, here’s what I think.” Well, that’s good information. Now you know you didn’t hear them. So then you reflect back, “Okay, so you’re telling me blah, blah, blah?” “No, you don’t get it. Listen to me, blah, blah, blah.” “Okay, so you’re telling me this?” “Yes.” Now we’re getting somewhere. So reflective listening really gets you more present with what they’re actually trying to say so that you can actually be of service to your child.

The next one I have out of 10 is validation. “I hear you.” Now this is very related to reflective listening. Reflective listening is validating. We often invalidate our kids, they’re trying to tell us something and we tell them why what they’re saying isn’t good enough. That’s what they hear us saying. They’re hearing us saying, “You’re telling me I’m wrong. You’re telling me what I say isn’t valuable. What I say isn’t good enough. What I say doesn’t matter.” That’s what they hear. That’s not what you’re trying to do, your intentions are good parents, but they’re hearing, “You’re invalidating me, you don’t really care what I have to say, you don’t want to hear what I have to say.” And we get very lost in these conversations. So your kid wants to be validated, or if you want to be validated. When you have somebody who invalidates you, you don’t like it, you know, it’s it drives you nuts. Whether it’s at a store that you’re shopping at, whether it’s with your spouse, or friend, or anybody. Feeling invalidated is really hard. And you know that there are some people that are not secure for you and will never validate you. That’s a losing battle. You don’t want your kid to feel like that, you want them to feel validated. Doesn’t mean that you agree with them, does not mean that you necessarily agree. But it means that you hear, you hear what they’re trying to say. ‘I statements.’ “I feel such and such when you do this.” So a lot of times when we don’t use I statements, and we’re using ‘you statements,’ you statements say things like, “You make me so upset, you make me so angry, you make me feel so sad, you make me so discouraged. You drive me nuts.” That’s a victim mentality. “You are making me something, I’m a victim of you. Because of you, I feel this way.” That’s not a way to listen to your kid, that’s not something that’s really gonna feel connected to them. But if you start saying things like, you know, “I feel sad when you tell me that,” you know, and don’t say “disappointed.” That’s like, that’s again, a you statement. “I feel disappointed in you. I feel sad watching you struggle in school. What can I do to be helpful?” The next one that I have on there says ‘in my body.’ So you can say like, “I noticed in my body that I feel tight when we’re having this conversation, I noticed that I feel uncomfortable and a little anxious. I feel like I’m not being heard, and I feel a little sad right now. So you’re not saying you you you, you’re saying “This is how I’m experiencing this.” And that opens up a completely different dialogue than the you-you-you blame game-type conversations that we’ve often been indoctrinated with.

And next thing is “What do you think?” So ask your child and the child says, “Hey, Mom, Dad, can I do this?” “What do you think?” “Well, I think I should be able to because blah, blah, blah.” “Oh, well, I’m not so sure about that because of blah, blah, blah.” But “What do you think?” That’s again with validation. What do you think? And they come and ask you for help with homework, or this or that, and you can say, “What do you think?” So often when I do ‘what do you think’ with kids when it comes to like school strategy stuff, they often, like speak through it, and then they come up with their own answer. So anyhow, that’s just another good one is the “What do you think?” It’s curious, what do you think, it’s not condescending. It’s a very open vibe, you’re listening attentively. It gives them ownership. Parents often, you know, tell them what they think and say the answer. Well, let your kids say what they think so that they feel heard and understood. It’ll help build your relationship.

And then just ask your child, “What can I do to improve our connection or our relationship?” Ask them. Just ask and listen. “Hey, I want to have a better relationship with you. I want to have more fun with you more joy, more peace, less arguing, less homework battles. I want to feel more connected to you. What can I do to grow our relationship? Just ask, ask.

The last thing I want to talk about is doing your own deep inner work. I’m not going to sit on this long. But basically what happens is, is that when don’t do our own deep inner work and we’re not working on ourselves, and we’re just looking at our kid and what they need to do and how they need to change and all this stuff. They know it, they feel it, they can tell we’re not working on ourselves, they can feel like we’re hypocrites. And we want to do our own deep inner work, our own journaling, or meditation, or prayer, or therapy, or self-help or self-development, or support groups. I’m not trying to sound cheesy here at all, but people have done the work to learn this stuff. They spent decades of their lives learning about human dynamics. They know how people can help themselves. Dive into it, why would you not? The reason we don’t is that we have ego tied up into it, and we have fear that if we start asking for help that means there’s something wrong with us. No. If we ask for help as a parent to become a better parent, that means there’s something right with us. That means that we’re working on ourselves, so do your own deep inner work because that really models for your kid. Like even if you don’t tell them, they feel it. And that makes us better listeners.

Those are my 10 things for you. Those are 10 ways to better listen to your child. I hope that was helpful to you. My name is Seth Perler, go to my site, SethPerler.com. I have a bunch of freebies for your parents and teachers. If you like what I’m doing, please share this with somebody. I’ve worked very hard at what I do. I’d love it if you could take a minute to share. Give it that thumbs up which helps the algorithm. Subscribe to my stuff and leave a comment below. What do you think? How do you advise people to better listen to kids? Any tips for us? Leave them in the comments below. Have a fantastic day. My brain is fried. Bye.

Podcast: Success is Subjective

Joanna Lilley (from Lilley Consulting) interviews me about executive function and college. Success is Subjective is dedicated to all things related to emerging adulthood stories and therapeutic resources for young adults. Click here to listen. In this episode, topics discussed include:

Did you know that some students are enrolled in college automatically on academic probation? That’s a real thing.
Failing out of college happens, and moving back home with your parents after is common.
Attempting college at another school with the same approach is a recipe for disaster.
Self-talk was saying “I’m a failure;” but learning to differentiate the shame.
When someone is at rock bottom, the way to pick yourself up may be in learning how to try. Meaning, you have got to learn to ask for help! Ask anyone and everyone for help, because you don’t who will give you great advice!
How mindful moments can bring us closer to what truly brings us happiness!
Learning that you have a diagnosis later in life is not uncommon!
Message to students: You can do ANYTHING! Do not give up!

Click here to listen.

🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Subscribe, like & comment to support my work.
👉 Share: To support me, please *CLICK* at the bottom to share on FB or Pinterest.
✏️ EF101: Here’s my jumpstart course for parents and teachers.
💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate?
🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Podcast Transcript: Coming soon!

What you should ask your teachers if you want to do well

Students, I’ve been helping students for a long time, and with all the craziness this year, it’s even more overwhelming to succeed. So here are questions we’ve been asking teachers a lot to get clarity about what needs to happen.

I want to know how to succeed and need clarity…

What specifically needs to happen in order to pass this semester?
Should I come in for office hours? A quick zoom call?
Are there PEPR this semester?
What specifically do I need to do to pass/raise grade?
What am I doing well?
What is the one biggest insight you have that would make a difference?
What’s your best tip for student success?
What should I be looking at online specifically? How often?
When do you update grades?
How do I navigate the portal?
Are you aware of my accommodations? I want to make sure I’m getting the needed support.
I feel like it’s hard for me to get clear information, what do I need to do to get clarity about schoolwork?
How much time should be spent studying, reading, writing, hw, etc?
What if I take forever, what should I do?
What should notes look like?
Are there any exams? Is there a study guide? Where do I find it?
Do you accept late work for credit? How specifically does that work?
(later in the semester) After looking at the grades on the portal, it’s hard to understand what’s going on, and I don’t want to be blind sighted. Am I missing something or are there any upcoming items that will be entered? If so what are they and how do I get details?

Follow up email

I know you’re busy, but this is urgent. I emailed you the following yesterday, but this is urgent, so I am resending it to make sure you see it. Please respond asap so I can do my best,

Thank you for understanding and for all you do to help me,

Me

When to CC others?

You SHOULD CC someone because it tends to help with accountability. In other words, teachers are more likely to respond with better details and more quickly.

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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey students, what’s up? The problem is, is that this is the beginning of a new semester. And it is has been a wacky, crazy year. And it is sometimes hard to do well, a lot of my students really struggled last semester, and a lot of things fell through the cracks. And a lot of my students had, you know, had failed some classes and stuff like this, and they don’t want to be doing that.

