I was recently the guest speaker for an event at Fusion Academy in Chapel Hill. Fusion Academy is a private alternative school changing how education is delivered to students in grades 6–12. They offer both standard and honors-level courses. Their classes are either 1:1 or small class sizes. Learn more here.
My talk was about personalized goal-setting and life skills for neurodivergent students. During the Q&A, a therapist asked a question that I answered, but time didn’t allow for as complete an answer as I would like to have given.
Her question was this: When families pay for executive functions (EF) coaching but end up getting expensive tutoring instead, they are understandably reluctant to do EF coaching again. How do I handle EF coaching?
Here is my general plan, which would have more or less pieces depending on the client and their family situation.
When working with students, I am not using terms they don’t know. I am meeting them where they are at, so I probably won’t ever say the words executive function skills to them. I am a coach, not a teacher or tutor. While I know about neurodivergent and brain wiring, I don’t assist with doing homework. I discuss organization, planning, starting a non-preferred task, stopping a preferred task to do a not-preferred task, reading a social situation, and so much more with my clients. The idea is that we are using examples from their life to gain awareness about themselves. We aren’t fixing anything because there is nothing to fix. We are using their strengths, shifting limiting beliefs, and finding the right tools for their brain wiring. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to learning and developing EF skills.
I often focus on time blindness, which affects time management, organization, and planning. It also affects prioritization, sustained attention, task initiation, and goal-directed persistence. However, since I do whole-person coaching (meaning any area of life) and clients are responsible for bringing topics to sessions, we also talk about other EF skills, even if we aren’t using academic words to discuss them. While the EF skills I mention above seem academic, they apply to different areas of life, like driving, finding and holding a job, money management, and maintaining relationships of all kinds.
Parents are not just observers in this process. They are active participants. They need support, too. Parenting is a challenging journey, and some parents have more on their plates than others. So, parents (or legal guardians) also need to have sessions with me. Depending on the family, these sessions will look different. It may be the last ten minutes of their teens’ sessions to every other, alternating with a teen to every session if they have children who aren’t yet teens.
- Some parents will benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of EF skills and neurodiversity. This knowledge will empower them to better support their children. Some parents will need suggestions. I only give suggestions. Parents need to make their own educated choices for their families.
- Some parents will need coaching for their neurodivergent brains so that they can show up with a calm, secure, and positive mindset to support their child/teen.
I once coached a mom along with all of her daughters. She told me I was part of a team and that her daughters were well buttressed. I like that term because it comes from art history, which I have a degree in. Buttresses are extra support for walls, mostly in cathedrals. I love the idea of having support throughout all areas of life. We all need extra support sometimes. We want to create buttressing by:
- Preparing for IEP/504 meetings. I support students (sixth grade and up) in figuring out how they best learn and what they believe would be helpful. This allows them to ask for what they need at the IEP or 504 meeting, helps them take on some responsibility for learning, and helps them get rid of unhelpful accommodations.
- Participating in activities that demonstrate strengths, whether a club, sport, or private lessons outside of school, helps build self-esteem.
- When needed, specific support by tutors, OTs, SLPs, and therapists should be part of the buttressing. All support providers should use the same language. These don’t necessarily need to be paid services. They could be a family friend, an aunt or uncle, or a trade for services.
As we are working together to support EF skills, we need to be careful that we aren’t enabling or teaching helplessness. Children and teens must be able to put in effort and fail to learn resiliency. But there is a fine line, we don’t want them to be constantly failing. Celebrate all successes regardless of size to keep on learning and trying.