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2021 Vlog Roundup

Hi Parents, Teachers, Therapists, others! Wow, 2021 was an interesting year to say the least. The world has changed a lot, and I created a lot of content that is relevant no matter what. Here is a roundup from 2021 that you can scan through to find vlogs you want to revisit, or vlogs you missed. Enjoy, and may 2022 be full of good for you and yours, Seth Perler

How Self-Care is DIFFERENT for kids vs adults: “Self-care” is a term that can be confusing because different people define it differently. BUT there are some IMPORTANT things to consider that are useful when parents and teachers are trying to be helpful to their students. Here I give you a simple way of conceptualizing it, so you have a clear context to go from.
Why this Temperature Check strategy improves listening, and WHY it matters: One of the most important things about helping students with Executive Functioning (or anything for that matter) is for us to continue building listening skillsets. Here I share how I use TEMPERATURE CHECKS so you can apply it and help your student feel more heard. Most importantly, this empowers us to be much more helpful to our students.
How a LOCKER DUMP can make school easier: For disorganized students, doing a periodic Locker Dump can help make everything easier. Here I tell a few tips about HOW to approach it and WHY it’s so helpful.
How to not Fail classes- What to email Teachers late in a semester?: A lot of students FAIL right at the END of a semester, and there is a lot we can do to help support them if we know HOW to be proactive. Here I break down HOW to email teachers at the end of a semester if you are trying to support a struggling student. I share one of my actual templates and tell about the nuances that matter.
Better Student Habits?: Changing habits is SO incredibly challenging for people with executive function challenges. Students often have the goal of “improving grades”, but don’t always connect the dots that changing the habits is exactly what will get the grade to improve. So the “goal” isn’t really the grade, it’s the change in habits! This video breaks down how you can make a custom habit tracker to help you.
How Schools Can Improve: As we know, the “system” is unbelievably behind when it comes to serving neurodiverse kids. So what do we do about it? We know things aren’t going to change anytime soon, but we have kids who need the right help NOW. In this video I scratch the surface on what I think is absolutely the #1 most important thing we “should” change. Hopefully you’ll get some good ideas from it that you can use to support your children/students now.
INTROVERTS: How to support with Executive Function, ADHD, 2e: I have had so many questions over the years about how to support introverts with executive function, that I made this video to discuss some good strategies I use. One common question I get is “what if my child/student doesn’t talk much, but I need to know things so I can help???
Forgetful much? Here’s a tip that works: ADHDers often forget stuff!! Here’s something that I do and teach my students that saves me a lot of frustration.
Do your grades stink? Is the DIP happening?: If your grades fall every semester, it will not fix itself, but the good new is that there is a DIP PATTERN that is predictable. This means that you can do a lot about it, to make your life easier and get more out of education.
Teacher Calendar Tips: TEACHERS (parents, you’ll like this one), the stuff you post online for kids NEEDS WORK! Please check this out to see how you can make life easier for everyone with an executive function friendly calendar. And seriously, we do appreciate you teachers!
12 core strategies for ADULT ADHD & Executive Function (Tips to live by): In this video you get my 12 core strategies, because I always get emails FROM ADULTS asking how to apply strategies to adults with ADHD or Executive Function challenges. You might want to take a few notes.
Kids are behind. HOW can we help?: All kids are learning less lately, and the racial and socioeconomic inequality gap is even bigger! And Executive Functioning challenges make the impact even bigger still! Should we depend on schools to fill in the gaps? Here I offer several unconventional yet practical actions we can take to help kids.
Are You Your Kid’s ALARM CLOCK?!?!:WHEN can we let kids “Fail Safe? When is it rescuing? Enabling? Saving? Maladaptive? Helping too much or not enough? Here I explain several core concepts to empower you.
What ADHD support should PARENTS ask TEACHERS for?: In this video I break down the ideas you might want to know to help your child get the support they need.
Are there good APPs for Executive Function? Parents & Teachers want to know: Here I give a quick deep dive into what you need to know.
When nothing works! Parents who tried everything with few results, Executive Function: When parents try everything and nothing seems to help or work, it can feel incredibly frustrating, like you are spinning your wheels. Here I dive into some key insights that might help.
I’m Worried For Our Kids:* THIS fall I’m concerned about how we are going to support our kids in such a divided world. I worry that there are going to be a lot of unforeseen problems this fall and that if we DON’T proactively think about this, that we are increasing the problems our kids will experience. On the other hand, if we DO PROACTIVELY start living in the solution, we will be able to support our kids better! Here I outline several ways to help.
How to make an Executive Function Friendly Home for this fall: In this video, Sarah Kesty of The Executive Function Podcast and I discuss several excellent ideas about how to make an “Executive Function Friendly Home”. Doing this makes it much easier for your child to manage life.
Can ADHD people MEDITATE?: Meditation has been the BEST thing for adhd/ef ever, because it helps me manage my attention/focus, and as a result, I have a better life in multiple areas.
Emotional Regulation & Executive Function: Emotional Regulation is part of executive function, and it’s important because the better a child can regulate/manage emotions, the more they will be aware of what works and what doesn’t work. This means that they will be able to process emotions rather than avoid and distract in unhealthy ways. This is a quality of life issue. Here are 8 tools that will help in this video.
The #1 Executive Function skill that SHOULD be used over Summer Break?:Parents, what’s the #1 Executive Function skill that SHOULD be used over Summer Break? By the end of this video you’ll know what it is, WHY it’s important and HOW to support your child. Teachers, you might like this one as well.
Students: How to plan summer EVEN IF you hate planning:The problem is that summer goes by in the blink of an eye, and many students miss out on things they wanted to do because they didn’t plan well. I get it! And here is HOW you can get started planning, even if you hate planning, and it’s pretty easy too.
Trauma & Executive Functioning, how does it impact EF?: In this video I respond to the email with some good background, followed by 3 insights to help you help your child.
Teachers, are you “GRADING” right?: Wowwwwww teachers, it’s been a crazy year. And you still have to “grade” kids, and those grades may impact the kids. So what is in the HIGHEST GOOD??? Here I make a plea for how to consider this bizarre year and how to “grade” your students.)
What is Executive Function?: What the heck IS Executive Function? This quick video will teach you the basics so you get it 🙂 You’ll know what it is, why it matters and 8 specific executive functions.
How to Help with Disrespectful Behavior: I give my perspective along with 11 great solutions for compassionate and proactive parents and teachers.
On Boys Podcast: Executive Function: Does he struggle with homework, procrastination, time management, or lack of motivation? Does he have ADHD? If so, he probably needs help developing his executive functioning.
Top 10 Executive Function Tips: I was recently asked “what was the #1 EF skill that helped me turn my life around?” GREAT question, because I failed out of college and always struggled in school, and felt hopeless! So HOW did I turn it around? Well, here I describe the top 10 EF skills that helped me, and I think you’ll love this video because you can apply it to your life.
What if Student’s Efforts DO NOT Pay Off, and Grades Still Drop?: Here I offer excellent insight for students, but parents and teachers, you’ll definitely want to see this one, because it WILL HELP YOU HELP STUDENTS. I give some practical insights and 9 solid tips that all have to do with one overarching idea, “overhauls.”
Chat with Neuroscientist Nicole Tetreault, PhD: Dr. Nicole Tetreault and I discuss some great ideas for how to help students finish this crazy school year, what to do this summer, and how to prep for this fall.
How To Advocate for Neurodivergent Children: “WHAT CAN WE ALL DO TO KEEP THIS PARADIGM SHIFT TO ONE OF MORE INCLUSION FOR NEURODIVERGENT CHILDREN MOVING FORWARD?”
10 Executive Function Tips for Teachers: Teachers, here are 10 of the most important tips I can think of to help you help your students who have executive function challenges.
Worst Spring Fever Ever: Tons of kids are now failing within the context of this, particularly crazy Spring Fever. They are, getting so “behind”, anxiety is rising, engagement is falling, too many hoops to jump through for some kids to “succeed”.
Will my kid FAIL this crazy school year?: I’m so sick of how our education systems fail to meet the needs of so many kids and stay stuck in outdated approaches. Here I TRY to do a bit of justice to some of these complicated topics so you can have a bigger picture and hopefully feel more empowered to better support your children or students.
The RIGHT Definition of Executive Function: Unfortunately, if you search for definitions of EF, it can be confusing! Different experts define it differently, AND they discuss the key skills completely differently! So what do you NEED to know to make sense of this? Well, this video has your answer!
Ideas to Help Your Child: If you’re raising a bright child with learning, social, emotional, and/or behavioral challenges, this is for you.
Boys: Executive Function & ADHD: Here’s a fantastic dive into helping Boys with Executive Function & ADHD challenges with Janet Allison and Jen Fink. Janet and Jen run the “ON BOYS Parenting Podcast”.
The Shame of ADHD & Executive Function: If we want to REALLLLLLY help kids who have ADHD or Executive Function challenges, we MUST understand the complexities of how shame impacts them. Here I detail this issue and give insights and solutions so you can better support the kids you are trying to help.