So anyhow, what’s up? My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach, and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education, so you can have an awesome life. And if you want to do well, this semester, I’m going to tell you the exact questions you should ask your teachers and why. And parents, if you’re watching this, you may like this as well because you can go ahead and apply the same principles. But students here’s the thing. So I work with students who are resistant, they don’t feel like it, they don’t want to, they don’t want to email their teachers, they don’t want to ask their teachers for help. You know, it can be really hard. So the first thing you want to understand is that asking for help is what successful people do. If you want to be successful in life, and you want to have choices as an adult, and you want to have opportunities, and possibilities, and do cool things with your life, the most successful people in the world ask for help. They learned how to ask for help. And that’s one of the hardest things in the world to do.

In this video, I’m going to show you the questions that I think you will want to consider asking your teachers. So before I start going into what these questions are, I want to tell you that you don’t want to send all the questions to them. Just pick three to five questions and send those to your teachers, and that’s it. And parents, you need to hear this too. Don’t send a giant email, send a quick little email with three to five questions, that’s it. Give the teacher something that they can actually respond to. So I’m going to give you a lot of ideas, and I’m going to tell you why I am I’m asking the question. Why you might want to ask these questions to your teachers. I hear these problems all the time, so telling you why will allow you to know if you want to ask the question. So anyhow, here’s what you are going to want to do.

Basically, you’re going to want to email your teacher and you’re going to want to say “Hey, yo, what’s up? It’s me, give me a little bit of help here. I want to do well this semester.” So here’s how it looks. First thing, what you should ask your teachers if you want to do well, the first thing you want to do is you want to state the problem. So “Hey, what’s up teacher? The school set up is challenging, you know, it’s stressful for me, I hate being on screens all day. It’s socially hard, I can’t see my friends, or I’m with my family too much. I’m getting anxious, I have executive function struggles…” So the first thing you’re going to do is to state the problem. And then you’re going to state what you want. “I want to know how to succeed, and I need some clarity.” And then you want to say “Will you please help me?” That’s the hardest thing in the world to ask, but once you ask it a couple of times, you start to realize it’s actually not that hard to ask. I think one of the things that makes that question hard to ask is a lot of times when we feel like we’ve asked for help from a teacher, maybe we felt shame, or we’ve heard from the teacher, “Well, I already explained that to the class, why are you asking me this again?” Or things like that. Well, don’t let that discourage you. If you ever get pushed back because you’re asking for help, just say, “Hey, look, I’m just asking for help. Okay, I’m not perfect. Help me here.” Like, just have that kind of frame. You are there to get an education for you. Not for your parents, not for your teachers, not for me, not for anybody, it’s for you. This education is for you. So you’re not putting them out, just ask the questions you need to. So anyhow, that’s it. That’s what I want to start you on. Say the problem, “Yo, this has been challenging,” real quick, “This has been challenging. Will you please help me? I want to do well in your class.”

Then here’s what you’re going to ask, “What specifically needs to happen in order to pass this semester?” So you’re just asking the teacher what needs to happen. It’s very open-ended, which makes it really easy. And then they can reply to you in a good way.

Next, “Should I come in for office hours or a quick Zoom call to get some help?” So just ask them, and don’t assume you know what the teacher is going to say. Just ask. Then you might want to ask, “Are there any PEPRs this semester?” So PEPR is what I call it. So basically, this semester, any semester, usually, you have very large things. My students who struggle with executive function wait until the last minute on everything. Then they wait until the last minute on PEPR which I’ll explain in a second. And when you wait until the last minute on PEPR, then you rush it. Sometimes you do well and get an A or a B because you think you’re good under pressure, and you might be good under pressure, but it’s not a good way to keep living. You want to change that and not always do things under pressure. So you want to ask if there’s any PEPR. Are there any papers this semester? Because big papers always take a long time, people always wait until the last minute. Are there any exams? P-E? P is projects, and R is large reading assignments, like novels. So “Are there any big papers, exams, projects, or readings I have to do this semester?” so you want to ask that next.

Then sometimes you want to ask, “What specifically needs to happen in order to pass the semester?” Great question ask. “What specifically needs to happen?” Oh, I really said that. My brain is a bit fried today. Excuse me. Where was I? There we go. “What specifically do I need to do to pass?” Or you can also ask to raise your grades. So if you’re failing, you can say “What specifically do I need to do?” That way they’re not vague. They’re not just saying “Do your homework.” You’re saying specifically, “What homework should I do? Should I focus on all the missings? Should I focus on the things that are worth 100 points? Should I focus on the missings that are worth 10 points? Should I focus on the big project? What specifically do I need to do to raise my grade?” Ask what you’re doing well. That’s a great question. Ask, ask them, “What is the one biggest insight that you have for me that would make a difference in my life? What is the one most important thing you would tell me?” That’s a great question because they can focus on one thing. “What’s your best tip that you have for student success? What should I be looking at online specifically, and how often?” My students don’t even know what portals to check, when to check the portals, how often. Teachers don’t usually say how often they update things. Is it on Wednesdays? Is it on Fridays? Is it daily? Is it every month? So what should you be checking, and when? Because I have students who have Schoology and Google Classroom and the teacher website, and all this stuff. “When do you update your grades?” I already mentioned that. “How do I navigate the portal?” So that might be a good one to ask. “Are you aware of my accommodations? I want to make sure I’m getting the support I need.” Sorry, for coughing here. I have a super dry throat today. “I want to make sure I’m getting the support I need. Are you aware of my accommodations?” Sometimes teachers don’t even know that you have accommodations. And if they know, sometimes they’re not doing anything about them and you need to remind them? Great question is, “What if I get way behind this semester? I want to do well, what if I get way behind which I do? feel like it’s hard for me to get clear information. What do I need to do to get clarity about schoolwork?” Sometimes teachers post stuff that’s really vague, and I don’t even know what they’re talking about. Your parents don’t even know what they’re talking about. How are you going to know what they’re talking about? What in the world do they mean? So “What do I need to do to get clarity? How much time should be spent studying, reading, writing homework, and ect? I have a lot of students who take forever to do things. And it’s good to ask because if the teacher says, you know, 30 minutes a night, and you’re spending two hours, something’s wrong, you need to tell the teacher. “What if I’m the type of person who takes forever? What should I do? What should notes look like in your class?” You know, some teachers want you to take notes, some don’t care. But you might want to know what notes should look like, because that can help you a lot.” Are there any exams?” That’s like what I said before with PEPR. But in this case, you’re asking, “Is there a study guide and where do I find them?” I cannot tell you how many times I’ve said to a student, “Do you have a study guide?” “No teacher didn’t give us one.” “Well did they tell you what’s going to be on the test?” “No.” And then we email the teacher, they reluctantly email the teacher, and we find out that there is a study guide, or the teacher did outline what needs to be on the test. So if you’re like, “No, the teacher didn’t tell me,” rethink that. Check yourself.

“Do you accept late work for credit? How specifically does that work?” I have students who are like, “Oh, it’s late, my teacher is not gonna give me credit.” And then we find out they will give him credit, or the teacher won’t give him credit and then we find out well, is it even worth it to do the work at that point. Which is a horrible situation to be in even asking that question. And then later in the semester, after looking at your grades on the portal, sometimes later in the semester, you might say something like this, “Hey, teach what’s up? After looking at the grades on the portal, I’m having trouble understanding what’s going on. And I don’t want to be blindsided and fail your class. Am I missing something? Or are there any other upcoming items that will be entered?” So what happens a lot is that a student is getting like, let’s say a B or C, and the teacher doesn’t upgrade the grades very often. And then all of a sudden, one day, it’s like two weeks before the end of the semester, the teacher upgrades a million grades and you have an F, and you’re going “Why do I even have an F? That makes no sense. How did this happen?” So you don’t want to be blindsided. You want to be proactive. Say, “Am I missing something? Is there anything upcoming that’s going to be entered? If so, what are they and how do I get details?” Excellent question, especially if you’re the type of person who gets blindsided a lot.

Now, the next day, if they don’t email you back, and this may sound like you’re bugging them, but you’re not bugging them, okay. Listen to how I’m framing this and say, “Hey, what’s up? I know you’re busy. But this is urgent. I emailed you the following email yesterday so I’m resending it to make sure you see it. Please respond ASAP so I can do my best. Thanks for understanding all the help. All you do to help me. From, me” and whatever your name is. Now, sometimes the teacher doesn’t really respond to you. Or the teacher isn’t cool or they shame people, or they’re just not very helpful. You’re not connecting with them and they’re really hard to talk to. And you’re like, “Man, that teacher hates me. I don’t even want to ask them anything.” Well, again, the education is for you and not for the teacher. So I don’t care how they feel, how they act like that. Don’t just ignore that. You need to do what’s right for you. So don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about it, I promise you. If they’re not cool like that, CC others, meaning email this your school counselor, or an admin you’re like, or another teacher. You should CC someone else, because that tends to help with accountability, meaning that the teacher is more likely to respond in a positive way if you CC it to others. Just be open about it, be like, “Hey, what’s up? I’m CCing you because I don’t know if this teacher checks their email, can you make sure they get it?” Don’t worry, you’re not going to hurt anyone’s feelings, nothing bad’s gonna happen. But they need to take responsibility for their job and being of service to you.

