Category: Executive Function

The most IRRESPONSIBLE person I know (Executive Function challenges)

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Students who are labeled as “irresponsible” have executive function challenges. Calling someone irresponsible in order to somehow motivate them, does not work. Instead, it causes shame and more resistance. If we really want to empower these kids, we need to compassionately help them learn strategies. This video explores this issue. If you appreciate my work, please share, comment, and subscribe.

Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

If you parents and teachers have a child that you’re working with who is highly irresponsible and that concerns you this videos for you? What’s up? My name is Seth Seth bro. I’m going to go pick it up on your go to Colorado. I help struggling students navigate this thing called education so that they can have a great life. And if you have a kid who’s responsible then obviously if they do not learn to be responsible that can impact your life. So I want to talk about the most irresponsible person. I know. When I was younger, I used to refer to myself as the most irresponsible person. I knew and I had a lot of Shame around that and I refer to myself as the most irresponsible person a new because I was the most irresponsible person. I knew I got fired from places like subway Walgreens the grocery store a place where we went door-to-door with a bunch of really cool fun. People got fired from that. I got fired from a telemarketing job. The first day I couldn’t get things turned in I couldn’t show up. I couldn’t I would tell people I would do something I couldn’t do it. I felt like the biggest liar in the world. I had a lot of Shame and that in my story was I am the most responsible person. I knew now that time when I was young person I had a very fixed mindset if you haven’t heard of Carol dweck’s work on the word fixed mindset, it means that Thought that the way I was with the way I was and I can’t change it and I’m just this worthless person who’s never going to figure it out and I’m never going to be able to have a good life and I don’t have choices for myself, yet on the outside of it act like I had it all together and get off my back. Leave me alone. I’ve got this, you know, how come nobody trust me type thing. But inside I was like really really felt like I just wasn’t ever going to be able to make anything in my life and I wasn’t cuz that the evidence what was that I didn’t wasn’t able to at that time. So I was a very irresponsible human being and I thought that I was broken. They need to be fixed if there was something wrong with me. So I used to carry that story and one of the things that that story did in a bad way is that enabled me to perpetuate that story. I was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would use which car confirmation bias where I would look for evidence to support the fact that yeah, I really can’t do anything. You have to see there’s another example. Yep. I give up. I’m a failure. I just can’t do it. I was another one of my stories. I’m a failure. I’m a failure. I can’t I’m a failure. so that was who I was I was the most responsible person. I knew. Now if I tell you I’m going to do something. There’s a 95% chance that I’m going to do. What I tell you I’m going to do my word is pretty good. It’s not perfect but pretty good. And if I can’t do it, I’m going to contact you and let you know that I can’t that’s a big change and that took a long time a lot of effort a lot of introspection a lot of stuff working a lot of executive function work to get this so If you have a child who struggles with? being irresponsible what that really means is that I didn’t have tools to be responsible which really means that I didn’t have executive function skills. I didn’t have effective executive function skills when it mattered a lot of times when there’s something that was interesting to me, but I interest I have plenty of executive function, but when it came to large goals and aspect of reaching those goals that was not preferred activities. I did not have the skills overcome my own resistance and to be able to take action to accomplish my goals. I did not have executive function skills skills are built skills are developed skills are not motivation skills is not discipline skills is not making a decision. Oh, I just care enough and I’m just going to try harder and I’ve got the skill. That’s not what a skill is skills are built and developed is like a muscle and I did not have a lot of experience building and developing effective skills. Tools in for execution in my life. So now if you have a child who is experiencing this I would venture to Guess that they like me also beat themselves up even if they act like they got it all together that they feel pretty bad about themselves that they feel pretty hopeless about certain things and that they feel stuck they feel the limiting belief the fixed mindset of feeling stuck like you know why this is just the way I am. I’m never going to be able to do this. So I’m not even going to try this is too hard. I can’t I give up this is stupid and finding every single excuse in the book to resist to push you away to push anybody away threatens that so How do we unstuck ourselves? How did I unstuck myself? How does the young person who is struggling with responsibility or being a responsible? How do they unstuck themselves to make some motion forward first thing is mindset. To believe that I can okay. I can do this not going to be easy, quick. You know, there’s no no magic pill. It’s not fast, but I can do this. I believe I can now my thing about beliefs that’s perception of belief when I’m talking about manifesting or how we set intentions and create things in our life. My thing about belief is this I don’t have to believe what I want to believe a hundred percent of the time but I have to believe it 100% some of the time. So to me believe in mindset is taking some time for young person to learn the skill of thing. Okay in this moment, I 100% believe that I can do this. I can figure this out. I can grow I can accomplish this I can develop through this I can work through this I can build this goes around this and then you know, we’re going to get into imposter syndrome. We’re going to get self-doubt and all that that’s part of the process that’s normal. But part of the time we You Me At adults can go to the other person were working with and be like, hey, I want to help you believe this. Do you believe his believe you can’t you can and what we say matters we impact these gets em, we don’t believe in them that impacts them to hold hate feeling so we got it believe in them. So number one is mine that number two is foundations. Appreciate that in mind that if we’re going to get unstuck with that in mind so that we can get unstuck. Next me at that Foundation skills. You have to have tools Foundation executive function skills of planning and organizing advocacy director of the stuff. I always preach about so we want to get unstuck not we can’t just believe it. Woo. We have to believe it though, and we have to start building skills to implement. Next very simple. We got to practice the skills. We got to maintain we got to sharpen the sword. So, is it really that simple? Yes, if you want to get unstuck or you want to help a kitten get unstuck it is those three things that is what I believe one. We had that the mind that we have to help and how are them to learn and development practice the mindsets they have mine that’s already they’re just negative self-defeating resistance based mindsets. I keep them suck. So we have to help them with Minds that we have to help them with foundations and skills and tools and we have to help him with maintaining knows I’m practicing those and sharpening The Sword and getting better using those mindsets in those skills. Is it really that simple? Yes it is. Is it easy? No, no, no, no, no. No, they will resist that every turn and we get to compassionately and empathetically help them work through resistance learn to understand what’s going on with emotional regulation help them with their sleep there nutrition or exercise other things that affect them but it is not easy, but it is simple Those are the things we need if you need to help them with mindsets, we need to help them the skills. We need to help them to sharpen the sword. Now good thing you five things I did. One thing I did to get unstuck as I had humility. I admitted that I was stuck in that I needed help. Number two thing that I did is I asked for help which is very hard. But once you have a little bit of humility, you know, you need help you can ask me about the next thing after asking for help is I receive the help I can ask you for a cup of water. You can hand it to me. And if I don’t receive it, I don’t have it. I asked you for help. I asked you for water. Where is it? I was right I have to receive it. So I took the help. And next I persisted. I continued I didn’t give up and the next thing I did was I found meaning which often isn’t happening. And what we are asking kids to do. We’re asking them do their homework or read this book or write this paper is often not meaningful a purposeful and that’s a big big big problem. But what I did to get unstuck was one I admitted I needed help to I ask for help 3. I apply the helper. I accepted the help for I persisted and didn’t give up. I had to keep going going going even when I didn’t see any results it took a long time. And then finally I found meaning in what I was trying to do, too, and I’m going to wrap up with this. There’s a mentor that I had his name was red. He was a very very very very old man. He is now passed on a few years back, but he was very very important in my life in this man was a mentor of mine because he took an interest in helping me and he wasn’t just going to tell me what I wanted to hear. He would tell me the truth as he thought even if he was wrong. He was going to tell me the truth no matter how I felt about it. He was going to tell me his truth and that kindness of being blunt and honest with me was so helpful to me. One of the things that he said to me was he said find Value in today? So a lot of our kids aren’t finding value in the work that they have to do and one of the hardest thing for me to do and I think for a lot of our young people to do is to find the value in what they’re doing. There’s plenty of value in the work that they’re doing even if they don’t like the teacher they don’t like the class with a don’t like Content they have to look for it. And I think that was probably have all these things even though the humility was super hard the finding choosing a fine value and say was really hard. So I’m going to wrap that up what I did on sukma top 5 things one humility. I admitted I needed up to I asked for help 3. I took the help for I persist that I didn’t give up. I didn’t just think all I ask for help once and everything should be solved Quick Fix know I persisted I kept going I didn’t give up and V. I found meaning I found value red said to me find Value in today. I had to work to find Value and now I have a life where I find so much value in the work that I do and I love my life and I love when I get to do and I feel like the luckiest person in the world that took work. But any of our students can get there they can do this. There’s no reason any of them can’t do this that we can all do this. We just need the right help in the right support with that. My name is Steph. Where am I? / ler com- on the go to Colorado if you like going to do please share my work with somebody leave a comment below. How do you help students get unstuck? How do you get unstuck yourself Let It Snow. Take care.

