Executive skills experts -- is there a name for this skill?

[Cosmos]

And do you know of ways to teach/strengthen it?

 

My teenage ds struggles with executive skills. The book Smart But Scattered Teens was a godsend for us when we read it a couple of years ago. Finally we had the vocabulary to articulate the problems and see what the root issues were. Using that book's terminology, he struggles most with task initiation and prioritization. He's made good progress, though it doesn't always feel that way! But recently we've had some discussions that made us all realize that there's something dh and I both do quite naturally but ds does not. It may be related to working memory, but it seems a little different to me. So I'm turning to you all, the experts!

 

Here are some examples:

 

I'm doing my daily walk and as I walk, I look at the trees, smile at passersby, etc. Then this thought floats up into my mind, "What should I make for dinner tonight?" I might push the thought away or I might think about it for a few seconds. A few minutes later another thought pops up, "What should I put in my article for the church newsletter?" Again, I might think about it or not.

 

Dh is sitting on the bus on his way home. He's looking out the window and then this thought pops into his head, "Where should we go camping this summer?". He thinks about it for a little while. Later on, as he's walking home from the bus stop, he starts thinking about a problem he's working on at work. This time he pushes the thought away, because he tries not to think about work outside of work.

 

Okay, what I'm referring to is that moment when the idea "floats" into conscious thought. All of these items I mentioned (make a meal plan, write a newsletter article, plan our summer camping, etc.) are on our to-do lists in some form, whether written out or just on a mental list. But what happens for both me and dh is that we do a lot of work on items where decisions need to be made by brief thinking sessions in odd corners of time. I don't consciously choose to think about my article. My brain just prompts me, and then I decided to go with it or not.

 

Some tasks don't seem to work well by just sitting down to work on them. In particular, tasks that are essentially making a decision -- What topic should I write my essay about? Where should I apply for a job this summer? What classes do I want to take next year? I know that for me, it's very difficult to say, "I'm going to sit down for twenty minutes and decide what my essay topic will be." And from what I have observed, that doesn't work well for ds either.

 

For me here's what does work: I may spend some purposeful time brainstorming or doing some freewriting and putting a few ideas on paper. In the case of choosing classes, I might list all the possible classes I'm interested in. But then I put the task somewhere in the back of my mind for awhile, ideally several days. And I find that it will "float" to the front of my mind periodically and over those days, I end up thinking about it several times. At some point my thoughts start to clarify and I feel ready to make a decision. Somehow that kind of thinking -- little microbursts of thinking whenever it comes into my mind, spread over many days -- is far more effective than trying to force my mind to think on demand.  Dh says that he does much the same thing.

 

In talking to ds, we have found that he doesn't do this at all. Even though he's looking at his task list on a daily basis, those items basically never just "float" into his mind. :huh: Instead, he thinks about books he is reading, story ideas, ideas for his gaming hobby, etc. Obviously, one explanation is that those projects are more important to him than the ones on his task list! But actually, some of the projects on his list are very important to him. Many are his own personal goals. It's not just school work and other things imposed on him. But it appears that stories and games are the only things his brain holds "in the back of his mind" where they can float into conscious thought now and then. Everything else is out of sight, out of mind.

 

Of course I'm not saying he shouldn't think about stories and games. Just that it would be great to find a way for other ideas to float up occasionally as well. Because without that step, making decisions is really hard. Sitting down to focus on the question might generate a few ideas but no clarity, or worse, a mental block with no ideas at all. But if he stops focusing on it, it goes completely out of his mind. There is no "mulling it over" in the back of his mind. So the next time he sits down to focus on it, he is in the exact same situation as before.

 

Any thoughts on this?

[Storygirl]

I think this may be called "inner voice" or "internal monologue."

 

I just googled it, and the results that turned up focus more on learning how to hear one's own inner voice. I'm not sure how to develop an inner voice if it is lacking.

 

It's a very interesting question. My inner voice is extremely active :) . However, although I haven't talked about it in such a way with my children, not that you bring it up, I suspect that several of my children also lack this skill. I wonder how connected it may be to other issues -- ADHD, IQ, LD, etc.

 

ETA: Some of what my search turned up relates to trying to connect with one's inner spiritual or creative voices, in order to deepen spirituality or creativity. I think is a different concept than the inner cognitive or thinking voice (though both involve thinking to oneself in the brain).

Edited May 4, 2016 by Storygirl

[kbutton]

I think Storygirl is correct, but I think I've also heard it called self-talk (but not affirmations, which is also self-talk of another kind). 

 

I totally know what you are talking about. Maybe you can explicitly teach it by putting microbursts for discussion on his list of things to-do. You externalize it by talking together, and you demonstrate it with your tasks and his tasks. Then maybe over time, he'll internalize it? 

 

The one thing I would try to verify is whether or not this kind of thought process applied to things he needs to do (vs. things that naturally come to him) brings on anxiety. I swear people who struggle hard with EF push many difficult thoughts out if they aren't sure what to do with them--to avoid anxiety. On the flip side they might ruminate on them (but not productively), which creates anxiety. I don't know anyone with EF issues that doesn't take one extreme or another. If anxiety is in the mix, you really have to be sure to undergird any strategy with ways to minimize anxiety about the process. 

 

I can honestly say that I've met people whose self-talk says things like, "I won't think about things that are too hard" And other lovely things like that. The answer in their minds is just a brick wall with No smeared across it in all known human languages. :-) If someone asks them to make a decision, big or small, about that area, the answer is always NO, even if YES would theoretically be very, very simple and helpful. Or, they might theoretically think something is a good idea, but when it comes down to brass tacks, they can't pull it off, and they really muck up the process. Without being too specific, I know someone who was struggling to find ways to organize important things--bills, calendars, notes, etc., but didn't like most organizational strategies/structures, etc., and this kind of clutter was very, very handicapping to daily function. There could be stacks and stacks of clutter (uglier than any organizing solution that was rejected as too ugly), no idea how to organize it, but there was no ability to accept a strategy that was unliked, so the answer to all solutions was always NO, NO, NO. It was easier to lose things than to organize because organizing means making decisions. (I won't tell you what it was like for this person to be able to do something like select paint and make choices about furniture, etc., but it wasn't any better.) The anxiety around this stuff was controlling the functioning of the whole household. There was no ability to see the process in pieces, no ability to go to the store just to discuss paint colors for something coming up, no ability to process data about any of it. Vacations didn't take place because it required making decisions. It applied to lots of areas of life. (But on the flip side, this person could decide on a dime to go on a mission trip to the other side of the world--maybe because the only decision was go/not go, and the rest would be taken care of by the planners?) Anyway, it got pretty bad before it got better.

 

If you find a solution, I am all ears. It's an important life skill.