Anyhow, what’s up? My name is Seth Perler. I put these questions on my website. So if you’re watching this on YouTube, just click on the blog post, you can print up these questions and check them out if you like them. And just, you know, never give up. This education is for you. If you struggle with executive function in school and things like that, look, just never ever give up. This education is for you. Who cares about all the grades? Just do your best and get what you can so that you can have a good life now, and a good future. My website is SethPerler.com. If you want to subscribe, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment. What do you think? Are there any questions I left out that you would advise people to ask their teachers in order to have a great semester? What kind of thoughts do you have about this stuff? All right, be well take care of yourselves. I will see you later.

SHAME. (for students) How adults can unintentionally shame students.

Parents and teachers, this one is for students… Students, shame hurts. But there are some common ways shaming happens around school, and when we understand how this dynamic shows up, we can RESPOND differently! This is good because we can learn how to NOT internalize it and ultimately feel better now and set ourselves up for a better future.

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, what is up students? Parents and teachers, you’ll want to watch this. But students, I’m making this one for you. My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach based in Maui and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that you can have a good life now and have a good future, all those sorts of things. What’s up, students? I got a message for you today. And what I’m going to talk to you about today is called ‘shame.’ Shame. Now some of you might not even think about the word shame ever. You might think, “Why would this even matter to me, Seth? Who cares about this? This doesn’t impact me.” And the thing is that shame, this thing called shame, can be what’s called corrosive. Something that is corrosive eats at something over a long period of time. Something that’s corrosive can make metal rustic, it can corrode it. And shame can be corrosive on us humans. On me, on your parents, on you, on your teachers, on all humans, shame, this thing called shame can be corrosive.

Why am I telling you this? Because the students that I work with often experience shame from adults. The adults, society, culture, parents, teachers, subcultures, they’re not trying to shame you, usually. Usually, it’s very what’s called ‘unconscious’, they don’t even know that they’re doing it. So what sort of students experienced this shame, well the ones that I work with, what is that? Well, the students that I work with, if you’re watching this, you might be able to relate to this. This is the type of student that I was, this is the type of student that I work with day in and day out, usually high school and college students, sometimes even elementary students. But the students that I work with are what’s called resistant. So there’s this thing called executive function, our brain helps us to get things done, to execute. To get our schoolwork done, to do things like that. Well, the students that I work with don’t get a lot of schoolwork done. They struggle with this stuff. So what do they resist? They resist doing homework, they resist their responsibilities or chores or things like that. Sometimes they resist being honest with their parents, or forthcoming with people about what’s going on. They resist using planners, they resist getting organized, organizing things, cleaning things, checking their portals, dealing with emails in their inbox, they might resist reading, but they really resist a lot of things related to school. They don’t want to do it. And the things that we say, that I say when it comes to school, or that I used to say when I was a student, and that really got me in trouble.

But what I used to say is, “I don’t feel like it. I got this homework to do. I don’t feel like it. It’s too overwhelming. Why do I have to do this? This is stupid. Why should I care about such and such topic? I’m never going to use this.” And then I might say to my parents, “Why don’t you just trust me? Get off my back. I’ll do it later. Leave me alone. I’ve got this. I promise. I stopped being so annoying. I know. I turned it in. I swear I turned it in. I promise I turned it in. I remember turning it in. You can ask the teacher if I turned it in!” Well, actually, I wouldn’t want them to even talk to the teacher. But then it turns out, “I didn’t turn it in. I found it at the bottom of my backpack.” And I might say, you know, blame the teacher on things, say the teacher lost it. Anyhow, all of these things that I would say were designed for me to resist. To be resistant. To resist doing my schoolwork and stuff like that. Well, that can be fine, except that the more I get out of school, the reality is, and of course, there are teachers that weren’t my favorite teachers or subjects I didn’t like, but the more I got out of my education, the more opportunities I had in life. So what is this about anyway? I’m talking about shame. Shame, shame. What do these things have to do with shame? Well, when you struggle with these things, when you are resistant to these things, the adults in our lives, make stories to explain why you’re resistant. And those stories might come at you and tell you the following messages. The stories that adults say might convey to you the following messages. These were messages that I heard as a young person, and the messages were things like this: “Seth, you’re lazy, you’re unmotivated. Just motivate yourself. You’re not trying hard enough. You need to try harder. You’re just undisciplined. You don’t seem to care about school, why don’t you care?” And I felt very misunderstood by those messages. So those messages tend to shame us. They shame us. They don’t help us to change. They just feel bad. Because the message is, “I’m just choosing to be lazy. There’s something wrong with me. I’m broken. I’m just unmotivated. I’m just undisciplined. I just don’t try hard enough. I just don’t care.” And those things are misunderstandings. They don’t understand the big picture. Well, what’s the problem with that when it comes to shame? You know, you might experience these things. Well, what’s the problem with those messages if you’re feeling those messages coming to you? The problem with those messages that I want to really convey to you is this. You and I, we can do what’s called ‘internalize’ these messages. We can internalize these messages. What does that mean? Well, when we hear a message like “You’re lazy, you’re unmotivated. You don’t try hard enough,” we can internalize it, and think bad things about us like, “I’m bad. I’m a bad person. I’m not worthy, I’m not good enough. There’s something wrong with me, I’m broken. I’m not smart, I’m stupid, I’m dumb, I just can’t do anything right.” And so it starts with the messages, the shaming messages, then we can internalize the shame and turn it against us, ourselves. And when we internalize those shaming messages, we start to say things like, “It’s too hard and I can’t do this and I give up.” I don’t want you to ever give up. Sorry, “Alexa off,” I’d set a timer. I don’t want you to ever give up on yourself or the things. But the shame can be really what’s called ‘daunting’. It can feel big and heavy, and it can be unmotivating to try harder when it feels like we’ve tried so hard, and we’re not getting anywhere. And then we’re getting these messages that we need to even try harder. And we think that anything we do is not good enough. So it can be very daunting. Don’t give up. NEGU. N-E-G-U. Never, Ever Give Up. So what do we do about it, though? We don’t just think, “Oh, I don’t want to have that shame feeling, I just decide it’s not there anymore.” That’s called stuffing your feelings, and stuffing your feelings is never healthy. We find unhealthy ways to stuff our feelings and that doesn’t work. But what we can do is what’s called our own deep inner work. And this is where I’m talking to parents and teachers too. If there are parents and teachers watching, so students some of the parents and teachers are watching this, what I’m hoping is that they’re going to really hear this message. So sometimes parents and teachers do this and they don’t intend to. They were a student, a kid just like you. They were right where you’re at, but they are not anymore. As we become grownups, we change and we forget what it was like. But when adults, and when you, and when I do the following thing it can help. When we do our own deep inner work. What does that mean? If you do your own deep inner work, meaning look at what makes you tick, what your thoughts are all about. Your emotions, look at yourself. Really be compassionate and empathetic with other people. When we learn to do our own deep inner work and work on ourselves, do what’s called self-development, we have the opportunity to respond differently in situations rather than be what’s called ‘reactive’. So reactive means that when we feel shamed, we just react. “I can’t do it. I’m stupid, this is stupid. I hate this. Get off my back, leave me alone. I’m just lazy, I’m just a failure.” When we react, we just do it instantly and there’s not a lot of thought. But when we respond, when we do our work on ourselves and work on who we are, work on journaling, or getting a counselor, or reading books to develop ourselves, or things like this. When we work on ourselves and do our own deep inner work to get the truth about ourselves, we can respond rather than react. We can respond to what’s called ‘consciously’ or with ‘intention,’ or mindfully. So we can respond with awareness rather than blinders on. We can respond with self-awareness so that we can have better responses for ourselves. But also our responses help us make more of an impact in the world. Because you, literally, you are the future. You are either going to contribute to the future of this world and making it a better place, every day we have an opportunity to do that, or not. You have a lot of power as a human being to do whatever you want. So the things that matter to you, and that you’re interested in, and passionate about, or curious about, or even the things that you’re angry about, that tells you what your passions are. Because if you’re angry, for example, about how animals are treated, or climate change, or certain things, that actually can tell you something you’re passionate about. But the more we can do our deep inner work, the more we can respond rather than react. This means the more you can have a better life for yourself, and the more of an impact you get to make in your life. Again, my name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach, I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that you can have a better life now, and a better future. I wish you the best this year. I hope it’s filled with peace and joy. I hope that any shame that you experience you can move through and learn from and not internalize and do your own deep inner work to see how crazy awesome you are and how much you matter. Take care. Oh, all the things. If you like what I’m doing, share it right now; leave a comment below. What do you think of this video? What was one thought that came into your head while you’re listening to this? Give it a like and the thumbs up and stuff like that. If you like what I’m doing, please support my work. Take care.