Executive Function & PROCRASTINATION. A breakdown.

By the end of this vlog, you’ll get 2 things:
  1. Understand exactly how procrastination fits into Executive Function and how it impacts students
  2. Know my #1 key strategy for what to do about it
I also cover:
  • EF aspects
  • Two sides of the same coin
  • Self-starting, task initiation, get the train going
  • Procrastination, unmotivated, undisciplined, stuck
  • Do not have skills to self-start
  • The impacts and consequences of procrastination
  • Grades
  • Relationships
  • Emotional overwhelm, avoidance
  • Mindset
  • Energy depletion
  • Strategy, chunking, 2 types
  • Abstract vs concrete
  • Plan chunks
  • Timer

💚 Give: Love my work and want to donate? 🎦 YouTube: Visit my official YouTube channel here. Please 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. 🙏 Thanks! — Seth

Video transcript:

Parents and teachers, what’s up? In this video I’m going to talk about procrastination and by the end of this video you’re going to have two things one. (1) You’re going to understand how executive function and procrastination go together, how they’re related, how procrastination fits into executive function now that impact students. (2) You’re going to know my number one key strategy for working with students who struggle with procrastination and why I use that strategy, and I’ll break that down for you. So my name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach based out of Boulder, Colorado and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education. I’m going to start off by telling you that procrastination you can think of as an aspect of executive function, or poor executive function. Here’s what I mean. You can look at many experts out there who talk about executive function, you’ll find that different experts breakdown executive function into different aspects. Some experts may say there are three aspects to executive function, there can be five, there are eight, etc… When I’m doing speaking presentations, I have anywhere between fifteen and twenty. I do not fit in the box and don’t really care to have the exact number. I do not care to give you a perfect recipe for how things are done. I care to communicate things in a meaningful and useful way so that you can better help kids. When I look at the aspects, there are different ways to look at it. Now, I will tell you what you will often see in terms of procrastination as an aspect of executive function. So basically, first of all, let me explain the many aspects to executive function. Some of the common ones that you might see would be: focus, attention, concentration, organization time management, planning, prioritization, etc… Aspects of executive function are any of the things the brain needs to do in order to execute a complex task. So for example, when I painted this room and put all the posters up that required planning, that required time management, that required task initiation, that required task persistence in order to complete this project which took me a day or two. It required a lot of executive function. I had to execute, I had to do different things. My brain had to do different things to make the goal and to accomplish the goal. So I wanted to mention the aspects really quick because what I’m going to tell you now is specifically looking at procrastination as an aspect or a part of an aspect of executive function. How do we do that? Alright, so we have procrastination. Procrastination is basically two sides of the same coin. So when you are thinking, if you are listening to somebody speak about executive function and they’re speaking about the other side of this procrastination coin, what they are going to say in clinical speak is they’re going to the term ‘task initiation.’ Task initiation is to initiate a task. Well, that just means self-starting, it just means getting started, it just means getting the train rolling. So one side of the coin, one aspect of executive function on one side that is task initiation, self-starting or getting the train going, or starting your work, or starting your homework; we’re getting started. Getting started in and of itself is a difficult thing when you don’t want to do it, when it is a non-preferred activity. Obviously your kids don’t procrastinate when it comes to doing something that they’re interested in, something they care about, something that matters to them, something that’s fun for them. But if it comes to something that is a non-preferred activity task initiation, self-starting, getting train going, getting started on your work is not easy for them. So what’s the other side of the coin? The other side of the coin of self-starting or task initiation is not initiating the task, and we use the word procrastination to describe the many ways that we avoid starting. Procrastination is not starting. People will often use other words interchangeably with procrastination and sort of lumping them under these different categories, not really interested in that part of executive function, which doesn’t help the kid. For example, an adult might say,  “Oh, yeah, the kid is just unmotivated,” or “the kid is just not motivated,” or “the kid just needed to get motivated,” or “this student is not disciplined. This student needs more disciplined. This student just needs to work harder, the student just needs to care more.” But essentially we have the words lumped together: procrastination, unmotivated, undisciplined, and stuck. So those are sort of the common ones that we see. So on the one side of the coin, we have task initiation and self-starting. On the other side of the coin, we have a lack of motivation or we have procrastination. Either way, whatever way you look at it, the problem that adults, teachers, and parents often encounter is that the way that they approach this does not work. It may work in the short-term through shaming the kid or putting a lot of pressure on a kid, but it doesn’t work in the long term to help the kid learn what they need to learn. So, what is the right way to do this? The right way to help a child overcome procrastination, so to speak, or lack of motivation or lack of discipline or however you phrase it. The right way to really look at this in my opinion and I work with a lot of kids who struggle with this stuff and I have for many years, the right way to approach this isn’t to use those terms, but is to say, “Hey kid, how do we help you learn skills to help you self start, even when it’s a non-preferred task.” Obviously, I wouldn’t use those words with the student, but the essence of this is how do we empower you, the student, to have skills, to have tips, tricks, strategies? How do we help you have a way to self-start on a task that is an important task for you to get done for your life. Homework, responsibilities, things that lead to a bigger goal. Even though the big goal is fun, the steps to getting there may not be as fun. For example, you may want to go to college but doing a college application is a massive, massive job. Just doing a college application takes a lot of executive function. So if you want to go to college you have to do a lot of things get there. If a student wants a car and they want to buy a car, well all of the work that it takes to get the car, there’s a lot of work to that, or even just getting a driver’s license, there’s a lot of executive function that’s required the one big goal. So basically the question is how do we empower these students? I’m going to say this again, to have some strategies to help them self-start even when they don’t feel like it? So I’m not trying to motivate my students as a coach. I don’t tell my students, “I want you to be motivated.” I tell them, “How do we trick you? How do you learn to trick yourself into starting even if you don’t feel motivated?,” because if I’m looking to help them figure out how to feel motivated, that is a losing game as far as I am concerned. I want to give them practical tools and tips and strategies on how to self-start. I told you in this video that I would help you understand how I do that. Before I do that I wanted to talk about the impacts and consequences of procrastination. I have 5 impacts and consequences of procrastination to share. Number 1: The obvious is that their grades suffer. They have lot of missings, incompletes, late work, zeros, and a lot of test corrections. So their grades are suffering from procrastination. Number 2: The relationships. Often times the relationships your child has with you the parents, there’s a breakdown. There’re homework battles, there’s a problem, they might be lying, there might be challenges in the relationship because of procrastination and trying to get them to do what needs to be done and to their relationship with their teacher. Their teachers may perceive them as somebody who doesn’t care even though they do, or somebody who isn’t trying hard enough or isn’t is undisciplined or motivated in, and they get an image of the student that may or may not be accurate. But often that doesn’t take into consideration the legitimacy of executive function challenges. So that’s grades and relationships. Number 3: There is overwhelm. Often times the students get overwhelmed emotionally and that leads to avoidance. Procrastination impacts them because they put things off and they get overwhelmed and they either deal with that really stressed or they pretend it’s not going on. So it affects them emotionally. Number 4: Procrastination also affects mindset, and often times these students who procrastinate, they start saying, “You know what I give up. This is stupid. Why try anyhow. I don’t need to do this. I’ll do it later.” They start to get a lot of mindsets that help them not take action and avoid, which is the emotional that I mentioned before. Number 5: Finally, energy depletion. Procrastination really takes a lot of energy for them to procrastinate. For them, it sort of lingers in the brain that there’s something that’s undone. Even if they’re not conscious of what it is, they have the sense that something’s undone and it can really take energy away from them. So procrastination can really deplete your energy directly and indirectly. Now for the strategy. How do we do this? How do we help? I like, as a coach and a human being, I’m a very big picture person. I like to get things as simple as possible. So I’m going to tell you essentially how I help students I work with, I’m not going to say overcome, how I help them work with and work through procrastination. How I help them to self-start and how I help them to trick themselves into taking action. I’m going to give you one concept that I think encapsulates a lot of how I approach doing this. That word, that concept is ‘chunking.’ I help students by learning to chunk. So in other words what happens is that when a student has action to take and it’s a non-preferred action and they don’t feel like doing it, what happens is it’s often abstract. We have abstract and concrete. If it feels abstract it feels big, it feels overwhelming. They say, “Oh I have homework to do tonight and I don’t even know where to start because it’s abstract.  I got a bunch of stuff to do. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know exactly what I have to do. I don’t know how long it’s going to take. I don’t know where I’m going to do it. I don’t know how I’m going to get this done.” That’s abstract. What do you think abstraction does to emotionally? It feels overwhelming. Abstract is overwhelming. Then we go to concrete. The more concrete we get, the less overwhelming it is and the more attainable it is. So how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. We work with baby-steps. We break it down into small chunks. When a student can chunk it down they can contemplate, “I can get that thing done, I got this.” or “I can get part of that. I can at least get started. I can’t task initiate and I can get the momentum going.” So how do we chunk? Two ways. One word is chunking and there two ways to chunk. There are plenty of other theorists out there or strategist or coaches or tutors or novelist or whatever. There are plenty of people out there with other good ideas. Use them if they worked for you, I don’t really care. I’m going to tell you how I break it down for kids and why. I break it down into two ways of something. (1) is by time (2) is by task. What do I mean by time? I swear I use these timers so often with kids because this is concrete. It’s concrete because it’s auditory, it’s concrete because it’s visual and you can see it, it’s concrete because it’s kinesthetic and you can touch it. This is a thing. I can contemplate doing 3 minutes and 3 seconds of starting my homework. “Hey, I can get the ball rolling with it. I can work for 10 minutes or 20 minutes with this,” is concrete that helps people get started to self to focus and get their attention. I’ve stayed away from the abstract and back to the concrete so that we can concretely work on a non-preferred pass for X amount of minutes. For X amount of time. So we chunk by time. Again, the kid says, “Oh, I have all this work to do all the time,” it’s abstract. Cool. Ask them, “Can you focus for 5 minutes? Can you plan for 3 minutes? Can you focus for 30 minutes?” If you watched my video last week when I talked about the 3-30-3 method that can help you figure out how to do that. But can you do it for a smaller chunk of time? That makes it concrete. We want to get it within the threshold so that they can go, “Okay, I can do that. Yes, I can work for math on math for 5 minutes” and maybe they have an hour or two hours to work, but we need to get the momentum going. Number (2) we chunk by task. If they have a paper to write, a task for the paper is to get your materials out. A task for the paper is to read over the rubric. A task for the paper is to make an outline. A task for the paper is to draft. A task for the paper is to edit to, revise, to talk with someone about your idea and talk it out. These are all tasks that you can break down. So you can chunk it by task. A task for math might be doing one problem, it might be checking your work, it might be doing 5 problems, it might be doing the front page, it might be putting your name on the top of the math paper, it might be reading the instructions. So we can chunk these things down by task and by time. It is outside the scope of this video to go into extraordinary depth on how to do that, but that’s what I wanted to talk about. We want to get it from abstract world to concrete world. We do that by chunking by task and by time. When you do that, you want to ideally write out your plan whether you’re using notecards or whatever, but write out a plan, a concrete plan. This is concrete. You want to have a concrete plan in your hand of the tasks that need to happen. So go snag one of these timers. Anyhow, that’s all I got for you today. Again, my name is Seth with SethPerler.com. If you haven’t signed up for my blog on my site, I send out a new video at least every week and I do a lot of things to help support people struggling with executive function. This was a video where I wanted you to understand exactly how procrastination fits into executive function and how it impacts students, and know my number one key strategy for dealing with that. So, please share this, give it a thumbs up on YouTube. If you’re watching me on YouTube feel free to tell me what you think and what works for you for the students that you are working with. I’m going to get out of here. I hope you have a fantastic day. I will see you soon. Please CLICK below to share.