🎦 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

How Self-Care is DIFFERENT for kids vs adults

“Self-care” is a term that can be confusing because different people define it differently. BUT there are some IMPORTANT things to consider that are useful when parents and teachers are trying to be helpful to their students. Here I give you a simple way of conceptualizing it, so you have a clear context to go from.

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. Parents, teachers, therapists, maybe some students, in this video, I’m going to talk to you about self-care. But really, this one area of confusion that I’ve seen a lot around self-care, and that is this. Self-care is different when we’re talking about self-care for students, and we’re talking about it for adults, I’ll explain in just a moment. My name is Seth Perler. I’m an Executive Function coach, so I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so they can have a great life. My site is SethPerler.com and got a bunch of freebies for you. I put out content all the time, a lot of good stuff, resources for you to help students with executive function challenges, ADHD, and all sorts of challenges that students might have that can interfere really, with quality of life, which is what it’s really all about. We want people to have a great education so they can have a great life. Now, let me talk about the self-care. So we have this term ‘self-care,’ such a term that people use so differently, well, I just want to break it down with something that I’ve noticed that can be really helpful. A lot of people when they think self-care, they might be thinking, really, in terms of thinking about adults. They might be thinking, you know, self-care might be you know, getting a good workout, might be going to get a manicure or pedicure for some people, might be going to the doctor, might be all sorts of things. But imagine adults can have a very, you know, personalized idea of what is self-care for me? And people have their own ideas. But when we’re talking about kids, please don’t complicate it. What I generally am hearing when people are saying ‘self-care for kids’ it’s generally four things. When we’re talking about self-care for kids, and we want to teach self-care, we want kids to have better self-care, we’re concerned about a kids self-care. We’re generally talking about four things. What are those four things? Well, with executive function, with the brain’s ability to execute, to do things, to do the things that need to be done in life, sort of the foundation and in my perspective of executive function is good sleep, nutrition, and exercise. Okay, so for self-care, sleep. Is the child or student sleeping? And when I say sleep, I mean restful sleep, where they’re waking up rested. Our executive function, our brain does not function optimally when we don’t sleep well. So is there restful, consistent sleep? That is self-care. Self-care is how do we care for ourselves to create the conditions to have restful sleep? Self-care, two, nutrition. Food, diet, whatever you want to call it, it doesn’t matter. But the question that I ask is, “Is the food that we’re consuming, nourishing, really nourishing, food? Is it nourishing?” So that’s the question I want you to ask. There’s a lot of chemicals and you’re eating a lot of processed foods, is that really nourishing? And what does that do to the brain? So self-care, are we nourishing ourselves? Self-care, exercise. I don’t care what you call it, movement, fitness, whatever. But the brain functions best when our bodies are activated, when we’re getting good fitness, good exercise, good movement, whatever you call it. So those are the first three. Okay, so what’s the other one? I said, there are four, what’s the other one? The other, the other one, I’m just going to call ‘other’ self-care ‘other.’ Other that I hear a lot from parents, teachers, and therapists has to do with any other sort of self-care. I often hear parents who were talking about their child with executive function struggles not wanting to brush their teeth, not showering regularly, mental health could be other, self-harm could be other. So self-care can come in other ways. Just to relook at it. I said earlier, I said, you know, for adults and parents, we think of self-care, and we might think of you know, doing nice things for yourself or getting that workout in, and it’s a different frame. But when we’re thinking about kids really, what my focus is, when I’m saying,”How’s the self-care?” I’m really looking at how’s the sleep, how’s the nutrition, how’s the movement, and how’s the other? What are those other things? And again, there are very consistent things in the other that come up like tooth brushing, I’ve just heard it so many times. It’s, it’s just, it’s so common to hear that, that’s one, there are these common areas. So we have our you know, our sleep, nutrition, exercise and other. What do you think? What’s the difference between self-care for adults? And I’m asking this in a useful way. Okay. We’re really looking for useful answers here. But how do you differentiate that? Is there anything I left out? How can we define it for adults, and how can we define it for kids when we’re really talking about how to serve a human being kid who’s struggling with stuff? What are we looking at here? Did I leave anything out? What are your thoughts about this? How do we help people in this area? Again, my name is Seth Perler. Go head to SethPerler.com or ExecuticeFunctionSummit.com, you can check out what I got. I think probably a freebies for you in the link right there, but a lot of good resources sources for you. Please share my work, give it a thumbs up, like, subscribe, and do the things that support me. If my work is supporting your life, please support me. I’d appreciate that. Have a fantastic day and I wish for you peace of mind, joy, and I also wish for you connection with the people that care about you. Take care.

Why this Temperature Check strategy improves listening, and WHY it matters

Parents, teachers, literally one of the most important things about helping students with Executive Functioning (or anything for that matter) is for us to continue building listening skillsets. Here I share how I use TEMPERATURE CHECKS so you can apply it and help your student feel more heard. Most importantly, this empowers us to be much more helpful to our students.