How 2020 Impacted Kids

Parents and teacher, this is a different type of vlog for me, but I hope you find it helpful to you and yours. Here I look at 2020 and how it impacted out kids:

What I see as major impacts and what’s different about 2020
What can we do to really help our kids?
What I want and hope for you and your children
Final wish and wisdom

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF. Well parents and teachers, today is going to be a pretty different vlog for me than what I usually do. My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach based in Maui and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life now and a great future. So the whole point of what I do is we want our kids to have a good education, have a good childhood, and have a good future. So in this video I’m going to talk about the impact of 2020. I’m not doing like a year review or something like that, what I’m trying to do every week, if you’ve been following me for any amount of time, every single week, what I try to do is be of service, I try to give something that serves you, I want you to walk away from this video saying “Wow, okay, that was that was actually helpful and actually have a good way of thinking about these things.” So I have been in the education world for, I don’t know, 23 years or so, and I’m somebody who really thinks about how these things impact the bottom line, and the bottom line for me is quality of life. Again, quality of life now for our kids and quality of life in their future. So that’s what education is about to me, it’s about quality of life. And executive function for kids who have executive function struggles, executive function is a quality of life issue. Meaning if our kids don’t figure out how to have a good enough executive function to navigate this world, then it’s going to impact their quality of life. I’ve seen it a million times, I went through it myself. The struggle is real, this is not a joke, this is not a game. These executive function struggles really impact our quality of life and we have to learn how to work with this stuff. So anyhow, this is a different type of vlog. I’m going to talk about three things, I’m going to talk about 1.) what I see as the impacts of 2020, what’s different than before? 2.) What can we do about it? Which means what I want for you and your kids and what I hope for you and your children. 3.) A final wish and hope to wrap it up and hopefully impart some wisdom, if I have any wisdom to impart. Who am I to even make this vlog? I don’t know anything, I just try to do my best to be a service. And I saturate myself in this world of education and trying to be helpful. And for what it’s worth, for those of you that follow me, I hope you find this helpful. So let’s talk about the impacts of 2020. Number one, what I see the impacts of 2020, the good and the bad. So I want to point out some of the things because I see a lot of families, a lot of kids, a lot of schools, I see schools in different countries because I have clients in different countries and readers, and I get email from all over the place. So I have a very wide view of all of these things. First of all, I want to say that there have been positive things that have happened. And what I mean by that is that something about the pandemic, and things slowing down, and things changing, and people being stuck in homes together for long periods of time, it brings everything to the surface, all the problems are brought to the surface. And there are a lot of people who have taken this as an opportunity or who’s found opportunities in these situations. They’ve really tried to look at it positively and see how can we use this to our benefit. So I’ve heard a lot of families saying things like, “How can I complain? I get to spend more time with my family.” And then I’ve heard the opposite, you know, “I have to spend time with my family.” So a lot of it is a frame. A lot of people who have found the positive, the silver linings, are saying “I get spend time with my family, we get to work through problems, we get to build more intimacy, we get to deal with traumas, we get to learn to love each other more compassionately, we get to learn how to appreciate quality time with each other better, we get to really focused on those things. You know, a lot of people have gone out and done things. A lot of people during COVID, for example, have exercised less, a lot of people have done the opposite and exercised more. So, there have been a lot. I’ve also heard from a lot of my families of kids who struggle with executive function, that the change in school has made it easier for them to succeed. So believe it or not, and this is not the majority, but there are plenty. There are plenty of families and kids who have said that this is actually easier for them, they can be more successful, they can navigate this better for various reasons, which I don’t have time to go into now. But in essence, it’s been easier for them. So there’s been positive that has come out of this. Relationships have developed, people have found creative ways to connect, people have built on their hobbies, kids have built on their hobbies or their talents or their skills. People have worked on their health, they’ve worked on their goals, they’ve worked on all kinds of things. So there have been positives. Now unfortunately, my list of negatives, and I really tried to be positive, but this year has sucked for a lot of people in a lot of ways. And my list of negatives is pretty big. I think, probably, the biggest negative that I see that is the most corrosive and harmful to everybody is probably the disconnection that people have. The kids feeling disconnection from their teachers, from their schools, from their friends, from themselves, even from their families. Being with their families all the time can create more disconnection, families feeling disconnected from each other, I feel disconnected from my family who doesn’t live anywhere near me. I haven’t seen them since February, there was a wedding. And I usually see my family about four times a year. So the sense of disconnection, I think, and there’s a great book called ‘Lost Connections,’ check it out, I highly recommend that one. It’s fantastic. I won’t go into what that is, but the loss of connection and the dissense of disconnection, I think, is one of the worst things. Number two is trauma, there have been a lot of traumas. This whole situation has created a lot of traumas. And I don’t necessarily mean event traumas, like if you have a traumatic event, but I mean sustained traumas that are just sort of ongoing traumatic senses of lack of well being, or fear, or disconnection, or whatever is causing that. And I think that with the trauma, of course, there have been event traumas, a lot of event traumas that people have experienced this year for all sorts of reasons. Death in the family, people who have gotten sick, people who are still sick, people who have ongoing sickness, domestic violence, there’s been all sorts of, you know, more event-based traumas. And I don’t think we’re going to even understand the impacts of this, I think the lasting impacts of trauma can last years. So unfortunately, and I want to be very honest with you, but a lot of our kids are going to when they’re in their 20s, or 30s, or 40s, or 50s, they’re going to then understand how some of the things that happened this year have impacted them. And hopefully we can be giving our kids tools for working with us right now. The next one is mental health suffering. I think that I pretty much covered that in the trauma one but anxiety, depression, bipolar, any sorts of mental health issues, the traumas, cutting, drugs, addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, gaming addictions, process addictions, any things like that. So the next one is the loss of learning. Has there been a loss of learning? Absolutely, positively, 100%, absolutely. This is not working for a lot of kids. The education is not able to do a good job right now, and it already had a lot of dysfunction in it. So definitely there’s been a loss of learning. Our kids are, you could say, behind. I don’t like to frame it that way because I think there are opportunities in this which I’ll discuss shortly. Another impact of this is teachers quitting, teachers leaving the profession saying “This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m not being supported how I need to.” It’s not appealing the amount of pay that teachers get first, the expectations anyhow before this all happened was deplorable and disgusting. In the United States of America, how can we so undervalue the people who impact our kids the most? It makes no sense. It’s absurd. It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid. It’s insane. But right now, it’s even worse. It’s not appealing for people to say, “Oh, I want to be a teacher.” So we have teacher shortages everywhere that are just even worse. Now I’m hearing teachers who were really stressed out. So also, the impacts of this is that people in the medical professions are burnt out and not valued and mistrusted, and just crazy things happening with them. And even though that’s not necessarily education, I think it impacts our kids, our kids who want to get into the medical fields, we need them. We need people, great people in the medical fields. And so you know, this, this is really going to have a lot of long lasting effects. Saying, “Look how people treat nurses and medical professionals. Do I want to do that?” So I think that’s a big one. The next one is that teaching is different. And I have a fear that since teaching has changed, and teachers have really tried to figure out how do we adapt to the same situation, that the people who benefit and profit from these things, so standardized testing companies, textbook manufacturers, curriculum manufacturers, these people are out there to profit and benefit and make no mistake, they are going to see, “Wow, we can sell our story and continue to sell our products. We can digitalize it this way.” They’ve been learning a lot for how to maximize profit. And the problem with that there, I’m sure there are lots of great people that work for these companies. But make no mistake, this is big business. These are big industries, they are there to profit. And they’re there to make as much money with as little effort as possible, which means that more of our kids who struggle with executive function are going to fall through the cracks and look like they’re to blame. Because we still have this ridiculous story about using letter grades, which I think are immoral and outdated and archaic. All sorts of things about the education system that could be improved upon, they’re really not looking at as how can we benefit humanity the most, but how can we benefit the bottom line the most. So I have a fear that these people who are going to capitalize on this are going to dilute the actual value of education of kids being able to have a good life. So I’m worried about that. Next I noticed the distractions of tech for kids. I mean, we’ve been noticing this forever, but it’s so apparent now how distracted they are. How they’re expected to be on a device that has lots more interesting things and they’re supposed to focus on the teacher in the class when there’s lots more interesting things. So the engagement online is just not there. Kids with strong executive function can engage well enough. But the distractions of tech I noticed in 2020 are just through the roof. I fear that it’s just causing these process addictions, where kids are not bored, they’re not slowing down, they don’t have time to be bored, and to play, and to imagine, and to do things where they have to be bored and try things because they can be distracted in a second all day long. And not learn how to connect with human beings, how to create their own things, how to play. So that’s a problem that I see more of in 2020. This is a positive, I should have said it earlier. But the effort of teachers and parents has been tremendous. Teachers have bent over backwards to navigate this. Nurses, medical professionals, parents, have been trying so hard to learn how. So there’s definitely a lot of positives in that. Next one is with 2020 is the failure of schools. So the problems that we already have with schools with lack of engagement, it’s exacerbated now by what’s going on. Schools are failing, even though teachers are trying so hard and parents are trying so hard, schools are failing to educate kids in the way that they need to be educated. It’s just not working. It’s just not working. It’s just not working. It’s just not working. So we need to get back to some sense of normalcy, human connection, and hopefully not get back to normal. And how school was before because it already had a lot of problems. We need to increase engagement. Another effect of 2020 on our kids, on us, on on maybe you and I and people we know is hunger, food lines, poverty, homelessness, hopelessness, lack of opportunity. People are struggling so much. And our kids are experiencing this or they’re seeing it. What kind of a world are they growing up in? What do they think when they look at the world? Another impact of 2020 is I think a lot of kids their self esteem, if it was already struggling is struggling even more right now. The impact of grades, because we’re still doing grades, and we’re saying “Engage in this thing that’s not engaging. If you don’t do we’re going to punish you with bad grades and retaking classes,” and stuff like this. That’s been a big impact. I mean, these kids with executive function struggles, they’re either working so hard, they have no time for other things, or they’re just like, “I give up, I give up, I give up,” and then they try and then they give up. It’s not mentally healthy. Next one is the impact of being indoctrinated