The questions students SHOULD be asking themselves

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Students with executive function challenges benefit from being taught directly about strategies for school and life success then implementing them for a looong time. After many years of working with these kids, there are definitely a handful of ESSENTIAL questions they SHOULD be asking themselves on a daily basis in order to effectively track the systems they need to be maintaining. When students DON’T learn to ask these questions, things fall apart, they become more disorganized, they end up with a bunch of missing and late work, grades fall and stress goes up for everyone. This video dives into some specific questions to ask and why they are so important. Very best, Seth Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you -Seth

Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them ASAP, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

Hey parents, teachers, and students. What’s up? My name is Seth. I’m an executive function coach in Boulder, Colorado and I help struggling students navigate this thing called education. I’m going to talk a little bit today about this sheet that I use in my office quite a bit and I did an extensive video on this and why it’s so important.
So basically I created the sheet after years and years and years of asking students the exact same question. And the reason I created that sheet is that these are the questions that students need to be asking themselves. However, if your child, if you’re a teacher, if your students, who struggle with executive function, or if you are a student who is trying to figure out how to navigate this thing called school on your own, you want to be asking the right questions. These are the questions you are going to need to be asking yourself on a daily basis. Now with most successful students, this comes relatively easy to them again. Why? These students who are naturally organized naturally have relatively good executive functions. They ask these questions more or less automatically and they think through these things in order to make sure that no stone goes unturned, that they are really asking the right questions to make sure that they’re on top of what needs to happen. The students that I work with that struggle with executive function tend to have a lot of missing or incomplete work, zeros, test corrections, and things like that and they missed details and they might have homework that they just forgot to turn in that they actually did. They may have forgotten to turn it in with their name on and got no credit etcetera. Either way, they tend to miss details, but basically what does she does is it breaks down the questions that I want students to be asking on a regular basis. I’m only going to focus on one part of the sheet. Basically, when my kids first come in and they’re making a plan for the evening in an ideal situation, they’re going to think through it just like you and I do as adults, we think through our day, “What do I have to do today?” They get home from school. They should be thinking, “What do I have to do tonight?” Obviously kids are with executive function are not necessarily thinking what they have to do that night. Anyhow, I start off by asking, “What’s your number one priority?” This is a very good question asking to ask for these classes. Any makeup work? Then ask if they have any long-term things they should be working on. Then I have the ‘should’ section and that’s what I’m going to talk about right now. In this section you should say, “Hey, do you have any homework?” They’ll say, “I’m all done, finished it all in school. Nope. I’m sure I don’t have anything,” and they really believe they don’t have anything to do but they’re not understanding that there are other things that they should be doing on a regular basis that other students do naturally, but these students often don’t do it at all. What happens is they end up in the big ‘dip’ and they end up spending the rest of the semester trying to swim upstream and dig themselves out of holes. So what are the questions? I will put them on my blog so that you can cut and paste them and make a print out if you want. But basically, the questions that I ask my students all the time is this: “Hey, what do you have to do tonight?” They might say, “Just math, that’s it. Yep. That’s it. No, everything else good. Yep. Everything else. Good. Respond with, “Okay, well should you check your portals tonight?” Oftentimes what schools do is this is a mess. I might have a student who has a portal called Infinite Campus, Google Classroom, and Schoology. For example, I might have kids with multiple portals, or they may have one teacher that has their own website where they post up. It is a mess, a logistical nightmare for kids who struggle with executive function. It is very difficult for them to know what they need to stay on top of it, to even know where to go. So I ask, “Should we check your portals tonight?” And when I do that, I thoroughly check them. For example, when we check the Grade Portal, my students are often looking at them, “I have an 82 in this class,” and I say, “I don’t care that you have an 82, let’s look at the details because that’s where it shows the missing and incomplete work, zeros, and the things that you need to know.” That’s where we see patterns. That’s where we can see, “Oh, this kid has an A, they’re getting all their homework turned in and that’s why they have the A. But all of their quizzes and tests are lower scores.” So we know it gives us the information we need to work on study skills, for example. Question 1. “Should we look at the portals tonight?” Question 2. “Should we deal with your inbox tonight?” A lot of times these students are not looking at their inbox, ever. They don’t reply to emails that legitimately require a reply. If they do reply to the email, they often do it in a short way where they’re not capitalizing, they’re not indenting, or they’re not showing that they know how to write a letter. They don’t have to be long, but they at least should be courteous. And should they should show that they know how to actually communicate via writing in a quick email. They often have a lot of spam. They often have a lot of like things that they’ve subscribed to where they have millions of things that never opened all these things. So should we deal with the inbox tonight? Question 3. Planner. “Should we deal with updating the planner?” In an ideal world, every day your child is crossing off for checking off each day and all of the things that they’ve done that day. So that by the end of the day you can look in a month, for example, and see a bunch of crossed tasks in the days because they are regularly checking it out. These kids don’t do that. So should we update your planner? And now it’s in your planner. It isn’t just getting it up to date for what you can cross off, but it’s also asking if you need to backwards plan. Do you have a project coming up where you need to backwards plan? And you need to be working on that and also getting in your planner give extracurricular activity. And upcoming homework. What you have to do tomorrow is that in the planner. So should use the update the planner question. Question 4. Should we reset your backpack? I do this every week or two with all of my students. We take everything out of the pack. We could reorganize all the folders. We organize all the pockets and we organize all the school supplies. We organize the entire backpack and what do you know because it starts with executive function. You know homework that was supposed to be done today, or that got lost in the backpack. Papers that are in the wrong folders, papers ready to be recycled, things like that. We need to reset the backpack. Question 5. Is there any makeup work? I know I mentioned this earlier in this video, but I will ask this question, should I work on makeup work because these, kids when you say, “Do you have any homework,” they’re thinking about “no, I don’t have anything to do today or these are the things I have to do today.” But if they have missing or makeup work that needs to be done, that’s often not on their radar, okay. “Do you have makeup work that you’re forgetting about?” Question 6. This is a very very powerful question. “Are you forgetting anything?” When I ask the student if they’re forgetting anything, my goal is that I see them take a moment and maybe look around thinking about it and seriously contemplate, “Am I forgetting anything?” This is a very powerful question and often times a student will say, “Oh, yeah. I’m forgetting blah blah blah.” They’re forgetting the thing. And so it’s a great question that helps capture the things that we have missed. So my goal when working with these students is to catch all the details and to help with executive function a lot of things. The questions I just mentioned are very related to Executive function directly or indirectly. So again, here are the questions you should ask. “Hey, what’s up Japanese homework tonight? Okay, you know we go through the the deal but should you check your portals tonight? Should you deal with your inboxes tonight? Should you deal with your planner tonight and update it thoroughly. Should you reset your backpack and reorganize yourself tonight? Do you have makeup work that you should be worth? And did you forget anything?” That’s all I have for you. Again, my name is Seth Perler, I’m an executive function coach based out of Boulder, Colorado. I hope you’re having a great day. And if you like my work, please share it with somebody today. And also if you are on YouTube, you can go ahead and give me a thumbs up and a comment if you want tell me what you think about this, if there are questions that I’m forgetting that I should be asking students. Should you be doing this tonight so that they are covering all the bases are there. Is there anything that I’m leaving out and what do you guys do to deal with us? All right. I will see you soon. Take care.  