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. What is up parents, teachers, therapists. It’s me, Seth Perler, Executive Function coach. I helps struggling students navigate this thing called education so they can have great life. In this video, I’m going to talk to you about how to listen. But I’m going to give you one specific tool that I use with middle, high school, college, even younger kids that is an amazing tool that you can apply and you can start using today. I’m going to challenge you actually to use it today, of how to listen better. How to listen so that your child feels more heard. Now, why did I just say that? How to listen so that your child feels heard? Because listening, real listening involves that we feel heard. Imagine you’re talking to someone and you’re saying to them, “Hey, you’re not hearing me,” and they’re like, “I am hearing you. I’m listening.” You’re like, why would you say something like that? You would say that because you actually don’t feel heard, you intuitively don’t feel heard. Maybe they listen to the words that you said, but they didn’t really hear your core message. You know that something got lost in translation there. Okay. So how do we do that? Well, here’s one technique that I use all the time. This is what I call the ‘temperature check.’ So when I do a temperature check with students, again, you can use it with any age kid. You can use it with your graduate students, you can use it with your friends, your spouse, your co-workers, any age, this works with the temperature check. And the way that the temperature check works is it’s a way that I talk to kids about any topic so that I can get real information, so that I can actually be helpful to the kids so that we’re not getting answers like, “Hey, how was school today?” “Fine.” “Hey, how’s it going?” “Fine.” “Hey, how is this class?” “Fine.” “How do you feel?” “Good/bad.” You know, like, so that we can actually get meaningful responses that we can do something with to be helpful to this kiddo. So how a temperature works, how I use it, and you can adapt this in so many ways, but generally speaking, what I usually do is a 1 through 10. So I say, “Which temperature on a scale of 1 to 10?” 10 means awesome. One means horrible. You can reverse that, it just depends on the kidn and the situation. But generally speaking, I do a 1 through 10. Sometimes I’ll do one through 5, and sometimes I’ll do 1 through 5 on hands. If I’m speaking to a whole class, I say, “What’s your temperature on this math work we’re doing? Everybody hold up your hand,” and I have kids go like this or like this, I know that those kids really are struggling with the concept. I have kids going like this, or this or this. So you can actually evaluate a whole group of parents or teachers or kids. But on one, you just do a 1 through 10. Alright, what’s your temperature 1 through 10? Now, what topics can you do this with? So let’s say that I want to know how they’re doing a class. “Hey, what’s your temperature with that science class? What’s your temperature with that science teacher? What’s your temperature with those kids that you were talking about last week that you’re having some problems with? What’s your temperature with how you slept last night? What’s your temperature with your fitness and how your body feels lately? What’s your temperature with the food that you’re eating? Do you feel like you’re eating healthy food?” It doesn’t matter? “What’s your temperature with your procrastination? With your planner, with your whatever it is. You can really use all sorts of topics. “What’s your temperature with school in general? What’s your temperature with school today? What’s your temperature was school this week,” you know? So you’re just saying “What’s your temperature?” Now, what do you do with that information? Let’s say that somebody gives you an answer. Seven, seven is the super like non-committal answer, right? So you can even say something like, “What’s your answer, and you can’t pick seven?” because it forces them to pick an eight or a six and do something, you know, a little more. If this is the kid who always says, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” you can say something like that, you know, but you can’t pick seven. But anyhow, you want to know, you know “What’s your temperature with this thing?” And then they tell you. It’s a one, it’s a three, it’s a five, it’s a 10, whatever it is. Your question after that is “Why? Cool, six. Why? Why’d you pick a six?” And then they tell you, and if you follow my work, you’re using wait time to be really patient and really allow them to feel heard and tell you why they chose that. Then you might say, “Cool, tell me more.” Again, tell the question, ‘tell me more’ is a way to be a even better listener, to communicate even deeper, just opening that door. “Cool, tell me more.” And then pause, wait, and then they tell you a bit more. So now you have an understanding of why they chose what they chose, and you’re starting to get somewhere. You’re starting to say, “Wow, I know how I can help this kiddo. I’m getting some real answers that are actually useful in this situation.” So now, and again, parent, teacher, therapist, whoever you are, we can all use this technique. Now, you’ve said “What’s your temperature? Why?” and then you’ve given some space. You’ve done what’s called ‘holding space’ so that they feel heard and you can get some good information. Now what I follow up with is “Cool. What could make it one point higher?” So if it was a six, I might say, “Cool, what would make it a seven? A solid seven?” If it’s a one “Cool, what would make it a two?” I’m not gonna say, well, what would make it a 10. If it’s a one, I’m gonna say “What would make it a two?” I might say, “What would make it a 1.1?” You know, the mind has to not feel overwhelmed by abstractness, we have to make things concrete for these kids, we have to give people an opportunity to find their own solutions for things, what can make a one a 1.1? What can make a one a two? What can make a six a seven? And what happens is, is that my students at this point usually give me like, really good information, and I’m not the one telling them, “You should do this, you should do that,” and blah, blah. They’re coming up with their own solutions, there’s agency, there’s ownership, there’s buy in, these are their ideas, that now we can start exploring. You know, a lot of times we adults, tell them what we think they need to hear. We don’t give them the opportunity, and nor do we value them as being competent enough to come up with good ideas. So you know, here we’re saying, “Okay, cool, what would make it a seven?” Now, the answer, you may know, really isn’t clear enough, or it’s really not action-based enough, or strategy-based enough, that is going to get them where we’re trying to get them in whatever the situation is. So at that point, you can be like, you know, they’re like, “Well, to make it a seven, this would happen.” So for example, if I said, “What would make school,” let’s say, they say school is a two, and I say, “Okay, what would make school a three?” And they say, “If there was no homework,” well, what am I going to do with that answer? That doesn’t help us in the situation. So I’m going to guide them. I’d be like, “Cool. Wow, tell me more about that.” I want to hear them. What would it be like if there was no homework? That’s going to give me some important insights anyway. But that’s not an answer that allows us to give the kid agency and ownership and problem-solving ability to really know how to solve the problem. I mean, if the school feels like a two, how can we make it feel like a three? Like, they’re not going to magically make homework disappear. So we want to guide them to be like, “Cool, that’s a great answer. I want to understand that. What else? What else? Tell me what else could make it a three?” And then we eventually may be like, “Do you want to hear what I think?” And then we can start guiding them. Anyhow, I wanted to basically in this video, I wanted to talk about how to listen better and I want to teach you this temperature check strategy. Again, you utilize it any way you want. But that’s the gist of what I do. I usually do 1 through 10. I usually say, I usually say “Why?” You know, “What’s the number? Why? What would make it better,?” and I help strategize from there. Quick tip for you. Again, my name is Seth Perler, Executive Function coach, go to SethPerler.com. I have a lot of freebies. If you like this video and this helped, you please give me a thumbs up like, subscribe, share it with somebody, Sharing is the best thing you can do to help me. Leave a comment below. What is one way that you use to better listen, or hear, or help somebody feel heard? What’s an idea that works with you that you’ve implemented? Share it with us, help us in our lives as well. My main wish for you today is this. I hope that you have connection with your child and the people that are important to you today. And I hope that you have peace of mind and some joy in your life today. Take care. I’ll see you soon.

How a LOCKER DUMP can make school easier

For disorganized students, doing a periodic Locker Dump can help make everything easier. Here I tell a few tips about HOW to approach it and WHY it’s so helpful.

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. So you have probably heard of a backpack dump, right? Well, what about a locker dump? So what’s up, my name is Seth Perler. I’m an Executive Function coach, and I help struggling students navigate this thing about education. so they can have an awesome life. And executive function is a quality of life issue, this is something that can really get in the way. And in my site, SethPerler.com, I have a bunch of freebies for you and stuff that helps you. But a locker dump, let’s get back to this, a locker dump is like a backpack dump. So for any of you high schoolers that might be watching, anybody who has a locker at all, what happens with my students is these are students who you know, their lockers get overwhelming, the backpacks, their folders, they put papers in the wrong folders, put them in no folders, the backpack is jammed with papers in the bottom of the backpack, the locker is full, their desks are messy. It’s just generally very overwhelming. What a locker dump does for you is it really helps you to take stock of what you have, reorganized your stuff. And it’s probably really important if you are not the most organized student. It’s probably important to do a locker dump, probably once a month at least. It’d probably great to do them once a week to just sort of reset. Here’s what happens when my students do a locker dump. They will find out, they’ll be going through everything in the locker. And the way that I do it in my office, when I’m working with students in the office, is I have the student just put everything into a plastic bag or something, just get everything from the locker, and I mean everything. Gum wrappers, stuff from the bottom, broken pencils, just get it all in a bag and get it to the office. Or if you’re doing it at home, get it onto the living room floor or wherever. You might want to lay out a big old sheet, or something, or a giant table, but a big sheet to put everything on that you can collect all the crumbs and dust and everything and just shake it outside when you’re all done. But the point is, is get everything, every molecule from that locker at home, so that you can then make sense of it. So what you want to do is get all your stuff, lay it out on the floor or the table or whatever, and then start going through every paper. Here’s a mistake that a lot of my students will make. They’ll pick up like four papers, and they’ll be like, “I don’t need this anymore, Seth,” and I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s look at what those are.” So sometimes you have to be real careful not to grab multiple things, and really look at it and say, you know, “What is this?” “Whoa, these four papers, I actually need this one.” You have to be pretty detailed. A question that I ask students a lot when we’re doing this is they’re like, “I need to keep this,” and I say “Why do you want to keep that?” Now they may have a good answer. Cool, we’ll keep it. But actually, maybe, a lot of times, they’ll go “Oh, actually, I can get rid of that.” So we want to do things fast, and we got to really realize that sometimes going slower is faster. So we really want to be intentional, look at every single thing from locker, reset, overhaul, get it back to where it needs to be, get everything reorganized. You’ll also probably come across things in the locker where you’re like, “Oh, I thought I turn that in. I got a zero on that and it’s right here. Now I can turn it in get credit for it.” Or “Oh, I forgot this project was coming up. I’m glad I saw that. Oh, I forgot I had that charger, I’ve been looking for that forever.” So it can really help in so many detailed ways. Anyhow, my name is Seth Perler. Give this a like, thumbs up, comment, whatever the heck, subscribe. If you like my work, please do share my work and please subscribe. But I want to hear from you. What is your comment? What ideas do you have for a locker dump? Are there any other kinds of dumps between locker dumps and backpack dumps? Maybe a desk dump, or a drawer dump every once in a while that you find helpful? And then are there any other tips with a locker dump that I may have left out that could help other people? Go ahead and put it in the comments. What are your thoughts right now? I appreciate you I want to wish you joy and peace in your heart and most of all connection with the people in your life today that you care about. Take care.

How to not Fail classes- What to email Teachers late in a semester?

Parents, teachers, therapists, you’ll like this one because a lot of students FAIL right at the END of a semester, and there is a lot we can do to help support them if we know HOW to be proactive. Here I break down HOW to email teachers at the end of a semester if you are trying to support a struggling student. I share one of my actual templates and tell about the nuances that matter.