in systems that judges you based on arbitrary meaningless stuff, stuff that’s not engaging. We have teachers and curriculum and stuff that judges how they create a grade. It’s based on so many different arbitrary things and it’s so different from person to person. That’s just more of a you know, why grades just don’t make sense anyway, but. But what this indoctrination, to me, trains our kids to do is to be mindless, and to be robots, and to not think which is what we want them to do. You have to jump through these hoops to get these things. “Kids, if you do this, you’re a good person,” blah, blah, “And if you don’t, the opposite is true.” Another thing that’s been big in 2020 is, I think, a fear of death that we haven’t really seen. Our kids are seeing so much tragedy and death and these kids, they’re telling me their stories about what’s making them uncomfortable and being afraid of dying because of viruses or whatever and so they’re really thinking about death and sickness. They’re so exposed to stuff about it all the time. It’s really a scary time. So anxiety and depression are going through the roof. The last thing that I wanted to mention as I see it as a big thing in 2020, is this divisiveness modeling, like where adults are modeling divisiveness. Fear the other, the other is bad, we’re good. The other is scary. This disconnection on so many levels, that they’re growing up saying, “Oh, this is what life’s about. We’re supposed to fear them, and hate them, and like them, and appreciate them.” And so what’s the solution to that? I’ll tell you momentarily what I think. But here’s what I want, and what I hope. So that was what I wanted to break down some of the things that I’ve seen in 2020. Here’s what I want, and what I hope for you and for your children. I really want you to think metaphorically about planting seeds and not weeds. When we don’t cultivate, we don’t plant, we just let things go wild and do whatever they want. There’s no intentionality and no consciousness around it. No self awareness around it, no mindfulness around it, we’re just letting things go how they are, then weeds take over. And weeds are very hard to eradicate. We need to consciously plant seeds. So what seeds do we want to plant? What do we want to grow? Do we want to grow fruit, vegetables, flowers? What do we want to grow that’s going to bring health, and nourishment, and beauty, and love, and kindness, and warmth, and success, and happiness, and connection to our kids lives? What can we do to plant those seeds? So education is first of all, isn’t just for our child. We want our child to have a good life. But the education that your child receives also impacts their neighborhoods, their communities, their families, their cities, their states, their countries, the world even, okay. So the impacts of education are real. Your child’s education that they’re experiencing right now is going to not only impact their future, but it’s going to have this snowball effect and has an impact on everything else. So we want to really not just do it right just for them. But do it right for everybody. They are kids and as we do now, but in their future will influence culture and change culture. They will change how people think, they will change the future, they will create the future for their kids. So we want to give them as much now as we can in education, so that they can impact their future and their kids and their cultures in positive ways. We want them to have a great education. And what I think a great education is, what I think a great education is that will help do this, is that we are teaching them how to think not what to think. Our standardized tests, our curriculum, our tests, our grades, all our scores, all of these paradigms and belief systems that we’ve created, these stories about education that we’ve created, are very much involved with teaching kids what to think. Who writes the history books? Who decides what should be in the math curriculum? Who decides what should be the science curriculum? Who decides this stuff? Where does this come from? Do we ever ask that question? And if we do, do we ask it enough? So I want ultimately, our kids to know how to think. I don’t want to teach them what to think. There is an element of that, but ultimately, I want them knowing how to think. I do not want seeds of them being robots. I want them to have seeds of self development, self awareness, being mindful, being conscious of what they’re doing, aware of what they’re doing, developing who they are, working on being the best person they can be, being conscious about these decisions. Not just a robot, not mindless, but being conscious. So the influencers who benefit from education, the people who make money, or profit, or power from education that are sort of in the background, they don’t want people to be learning how to think. They want compliance. They want people who are not thinking. I think about kids like in their phone all the time and this neck position, they’re just like this all the time. And that is such compliance, their attention. Their most valuable thing, one of your most valuable things in the world is your attention. Pay attention, pay, it’s like a currency, attention. They’re paying a currency, investing, and what are they getting back for that investment? Not much. They’re investing in these devices all the time. Investment, investment, investment, investment. Their posture, their self esteem, their thoughts, they’re invested in devices, they’re investing their attention into this. So, these, the people benefit from this. They want compliance, it’s “Do what I say, not what I do” type of attitude. It’s “Do as you’re told, and then if you jump through these hoops, and do as you’re told, then you will be accepted. You will be loved, you’ll be worthy.” Okay, and these messages are deep, even from education, “Do what you’re told, and you will be rewarded.” And for kids who struggle, so many of them struggle with self esteem because they’re trying and they can’t do what they’re being asked to do, and they’re not getting the support they legitimately need. So these messages are deep, they go to the core of our mental health, and our well being, and of what we believe about ourselves. So I really want to see us planting seeds that focus on not being compliant, but knowing how to think. I want for our kids, my hope is that, we can have a focus on the relationship and building healthy, secure relationships with you and your children, with teachers, with your children, and their friends, healthy, secure relationships, and that they have awareness and mindfulness around what that is, and that they have awareness around what dysfunction is, and know how to set boundaries, and know how to listen to their intuition and their gut, and what’s right and wrong for them, and to trust themselves. And how do we do that? Part of that is by validating them, and so much of what they get from us, from parents, from teachers, from cultures is invalidating, is what you think is not good enough? It’s not okay. How do we validate what they think and help them become who they are? How do we listen to them better and hear them better? And as we model that, they’ll be better listeners and better at hearing people. They’ll be better at validating other people. How do we teach compassion and empathy in a time that’s so divided? I want these kids to be learning compassion and empathy. I want them to learn generosity, and service, and giving back, and not being afraid of giving. You know, we’re in a consumer society. Take, take, take. The more stuff we have, the happier we’re going to be. And then we take years or decades to figure out that it’s the opposite. It’s the more we give, and serve, and love, the more we have. It’s not the ‘stuff,’ but the consumer society perpetuates these messages. So how do we teach compassion, empathy, generosity, service, and giving? How do we build on their strengths, even though there’s this pandemic going on? And just craziness with school? How do we even now build on their strengths? Because that’s what we want them to build a life on, is their strengths. But schools don’t really focus on that. So how do we do that? Schools don’t always focus on that, I should say. How do we inspire curiosity? What’s happening now is there’s a lack of engagement. It’s so unengaging, how do we get back to focusing on inspiring curiosity? How can you inspire your children to be curious? How can we give our kids mental health tools? I want our kids to learn mental health tools in school, and education, and in their life. I want them to be learning these things, learning about their nervous system, and who they are, and self-development, and how people do it. People focus their whole careers on this stuff, it’s out there, why aren’t we teaching it? If I had a wish, I would wish that our kids were journaling. That I think is one of the most tangible things I can give you from this conversation. It’s just such a powerful thing in so many ways. How do we help our kids have goals that matter to them about who they are? How do we help them achieve those goals rather than everybody else’s goals? How do we really help them build those goals and strengths? How do we have that help them have service mindsets, and generosity mindsets, but how do we get them opportunities to be of service to others? The last thing that I hope for them and wish for them and want them to have through education through this time, is what I call saturation theory. And that is where I want our kids to be saturated in all different types of experiences, of sports, of arts, of subject matters, of books, of things. I want them to be exposed to many different things so that they can find things that matter to them, and that are inspiring to them that create curiosity for them. And then going back to the beginning, is this. When they’re saturated in these things, and they are building on their strengths, and they’re learning about service, and compassion, and empathy, and listening, and relationships, and all these things, then the hope is, is that we are planting the seeds instead of planting weeds so that our kids can have this great education, and have a great life, and have a great future, have a great present, and really know how to live on this this planet in a good way. So those are some of my thoughts. My final wish, what I want to end this video with. My final wish is this. All those things I just said about compassion, empathy, generosity, journaling, goals that matter to them, service, saturation, and all sorts of different ideas and mindsets and books and things. All of these things are designed to educate kids to learn how to think not what to think. How to think. My final wish is that everything that we do in the back of our heads, we’re saying, “Is this teaching them how to think or what to think? Is this teaching them how to think? Is what we’re doing teaching them how to think?” Are they thinking or are they mindless robots going around this world, not questioning themselves not questioning things, just listening to whatever they happen to get hooked into in social media and subcultures or wherever. And that’s where they take as truth. We are very emotional beings. When we do not know how to think we just go down whatever rabbit hole is most appealing in the moment. We get indoctrinated in these things and we can’t think for ourselves. We can get stuck in these things. We can suffer, cause suffering, and really lose who we are. And I want our kids to know who they are, what makes them education. So again, I want them to learn how to think. My final wish is that they learned how to think. That education, their education, teaching them how to think, will provide them, their families, their friends, their communities, their cities, their states, their countries in the world, more love and peace. I want your children to have as much love, and peace and joy, and contribution, and service, and generosity, and empathy, and compassion. I want them to have those things. And I wish that for you and for your child and for your family. That’s why I do what I do in the world of education. I’m an executive function coach so I focus on a particular type of kid, but my mission is really about quality of life. I want the kids and families that I work with to have more love, and peace, and joy, and contribution, and service, and generosity, empathy, and compassion, and those sorts of things. That’s what I want. That’s why I do what I do. It’s not about the kids getting good grades, even though that may be how people find me. It’s not about kids being successful in school and being a great student, but I want them to have good quality of life. My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach. If you haven’t seen my website, I have a lot of freebies and stuff there. SethPerler.com. I have an Executive Function Summit called TEFOS, The Executive Function Summit online, it comes in the summer of 2021. It will be going on no matter what because it’s an online summit. I got my YouTube channel, give me a thumbs up, like this, leave a comment below. If you’re watching me on YouTube or on my on my site right here, what do you think? What is this good education for you? What have been the problems this pandemic that had been come out in 2020? What are some of the positive ways we can deal with that and the solutions? What’s your wish? What do you want for your kids? What are some of your thoughts? Go ahead and leave them below. If you want to support me again, leave comment, thumbs up, like it, subscribe, whatever, share the stuff. Take care. Have a good day. I hope you had a great holiday season. And I really sincerely hope you have a fantastic 2021 that is filled with a lot more peace, and calm, and joy, and love, and freedom, and safety, and health, and all those things. Be well.