Spoke theory and patient persistence = win

Here is the summit link: https://executivefunctionsummit.com/ “So I thought I would give an update from yesterday and this is for the win! After my brief rant/post (which was self-care & self reg), I was able to regroup. I created a safe space for my son, who said, “I hate homework”. I told him I was not going to get mad over homework anymore. I started with a 2 mins. timer and stuck to it. We were able to get 4 out of 5 pgs done over several short sessions. Then we were exhausted and went for a walk to clear our heads. I took notes along the way about pg 5. This morning, I booked an appointment with him and stuck to it. For once, we didn’t start with a fight, negotiation or negativity. I had set up some visual prompts in the doc and HE actually went through it like a BOSS. Finished the whole thing in 20 mins.
Thank you: Seth, Stuart, Gretchen and the person who suggested the “appointment” (sorry I can’t recall who it was-and I can’t believe it worked). Also to Beth, who told me about the Summit and helped me to prepare for the school year and empowered me to be proactive. My take away from the Summit is life changing. I followed up on a couple of promises and connected with his currency (we played Magic for an hour – ugh; but he loved it!) This afternoon, our family went go carting and had an ice cream. This is a nice place to be.😄” Melanie Please CLICK below if you want to share

HOW to ask about school: “School’s fine, now stop bugging me”

Please CLICK above to share. Here’s a sort of “micro-MASTERCLASS” for ya. In this video, I teach parents in-depth about the problems with asking our kids what they have for homework and specifically HOW to ask the right questions in order to get MEANINGFUL answers so you can help. Here’s the PDF: SethPerlerPlanningquestionseachnight
Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

Hey, what’s up, parents? And teachers is the stuff. Farrow. Common today in this blog. I’m going to explain to you some of the questions that I use with my students as I’m trying to help them do their work Sony on my name Seth Perler. You’re probably familiar with my blog. But if you’re not I want you to know that this weekend there’s to post executive function online summer brand new Summit that I created with a bunch of experts from all over the place. If you haven’t if you didn’t know anything about this and you’ve been following my blog while it’s we have today left. It’s amazing check it out go to executive functions summit.com. The link is below and register and get what you can out of it. It’s almost over so dive in but I’m going to talk today parents about a list of questions that I so here’s what here’s the problem parents will say to their child. Hey, what’s up, you know Middle High School College is Waverly middle and high school. Hey, you have any homework in your child will say no. Or hey, how’s everything going in school fine and parents often have these conversations with their kids about homework where the student either is not aware of what’s going on or in the moment. They don’t they can’t recall it and bring it into their mind to give you a meaningful answer at or their resistance you and I’ll give you an answer about the basically saying hey back off mom and dad. I don’t want to talk to you about it. Leave me alone. I’ve got this I want to be treated like an adult even though I’m missing a million homework assignments. So on and so forth. So I’m going to talk about this here because the what happens is that I have students come into my office and after years and years and years of working with students who struggle with executive function have a lot of missing Zane complete slate Works zeros test corrections their failing classes or their grades are dropping after working with so many of the students. I found that There is a set of questions that I always ask now I may not ask all of them all the time. I’m always calibrating. I’m always looking at the kids nervous system into it to see if they have the tolerance for me to ask them certain questions. Obviously if they’re really overwhelmed. I’m not going to ask him all the questions but I need to be able to as a coach working with them as someone who cares about the man wants to help them succeed. I need to be able to get meaningful dialogue with them to get answers meaningful answers to help us know where we need to prioritize our energy and what the student needs to be working on. So these questions are the end-all-be-all and I don’t say that about many things but this is something that really encompasses every question pretty much that I’ve asked and I’ve organized these questions. I’m going to explain it to you in a minute. I’ve organized these questions in a very meaningful way so that you can use Use these questions as parents or teachers a lot of teachers follow my my blog you can use these questions. You can put them on the refrigerator. You can put them in the kids bedroom. You can put them wherever you want, but you can use them as a guide to know you’re asking the right questions. Okay. So basically what we’re trying to do the the one question I don’t ask on here. Meanwhile that I think is important for you to know is I’m not asking for a temperature check or a high low or something where I’m checking just how the kid is doing emotionally. So often times as I’m doing this, I just want to say that that we really need to be attuned to listen carefully parents. We need to be attuned to what’s going on in the emotional life of the child. So there might be something else going on or they might be really tired or exhausted or their their body feels tired or they’ve been eating a lot of sugars are foods that are making them foggy or they’re not sleep. Sing in the rain and fog is so we need to be at tune to other things that are going on as well. So a lot of times they’ll do a temperature check. Hey, how’s it going on a scale 1 to 10 in that might give me insight to get started on those conversations. Just want to say that disclaimer before I start getting into these questions cuz these are very linear concrete questions that in terms of their temperature is more is more abstract and it’s more something you want to dive into in terms of a to Newman and connection in relationship. Now in terms of these questions, I’ve broken into a few different categories. So basically you’re going to say your kiddo. Hey, do you have any homework know are you sure? Yeah. Are you positive? Yeah, leave me alone. Get off my back whatever. However your conversation goes. Do you have any homework? Yeah. I have one thing, you know and you might not know in your head. I bet there’s three things or whatever. But so that’s so we buy what we want as we want meaningful answer. So this is how we get it. So here then The first question I always ask is what is your number one priority? So I have a planning guide. I’m not going to show you tonight. But basically I said my servant. Hey, what’s up, man? How’s it going? How you how you been? Yeah, what’s going on? How’s your day? How’s your week? What’s up with the teachers of it? Really? Okay, cool. What’s your number one priority tonight? And I use a lot of weight time Avenel often times on the answer me. I just stare at them blankly for a moment and give some more spaciousness for them to think about it. This is a very very very very powerful question. Do not underestimate the power of this one question. It is one most on this paper. It’s probably it’s one of the two most important questions asked by the student. Will then say yeah. Well, I have to finish this math thing or I have to read the paper or I have to do an outline or I have to update my planner or I have to reorganize my backpack or I just need to sit for a few minutes. Now that we’re not going to write on their daily plan, but what is the number one most important? Here’s how I pray that what is the number one most important thing you need to do today that if you did at least that one thing you feel good about it. So that’s often a way that I go in more depth with that question. What is my number one priority next I ask about classes. Okay, so I’ll say work for any Japanese homework from your classes and let’s say that the student says no, even if listen parents even if the student says no. I don’t have the homework for any other classes. I still follow up with this questions all day. Hey, Jeremy, anything–for any other classes now Cool Math? No, Debi science. Yeah, I got blah blah blah. So they I’m not tricking them but I’m asking the deeper level. Like I’ll ask these questions about the different classes and often times. It’s it’s giving the spaciousness for them to think and process now. Are they going to have any homework for other classes? Are they just going to go from what’s in there had no, obviously in an Ideal World, they open their planner and they will see all of it or they can look in the online portal in the most Ideal World. They look in their planner and they can answer. Yes that I have this this in this because it’s reliable but we’re working with the kids who start with executive function. So we’re building that reliability of them. So you have any math science and social studies history geography depends on the kid. I’m not going to say all these things Wala or English Germany foreign language Japanese other classes, like sometimes kids might have a tech class or this or that and then I Ask do you have any makeup work? Another very important question. Do you have any makeup work because what’s on the radar as often what’s urgent from the day but they might think oh, yeah, I have this from the other day that I have to do first thing. What’s my number in Paradis then driving to work for classes and then do I have any long-term things I should be working on now. That’s what I call Pepper. Do I have any long-term things I should be working on. Do I have any papers or essays to work on so pepper papers exams projects are reading the papers exams projects are reading. These are long-term things that are not on their radar might be due on Friday might be to the next week might be doing a month. But these are long-term think they should be working for in these cuz you struggle with executive function are the kids on the Sunday night before a giant project is due on a Monday. They come to you at 9 at night and say Mom Dad. I have this giant thing due tomorrow and everybody’s freaking out stressed. So do I have any papers or essays? I should be working on exams test or quiz has those are just that since they should be studying for project. I should be working for or large reading Simon’s books novels are textbooks dense material that they are supposed to be reading they were they really need time to focus and saturate themselves in these things. So often times do I have any homework there? Just thinking this And they’re not thinking this then. It’s a lot of times kids with who I work with it be like hey Mom, Dad. I don’t need to go over to SS office tonight. I’m good. I don’t have any work. I’m sure I don’t but they have other things to do. That’s where it comes here. Should I organize my backpack in my papers update my planner check my portal thoroughly and deal with my inbox. The inbox thing is Big because these kids are often. They they’re subscribe to a million things or email addresses everywhere out there. I like for them to be digital minimalistas y k and then the final question of all when I said, this is the one most important questions with my number one priority. The second most important question is after I’ve gone through this with them is what am I forgetting? What am I forgetting? Great question and when you say what are you forgetting and they pause and they think about it. They are not always but they often will be like, oh, yeah this one thing it’s something about asking that question is really powerful. Anyhow parents and his little Master Class of a video Lesson for you. We’ve been going 10 minutes of fiber. This is so important. I’m going to give you a PDF of this document. Okay that I’ve created over years of asking the same question figuring out the pattern. These are the things you need to look at. Now remember parents. I do not ask every question to every child every night that will that will push them away and that is the opposite of what we want to do. We want to be connecting with them in the tuning to them. Okay. We need to connect to them in a tuna with them incense what’s going on with them and help them? Not it if we do all of this is going to feel micromanaging. It’s going to feel suffocating to them and it’s going to push them away from us and it and we are not going to be able to do what we are trying to do which is be helpful to them cuz I’m going to give you this again. I’m going to review just to pull it all together planning questions for each night as they’re making their plan. What’s your number on priority? You have any homework for your classes Germany things you should be working on that are long-term. Do you have any other things you should be doing that are more executive function organizational type things that deal with your systems. And then what are you forgetting? So again, I have been using these questions for a long time. I put it into a really easy to use for Matt at the beginning of last school year and I’ve been using it ever since and it really is a very solid and reliable mechanism you can use where you know, no stone is unturned. Do not use this every day and do not use the whole thing everyday, but this might be a good thing to do once everyone the week or once every two weeks to tell your kid. Hey, we’re going to do this thing exhaustively once every week or exhaustively once every two weeks until me the parent until I know that you’re really on top of And when you have that confidence that your kids got it like that. They’re at they’re asking themselves these questions. They really get the structure urine and amazing play. So anyhow, again, my name is sephiroth sephora.com. I got a Blog sign up if you want subscribe on the YouTube channel thumbs up at leave a comment if you want tell us what you think about this stuff and what ideas you have or insights you have is a parent in terms of dealing with this if your teacher what what am I leaving out? What it what else should we consider hair? Is there anything that I forgotten? Anyhow, I hope you are having a great day, and I hope you having a great school year, and I hope you’re having a great connection with your child. All right. Take care.