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. Hey, what’s up? It’s me, Seth Perler. So parents, teachers, maybe therapists are gonna like this one. In this video I’m going to talk to you about when it’s the end of the semester and you want to help make sure that your child who struggles with executive function passes the semester, what do you email teachers? So I go through this a lot with my families that I work with every single semester. Here is a template that I was using with families this particular semester, at the end of this semester. You teachers may want to know what I share in this email, because it can help you to be more productive in your classroom and support kids who are struggling with this stuff. And parents, you can obviously use this as you will. So go ahead and take the ideas that you like, you can hit pause on this and jot down whatever you want, use what you like, don’t use what you don’t like. So, and therapists, you’ll definitely know how I approach this as a coach. So again, the problem is, it’s the end of the semester, at the end of the semester. You can look at my other work, I have lots of freebies on my site, SethPerler.com, but you can look at my other work to figure out what PEPR is, P E P R. But basically, at the end of the semester, here’s what happens. Kids who struggle with executive function are going to tell you parents, “Leave me alone, get off my back, I’ve got this, you know, um, my grades are going up. You know, I’m getting caught up,” but they’re always getting caught up. So the actual executive function skills and habits that are needed to be successful are not there. Like they’re always playing catch up. So the skills or the foundation is not there. So now at the end of the semester, regardless of where the skills are, we still you know, we want our kids to pass their classes and get as much out of their education as they can. So the problem is parents, the problem is this. You the parents are often unclear about what the heck needs to happen. So you ask your kid, “What’s going on in school? How’s it going? Do you have any makeup work? Do you have any incompletely work? Zeroes? Do you have anything to redo? Do you have any test corrections to do?” “I’m fine, leave me alone. I’ve got this,” you know, and you’re trying to be helpful, but you’re trying to figure out what’s going on. Then maybe you go and you look at the portals, you go look at the teacher sites, you’re trying to figure out what the heck is coming up, how can we make sure? You might email or call teachers, just try or ask other parents and try to figure out what the heck is going on. The problem again, parents is clarity. You’re unclear about what the heck needs to happen. And you’ve seen the pattern over and over. So you have this feeling in the pit of your stomach, “Oh my gosh, is my kid forgetting something big? Are they going to fail a class last minute and we didn’t know. We could have done something differently had we known.” So this email template will help you know exactly what to ask, again, use it or not, I don’t really care use what you like, Okay. End of semester. What’s the purpose? Parents do this to see how their child is doing at the end of the semester when things can fall apart fast, and when students who seem to be passing and failing. How the heck does that happen? The subject, I would probably put in ‘urgent’ and then your child’s name. So that’s the subject. Why would I do that? Teachers get a lot of email. Respect that teachers get a lot of emails, you want to stand out in that inbox though, and you want them to reply, but they’re getting a lot of it. So you have to stand out somehow. So that’s what I recommend, just pop that word urgent and your kid’s name so that they know. And then you can send it either to the entire team of teachers, you can CC the principal or the counselor, or you can just send it to one teacher. If they tend to be a supportive teacher, send it to one teacher. If it’s a teacher that your kid doesn’t resonate with, and they really haven’t, they really don’t seem to get your kid and does not feel like a very supportive teacher, then probably just CC it to everybody so that there’s some sort of a paper trail, and there’s pressure on them to give you a reasonable response that actually answers your question. So basically, you’re going to start out with that, “Hey, teachers, what’s up. First of all,” and always start positive, “First of all, thanks for your support my child, we appreciate you. Next, we don’t want to bug you.” So that just shows that you understand that they’re busy. You can word it however you want, if you like that part of it, but “We need some quick answers about the end of the semester so we can be supportive.” So you’re telling them why, you’re not attacking them. Teachers get a lot of pressure, they get a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of “My kid said this,” and it may or may not be true, what the kid is saying or it may not be the whole truth. Teachers can get a lot of pressure from parents that don’t understand what their intentions are with expectations or things like that. So always assume positive intent with teachers, they’re working their butts off to help our kids you know, so. As you’re explaining to them, you’re not attacking them. You’re saying “Hey, we want to be supportive to our kid. We don’t want to get blindsided because we’re not always clear, like I said, on what’s going on.” Here are some questions you might want to ask: 1) How’s my kiddo doing in your class? Open-ended. 2) Any missing, or late work, or anything? Any finals? (This what I call PEPR, P E P R.) Final exams, papers, projects or readings coming up that you need to know about at the end of the semester, because these are the big long term things that kids do at the last minute, the night before, that they should have been working on and you’re like, “Why didn’t you tell me that two weeks ago when you found out about it?” And they’re like, “I don’t know.” So you want to ask about that stuff so that you’re not blindsided. Is there any big things coming up? And if so, where exactly can we find the study guide, or the rubric, or the due dates, or whatever you need? And then 3) Is there anything else that you might want to know? This is just one way to do it, you can ask these things. Now I want to talk specifically about just sort of getting further on with, are there any of these things or these things? So some other things you may want to be asking teachers is this. Here’s the problem parents. Teachers post their expectations, they all have different expectations. They all grade differently. They all have different syllabi and different things that they’re teaching and different things that they weight differently. You know, one teacher may really put a lot of emphasis on essays, another one on doing homework, another one on tests. So what you may want to do is you may want to say, “Hey, by the way, another question I have is, when do you update your gradebook? When do you update the assignments? Where can I find them, specifically? Where am I supposed to look?” Basically what you want to know, let me make these an easier question for your parents. What you want to know is, “Where do you post important stuff? And when do you post important stuff?” So that you, the parent, and your kid, don’t have to be randomly trying to check all the time, so that you know exactly when and where to go look for the information that you need. Because again, parents are not clear what’s due, when’s it due, how long should it take? What do I do if my kid is stuck? You know, all these sorts of things. So you might want to ask a question like that. “When do you post this stuff? What do you post in? And where do you post it?” so that you can know. Then finally, what I recommend ending your email with is something similar to this, you know, tell the teacher “Hey, we don’t need a long email.” Okay. Teachers have a lot of emails. They’ve got grading to do, they’ve got planning to do, they’ve got working with the kids to do, they’ve got… teachers take their work with home with them all the time, like respect that. Give them the, you know, be like, “Hey, we don’t need you to write us a book. So just give us a quick something so that we know.” So that’s why I put this sentence there. So, “We don’t need long email. But please send a super quick reply to point us in the right direction when you get a minute. Thanks for all you do,” and then your names. Now I put a P.S. in here for a very specific reason. “We know you’re busy. So if we don’t hear back from you, we’ll resend this tomorrow so it’s on your radar,” I’m going I’m use the words ‘so,’. Notice I use quick reply to point us in the right direction, like that’s the ‘so’ right? You’re giving them the reasons you’re doing things so that they know they’re not being attacked, but you’re saying, “Look, you’re busy. But we need something, and if we don’t hear from you, we’re gonna resend this.” Why do I say that? Because I’ve had so many parents and students, email teachers and wait for reply and wait for reply and wait for a reply. And this is you know, you need answers. And a lot of times teachers again, they’re bogged down with so much that it’s hard for them to reply. But if you tell them, “Hey, send us a quick thing. And if we don’t hear from you, we’ll send you a reminder, a friendly reminder, hey, get back to us. And if we don’t hear from you, we’ll send it again the next day.” Then you can start CCing other people if you’re really not getting anything so that you can be like, “Hey team, hey, if anybody sees this teacher, let them know that we sent this because we really need to know as soon as possible.” Anyhow, my name is Seth Perler, I’m executive function coach. There’s tons of free content on my site, my YouTube. If you like this, I put a lot of work into giving you excellent resources, real practical stuff. Give me a thumbs up, give me like, leave a comment. At the end of the semester, what do you do to get clarity about what’s going on? You have any tips for us? How do you get it from your kid, from the teachers? If you’re teacher, how do you give clarity? Go ahead and put it in the comments. Check out SethPerler.com, and I have ExecutiveFunctionSummit.com, a summit that I do every year for parents and just lots of great resources and stuff. I really appreciate you supporting my work any way you can. Leave a comment, thumbs up, like, subscribe, etc. Have a fantastic day. Most of all, my wish and my hope for you, number one is that you have real present connection with your kiddo today. And number two, it’s that you have peace in your heart and joy in your life today. Have a great day. Take care see you later.

Better Student Habits?

Changing habits is SO incredibly challenging for people with executive function challenges. Students often have the goal of “improving grades”, but don’t always connect the dots that changing the habits is exactly what will get the grade to improve. So the “goal” isn’t really the grade, it’s the change in habits! This video breaks down how you can make a custom habit tracker to help you.

