Mich, how did you teach EF skills?
DeeDee
I'm not Mich, but there is a lot of literature out there on this subject-- a lot of it is geared toward pre-adolescent kids, since that is where the executive skill set first becomes 'out of sync' for kids that are at all asynchronous.
One of the things that I read recently was
Smart But Scattered by Dawson and GuareI've recently read this book. It contains a lot of common sense recommendations (lists, rewards, consistency), and we were able to figure out why what we'd been doing in the past hadn't worked (mostly in that we'd stop the process too soon).
The book recommends working on no more than two things at a time. Taking that recommendation, we're continuing the system we started before I got the book (homework neatness & completeness) and one more task (emotional control in playing games). We have a list of about 10000 other skills and tasks that drive us nuts and hamper our daily lives or DD's education. Those are in line according to urgency.
It seemed to have much lower expectations for EF for an age group than we have in this house, and significantly lower expectations than schools seem to have for children. I was left with the sense that I shouldn't even be reading the book based on the expectations of kids in grades 1-3. Even if I were to look at expectations for older kids, DD (age 8) would generally be marked as fine. And yet, she cannot be relied upon to finish getting herself dressed once she starts. This left me with the sense that they underestimate how much you can teach a kid with respect to EF, and wondering if maybe we could tackle an additional task or two right now.