3 school PLANNER myths and what to do instead

Please CLICK above to share. In this video, I’ll explain 3 big myths about planners/calendars/agendas and how adults try to help students use them. Then I’ll give you guidance on what really matters when choosing the right planner for a student who struggles with planning.
Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

Parents in this video. I’m going to talk to you in teachers. I’m going to talk to you about three myths that people often have about planners calendars and agendas. So the first men tell by the way, my name is sepis up for what I comment executive function coach out of Boulder Colorado and I will work with students who struggle with this thing called education in and help them learn how to better navigate it and the first planner meth that I’m going to talk to you about. Is that giving a kid a planter is enough. So there’s this myth without all that if we just give them the right planner that that’s good enough, but the fact is that these skills the skills of learning how to plan the skills of using a planner eat to effectively track and manage the tasks and responsibilities that a human being has the skills that are required to do that are enormous. There are a lot of microscopes that are involved in this process and I think that what happens is that kids usually get Planters and play. Sixth grade, that’s usually when they’re first given them by the school or the parents and I think that would happens is that at that time we give these planters out in a lot of the kids in 5th or 6th grade do well with Planters. They’re giving them to give him a little bit of guidance and they can run with it. And then you have these other kids were giving the planners and they like, what do you want me to do with this isn’t fun not only is enough fun, but I don’t know what you want me to do with us. And so the idea is that if we give it to you and give you a little guidance since they use it that you’re going to use it while I want to dispel the Smiths. So what I think is happening here is that the kids who are naturally pretty decent using them. They actually have been building on these microscopes for years and first grade second grade third grade fourth grade by the time they’re in 5th and 6th grade and they’ve built a lot of decent executive functioning planning skills there more linear thinkers weather that’s by nature nurture. I am not getting into that but they have better executive function skills. They are more linear Arthur Morris. Sequential there more process thinkers. Are there more detail oriented people and so they take to this stuff more easily. They look at a player and they say and you give him a little guidance that makes my life easier, but the kids who haven’t been consciously or intentionally building the skills over the years and the more free-spirited big picture of global thinker right brain, these type of kids who don’t have great executive function. They get the planner and they say I look at my shoulders watch. Why why what what am I supposed to do? I can’t attract all the things you’re telling me to do. It’s just overwhelming to them all of the skills that are involved in this. So again myth number one is that giving them a planter is enough. It’s not enough. He’s a very high level skills it have to be taught in and takes years to teach and for the kids who haven’t been taught that directly we need to teach that number two. Nip number to is one-size-fits-all. You’ll see a middle school with 1,500 kids. They buy boxes of these Planters. They get them the teachers get them. They take him to the classrooms. They pass them out and you got 1500 middle schoolers in a middle school with the exact same plan or is it one-size-fits-all is the bat planter is banned all be off for all of them. These Planters have the school handbook in the front. They have the hall pass in the back there the periodic table, only misspelled words bunch of crap. They don’t need in the planner and they will have two or three pages in the front of it that says how to use a planner and then the teacher might give a little bit of guidance and say, okay pull out your planner blah blah, but that’s not enough. So anyhow, one-size-fits-all is myth number to one size does not fit off. There’s another place where I see the one-size-fits-all meth and that is where somebody researches planners. What’s the best planner you get back a bunch of gov results on the internet as to what’s the best planner you read the reviews? You see all these people that are crazy about this planner the person who designed the planner has written a book about the plant. Have the courts about the planner in and everything’s the planner. It’s the coolest thing in the world in the people who write the reviews The Five Star reviews. They love it will guess what? They’re the people use it if people use the one-star reviews probably while there probably aren’t many of them because they’re not using it. They don’t have the experience to say I’m going to give this one sat there just aren’t many people who do that. So you got to really think about why are these reviews here? Now? Those Planters are often good for people with decent executive function already who are willing to take the time to learn the methodology and the intention behind that particular planter design again, there is no one-size-fits-all many players can be good for many different people people use those Planters. Well are using the skills of planning. They’ve just giving you a device that helps you use those skills fairly well and you adapt somewhat your personality and style to these Planters. They’ve given you a A jumping off point and some guidance around how to do that. But the these for people who plan decently well and want to spend the time to refine that stuff. They’re going to love these planners your kid if they struggle with executive function is not going to spend that much time on it, especially independently learning how to do it. It’s number to one-size-fits-all number three planners. Don’t work for my kid really. It’s more planners. Don’t work for me. You really hear this myth more for a kid. Yeah planners. Don’t work for me. Yeah, I don’t like planets. I hate planners planners planners just don’t work the Planters not working. It’s that the kid isn’t working the planner. Now as I said before they don’t know how to so it’s like giving them this Guitar. Let’s say you’ve never played guitar before and giving you this guitar that has a lot of complex Q’s me there’s a phone call that has a lot of complicated things going on. You have to know how to change to know how to clean it with a proper cleaning stuff. You have to know how to change the pickup. To change the volume at a change of tone which pickups to gives you what sound what that ass holes for why those dots are there white spots. Are there do you like big fat small fretz flat frats what you are so many complicated things with this instrument and a planner is a very complicated instrument that helps us track our responsibilities in our tasks effectively. So when we when it gets as they just don’t work for me, they’re really saying I don’t have the foundation of knowledge that I need the complex skill set to use this incredible tool. You’re giving me and you’re giving it to me and saying hey go make an amazing song with this like with a guitar, but you’ve never played it before and you’re like what in the world are you talking about? And that’s what we do to kids are so those are the three big myths that I wanted to talk about now. I’m not just going to leave you hanging in there. I’m going to tell you now. How do you pick the right planner? Stop just told you some of these big mess because I don’t want you just thinking that if your kids I was with executive function you give him my planter and they’re going to be okay. Now, we have to really help them learn the skills. But you do have to get one now. I can’t go too deep into it in this video. I’ve already been talking for 7 minutes, but I will tell you this but he kid will do when you go into the office or online or whatever you say what plant or do you want their filter that they’re picking is like if I were to go into a guitar store somebody’s ever play guitar and say which one do you want? They might pick the one that’s their favorite color or that the shape looks cool or that reminds them of their favorite Rockstar. They’re not looking at how is this going to perform and they need to look with planters that how am I going to be able to use this to plant now? How are you the parents going to help them choose that? If they don’t have the background knowledge, what we’re going to do is you’re going to open up dialogue. So they’re going to say it’s a lot of times kids will be like, oh, yeah that one I don’t like the way that one looks. I don’t want my friends to judge me when they see the way that one love, you know, they’re thinking thoughts like this. That one looks cool. That one goes under the radar. I’m not going to stand out with that one. I liked it that one small. I like that one’s bit smaller. Easier to carry a big it’s easier to find like people have all their thoughts what your child is not thinking is how am I going to use this to plan and effectively track my tasks and responsibilities in my life to make my life easier. That’s not what they’re thinking. That’s the dialogue you want to have so they look at a planner and you say what do you think of this one? They say no and you say why? Nice a while because of blah blah blah and if their answer doesn’t really have to do with planning then I want you to press them and say well what about if this was yours how would you use this to plan and they would say whatever they would say and then you look in the next one. How would you use this one to plan how that’s the question the dialogue you want to be having it. How would you use this to check homework? How would you use this one to check test? How would you use this one to check project? If you parents go into the store and you’re talking about how they’re going to use this to effectively manage and track their responsibilities and tasks. That’s what you want to be doing. Now that mean you’re going to walk out of there with the perfect planner know your kid may be using it for two weeks. And you see that it’s not working again. Does that mean that they’re not wear and maybe means they’re not working at you you really windy really need to spend a lot of time with them in the first 6 weeks of school developing planets feels a lot of times the middle school, you know, the teachers will hand out a planner and they open your planner write this in it and it’s just it’s not teaching the skills and again for the kids who seem to pick it up naturally, you know, they seem to be working harder while they’re not they’ve been working for years that they have the skills. Your good is actually working really hard to figure out what the heck is going on with us. So anyhow, I hope that that helps you can sign up for my weekly updates except for what I come and August 23rd 2019. We have it executive function summit.com. I’ll leave a link below cuz I can’t function simon.com its executive function Summit for you parents I’ve got 23 experts from all over the place who are going to share all of their expertise about executive function with you for free for 3 Days starting August 23rd. I register free executive function Summit Please share my work. Please share the summit with people if you like it and please if you like this give it a thumbs up that helps me on YouTube and subscribe to my site subscribe on YouTube. Whatever you want to do this for me. If this is helpful to you, please support my work. Alrighty, then I will see you next Sunday.