8 Winter Break Tips for Students (Executive Function Success)

Teachers and parents, for most of you, winter break has begun. This is actually a VERY important vlog, so check it out. In this vlog I speak directly TO STUDENTS, but I also am speaking to teachers and parents here. (and as always, parents and teachers should watch first to see if it’s something you want to share with your child/student. ) Here are 8 essential tips for break, and the first one is **time sensitive**, so watch the opening today, seriously.

Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF. Congratulations. Students, it is winter break, it’s December 20th 2020, 12/20/2020. For the vast majority of you students who are watching this today, it is want to break. Congratulations, I’m really happy for you. Take a deep breath. So for most of you watching, you’re done. Some of you have Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of school this week, but most of you are done with the semester or done with school up until winter break, most of you are on winter break. For those of you who are done with the semester, I have an important message for you. For those of you who are not, still listen to this message. And teachers and parents, I want you to hear this video, this is an important video. I have eight things for you students. And number one today is the most important tactical one. Number 1: is NEGU. Never Ever Give Up. Never ever give up. Oh, by the way, my name is Seth Perler, I’m executive function coach. I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so you can have an awesome life. Okay, that’s what I do. Anyhow, number one is NEGU, never ever give up. Students, I don’t want you to ever give up. And I particularly don’t want you to give up on advocating for yourself now. What does that mean? Please, please, please listen to my advice. I’ve been doing what I do for a long time, I’ve saved a lot of kids a lot of energy and time and stress with this simple thing. Here’s the thing – I don’t want you, you probably don’t want to, have to retake a class because you failed a class. You don’t want to be in summer school, you want to retake it this semester or next fall, if you would have to take it next fall. I don’t want you to have to retake a class. Well, why do you have to retake a class? Because you fail a class. How do you fail a class? It’s because you get such a low percentage that you fail. So it’s a numbers game in that sense, at least. So what I’m proposing to you is today, even though it’s Sunday, even though the semester may be over, I don’t care never ever give up. So what you want to do is you want to look at all your portals and all your grades, you want to make sure you’re passing all your classes, then look at the grade details, make sure nothing wacky happened. For example, maybe you did your final exam, you click ‘Submit,’ but you look at it and you have a zero in your final exam. How can you possibly have a zero? You need to email that teacher and make sure that you don’t fail the class because you have a zero that you don’t really have. Maybe you look back and you see “Oh my gosh, in November, I did this giant assignment and I have a zero on it. Why do I have a zero on that? It pulled me down to an F.” Maybe you’re missing a few assignments, but you know you have them, maybe you did a final project and forgot to turn it in. I don’t care what the situation is. NEGU, never ever give up. When you find those wacky things email the teacher say, “Hey, I know this is crazy. I know it’s Sunday, but I am missing this thing. Will you please help me? Can we can we figure this out?” Why do I tell you to do that? Different schools in different school districts have different times or ways that teachers input the grades, different software, and sometimes the teacher can do something to change it. What they’re probably going to tell you is that it’s set-in-stone, they can’t change anything, but that’s not always true. Sometimes there is a workaround and there’s a reason that they’re able to legitimately change it. So you want to advocate for yourself. Now I know some of you have limiting beliefs. I used to have a lot of limiting beliefs and you’re like, “No Seth, that’s not gonna work for me. Yeah, but I’m different. I can’t do it because, I can’t do because, I can’t do it because, and you have excuses and you have reasons. Those reasons are just barriers that are in your way from trying to advocate for yourself. Do it anyway. Look, if it takes you five or 10 minutes, and you do it and it didn’t work out, who cares? It’s a small price to pay for potentially not retaking a class for an entire semester or some crazyness like that. Or having to deal with it after break once you find out and having to jump through a lot more hoops to work with it then. Listen, most teachers are caring. And I know you might be like, “Well, this teacher, Seth, you don’t understand.” I don’t care. Email them anyway, tell them the truth, tell them what happened and what’s going on and advocate for yourself. You’re worth it. This education is for you. It’s not for me, it’s not for your parents, not for your teachers. This is for you and your life. So don’t give up. Check your portals and if there’s anything wacky, just email the teacher and try. At least try, and do it today. Don’t wait until tomorrow. The longer you wait, the more it is going to be set-in-stone. Number 2: Tip number two for this winter break. Plan and celebrate you. What I mean is celebrate yourself but you have to plan it. You have to plan it because this break is going to go by like that. But I want you to take time to celebrate yourself. I don’t care if you have a party with your family. I don’t care if you have a movie night. I don’t care if you buy yourself something, you can gift yourself something like that guitar was a gift that I bought for myself after a bunch of hard work. I really wanted that particular one. I’ve been eyeing it for years. I gifted myself. Gift yourself. You worked hard. And you might be like “Seth, I didn’t really work that hard.” I don’t care. You what you did well is what you want to reward, so reward yourself. Celebrate yourself. Gift yourself for what you did well, what you did right, where you tried, where your effort is. Not for the results, not for grades, not for the scores, not for the numbers. For your effort, very important. But plan your celebration, whatever you want to do to celebrate, plan it, because otherwise your brain is going to go by and it’s not gonna happen. It’s important psychologically to celebrate yourself because we often beat up on ourselves so much. It’s important to do the complete opposite and practice it. Number 3: Tip number three for this winter break. Tip number three of eight, is you may have weird feelings right now. Here’s what I mean. Your semester just ended. You may feel this weird sense of relief and calm, and “Oh my gosh, the chaos is over.” And “Oh my gosh, I can breathe” and “Oh, I don’t have anything hanging over my head anymore. I don’t have any, you know, lessons or assignment weighing me down.” You may feel sad, or depressed, or lonely, or angry, or grumpy. When we have a giant shift, like when a semester ends, a lot of weird and uncomfortable feelings can come up. So I’m telling you this on tip number three just so that you can be aware of it. And you can not think “Oh my gosh, there’s something wrong with me?” Nothing’s wrong with you. Most people when there’s a giant change like this, even if you don’t think it’s that giant, there are weird feelings that come because it’s changed. The nervous system is feeling change, and it’s feeling stress and you have to figure out what to do with that. So just if it happens to be like, “Oh, yep, that’s probably it, just having some change right now.” Number 4: Plan your break. Now of course it’s break, you’re like “Seth, why should I plan break?” What I’m saying is think through what you want to do during break. Like maybe last semester, you were like, Oh, I wish I could be skiing more “Oh, I wish I could be hiking more, or seeing my friends more, or this more, or