Transcript: Click here for the video transcript PDF Note to people who like transcripts: I do these pdf transcripts and closed captioning for small number of people who requested them, because it’s important. But the time and money it requires does adds up, so if you’d like to help offset this, you can donate here > Thanks, Seth Parents, teachers, students, what is up? You’re going to like this video because I’m going to talk about habit trackers. So for students who start with executive function stuff, you have a lot of late work, missings, incompletes, they’re trying to change habits, they’re trying to get more organized, trying to prioritize better, trying to use planners more, all of these sorts of things, they’re really working on some stuff. Habit trackers can be a game changer. I’m going to share with you one that I made with a student recently, so a lot of the work that I do we’ll custom make certain things, daily plans, planners, whatever. But in this case, we worked on a habit tracker for this particular student. And I changed it a little bit just for anonymity purposes for the student, and just to make it a little more applicable to a lot of people. Now the habit tracker I’m going to show you would probably be good for middle, high school, college students, but you will have to really consider the complexity of it because you want you don’t want it to be so hard that you’re not going to use it. I’m going to go ahead and show you how I created it and why I created it the way I created it. Go ahead and take whatever ideas you want, and I hope that this helps you or the students that you work with, or if you’re a student, I hope this helps for life. I use habit trackers myself, they’re tremendous, because I’m not one of those people who’s just like, “Oh, I’m so disciplined, I’m so motivated, I want to create a change and I’m really driven by that thing,” nope. It’s very hard for me to create these changes, so that’s why I use them because it allows me to create change in a really manage way. So here is the one that I created, I’m going to go ahead and show this to you. And I’m going to break down why I did it the way I did it. So basically, this is the gist of it. And this is another version that I’m going to show you in just a minute and I’ll tell you why I’m going to show you that version. But this is a habit tracker, and I’m going to increase the size a little bit so we can see it better here, and I will go ahead and break down the different pieces of it. First of all, what we did is we did a two week date range for this particular student. The reason we did two weeks is because it’s a good amount of data to be able to visually see. Now with this student, we were talking about different ways to visually see it, like should we use stickers, this student is a high school student who likes stickers, should we use numbers, yada, yada, I’ll get some more about that. But whatever you use, whether it’s stickers, whether it’s color, whether it’s numbers, whatever, make sure that the amount of time you choose is pretty appropriate so that the data works for whatever situation you’re in. We happen to write the dates that we were looking at, and these are one through two of an eight week, just a little challenge to see what happens. Again, there are a lot of details on this particular one. But we did that purposely, you don’t have to add this many details, do something that will be successful. So I wanted to show you that really quick. I’m going to go ahead and go to 100% to make it smaller. This also, what I did is I changed it so that this was on landscape. So the way you do that is you go to ‘File’ and then ‘Page Setup’ and set it to landscape because it just fits better for what we were creating. You do you, but that’s what worked for us. And then our margins are like point five, so we ended up changing the margins, also in the Page View, Page Setup button that will help you to change the margins. We wanted to maximize the space on this page, so that is what we ended up doing. Now I’m going to go ahead and increase the size and walk you through some more parts of it. What we did here is we typed in the date, so you can actually leave these blank so that you can replicate it and use it for different students in your classroom or you can replicate it for yourself. But what we did is we actually put the dates in here for the two weeks that we are doing, and then we put the days that were starting on a Monday, and we added those in here. So that’s how we started the dates and the day. Then going down are the habits, I’ll talk about the habits in a moment. We also did an overall success on a scale of 1 through 10. So what that does is that allows you to look at, let’s say that you were looking at total sleep time, and this particular student wants more sleep. So they can look at you know, their overall success. And let’s say that they really improved on it and they gave themselves an eight. It doesn’t matter, it just matters that whatever you know, you choose to do that you can explain it. But you know, we can let people create their own ways of evaluating, but it’s really important to look back and see the overall success. So we have an overall success column here. Now, not everything is going to get in here. I’ll explain that in a minute. So basically, what we chose to look at here is the last bed time, this is the only confusing thing on this chart. So that is the previous night’s bedtime, so let’s say that it was 10:30 in the morning and then at 6am is when they woke up. Now so this is the night before and that day. The reason that we did it that way is because then we can figure out the total sleep time of the night before. So this is just the only wonky thing is it’s the previous night. Everything else, this is Monday. This whole column here is Monday, but this one thing here is Sunday, just to be clear. What time did they go to bed the night before? What time did they Make up how much total time did they sleep? So their goal is to get eight hours of sleep at night. So this way they’re tracking it, they can track it each night. They probably don’t need, but they may need to have success, how successful were they on waking up, maybe they gave themselves a four, maybe going to bed was a nine, whatever. And then they consider their overall an eight, whatever. Now this student doesn’t eat all their meals. So they want to look at how many, they’re supposed to the three meals a day and sometimes they don’t eat until evening. So this student wants to be sure that they’re tracking it to try to eat three meals a day. Meal one yes or no, meal two yes or no, meal three yes or no. Self-care on a 1 through 3. A one means self-care wasn’t that great, didn’t brush teeth, didn’t shower, didn’t brush or whatever the thing was, general self-care. And a three means great, and a one means not great, and two means medium, whatever. And then brushing their teeth, 0, 1. or 2? Now this is how many times this student wants to check how many times because they want to brush their teeth twice a day. And they they can either in this case, brush their teeth zero times a day, one time a day, or two times a day. So that’s why we chose the zero through two for the metric here. Did they exercise, yes or no? Did they shower, yes or no? Did they brush their hair, yes or no? This student wants to track this, okay? Did they meditate? If so, how many minutes? Did they do five gratitudes? We do a lot with gratitude. So grateful for this, this, this, this, and this. Gratitude really helps change the brain in a magnificent way. Did they clean the room for five minutes, yes or no? They want to just be cleaning a little bit every day. Did they use their planner, yes or no? Did they make a plan for the day, yes or no? How was their focus on a scale of 1 to 3? Was their focus really good or really weak? Were they kind of themselves? This student wants to track how kind they’re to themselves. And did they have what would they are calling ‘fun time,’ make time to have fun every day? And then overall daily temperature, what would they consider it? And so then you can see you know, like I said before, they can choose to evaluate over here, you know, how did I use daily plans during this two week period? And then they can go on to the next two week period, and they can restart and they can see everything. But the thing is, is that what we wanted to do was make this a very easy chart, it only takes a minute to do. They can run through and do everything, and we want it to be very visual, but it wasn’t visual enough. So since we’re not doing stickers on this one, we’re like “How can we make it more visual?” Meanwhile, I want to mention, the intention is not to type stuff in. The intention is we printed these off four weeks worth, or for 8 weeks week’s worth but four sheets. The intention is to print it off and to handwrite it so you don’t have to do it on the computer, but to have it on a clipboard that’s real easy to access. So anyhow, wasn’t visual enough. So how can we make it more visual? Because the more visual it is, the more you, or me, or whoever’s doing the habit tracker is going to be able to, like for me when I do habit trackers myself, it’s very frustrating when it’s visual, and I can see color on it, so I use color. So what we decided to do on this one is to use highlighters, but we’re using colors to say “Yes, this felt successful,” or “No, it didn’t feel successful,” and I’ll show you how that looks right now. So here, this one, what we did is let’s say their last bedtime was at 10:30pm and they felt that was too late. But waking up at 6am was good, that the seven and a half hours wasn’t enough for them. But then they did meal one that was green, meal two was green, meal three they didn’t do so that’s red. So you can sort of self-reflect, like self-reflect. Maybe in this case, a 2 felt like a win, right? And brushing their teeth two times a day is definitely win, but even though this isn’t a 3 it’s a win. And then exercise, no, no, so those are red. Brush their hair, yes. Meditated for two minutes, maybe they wanted 10 but they did two and that’s still a win for this person. So anyhow, you can choose what’s red and green. But what’s really cool about this is that when you can see the entire chart and the entire thing is filled out and there are colors, and you can see a progression of more green or more red, and you can really visually see where things are going, it’s very motivating. It becomes very concrete. Part of the problem with those of us like me who have ADHD, executive function challenges, and things of the sort, part of the problem with the prefrontal cortex with this stuff is our ability to accurately or realistically self-reflect and really look at things objectively and accurately. And other people might be able to see us pretty accurately but we often can’t see ourselves as accurately. So this makes it very concrete, not abstract and it makes it a lot easier for a lot of us to be able to accomplish goals. I hope that video was helpful for you. My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach, and I help struggling students navigate education that they can have a great life. Please, I put a lot of work into my work as you can see here, I’m sharing this with you for free on YouTube. And if you like what I’m doing, give it a thumbs up. Take a second to do that, and subscribe, that supports. Please share my work, snag the link and share with somebody today, somewhere. Leave a comment, that also helps. My question to you in the comments is this. I’m interested in hearing what do you think would be a really great thing to have on habit trackers? So what would you put? Completed homework or organize backpack? Like what things might be important for you or people that you know, and do you have any other ideas that would make a habit tracker like this better? Feel free to add it in the comments below. I’d love to read your comments and help other people through those comments. Again, please share my work. You can go to SethPerler.com by the way, my website for a bunch of freebies for parents, teachers and students, and my YouTube channel, and my ExecutiveFunctionSummit.com for my summit, and all the things. My wish, my hope for you today is this. I hope that you have peace of mind and peace of heart today, and I hope that you connect with the kids in your life that you care about. Real, have some real connection and quality time today. Be well, take care.