4 B2S Executive Function tips

Please CLICK above to share. This vlog gives parents 4 concrete tips to help you help your child start the school year right.
Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

Hey parents, what’s up? If your student is about to start the school year this the beginning of the school year and you want them to have a strong start and they struggle with executive function. I’ve got four tips for you today. My name is the plural executive function coach at Boulder Colorado. I have struggling students navigate this thing called education parents. I got four tips for you today to start the school year off right for back to school time in terms of how to help your student your child. I have a great school year or at least to get started with that tip number one, if your student struggles with executive function, what you want to do is help your child. I hit the ground running to tip number one is help your child. Hit the ground running. How do you do that? Well, what you don’t do is you don’t wait until after the first hey to start getting ready for the school year you get ready before as much as possible. What is that look like number one setup what I call the sacred studies face. If you’re not familiar with my work sign up for my blog check out the sacred study space stuff that I have a bite. Want to help your child start the school year were they helped design? They have ownership in Vienna in terms of Designing their own sacred study space if your child tends to study on the couch on the floor in bed, which is the number one worst place to study and stuff like that help them really design a place where they can do two things one remove distractions in to maximize it for productivity and focus. So that is a secret study space. So you want to hit the ground running when you want to have a secret study space to you want the planner front-loaded you want a front load everything in the beginning of the school year that you possibly can but in terms of the plan of what I do is I block out all the Highlight out all the days that the kids have off for the entire school year we do that at the beginning of the year put things into the planner like their extracurricular activities like big if you’re going to travel this fall for Thanksgiving or the holidays things like that. It’s so you want a front load the calendar you’re going to hit the ground running when your child can walk into school on day one. And they’re planner or their calendar or their gender. Are there online calendar? Whatever the they’re using that it already has the important things in that planner so that when they can go in on day one, they open it out. They can already see some things that are in there. They’re already familiar with that. They’ve already worked in their planner. So hit the ground running also means having their folders really the clearly labeled with her name in the course really big clear labels color coded. There are no books are labeled. I know that sometimes teachers are going to give your kid a list. Hey for my class. I want you to get that the not going to get that till the first day. But when I say hit the ground running you won’t have everything you can possibly have in place have a secret study space ready to rock and roll have the organizational system with the folders in the backpack ready to rock and roll have everything label the compass and protractor their backpack and everything with their name on it in case they lose it that it comes back to them have all the things done. So day one. Do you want them to walk into their classes with with some some sense of what’s going on son sense of organization some sense that their planner they’ve already been using it though. They’ve already been exposed to it. You do not want them to just go for the backpack full of random supplies that come from the the list that the school told you to buy and they’re just not right there. Just haphazardly walking in and randomly, maybe jotting some stuff in their planner stuff like that. You want them really ready to hit the ground running that is tip number one do whatever you need to do to help him hit the ground running. So when they walk into those classes on day one, they’re actually ready to listen and learn and they actually have thought through some things number 2. Number to tip if your child struggles with executive function is make a weekly plan and post it on a wall somewhere and what that look like is that your again same concept to trotta’s buying and ownership over designing their week. So you don’t. They don’t don’t just go to school and randomly do stuff but you actually make a visual large printed calendar that looks nice. Hopefully that they’ve participated in creating that has their ideal week the ideal week. This isn’t something you change. This is just one if you put up on the wall, what does an ideal week look like so and you want to be as detailed as possible not as detailed as possible you want to be detailed enough so that they can see a general structure for the week. So for example, you might have a 6:30 a.m. Wake up 7 a.m. Go to school and then just say school from whatever time it whatever time and then maybe 4 p.m. Relaxation time 5 p.m. Plan my evening 6 p.m. Dinner 7 to 8:30 homework Focus time whatever if they have extracurriculars plan that in the week Friday nights, probably it’s completely free when they get home. Hopefully then I think that’s what all it said Sunday night should be Sunday night overhaul overhauling other systems updating their planner getting ready for the new Wii closing of the ovary whatever but you want to print a an ideal week that is tip number to print an idea week. If you don’t have to follow that plan all the time, but you want to have the plan so that your child can look at it and it’s concretely see some sense of structure because they struggle with executive function. They’re going to struggle with imagining a youthful structure in there going to be late on everything and really struggling for the whole semester number three Advocate early. So if your child Example struggles with Matt get the math tutor at the beginning of the school year don’t wait until things get bad and math before you get a tutor start off with a month of a tutor invest in that time. And in that money in that tutor to get a strong start rather than waiting until Things Fall Apart Advocate. Also, if your child starts with stuff send a quick email short lesson 2 page bulleted notes. Hey, my kids struggles with these three things in here are three things you can do to help. Thanks so much for being there teacher. I’m going to resend this email to you in two weeks cuz I know you’re busy and still getting to the no kids and then resend that email a couple times they hey, I know you already I just want to make sure you got it and I know you have a lot on your plate. Hopefully you can read through this real quick. And here’s what you need to know about my kids. So Advocate early and number for the number one most important thing in your child’s entire life is that you their relationships and all of our Lives relationships are really what matter so remember that your kids childhood, you know, you got eighteen years to for they move out of house. How many cases in and the time is precious, you know and sometimes we get so caught up in the day-to-day and in schoolwork and homework and all of the all the things remember the relationship most important thing so plan for this fall right now playing with your child weekends, or you know nights when you’re going to just do fun things with them and it like look at the semester right now with your child in tehaleh plan in sometimes when we can really not talk about school. Have fun do some cool things that we enjoy doing together and have quality time at the most important thing so plan that in now call for the entire semester planning. Sometimes when you guys are going to have fun and laugh and connect and build the relationship which is the most important thing. Anyhow get my name is set this up for what., North Dakota to Boulder Colorado if you want click the Bell button, if you wanted to give you reminders anytime I put a new video up at alert you unsubscribe for my blog. Give out free blogs every single week and I’ll see you soon. Take care.