I want to build this thing, or create this thing, or start a website, or start a new hobby, or read a book or whatever,” this is the time to do it. Break goes by again so fast. In the blink of an eye we’re going to be back in school. So plan it and then post it, put it on the wall: I am going to do this over break, I’m going to do that over break. I don’t care if it’s on a calendar or a sticky note, I don’t care. But invest in yourself over this break. Plan something that invests in you, that invests, so that you’re building who you are in this world. So do something good for yourself, plan it and then plan your fun. So anyhow, the point is to plan your break because it goes by fast. Number 5: Do a ceremony, a ceremony of letting go. What does that mean, letting go? You just worked really hard. You may have a bunch of folders filled with a bunch of papers you never want to see again, you may have a bunch of computer files you never want to see again, you may go through your drawers and your backpack and your folders and all the stuff, and make a ceremony to let go of all of it. Make it fun, make it interesting, make it cool, get rid of it, dump it in the dumpster, do something cool with it, whatever you want to do, but have a ceremony where you really say, “Okay, I’m done with this semester. I’m letting go of it,” and some of you are still in school, I understand that, when you’re done with the semester. You know, if you have papers that you wrote that are sentimental, keep them. Poems that you wrote that’re sentimental, you know, you got a great score on something you want to keep it for inspiration, keep it. That type of stuff, keep. But for the stuff that you don’t need any more, have a ceremony, let it go. There’s something also psychologically about purposely letting things go, having a clean slate. It’ll allow you to feel more free over break, but it also help you prep for next semester better because you’ll have that clean slate. Number 6: Prep for spring semester proactively. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do this one now. This one you can forget about until the day or two before break ends. So when school starts back up, you want to get your folders, your planner, your computer, your inbox, all of that stuff, you want to get it set up, cleaned up, clean slated, and everything proactively. Don’t wait till the first day of school, come home and think you’re going to do it that night. Just take an hour of the day before school starts and get yourself reset, do a reset, do an overhaul, be prepped. It’ll help you save a lot of time later. Number 7: This one’s a little bit strange. Live in gratitude. Look, life’s not perfect, but you probably have a really good life, a really good family. Maybe they’re not perfect, but they’re trying. They love you, they care about you. Good friends in your life, good people, good teachers. Live in gratitude, live in knowing what you have. A lot of times we can focus on what we don’t have, that we’re not getting what we want, that things aren’t how we think they should be. That focus on that can drive us nuts. It can be very, very stressful for us. Spend time being in gratitude, live in gratitude. Notice what you have. Number 8: The last one, I want to encourage you to practice generosity daily, every day, this whole break, every single day. Do something kind and generous for somebody else for no reason. Maybe it’s your sibling and you’re mad at them, do something nice for them. Be generous for no reason. Maybe it’s helping out with your parents with something you don’t usually help out with. Don’t make a big deal out of it, just do it. Maybe it is helping somebody that you see outside or maybe it’s contributing to a charity. It could be anything you can think of. Just some little generous act of kindness every day, do something generous to give to others without expecting anything in return. Why would I tell you to do that? What I found is that the magic in life, if you look at the happiest people you know, usually, people are happiest when they’re giving to others, whether it’s animals, plants, the earth, or the people that you know, or people you don’t know. When we are doing things to be generous, and kind, and giving, the irony is, is that’s when we quote ‘get,’ that’s when we really ‘receive’ the most important thing in life, which is joy. It’s not the most important thing in life. But that’s really when we receive joy. I don’t know what the most important thing in life is. Maybe it’s love, who knows, you figure that out on your own. That’s what you’re on this life journey. But generosity works. It’s magical. I’m so glad you’re on break. I’m so glad for you for all the effort you put in this semester. For those of you teachers watching, please, please, please, I want to encourage you too, for the kids who are struggling with executive function, look and see if there’s anything you can do. Like I know, you may feel like “Oh, well, the kid needs to be responsible for themselves,” or whatever. But if you notice that a kid didn’t turn in their final project, like send them a quick email or the parents quick email and say, “Hey, I’m turning in my grades, you better get this in,” like give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s been such a hard year for everybody. If they’re not advocating for themselves, please help them advocate for themselves by giving them a hand. I just see so many kids fail at this time in the year. It’s really hard to watch them then have to go through the process of redoing a class and they’re often feeling so beaten down by school anyway. So please, you know, take this into consideration. Anyhow, my name is Seth Perler. I have a site called SethPerler.com and I got a bunch freebies on there. Parents and teachers, if you haven’t signed up, sign up. Students, parents, teachers, if you liked this video leave a comment below. What are one of your tips, I gave you eight, what are one of your tips of what we should do over this winter break? What’s a really good thing to do over break? Should we read, should we write? What do you think anyhow? Be well. Check out my site SethPerler.com, give it a thumbs up, like it, leave a comment, do all the things. If you like what I’m doing, support me back. Take care and be well.

How To Handle the Week Before Break

URGENT! Ok, it’s the last week before winter break. In this vlog I speak directly TO STUDENTS, but as always, parents and teachers should watch first to see if it’s something you want to share with your child/student. For students with EF challenges, this is a BIG make it or break it week. It’s a week where a lot of these students can go from a C to an F, and it’s too late to fix anything after Friday. This vlog will help your child know exactly how to handle it.

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Video Transcript: Click here to download the transcript PDF.

Hey, what’s up parents and teachers? It’s me, Seth with SethPerler.com. I’m an executive function coach and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life. And in this video, this video is for students. So parents and teachers, I want you to watch this video first. And then if you want to share it with your child, or your students, go for it. And I have a PDF that goes with this video to help you.

Students, what’s up? My name is Seth. I’m here to help you at the end of the semester, in the last week of the semester, this is a critical week of the semester. If you want to end the semester with as little stress as possible and as much success as possible, as little frustration and annoyance as possible, and getting through this week as easily as possible, this video is for you. So what I do for work is I’m an executive function coach, I help students who struggle with this thing called executive function. These are students who have a lot of missings and incompletes, late work, zeroes, things like this. These are students who are super smart, bright, amazing human beings, who often struggle in school because of this thing called executive function. So I’m going to help make life easier for you.

