🧠 Why parents “should” do temp checks daily ✅ (Executive Function Tools)

I want to talk to you about doing daily temperature checks, why they matter, and why they can really help your relationship, your nervous system, your child’s nervous system, and their emotional regulation. I’ll also give you a couple of simple ways to do a temperature check.

What’s up? My name is Seth Perler. I’m an executive function coach. I’ve been doing this for a long time, since executive function coaching really started, and I love helping complicated kids figure out how awesome they are.

One of the most important things we can ever teach is emotional regulation and relationship skills. And one of the best tools we can use, in my opinion, is the temperature check.

In my methodology, I teach several different types of temperature checks. I don’t really care which one you use. What I want to talk about first is why the temperature check is so important.

A temperature check is powerful partly because of what it replaces. What we often do as adults, whether we’re a teacher, a coach, or a parent, is ask closed-ended questions like “How was school today?”, “What’s going on?”, or “What do you have for homework?”

Believe it or not, for a lot of kids with executive function challenges, those are hard questions to answer in a meaningful way. They might give you an answer just to get you off their back, but they won’t give you a real answer that actually helps you help them.

Then, as adults, we try to solve things for them. We tell them what they should be doing. We think we’re the adult, we know what’s important, so we direct everything for them. In that moment, we become their executive function. We start enabling them.

Even parents who think they’re being structured or strict can end up doing too much. And when we do too much, we don’t allow kids to have the experience they need in order to learn.

That’s why temperature checks help so much. They help kids give us responses that actually allow us to help them. They help kids become more self-reflective and introspective. They help them think things through. And they help kids feel more comfortable sharing with us.

Because a lot of the time, we shoot ourselves in the foot. Our kids don’t want to share with us. They want distance. They want us to get off their back, stop nagging, stop bugging them, stop lecturing, stop rationalizing, stop pushing, stop pressuring.

So they don’t give us an authentic response that really helps us help them. And it’s not about blame. It just means they’re responding to the way we’re framing our questions.

So the temperature check can help a lot.

There are many ways to do temperature checks, but the objective is this, and this is one of the most important things I ever say. The objective of the temperature check is that your child feels heard. Not that they give a perfect answer, not that they say the right thing, and not even just that they are heard, but that they feel heard.

If we really want to serve these kids, that has to be the goal.

A temperature check should be open-ended. It can be about anything, a social situation, homework, school, one class, one assignment, their emotional world, a trip you’re about to take, extracurriculars, anything.

The one I use most often is a simple one through ten scale. Ten is good, one is bad.

So I might say, “On a scale of one to ten, how’s your day?”

That’s a very open-ended question. And I want you to think about your own answer. What number first comes into your head?

For example, maybe my day is a nine. I slept well last night, my mood is good, I’m organized today, I have a lot of work to do, and then I have some free time for things I want to do. So mine is a nine.

Notice that I gave the number and the reason.

So the structure is, what’s your temperature and why.

Then your child explains why. You can ask, “What’s your temperature about this? Why?”

So maybe they say, “My temperature is a four because…” and then you ask, “What would make it one point higher?”

That’s a key question. You don’t ask what would make a five a ten. You ask what would make it one point higher. That keeps it small and manageable and helps your child come up with a realistic solution.

For example, you might ask, “How was history class today?” and they say, “It was a three.”

You ask why, and they say they were late, the class was boring, the teacher kept talking, the kid next to them was annoying, whatever.

Now you have something meaningful. Then you ask, “What would make it a four?”

That gives them the opportunity to think. Maybe they say, “If I wasn’t sitting next to that kid.” Now you have information that might actually help.

Another important part of the temperature check is biting your tongue and not interrupting too soon.

If they say, “It was a three because…” sometimes you don’t jump in. Sometimes you just say, “Tell me more.”

Keep it open-ended. Let them talk.

And remember, the goal is for them to feel heard, so you have to actually listen.

After they say more, you might ask, “What would make it a four?” or “What can you do to solve that?” or “What are you going to do to solve that problem?”

And then, “Do you want to know what I think?” or “How can I be helpful?”

That’s very different from doing too much for them. Instead of saying, “I know best, here’s what you should do,” you’re giving them agency. You’re helping them build the skill of thinking and solving problems.

One of the reasons this is so important is that over time, kids start learning how to do this internally. They can be having a rough day and think, what’s my temperature, why, and what would make it one point higher.

That helps them solve problems instead of just spinning.

That’s why I recommend doing this daily. Make it part of your normal conversations. Try it for ten days or thirty days. Do a temperature check every day, maybe even more than one.

Bring it into your daily dialogue. Bite your tongue, give them space, ease up on the pressure, and let them communicate.

Now, I know some parents get anxious here. They think, if I back off, my kid won’t do the right thing. I can’t trust them if I relax.

Give some space anyway. Not total permissiveness, there’s always balance, but give some space.

You might be surprised. In fact, I can almost guarantee you’ll be surprised, because this is what we see happen. When we give space and create safety, kids often start opening up more and engaging more.

Now, there are other types of temperature checks too.

You can use hot or cold. That can be emotional, like hot, angry, frustrated, or cold, calm, shut down, relaxed.

You can use red, yellow, green. Stop, caution, go.

You can use one through five, which works well for kids who don’t talk much, because they can just show a number with their hand.

You can also use this with a group. If you’re a teacher, you can ask the whole class, how did I do today, and have them show a number. Then you can ask what worked and what didn’t, and open up a conversation.

You can even make it creative based on your child’s interests.

But the most important thing is this. They need to feel heard.

And the way you help someone feel heard is through curiosity.

If you’re taking notes, write that down. Be curious.

It works with kindergarten, it works with college. Your curiosity helps their nervous system feel safe, and that goes a long way.

My name is Seth Perler. You can find me at sethperler.com and executivefunctionsummit.com.

I’ve got my summit coming up for parents and teachers, and I love what I do. I’m glad to serve you here.

If you like my work, thumbs up, comment, share it.

Take care. I wish you peace, joy, and connection with the people you care about, especially the kids in your life.