How Schools Can Improve

As we know, the “system” is unbelievably behind when it comes to serving neurodiverse kids. So what do we do about it? We know things aren’t going to change anytime soon, but we have kids who need the right help NOW. In this video I scratch the surface on twhat I think is absolutely teh #1 most importnat thing we “shoud” change. Hopefully you’ll get some good ideas from it that you can use to support your children/students now.

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. What is up parents, teachers, and therapists? My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach which means that I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life. And in this video, I’m going to talk about the number one most important thing in my opinion that I think schools need. So as we know, schools are filled with a lot of incredible well-meaning, awesome, hardworking teachers that are often underpaid, under resourced, overworked, have too many students, etc, etc. We know the story. And these teachers are working within the confines of a system that is oftentimes archaic and outdated. Oftentimes, it’s full of awesome innovation. But we really have basically the same model that we’ve had for way too long, and we don’t really challenge or change things, or think even think about things and the things that we should be changing. We just don’t do that. Why not? I don’t know. But there’s so many ways to improve schools. If I were to ask, I run an expert summit every year with a bunch of experts, like 25 experts, if I were to ask each of them every year, “What do you think is the number one thing that we could do?” They would all have different answers about how to change schools. If I were to ask them to pretend that schools never existed, and they were part of a team, and what they say helps to drive how to create schools, these things called ‘schools,’ they would all have different ideas about that. So what I want to look at, though, is, given how things are now, let’s say that not a lot of things change, because they’re not likely to. What is the number one thing, and the reason I’m telling you, this parents, teachers and therapists, is because knowing this one thing, if you agree with what I’m saying, and I really don’t care if you do or not, I do this to be of service and if you don’t like it then fine. But if you agree with this, then I think that this is something that you can learn how to apply to the kids that you care about, if you’re a parent and it’s your own kid, if you’re a teacher and it’s the kids that you’re working with, if you’re a therapist, a tutor, a para, or whoever. So what is that number one thing? The number one thing if I could change anything about schools, that would change if I could only pick one thing. That number one thing is I would have all schools in the entire world on the planet, I would have all schools be what’s called ‘trauma informed.’ We would have trauma informed teachers, trauma informed administrators, trauma informed schools, parents would be learning what trauma informed means. And here’s what trauma informed means. Here’s how I am going to explain it to you, and I’d be very thrilled to hear in the comments, particularly from you therapists who have a lot of experience with this stuff. Let us know how you would define it because that will help all of us have a better understanding of it. But here’s how I look at trauma informed work, and this is a big part of what I do. As an executive function coach, I’m not just trying to get kids good grades, who cares about grades if life doesn’t feel real good, and it’s always a slog, and you’re struggling with stuff. Trauma informed to me means that there are these two main areas that I talk about. I talk about the story and I talk about the body. What the heck does that mean? That means that all of us human beings. There’s something called Big T trauma and little T trauma. Big T trauma is what a lot of people think of with a huge event, like if there was a burglary, or you were in a war, or a car accident, like those are big T traumas. But little T traumas are very subtle. They’re happening often, repeatedly over a long period of time, these little T traumas that all of us, all of us have had these experiences. But we just don’t know it because we’re not trauma informed. And when you have a classroom, where you have kids who have had trauma, and you have teachers who are completely unaware of trauma, and they’re completely unaware that these students may be going through experiences in their very classroom that may have nothing to do with the teacher or the class at all, but that they are having actual physiological experiences in response to traumas that they’ve had or they’re having, and we’re not aware of it. And we’re just going on like clockwork, and just trying to do what the school expects us to do with our smart goals and our curriculum and our standards and all our standardized tests and all the expectations that are put on teachers. How do we help? So I look at so we have, the big T and the little T. But I look at the body and the story. Here’s what I mean by that. The story is the narrative or story or thoughts that play out in our mind. It’s our perception or our attitude about a thing. That’s what the story is. The story is the narrative, it’s the mind, its thoughts. It’s the narrative about the situation. So two people can been in the exact same situation, right? Let’s say that you have somebody who is a snake handler and there is a poisonous snake, and they’re calm as a cucumber, and they’re able to catch it and get the venom for an anti-venom for somebody or whatever, right. And then let’s say somebody has a horrible fear of snakes and they’re in the same room, these two people can be having a completely different situation, even though they’re having the same experience. In fact, the person handling the snake is more at threat. So what happens is, is that we have a narrative and a story, we have a narrative about, “Oh, my gosh, I have a test coming up right now. I forgot, I totally forgot to study for that test. Oh, my gosh, I did study for the test. But I’m totally nervous during this test, I’m going to fail this.” That’s a narrative and a story. “Oh, my gosh, I have a test. I’m so ready for this, I feel so good about this. Oh, my gosh, I’m so excited to see my friends. Oh, my gosh, everybody’s judging me. Oh, my gosh, all my teachers hate me.” We have stories and narratives in our head, about the world. So when we’ve had these traumas, which we all have, as I said, we have stories. And the problem is sometimes the stories are not proportionally sized to the actual threat of the situation. So our nervous system is designed to help us stay safe, perceive threats, but sometimes we perceived threats that aren’t necessarily threats. So if we’re really afraid of that test, but the test isn’t going to hurt us, but we can still have fear and a reaction to that. So we have the story, the narratives, the stories and the mind, but we also have the body. And what that means is that when we have a perception of threat, or a perception that we’re not safe, when our when our brain tells us or our mind or story or narrative tells us we’re not safe, or we’re being threatened, that could even be parents saying, “Hey, you said you’re gonna do your chores, when you’re gonna do it?” A kid might fly off the handle, because there’s a perception of a story. “I don’t want to do this, I feel threatened and attacked right now.” What happens is, is that story can tell a part of the brain called the amygdala, can send a message the amygdala that says, “Yo, we’re being threatened, we’re not safe.” And the amygdala just says, “Cool,” the amygdala doesn’t check to verify that the story is accurate. The amygdala just says, “Cool. Got this, thank you.” The amygdala sends a message to the adrenals on top of the kidneys, and the adrenals send adrenaline the heart, sends down to the body for fight, flight or freeze. And you can look up something of polyvagal theory as well. I love polyvagal theory if you want. But basically, we’re having a physiological response. Now in a classroom, you might have 20, 25, 30 kids. And kids might be having sensations of their traumas or experiences or feeling uncomfortable or unsafe, or threatened even in the classroom because they’re having thoughts and stories and narratives. But their body’s having experiences. And the body responds in many different ways. So a person can look totally chill, but they’re actually having an experience. And when we are not trauma informed, we’re not addressing this unless you’ve got brilliant, intuitive, caring teachers who are attuned, they don’t even know what attunement is, and they’ve never heard the term before, but they know how to do it like a master, like a Jedi. There are people who are really attuned, and just brilliant teachers who really understand nervous systems, even if they couldn’t articulate it. But essentially, when we are not trauma informed, and when we’re not self-aware, or self-reflective, or metacognitive, or introspective or reflective, what happens is that we tend to live very automatically. We react to life, rather than respond to life. The more trauma informed we are about ourselves or about others, the more we can respond. So we can say, “Oh, wow, I just had the story, this narrative this thought,” and we can go to a friend and bounce it off. “I’m just having the story. I just want to check, am I crazy here or what? Like, I’m having this narrative in my mind and here’s what I’m thinking, what do you think about that?” So we can like bounce the story off someone but we don’t have to just say, “Oh my gosh, I had a thought must be true.” There’s a saying I use with my students a lot, “Don’t always believe everything you think.” You can’t always believe everything you think. So we can be ruled by those thoughts, but we can also be ruled to the story and the body. We can also be ruled by the feelings, the emotions. We have a feeling of fear, we have a feeling that we’re being threatened. Our body feels uncomfortable because we have this narrative, this story, this perception that we’re not safe, and our body feels uncomfortable. Now when our narrative, our story, and when our body, when we have these uncomfortable experiences, and we just react, and we are not responding, we make bad choices, or I hate using the word ‘bad’ but maladaptive, often dysfunctional choices that aren’t necessarily in our best interest. So again, the more trauma informed we are about ourselves, and the more trauma informed a school is and all these people, the more everybody is aware that we are often making decisions based on false narratives. Based on narratives and stories and sensations and feelings and emotions and the nervous system responding to things. We’re often making them based on just how we feel. I’m going to stop in a second here. But I do have to say that when we’re dealing with the narrative, and the story, and the mind, and I’m not going to get into detail on this, this is for another video. But you might want to know that we also have these things called ‘biases,’ or cognitive distortions. You can research biases, or cognitive distortions, but that means that a lot of times we believe what we want to believe, so that it’s not necessarily reality. In fact, that’s one of the big problems with all the misinformation and disinformation that’s in the world today, we’re just saturated with so much of it. We tend to gravitate towards things that seem to make sense to us, without verifying the truth about it. That really scares me for kids, because I want them to be conscious beings who think for themselves and think things through. But when we do just react to life, and when we don’t respond mindfully, and when those cognitive biases or cognitive distortions influence us too much, again, we’re not having the quality of life that we want. We really want our kids to have a great quality of life, that is why we do what we do. Anyway, I hope that helps you. Again, my name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach, and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can launch a great life. If you like what I’m doing, give it a thumbs up, give it a like, subscribe to it, share my work with somebody, please. If you like this, go ahead and snag the link and share it with someone right now, that really helps me get my message out. And I have a bunch of freebies on my website, SethPerler.com, or you can check out my other site ExecutiveFunctionSummit.com. My real wish for you today, what I hope for you as you’re leaving this video right now, my number one hope for you is that you have peace of mind, peace of heart today, and that you go connect with the people that you care about and spend time with that because that’s the most important thing ever. Have a great day. Take care.