This is the last week of the semester for most of you students watching, this week is your last week of the semester. For some of you, your semester goes into January or goes longer or you’re not on a traditional schedule. So most of you it’s the last week of the semester. For all of you, it’s the last week before winter break. So in this last week before winter break, this is for all of you even if your semesters not over. But these are the things that you want to know. What I’m going to do is I’m going to show you a checklist and I’m going to help you make your life easier this week with this checklist that you can print up if you want to.

So first thing that I want you to know is that what I’ve seen with a lot of my students, what happens to them at this time in the semester is they can have a C in a class, and then they get the report card and they have an F. The reason that happens is because they think they’re on top of things but they’re not good at tracking things. And then oftentimes teachers will input a bunch of final grades at the last minute, they put those grades and it drops you down to an F. The other thing that happens is you have final papers, final exams, final projects, those are often due at the end of the week. And if you fail that and it pulls your whole grade down, you don’t know oftentimes until you get your report card or your grades. So here is what I want you to know.

There are two things I want to start off by telling you. One is there are things that you want, two is that there are things that you don’t want. What do you want? Well, I know what you want, because I’m psychic, just kidding. Everybody wants the same thing. We want fun, we want freedom, we want a good future with choices in life, we want independence, we want to be done with our work. Okay, we all want the same thing in that sort of a way. And the actions we take now will impact all of those things. What do we not want? Well, we don’t want F’s, we don’t want to retake classes that we fail, we don’t want summer school, we don’t want a bunch of stress and anxiety, we don’t want things hanging over our head, and we don’t want to wait till the last minute because it’s stressful and it creates worst results. So I have a checklist for you. My suggestion for the checklist is that you do it every single day this week, even today. So it’s Sunday now, I suggest you do it today. And then do it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And then you’re on break Friday. But guess what? I suggest you do it Friday as well. Because on Friday, your teachers are still inputting grades. And if you leave some stone unturned, and you don’t figure out that something big is missing, you can fail, even on Friday. So I do encourage you to check this out on Friday as well.

Here is the checklist right here. Basically, at the beginning of it I have this week and then I have a little intro here that I already explained. Here’s what you want, here’s what you don’t want. And here’s my suggestion to do it every day. You can look at that all later, I just mentioned it. Now here’s the checklist. Here’s what I think should do.

The most important thing is don’t listen to the resistance voices in your head too much. The voices that are like “I’m not motivated. I just want to procrastinate. I’ll do it later. I’ll do it tomorrow.” This is crunch time. I want you try to override this thought with better thoughts. Override the thought, replace the thought. You don’t just get rid of thoughts, you have to replace them. They don’t just go away, you replace them. What do you replace them with? You got to have a positive mindset that says “I can do this. It’s a stressful week but I’ve got this. It may be hard, maybe daunting and maybe long, maybe tedious but I got this I can do this. This is for me and my awesome future, not for my parents not for Seth, not for my teachers, not for anybody. This is for me investing in my future. I’ve got this.” And you have a serious mindset this week about focusing, that you’re really going to focus well this week.

Next, check your grade portal thoroughly to find missing, incomplete, late work, low scores. So basically the reason I say ‘thoroughly’ is because a lot of my students will look at the grades, but they don’t look at the details of this grade in the class. And then when I have them open it up, I’m like, “Come on, open up, let’s see.” And we open it up, they’re like, “Oh, I turned that in, my teacher should have already given me a grade for that. I better tell them that I did that, they must not know or something,” or “Oh my gosh, I didn’t know I had a zero and that. Oh, my gosh, I have all these missings and the’yre so easy, I could get it done in 20 minutes.” So look at those portals, and beware: teachers can input grades last minute. And that can really make things thanks. So be aware of that.

Next, make a master task list of everything important from your portal check. So when you check them, everything you see, write it down, print it up, put it in Google Calendar, put it in your agenda. I don’t care where you put it, on sticky notes, whatever you want to do that works for you, a whiteboard, but track everything so that you can make sure that you get everything done as best you can. You don’t have to get everything done, but a lot of my students get nothing done. Now that’s a recipe for disaster. So just get something done, get as much as you can. But your master list should contain everything on the list.

The next one is check all your other portals, your teacher pages, Google Classroom, Schoology, or anywhere that teachers share information I want you to check all of it, make sure that you’ve checked everything. There’s the next one, beware of teachers inputting grades, a bunch of grades, all of a sudden and check your portals daily. Email your teachers proactively to ask if everything is looking good. Now a lot of you’re going to be very resistant, “Seth, I don’t need to email my teachers, it feels tedious.” Look, I’m telling you, I do this all the time with my students, send a quick email, “Hey, teach, what’s up? I just want to make sure everything’s looking good. I think I’m doing well in your class, want to make sure that I’m not missing something crazy and that I fail all of a sudden”, just send a quick email like that. “Thanks for what you do. Take care, have a great day, bye. “Just a super quick email and just get it off to them. You can send the same one to every single teacher if you want. But it’s really important that you make sure that you’re not missing something.

Next thing is blockout more time than you think you need for your final projects, your final essays, your final assignment, your final readings. My students are notoriously bad at predicting how long things will take. And that combined with the fact that they procrastinate means that if they wait until nine o’clock to do their stuff, nine o’clock at night, and then all of a sudden they find out that they have like 10 hours worth of homework to do then they often shut down and just like are too paralyzed to do any of it. Or they do a little bit of it and it’s just not enough. So don’t shoot yourself in the foot, block out more time than you think you need. Just remember this week might be a wash for you. It might be a week where you just don’t have a life, all you have is school. But don’t worry, because next week is break and don’t forget that you are investing in a great future for yourself. So you know, just keep that in mind.

Next thing, get accountability, co-work with others. Okay, look, it’s the last week. Again, we like to procrastinate, call or text a friend, Zoom with them, a parent, even a relative, a tutor, whoever and be like, “Hey, let’s study at this time. Let’s co-work at this time.” I just co-worked today with a bunch of my students. I have students all over the place and we got on Zoom. We all just we meet up at a determined time. We say, “Hey, what are you working on today? What are you working on today?” Then it’s really quiet and we’re just working on our stuff. And every once a while we talk a little bit and then get back to work. Get accountability and co-working. Don’t try to just do it all yourself. Make it more fun and more interesting and do it with other people. It helps a lot.

Next, remove distractions. Look, this is for you and your life. Close the tabs, close the things that are distracting, turn off the social media that’s distracting. It will be there and it doesn’t do much good for my life. It probably doesn’t do much for your life. Like it’s a distraction. It’s just like a little zap to your brain of “Oh my gosh, somebody just texted me or snapchatted me or whatever, or TikTok or whatever, YouTube”. Just turn off and close the distraction so you can focus on what you need to do, then you can enjoy your distractions when you have time to enjoy them. So remove your distractions this week. And then every day this week, get excellent rest, eat food that truly nourishes your body and your mind, and get plenty of movement and exercise.

And then the last one that I have, the last one that I have, is ask for help. Nobody wants to ask for help. It’s the hardest thing to do. But all successful people, athletes, musicians, famous people, anybody you like and respect. Your relatives or anybody you know who is successful, they have learned how to ask for help. They have learned how to ask for help. It’s very hard. It’s very humbling. It takes humility. But that is maturity. If you want to be mature, if you want to be treated more maturely, if you want to be treated like an adult, you got to act like an adult. You got to act mature and asking for help is one of the best things you can ever do.

So those are the things on the checklist right there. The thing about the rest, yep, turn off your devices at night, get good rest, your brain needs it. And your exercise, just do something to move your body every day. I don’t care what it is. Now, I put some other things in here that can help you. You might have some papers, exams, projects and readings. A lot of times my students have this in the last week of school, you might want to list that here. It’s optional. I just made this for you, you can use. Some people you can study with, where can you study, where you can concentrate, here’s just like a little guide where you can fill in, you know, your times and stuff like that you can create this on your own. But however you want to use it, I just wanted to put some things there to make your life easier.

Yes, what I’m asking you to do is going to take time and energy. And it might seem like it’s too much because you already have a lot on your plate. But it will save you way, way more time and energy in the end. That is called being proactive. That is what mature successful people do. People who struggle with executive function struggle with this sort of stuff. If you practice now, it will help your life now and in your future. My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach. I hope you’re having a great day. Go ahead and give me a thumbs up, put your comment below. What do you think of this video? Leave it on YouTube, leave it on the blog, I don’t really care. But if you like what I’m doing, leave a comment, leave a thumbs up support my work, subscribe to my work, share my work, whatever you want to do. Have a great day. Be good to yourself. This is for you, remember that. Invest in yourself with this education. Take care. I’ll see you soon.