On Boys Podcast: Executive Function

How reasonable is this thing? How realistic is what they’re being asked to do in the context of everything else going on?

For example, maybe they have math to do, and they don’t feel like doing it. It actually is valuable for them to learn this math, but they’re so far behind — they have 30 assignments to do — that just rushing through it and getting it done is not helping them learn math.

Is the thing we are asking them to do, in the grand scheme of things, actually reasonable in their life?

Or maybe the worksheet has 50 problems, and they really only need to do three or four high-quality ones to actually get something out of it.

It’s like if I’m going to do push-ups today, and I do a thousand push-ups today and no more for the month. That thousand push-ups is not going to get me any results. Whereas if I spread them throughout the month, there would actually be some toning going on.

That’s what a lot of the kids — and in terms of this podcast, a lot of the boys going through this stuff — experience. They’re so far behind, and they’re just trying to survive. We’re trying to get them to be compliant, to motivate them, to get them to do the things, but we’re not giving them internal motivation or an internal locus of control.

And then, circling back to your question, Jennifer — so what do we do?

Yeah, that’s such a common thing, especially right now. The pandemic has been really hard on everybody.

So you’ve got this kid — Janet, I know you’re working with parents who complain about this — you’ve got this kid who is like 30 assignments behind in this class. He hasn’t turned anything in, and the end of the semester is coming up.

Do I just let him fail? Do I just push him through to do these things? What would be your recommendation, Seth?

So again, sadly, this is complicated. This is not something with easy answers. There are a lot of experts out there that have these sort of “pat answers” for things, and I have some models for things, but it is complicated. Every kid is complicated.

So the first answer to your question — and this isn’t meant to be a crappy answer — is that it’s different for everybody.

I love that honesty. I mean, that’s part of what we’re about here. We do these podcasts because there aren’t any easy answers. We’re going to give you bits and pieces, and then listeners, you take what applies to you, your kid, and your situation.

Yeah. And second, I think it really is about looking at those two things we were mentioning before:

1. How reasonable is the thing?
2. What do you do in that case?
3. And when they are doing the thing, what do you do to be supportive?

So let’s first look at how reasonable the thing is. What can parents do?

Well, you have to be really realistic in terms of how reasonable the thing is.

Now we get into a problem here quite often because parents and teachers will get stuck in this particular trap. Some of you guys have seen this. They’ll say, “Well, we know he can do it. We’ve seen him do it before.”

Do you guys hear that?

Along with that is: “We know he can do it, but he didn’t pass the quiz. He didn’t pass the test.”

One family I’m working with right now — 70% of his grade is based on tests and quizzes, and he can’t do these quizzes and tests online. He just can’t do it. But he’s doing the work, and he knows the material, and he’s getting penalized.

I’ll tell you what — that is not very motivating for him to do the next assignment.

Very good point.

So that’s an excellent point. And I’m sorry for everybody listening because we could go down so many different tracks here, but so many of these points are so important.

You have to understand the experience these boys are having. They have been asked to do things so many times, and they have “failed,” or it hasn’t been good enough. They’ve been told:

* “Redo it.”
* “You forgot to turn your name in.”
* “You’re getting half credit.”
* “It’s late, so you’re getting a zero.”

They’ve been told these things so many times.

And we forget that we are there to serve them.

Now, I’m speaking from an educator’s perspective. There’s lots of context here, but in our system, the teachers, the educators, the school, the principals — we are there for them. It’s not the other way around. They are not there to comply for us and our rules.

We are there to serve them.

But what has happened is we’ve created a system with standards and Common Core and tests and all this stuff that gets teachers really off course from why they got into teaching in the first place.

They got into teaching to help kids.

They get a lot of pressure from above to do things certain ways, and many of them — not all of them — lose sight of why they even got there in the first place.

Fifty percent burn out before year five and quit. Fifty percent of the people we hire to serve our kids quit by year five.

What are we doing here?

And then the ones who stay — who do you think they are?

A lot of them are brilliant, amazing teachers. But a lot of them are compliant, and they’re just like, “It’s good enough,” or whatever, and they settle.

Do we want that for our kids?

Well, that’s the system we’ve created.

So they’re in a place where they’re thinking:

“I have this pressure to get these kids to look like this on paper, and to walk through these curriculum requirements, and meet these standards.”

But the experience of the boys — especially boys who struggle with executive function — is:

“I can’t do what they’re asking me to do.”

The absolute load…

True story: I was speaking with a kid the other day. Beautiful conversation with this boy.

He said, “Seth, I have so much to do that I could literally spend every waking hour doing it.”

He wants to do well. He struggles with executive function and focus, but he said he could spend every waking second doing it.

So where is the time to be a boy and to experience life?