INTROVERTS: How to support with Executive Function, ADHD, 2e

I have had so many questions over the years about how to support introverts with executive function, that I made this video to discuss some good strategies I use. One common question I get is “what if my child/student doesn’t talk much, but I need to know things so I can help???

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. Hey, it’s Seth with SethPerler.com and ExecutiveFunctionSummit.com. If you are trying to support introverts, how do we do that? I’m going to give you four strategies here. I don’t care if you’re an introvert, an ambivert, an extrovert or who you are watching this, I don’t care if you’re a parent, a student, or a therapist, or teacher, this is for you, if you want to support introverts. What does that mean? Well, I get these questions from people quite often about introverts. And it’s, how do we support an introvert? Or how do we support someone who doesn’t say much? We’re trying to get answers, we’re trying to be helpful, but we just they don’t say much. And what often happens is, is that especially people like me, extroverts, although I do not do this. But people, a lot of extroverts, like we’re talkers, and we can speak to another extrovert and it’s just like, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce back, like a tennis game, just back and forth. But when it comes to me working with people who are more quiet or introverted, or don’t say as much, I have to create a different sort of space, I have to create a space where they can really feel heard. So essentially, what we’re trying to do here, if you want, I’m going to give you four ways to do this, but if you want to support introverts or people who don’t talk much, you really want to be able to be more helpful. It’s about the same thing that we all want. So basically, there’s two types of people in your life. You have people who you feel secure with, and people who you feel insecure with, and of course, people in between. But generally speaking, we want to feel secure, not insecure with ourselves and with others. So you can have an auto mechanic, a dentist, a doctor, a teacher, a friend, a parent, a relative, anybody. Some people feel really secure, and some feel insecure. So someone who feels secure, you feel like they hear you, you feel like they’ve got your back, you feel like they understand you. You feel like they listen, like they see you. They take time to get to know who you are. Okay, that’s secure. Insecure is you don’t feel heard. And the same thing with introverts or people who don’t talk a lot, they need to feel heard. How do we make someone feel heard? Well the secret, and I’m going to give you four strategies, but the real secret is: we actually hear them. That’s the real secret. But I’m going to give you practical ideas, because a lot of people who are asking this are parents or teachers who are really trying to be helpful, but they just don’t know how to get the person to talk. And a lot of times, we mess it up by talking too much or not giving them the space. I’m going to give you one example that you’ll be able to, especially for you and introverts, you’ll be able to recognize here of something that happens quite often that drives me nuts. When somebody is presenting or teaching or giving a talk and they go like this. “Alright, so does anybody have any questions? Nope. Okay, let’s move on.” That’s not enough time. You know, “Hey, anybody got any questions before I move on Okay, great.” So how can people even have time to process? Now some people know exactly what they’re going to say. But a lot of people need a lot more time. So I actually, the first strategy I’m going to talk about, I got four here… 1. The first strategy is called wait time, wait time. And that is where when I’m speaking with somebody, I oftentimes in my head will count, doing wait time. And but what I’m doing is I’ll say to a student, let’s say that I’m working with a student and the students like, “Yes Seth, I really want to work on planning.” And I say, “Well, what do you, what is planning? Why is it important to you? What do you want to work on?” Well, a lot of times the answer is, “I don’t know.” And ‘I don’t know’ is a great way to get that person who you’re working with or talking to, to sort of rescue you and finish the conversation for you. But that’s doesn’t help me when someone says “I don’t know.” So when somebody says, “I don’t know,” let’s say I’m saying “Okay, so what do you want to work on the planners?” Then the students like, “I don’t know,” I’m like, “Okay, take your time. Think about it. I’ll be right here, just listening.” And I look away, so that there’s sort of no pressure, I might look back and be like, “Take your time, just think about it.” So I don’t allow the ‘I don’t know’ to be the answer. I then create space to see if they really do have something to share. Now, I may count in my head. And they may say something after three seconds, 10 seconds, whatever. Or they might say, “I don’t know.” And then I really know they really don’t know, and then we can move on from there. But anyhow, the wait time in general, we tend to expect responses way too fast. And we don’t give people time to process and to think and to articulate their words. So the first thing, the first strategy is wait time, more wait time. A lot of times when I teach parents or teachers wait time, I teach them to wait after they wait. So let’s say that the student gives you their first answer. It’s a great idea after they give you the first answer, say, “I’m still listening, tell me more.” And allow more space to really even articulate more. This is sometimes the most magical, amazing experiences where I’m helping somebody, and they really tell me something that I need to know so I can move them forward, happens with that second wait time. So I just want to point that out. 2. Number two, number two. Pre-conversations. A pre-conversation to circle back to an original conversation, or to circle back to a conversation. Here’s how this works. Let’s say that I’m going to be working with you on some executive function that you’re working with. And you’re like, “Seth, I wanna I want to work on this thing.” And I’m like, “Cool.” And I asked you about it, and you really don’t know what your answer is. I say, “Look, why don’t you think about it, I’m gonna come back in five minutes and I’ll ask you the same question. But I really want an answer.” So for students who are like, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” they really don’t know what to say, give them space with a pre-conversation. This is like wait time. But you’re giving them space with this pre-conversation to really leave, give them time to think about it. So say, “I’m going to ask you the same thing, I want you to think about it.” Now you might say, I want you think about it overnight, I’ll see you tomorrow and we’ll talk about it. I’ll see you in a week, and we’ll talk about it, but I want you to think about it.” It might be in five minutes, whatever. But you’re giving somebody space to really think about it. And then you have to fulfill your commitment and revisit the conversation, obviously with that person. So make sure that you remember to revisit it. But that’s a really good strategy to really give somebody pre-conversations. They really need to know this information, they really need to know where you’re at with this. So “I’m going to ask you now, but I’ll come back and we’ll chat about it later. Just think about it.” So pre-conversations I use all the time. So it’s really powerful, really powerful. Just give somebody a lot of space to really process and then revisit it. 3. The third thing is called a false choice. So let’s say that I’ve used some wait time and some pre-conversations, and we’re really not getting anywhere and the person is really stuck, then I might use a false choice. I might say, “Okay, do you want me to give you some ideas?” Like let’s say that I say to a student, alright, we’re working on estimating time. You know, I start with the ADD and executive function, maybe the student struggles with it, and we’re time blind, we have time blindness, right? We’re not good at estimating how long things really take. And let’s say we’re working with that, and I’m working with a student. They’re like, I’m like “Alright, how long do you think this assignment is going to take?” And they say, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, giving them the wait time, they’re really like, “I really don’t know, I really have no idea,” then I might give a false choice, I might say, “Cool. So well, then do you think it will take 10, 20, or 30 minutes?” So I’m at least giving them an anchor of like maybe three options. It’s a false choice, because it could be one minute, it could be 37 minutes could be anything. But I only get three choices, do you think it’ll take 10, 20, or 30? So you can use false choices in all kinds of ways. But the idea is, is that you’re giving somebody like some training wheels, or some scaffolding or some anchor to start to explore whatever the issue is that you are looking at. So what was the first strategy? I said, wait time, what was the second one? Pre-conversations. And what was the third one? False choices. 4. And the fourth one is making a script. And this might sound silly, you don’t have to write out a whole script, but the gist of it is this. If you’re really trying to get through to somebody, you might jot down a couple ideas in a script so that when you approach them with a pre-conversation, or conversation, or false choice or something, you have some ideas in order to remember how to hold space for them, how to give themselves that wait time, and that openness, and that freedom to feel heard. So you might just take a little scrap piece of paper and jot down some things on the script for what you might say. So some things that I often say is “Go ahead and think about it for a minute. I’m right here, go ahead and tell me when you’re ready.” So you might say, “Think about it for a minute, and I’m listening.” Another thing I’ll say is that is “I’m listening. Go ahead, take your time, I’m listening.” You might say in terms of the script, you might say, “Hey, let’s talk about this tomorrow. What what time works for you?” or whatever you might say in the script for that. But anyhow, the point is, is that a lot of times in the moment, we’re not really thinking about how to strategize this, and it’s good to actually write it down and have thought about it. You don’t have to use the script, or you can use the script. But to have taken the time to really think about this human being you’re trying to be helpful to and to really take the concern for taking time, you know, it takes a lot of effort to do that. That’s a really cool thing. So you might want to do that make a script. My name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach, and I help struggling students navigate education so they can have a great life. And if you like this, I’m interested to hear what you have to say. Particularly introverts. If you’re an introvert, go ahead and comment below. I’m not an introvert. What makes you feel heard? What do you appreciate that allows you to feel heard? Let us know in the comments below. Any strategies that you might have go ahead and share them with us so that we can help more people help everybody. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up, give it a like, subscribe, comment below. Please share my work with other people who like it on my website, SethPerler.com. I have a bunch of freebies for parents, teachers, and students. And my number one wish for you today, my number one wish for you today is that you have peace of mind and that you connect with people that you care about. Take care, have a great day. Share this work if you like it. See ya.