[podcast] Dr. Robyn Silverman

Please **CLICK** above to share. Thanks! Seth Dr. Robyn Silverman had me on her podcast last week, and we had a great talk called “How to Help Kids Who Struggle with Executive Function Skills in School and in Life with Seth Perler.” Here’s some of what we covered:
  • What is executive function?
  • Why executive function is not something we are helping ALL kids to master
  • How do we know executive function is an issue?
  • What are the common mistakes key adults make in the lives of kids who have trouble with executive functioning?
  • What can the key adult—the parent, teacher or coach- say to this child to help him understand that this story he’s been telling himself is not true?
  • What can we do to help kids who are struggling with executive function?
  • What are some strategies that help kids get from point A to point B?
  • What are some key ways that we can help kids understand themselves and their brains?
Check it out on Dr. Robyn’s website here (you can listen right from her site) Or check it out on itunes here

About Dr. Robyn

Dr. Robyn believes that young people are assets to be developed, not deficits to be managed. With that ideology in mind, she spends much of her time speaking, writing and podcasting about the best ways that parents, educators and mentors can help children and teens thrive. Battling bullying? Dealing with divorce? Need to have a conversation about responsibility, respect, focus or confidence? Dr. Robyn takes you from beginning to end so that you feel ready and your children feel understood.

With all the work that Dr. Robyn does, challenges are met with practical and accessible tips, scripts, stories and steps to make even the toughest conversations and parenting situations easier. As a mother and a Child & Teen Development Specialist, Dr. Robyn gets it. She is your one-stop-parenting-shop delivering exactly what you need, when you need it, from someone you trust.

Learn more on Dr. Robyn’s homepage here, where you can sign up for her updates too. Please **CLICK** below to share. Thanks! Seth

How students “should” REFLECT after semester is over?

Please CLICK above to share.

What to do AFTER the semester ends?

What? Reflect – Introspection, become mindful of past semester, raise consciousness, self-awareness. Learning to reflect is a crucial executive function skill that must be developed.
Why? Build the executive function skill of self-reflection in order to look at what went well that we should continue to do, and what we want to do differently to be more successful.
When? Within a couple of days after semester is over
How long it takes? 30-60 minutes
How? Writing is best, then talk it out with someone, but at least talk it through
How else? Do a temperature check and/or hilo on these areas:
  • Each of your subject areas
  • Your systems, etc.
    • How effectively you used your planner to track things
    • How was your organization?
    • How effective is your study space?
    • How consistently did you use the portal?
    • How much focused time energy did you spend on homework?
    • Actual studying?
    • Focused reading?
    • Well-developed writing?
    • Took enough time on projects?
    • Proactive self-advocacy?
    • Forthcoming with parents?
    • Honesty with self?
    • Procrastination/distractions?
    • Mindsets that are positive? Not blaming?
    • Overcome resistance?
    • Fun?
    • Social?
    • Emotional?
    • Physical? Sleep, nutrition, movement?
    • Self-care?
Before you go back for spring semester: Do a reset of your systems – planner update, backpack, folders, inbox. Finally: Set your intentions for spring. Now: Relax, enjoy break!

Love my work and want to give? Click here! To support me, please CLICK at the bottom to share. Click here to visit my official YouTube Channel & subscribe if you want! Thank you — Seth
Reading the transcript? Great! We’re currently uploading hundreds of transcripts so you can read them asap, but they are NOT all edited yet. This is a big process. If you notice anything wrong and want to help us, feel free to click this Google Form to share it. Thanks so much for pitching in! – Seth

Video transcript:

well Hey, what’s up, everybody, except the stuff perler.com. I’m an executive function coach out of Boulder, Colorado and I want to wish you a happy happy happy with a quitter rehabbing. Winter break. Yes, it is winter break. I’m so students middle high school college students. This video is for your parents. I know you’re watching this video. I know your students are going to watch it. Unless you show it to them first. Even if your student doesn’t watch this video make sure that you watch it because what I’m about to go into is extraordinary really powerful student. This will help your life this video that I’m about to do on the power of reflection over winter break. I know you don’t want to be thinking about school right now, but if you take what I’m about to teach you for a half hour to an hour of your life it is going to help you in the upcoming semester to lower your stress in life and in school and to up your fun and your freedom and stuff like that. It’s going to make your life better. Just this one thing to talk about reflection what to do after the semester ends again. Congratulations on winter break. I’m glad you are done. I’m glad you can chill out and relax right now. What are we going to talk about? We’re going to talk about reflux. When you are done with winter break, what you want to do is reflect on the previous semester. I know you are resisting. You don’t feel like it you’re ready to chop, but just hear me out here. Just listen. What about to teach you about reflection? It’s not the end-all be-all. I’m not going to teach you every single detail of everything but I’m going to give you a really good way to reflect and I’m going to hell if you do this, it will help your life a lot. When should you do the reflection about the state about within two to three days after the semester is over after your fall semester is over the optimal time to do the reflection, but do it anytime but that is the optimal time when you’re going to get the most out of it because it’s still fresh in your hat. How long will it take it’ll take about 30 minutes to 60 Minutes of doing this reflection. Some of you may take longer especially if you’re somebody who likes journaling and stuff anyway, so how should you do it? Well the best Waze download the PDF that I have for you were just look at it on my website and use that templates and the best way to do it is to write about it and then talk to somebody about it. But at the very least print off with there and talk to a parent or an addled or somebody who you respect and liking and can get honest with n talk it out with them at the very least do it in your own head. Now, how are you going to do this Reflections? I’m going to give you some items that you’re going to want to reflect on but the way you’re going to want to do it is in two ways one is called a high low and one is called a temperature check. Here’s that how the Hi-Lo works. I’m going to give you a topic to reflect on for example, I might say reflect on how you did in your math class. Now, you’re not reflecting on your math class or your teacher or what the class was like, although that may be part of it. But you’re really reflecting on you reflection is about introspection metacognition mindfulness self-awareness self-consciousness, not a negative stop Consciousness for the conscious of what you’re doing how you’re behaving what your choices are. You see a lot of times you me we people human beings we run around like robots and we’re on autopilot. We’re not really thinking we’re not really aware and what you want to do with people who struggle with executive function like me and probably like you but not everybody but people who do struggle through executive function struggle with self-reflection. They often are not good at learning from the consequences and repeat the same mistakes over and over and then they blame so it’s it’s the teacher’s fault the teacher hates me. The school hates me. It was too hard though. It didn’t matter. Anyway. Oh, this is stupid all this with my time or I’ll do it later. So a lot of times people are not reflecting and they’re blaming their putting the blame on everybody else and they’re not looking at themselves. So to build the skill, the executive function scale of reflection of self-awareness to build these skill takes time, but it’s extremely powerful and important and will make your life better. So what you want to do in order to reflect two ways, you can do it. Anyway you want but I’m going to give you two ways one is the high low when it’s temperature check, but they were looking at math they want to do a temperature check temperature check says, okay Seth. How did I do in math last semester and I’m going to get myself a temperature. Maybe I would give myself a six and maybe I was and then I would ask the question was so you say what’s your temperature? I would say 6:00 and then my next question is why did I get myself a 6 o y and maybe I give myself at 6 because I did well on the test, but I didn’t turn in a lot of the homework and I sat next to somebody who I would always talk to and then be kind of distracting and I didn’t really talk to my teacher when I needed help but I ask for help eventually so I’ll give myself credit for that but I did ask for help only when things got really bad, but I did try harder than I wanted to so that’s why I get messed up at 6 then my magic question is so it’s what your temperature why and then what would it take to get to the next level for me to Next Level? B-7 if I was at a 6 lb 7 and then I would say well if I sat next to somebody who’s a better influence on me, if I went to the teacher earlier in the semester, whatever you get the idea that the temperature check now the other thing is a high low, so I might say math. Alright Seth. What was my high low and maybe my high and math the best thing about math my afforded math was that when it came to tasks. I really focused. I really tried really hard. I really was present for the test. I studied at least a little bit for the tested while on test and maybe Milo was homework. Being motivated in class in like getting rid of my distractions that you can reflect now specifically, what are you going to reflect on? So you have two ways to reflect the high low and temperature check and you can jot down your answers. Like I said before you can jot Em Down on the PDF, I gave you or Journal if you want or you can just talk them out. But what are you going to reflect on? Well number one thing you’re going to reflect on his these subjects. So let’s say that I took French language arts. Social studies art math and science. So each of those areas, I would do a high-lower temperature check on and just sort of explore and reflect on how it went and what I can do better for next semester. The next thing we’re going to do after we look at the subjects as we’re going to look at the systems and stuff. Okay, and here’s what I mean by that systems and stuff that includes things like planner how well did I use my planner last semester how effectively did I use it? What went well with until well, how was my organization realistically? What went? Well, what didn’t go well, what would I do differently? How was Myspace where I studied did I have a space at home that was conducive to doing my homework and studying or were there a lot of distractions how well did I keep up with the portal looking at the grades examining the teacher websites to see what the expectations were. Did I actually use the portal how well did I use my time and energy on homework was I distracted that? I know what was for homework that I do the homework. So, how is my homework strategy? How about actual studying? What was my temperature on studying? Did I actually study how I’m supposed to study in a way that actually makes me learn material or did I crammed at the last minute? Not really learn or did I do it? Not at all. How about reading when I was reading for reading assignments. Did I actually focus on reading and get present with reading that I skim it that I avoided that I wait till the last minute. I was my reading. How about writing when I had the right things that I actually plan it out or did I just vomit ideas at the last second and get it turned in that I actually write in a mindful thoughtful creative way how about projects that I approached projects at the last minute and avoid them that I put a lot of energy in a did I put too much energy into the artistic part of the project that really doesn’t get me any points and not enough on the research how to do in Project. How about advocacy did I advocate for myself and say hey teacher what’s up? I need some help. This is sat there and I’m struggling with this. I need some help or did I say all the teacher doesn’t want to hear from me. They don’t like to hear from me. I don’t want to bother them. I’ll do it tomorrow. I promise. I’ll talk to them tomorrow. I swear. I’ll talk to them later this week. I know I’ll go to office. Like did we actually advik? In a positive way. The next thing is what I forthcoming with my parents I say hey parents, what’s up? I need to be honest and open with you upfront. Here’s what’s going on. Where did I wait until they figured something out before we talked about it if that did I avoid talking about it and then I things all together. So what is a forthcoming was a honest with me was I honest to say Seth I’m totally unrealistic about how long it’s going to take to do something I hear is true story to be honest with myself. I can be forgetful about bizarre things and I’m not going to shave myself or just happen this video that I’m making right now. I just made it before I spent 20 minutes making it and I didn’t hit record and I spoke to the computer just like I am right now with no recording. Let’s make sure it’s recording right now. Yes it is. Thank goodness. So I’m human right but I need to be honest with myself about my strength and my weaknesses were you honest with yourself or were you blaming others? It’s their fault. The teacher hates me my parents bug me too much. I don’t have enough time for this. I don’t have nothing in me. Not looking at yourself and not taking responsibility. So are you being honest with you? What about procrastination and distractions? Did you last message? You want to reflect on how distracted you wear what men be honest with yourself? What distracted with the you how sorry I’m getting tongue-tied. How were you procrastinating? How did that affect you want to reflect on that and see what you can do better for yourself? How was your mindset? Did you have a negative mindset? Did you blame? Did you blame everybody else or did you have a mindset that hey I can figure stuff out. I can do this. It’s okay. I don’t have to be perfect or were you like really hard on your you know, how was your mind that what about your resistance last semester where you really resistant? I don’t feel like at this is stupid. This is Dom. I’ll do it later. I’ll do it tomorrow. I’ll resist I’m procrastinating. I don’t feel like doing it right the second leave me alone. Stop bugging me while you’re expecting me. How come you don’t trust me where you resisting doing? What needed to be done with your own excuses. How is that last semester? What could you do better? Master again, this is for you. This is not your parents. Not for school. This is for your life to have a better future for you in a better present for you. How was your fun last semester? Did you take time to really think about what matters to me? How do I want to have fun? And did you take the time to have the fun that you want to have in a really positive way? I’m talking I’m not talking about playing video games till 3 in the morning. I’m talking about doing things that are fun and enriching and healthy and good for your life. But that are fun for you spending time with people that really matter to that are good people to have in your life that you really think about. What about your social life? Did you bring a lot to the people around you? Did you bring a lot of good where you like? Did you have great friendships great relationships with people or in your social life. Was there some people who you shouldn’t be hanging around with their people. You didn’t treat though in a way that felt like Integrity for you. Like, how is your social life? Was it what you wanted it to be? How is your emotional life? Did you feel at peace? Did you feel not anxious? Did you feel not stress? There was a remote. My wife happy joyous or was your emotional I feel with anxiety and depression and frustration and anger or was it a mix? And what would you change about your emotional life? What about your physical life sleep nutrition exercise. Did you really get restful sleep and wake up rested. Did you really take care of your body and exercise and move your body. Did you really give yourself a nutritious food that really helps you and stay away from things that really are not good for you. What about self-care brushing your teeth and things like that. Did you actually take care of yourself and do the things that you need to do to treat yourself with good South care now after that reflected on all those things you’re done. You can do the temperature check on each of those things and now you’re ready to do a reset now the reset you don’t have to do right away. You can wait till the end of the semester on the reset. But the reset is really take your backpack. Throw it in the laundry machine clean it up. Get out all the crumbs get out all the change full out all the folders throw away old folder throw away old papers. I’ll get brand new folders. If you need them get all the folders emptied out ready for the new semester clean up your inbox reset your planner get it up to date. You want to reset everything. So when you walk into school in that first day back, you are ready to rock and roll don’t have a bunch of old clutter. You’re ready to start with a fresh start for having a great spring. So you do want to do a reset over the break before you go back to school doesn’t have to be right now. But before you go back to school you really want to get trapped in a good way. Finally, what you want to do is you want to set an intention for spring. How do you envision that your spring is going to look? So you want to set an intention for spring? Hey, I’m going to be laughing while I’m going to have a lot of good friends going to have some study parties. I’m going to get my homework done more proactively. I’m going to use my planner more effect. Play I’m going to be more forthcoming with my parents. I’m going to be less stress. I’m going to more free time. I’m going to be more focused on me. Stop. I’m going to eat all this stuff is going to magically happened. Just cuz you think about it. That’s not realistic. But you still do want to set the goal in the intention for what you want your spring semester to be like realistically this stuff works. When you envision stuff. It helps you achieve your goals. So you want to take your attention for spring. Now, you’ve done all the stuff you’ve done the reflection. You set an intention. You can do your reset later now relax. It’s a break. Enjoy yourself. Do stuff that’s fun for you over the break go snowboarding. If you live in a place that has snowboards play your instruments hang out with people do things that are fun for you. Like enjoy your break. You should relax you should not be stressing about school and all of that stuff. So again, my name is stuff for 11 the executive function coach in Boulder, Colorado. I’m really glad that it is break for me to I work very hard and what I do and now if you like what I’m doing in this helps you Please do all the things right now share this video. Subscribe subscribe on YouTube subscribe to my blog leave a comment do all the things and have a fantastic wreck.

Education On Fire

 If you like this, please **CLICK ABOVE TO SHARE** Here’s a new 45 min. podcast I did with Mark Taylor out of London. It was a ton of fun and you might get a lot out of it. He asked me the following:
  • Who are you?
  • What does your life look like now and how is it different from when you were growing up?
  • What was valuable about your school experience?
  • Which teachers do you remember and why?
  • Who did you admire when you were young?
  • What was it about that person that had such an impact?
  • What was the best piece of advice you have ever been given and who gave it to you?
  • What advice would you give your younger self?
  • What does your future look like?
  • What podcast, book, video, film, song or other resource has had the biggest impact on your life and why?

Mark has a podcast network “exploring a world of endless learning possibilities.” Here’s part of his description:

“Do you want your children to be happy, creative and inspired? To have an inner belief that they can achieve anything? Whether you are a student, parent, teacher or leader we have a podcast for you. For adolescents and supportive parents. I interview people living life on their terms. They share their wisdom and insights to help you discover your true voice.” Check it out right here on his site: https://www.educationonfire.com/executive-function-with-seth-perler-lf013/ Here on iTunes:  https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/learning-on-fire/id1435824784 Here on Android:  https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/education-on-fire/learning-on-fire If you have an iOS or Google device just search for Learning on Fire in the podcast app.
If you like this, please **CLICK BELOW TO SHARE**