Forgetful much? Here’s a tip that works

Parents, teachers, students, ADHDers often forget stuff!! Here’s something that I do and teach my students that’ saves me a lot of frustration.

Transcript: Click here to download the video transcript PDF. If you have ADHD like me and you’re always forgetting stuff, this is what you’re going to want to do. This is one tip that I’m going to give you that’s going to help your life. Why is it going to help your life? The way that it helps my life is it saves me a lot of frustration, it saves me from having to come home because I forgot something, it saves me from the frustration just forgetting something, wasting a bunch of time looking for the thing, it saves me from locking myself out of the house, all kinds of things like that. So what I recommend, and this is what I work with my students. My name is Seth Perler, by the way. I’m an executive function coach, I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so you can have a great life. And one of the things that my students struggle with is this: they’re forgetful. They’re always forgetting something, they’re unprepared, and it’s really frustrating. So what we do is we get some kind of box, and I’ll show you what this is in just a second, but we get some kind of box that you like. This is a good size for me, and you just want to get a good size for you something that you like, that’s the rule about the box to get. And what I do is, this is what I call a ‘Pocket Box,’ a pocket box. And the reason I call it that, that’s just a stupid name I came up with, but the reason I call it a pocket box is because everything that goes in my pocket goes in this box. Or when I get home things that are in my pocket go in this box. And it’s the things that really frustrate me that I really forget all the time, I need to make it easy so that I’m not losing things, I’m not misplacing things. Because I can’t imagine how much time over my lifetime I’ve wasted looking for things. It’s not cool. So this really helps my life a lot. Basically, here’s what you do. You want to have some box that you like, then you want to think of something that I call the ‘Rule of Three.’ Again, it’s just another stupid rule that I come up with to help ADD mind. But the rule of three helps me remember three simple things that I need every day. I always when I leave the house, in my mind, I do the rule of three. Now I have it here visual for you to show you how to make it visual, because some of us need to even more visual. By this time it’s in my head. But the rule of three is this. I have to when I walk out the door, I have to have my phone, my wallet, and my keys. If I forget any one of those three things, something bad’s gonna happen. Like I need those things every day. So basically, this is what I do the rule of three. And this is bright, it’s got huge font on it, you know, make it visual for yourself so that you don’t forget. So that when you’re walking out the door, you can look at it and be like, “Oh, do I have this, this and this?” Now your rule of three may have different things. Your rule of three might have something like your lunch, your backpack, turning off the lights, turning off electricity that’s dangerous. What are the things that you need to remember? Mine are phone, wallet, and keys. But what are yours? Now in this box are some other things as well. You want to keep this in a really easy place, by the front door, by your bedroom door, somewhere easy where you’re going to see it all the time because I depend on this box. This helps my life. But once you get it there, what are you going to put? Well, I’m going to show you my actual box and what I actually put in it. Here’s what we got. Ready? 1) Gum, keep it in here. 2) Glasses cleaners because they often need to clean my glasses, so if I’m running out the door and I need to clean my glasses, or I need to take this with me, boom it’s there 3) extra glasse, why? Because I lose glasses. 4) Next, anything and everything that has to do with money. So basically, credit cards, gift cards, your wallet. I’m a minimalist, this is the most minimalist wallet I could ever find. So, pocket change, anything that ever has to do with money I put in here. Anything that I might need on daily basis. 5) I actually keep a pad and a pen. Why? My brain is not reliable to remember things. So I have a sharpie and if I think of something when I’m leaving the door, I better write this down right now, jot it down, stick this in my pocket, take it with me. 6) Guess what else I need? Sunglasses. Don’t wanna lose my sunglasses. 7) Keys. Like I said, for me, the rule of three is phone, wallet, keys. So now we have keys, I have extra keys of everything. I have two car keys and two house keys. I have house keys hidden so that if I get locked out. So what do you need? 8) I also have my headphones because I use those. 9) I also have earplugs because noises frankly annoy me sometimes. And sometimes I wear these, and I cut them so that they’re short, they’re tiny earplugs, but I wear these sometimes just in normal, everyday life. But definitely when things get really loud and intense I will use these. 10) And then last but not least, I have the change in here, right. That’s everything for my box. Last but not least for me, I keep guitar picks in there because I play guitar. If I’m running out the house, I grab my guitar and I forget my pick, then that’s really bad and that frustrates me as well. So I just want to go over this with you really quick. By the way, I think I mentioned. My name is Seth Perler with SethPerler.com. There’s a lot of freebies there, a lot of content. If you like what I’m doing, give it a thumbs up, subscribe, and leave a comment. Here’s what I want to know. When you’re going through the same thing, and you’re forgetful and you’re always forgetting stuff and it’s frustrating you. If you had to do a rule of three, what are the three things that you would put on your rule of three, or what are other things that you would keep by the door that other people might not think of? So you can help people by giving some of your suggestions. What are some things that I might even keep in mind? What can we do? So go ahead in the comments and leave those ideas right there, and any other thoughts you want, feel free to do that stuff. That’s all I got for you. Please support my work and have a fantastic day. Take care.

Do your grades stink? Is the DIP happening?

If your grades fall every semester, it will not fix itself, but the good new is that there is a DIP PATTERN that is predictable. This means that you can do a lot about it, to make your life easier and get more out of education.

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🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Transcript coming: