By Katie Bellon, PhD, Denver Integrative Assessment

Could more free time help your child be more organized in school? Can unstructured play help children do better socially? You might be surprised to find that the answer is yes.

You may have heard “executive functioning” mentioned alongside discussion of traditional academic skills.  The executive functions refer to the brain’s self-regulatory capacities, housed mainly in the pre-frontal cortex.  These critical skills help an individual work in an intentional, directed way toward a future goal; prioritize and manage multiple, competing demands; and appropriately manage their emotional and behavioral reactions.

Damage to the prefrontal cortex can cause severe problems with self-regulation, as in the famous case of railroad worker Phineas Gage who survived a railroad construction accident involving an iron rod that was driven through his left frontal lobe. However, even in healthy adults, executive functioning exists on a continuum. Everyone possesses varying degrees of self-regulatory capacity, even under the best conditions (i.e., as fully developed adults, without a specific learning or developmental disorder that impacts executive functioning, not sleep-deprived, and not under the influence of alcohol or drugs).

But why does it seem like kids are struggling with these skills more than ever before?  While it’s difficult to establish a direct cause, the research has demonstrated the critical role of free (unstructured) play in the development of intrinsic self-regulation.¹  And researchers and parents agree that children in the United States currently enjoy less and less free play time.²

Free or unstructured play refers to children playing without adult direction or interference of any kind.  Given this, if we consider the amount of time a child spends in school, completing homework, on a screen, at church, with a tutor, or participating in sports, enrichment classes, or other extracurricular activities, we can all agree that very little time is left for free play.  Even the American Academy of Pediatrics has weighed in on the debate, particularly as some schools are dropping recess altogether in favor of more academic time.³

To understand how unstructured play helps a child to develop self-regulatory skills, think about all that’s involved in play: communicating with other children; negotiating, compromising, and resolving conflicts; creative role-playing and working to stay in character; developing rules or guidelines to play by and revising these rules as needed; remembering, following and policing the rules to maintain fairness and safety; problem-solving when challenges arise; and keeping track over time of new developments or ideas for the next play time.

Children who consistently struggle with these skills experience the natural corrective consequences of exclusion, and are thus highly motivated to learn and improve.  In contrast, when children are involved in structured, adult-directed activities, the specific tasks/activities are chosen for them, the rules and expectations are explicitly communicated, prompts and corrections are provided for off-task behavior, and guidance or support is offered as needed.

Structured activities, like school and sports practice, teach children to respond to cues, an important form of extrinsic (other-directed) regulation.  But when the cues are removed, children who have not developed intrinsic (self-directed) executive skills tend to struggle.  In my testing practice, I have seen bright students with deficits in intrinsic self-regulation follow a predictable trajectory that typically ends with significant challenges in college.

So, with the realities of modern life being what they are, how are we as parents supposed to help our kids develop intrinsic self-regulation?  Below, I’ve offered some ideas to consider, with the hope of starting a conversation in your family.

Elementary-aged children

• Let your child be bored as often as possible, as boredom sparks creativity. Most of your child’s time outside of school should be unstructured, either with friends, siblings, or by themselves, without access to screens.  Provide supervision only when necessary (e.g., for safety).  Seek out summer camps that are less structured and that provide plenty of time and space for children to play freely.
• Children of all ages should have regular (daily) chores to help the family and contribute to the running of a household. If they do a sloppy job, have them do it again.  And again.  And again.  Most kids do better with regular chores that are frequent and predictable, than with less frequent chores that are unpredictably requested.
• Limit the amount of time your child spends completing homework. A good rule of thumb is no more than 10 minutes per grade, per night.
• Let your child experience the consequences of forgetting an assignment, their lunch, or their sports equipment. If forgetting is habitual, regular rituals need to be put into place to support organization (e.g., putting everything needed for school by the door the night before, with a reminder note to grab lunch from the fridge).
• Start teaching money management by giving your child an allowance.

Middle-school-aged children

• All of the above, plus . . .
• Playing will naturally look different at this age, and phones/screens commonly enter the picture. Have conversations with other parents about restricting access to screens while kids are spending time together, to promote healthy relationships and social skills development.
• Minimal supervision should be needed when children this age are playing, and when screens are not accessible. Depending on the safety of the neighborhood, kids should be able to bicycle to a nearby park without parents.
• Teach your child phone/email etiquette. Provide opportunities for them to buy things at the store and interact with service personnel.
• Have a conversation with your child’s teachers about what the expectations are for parental involvement, according to your child’s specific needs. Help your child plan ahead, but do not rescue them.
• Teach your child to advocate for their own needs. Offer your presence and support only.
• Daily chores/responsibilities/expectations continue and are increased appropriately
• Increase allowance and teach them to save or work for more expensive purchases

High-school-aged children

• All of the above, plus . . .
• Your adolescent should be budgeting farther in advance and for larger items. For example, consider giving them a seasonal or annual clothing allowance that they are responsible for managing.
• Summer jobs are essential for this age group. Have your adolescent earn the money to pay for phone bills, gas, and social activities.
• Your adolescent should be able to take a city bus to meet friends downtown. Buses involve planning ahead, using a map, and transferring – Uber/Lyft and parent chauffeuring are not equivalent alternatives.
• Your adolescent should be responsible for making doctors’ appointments and filling out school forms.
• At this point, your adolescent should be managing their own sleep/wake cycle, daily medications, and school/sports responsibilities without your assistance.
• Think seriously about your adolescent’s readiness for college. If you are helping them fill out applications, write essays, or ask teachers for recommendations, these are red flags.

As your child grows and moves through each stage of development, if they are consistently unable to meet the self-regulatory demands of daily life, it’s important to understand the origin of these challenges accurately.  Are the challenges consistent across settings?  Are they struggling despite appropriate support or because of low expectations coupled with frequent rescuing?  If the latter, is the rescuing due to the child’s limitations, or due to parental anxiety?  Following such a decision tree should lead to a direction for evaluation and/or intervention.  Keeping an open mind is important, however, as the main target for intervention may not end up being your child.

Works Cited
¹Barker JE, Semenov AD, Michaelson L, et. al. Less-structured time in children’s daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning. Frontiers of Psychology. 2014; 5: 593.
²Gray, P. The Decline of Play and the Rise of Psychopathology in Children and Adolescents. American Journal of Play. 2011; 3-4: 443.
³American Academy of Pediatrics. The Crucial Role of Recess in School. Pediatrics. 2013; 131-1: 183.

Additional References
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clear-the-schedule-and-let-kids-play/373144/

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/all-work-and-no-play-why-your-kids-are-more-anxious-depressed/246422/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/well/how-to-help-a-teenager-be-college-ready.html

Katie Bellon, PhD

Dr. Katherine Bellon is a clinical psychologist licensed in the state of Colorado. She earned her Bachelor’s in Spanish and pre-medicine studies from Wellesley College in Massachusetts. Dr. Bellon then completed her graduate education at Fielding Graduate University in the American Psychological Association (APA) accredited Clinical Psychology Program, and received her doctoral degree in January 2010. She received clinical training at the Community Reach Center, the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Fort Logan, and The Children’s Hospital.

In 2008-09, Dr. Bellon completed an APA-accredited internship at the Denver Veteran’s Affairs Hospital, where she later worked as a post-doctoral clinical/research psychologist at the Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Centers (MIRECC). Dr. Bellon left the VA in 2010 to focus on educational and psychological assessment in the private practice setting before beginning the practice that would become Denver Integrative Assessment in 2012.

Dr. Bellon’s current focus is on psychological assessment for adults and adolescents, and educational testing for children six years old and older, adolescents, and adults.

More on this topic from our blog:

Executive Function Development and Your Children: All is Not Lost (Even if Often it Seems That, Literally, They’ve Lost All Their Things)

The post Free Play for the Win! Supporting Your Child’s Executive Function Development appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

Burrito? What burrito? In his school back pack?

Surely my twelve-year-old son couldn’t be referring to the egg and cheese breakfast burrito I bought him last week. (Yes. Yes, he was.)

Today was one of those days when I felt like everyone in my family needs his own personal assistant. It was the kind of day where it seemed like I simply couldn’t keep up with the amount of missing apparel items, the crumpled assignment sheets (and burritos, apparently) shoved to the bottom of backpacks, the misplaced books, as well as the reminders to brush teeth and apply deodorant.

Would it surprise you to learn that the most predictive factor of academic and professional success is not intelligence? If you are the parent of a gifted child, I’m willing to bet you know that the answer to that question is executive functioning. Executive functioning is how the brain regulates itself: cognitive processes such as attention, inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility, delaying gratification/working toward a long-term goal, planning/organization, and emotion regulation.

I really try not to engage in schadenfreude, but whenever I witness evidence that my family isn’t the only family struggling with executive functioning issues, I do feel, at the very least, a little less alone. And, for those of us whose children have messy backpacks while wearing only one winter boot during a mini-meltdown over the long-term project due tomorrow, there is hope.

According to clinical psychologist and Mackintosh Academy-Littleton parent Katie Bellon, “executive functions mainly involve the prefrontal cortex, which fully develops in most people around 25-years old.” All is not lost—there’s still time to help your children’s executive functioning development!

Katie has years of private practice experience. At an upcoming Parent Education event she will share a research-based perspective on what parenting style works best for promoting executive functioning skills in children, how structure versus a lack of structure can affect the development of executive functioning skills, and, as a bonus, she will share some tips and strategies for parenting gifted kids in the summer. Join us at the Mackintosh Academy-Littleton campus on Wednesday, April 29^th from 6:30-8pm!

The event will be B.Y.O.B. (Bring your own burrito.)

The post Executive Function Development and Your Children: All is Not Lost (Even if Often it Seems That, Literally, They’ve Lost All Their Things) appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

That surprised and concerned me. This is a kid who started asking “why” when he was 18 months old and had never stopped. This is a kid who, when we visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, pointed out to an audience of 100 people that the speaker had omitted some information about Saturn. (She laughed and agreed she had.) This is a kid who, as we were driving to school one day, theorized why when you are going slow, as in car, everything close looks big and it seems you are going faster than you are, but when you are going fast, as in an airplane, everything below looks small and it seems like you are going slow. He speculated it must be because of the relationship between speed and distance on perception.

So, I made arrangements one morning to stop by his class at our local public elementary school to check out his “active observing” for myself.

The students were all seated on the floor in the front of the classroom.  The teacher was recapping the previous day’s lesson.  I looked for Quinn and found him sitting to the side of the room seemingly attentive. Something in his posture, however, as well as the vaguely unfocused look of his eyes, told me he was not fully present. It’s hard to say for sure, but my best guess was that he was fighting a battle on Alderaan or Endor. What was happening in the classroom was irrelevant as there were urgent issues in a galaxy far, far away that needed his attention.

Quinn liked school. He had good friends and nice teachers. But when he asked his teachers for more challenging books to read he was told he could not advance to his reading level until his writing improved. He asked to have access to more pre-algebra work and was told he needed to show mastery of a timed addition test on a computer before he could advance. He knew how to add, but his fingers froze as he watched the clock count down. Without the speed, he would not get more challenging work. The stress of being timed took away from completing the actual math. It was difficult to get him to complete his homework. His grades were average.

He was, in a word, bored.

He didn’t know that, but we, as his parents, did.  That led us to the conclusion that he needed a school that would challenge his mind. One that would not just keep him busy but would engage him and help him develop his critical thinking skills.

Now, boredom is not inherently bad. There are many articles stressing the need for kids to have downtime and how boredom generates curiosity and problem solving. Boredom can be good. Just not while sitting in a classroom day in and day out.

In one such article about boredom published by Psychology Today, the writer proposes that  “The antidote to boredom is to provide children with an environment that lets them experience autonomy (the ability to work a little on their own), control (the right to have a say over what they do), challenge (a small push beyond their comfort zone), and intrinsic motivation (the motivation comes from inside them).”

And that is the environment that Quinn has found at Mackintosh Academy.

Shortly after starting Mackintosh as a 5^th grader, Quinn told me, “When I was at my old school I used to think about everything but school. Now I choose to only think about school. We learn so much in one day I don’t want to let my mind wander.”

Quinn’s teachers report that Quinn contributes meaningfully to class discussions. He completes his homework with little to no intervention on our part. He is fully engaged at Mackintosh. Every evening as part of our dinner conversation we ask Quinn to tell us five interesting things that happened in his school day.  Sometimes it takes 15 minutes to fully cover one item in depth. Sometimes there are more than five topics to cover. Sometimes we have to stop the conversation as we have sat at the dinner table for so long that bedtime beckons.

As I have gotten to know some of the Mackintosh families, I have learned many stories about the path that led them to this school for “keen minds.” While some families knew from the start that their child would not be well served in a traditional school environment, others, like us, discovered when trying other schools that their children’s needs could not adequately be met.

One unifying theme among families is that Mackintosh teachers see our children for who they are and help our children see what they can offer our world, as well as galaxies far, far away. And for this we are grateful.

~by Kathy Yates, Mackintosh mom and Change Management Specialist, Concurrence Consulting

The post What Do You Do When Your Child is Bored in School? appeared first on Mackintosh Academy.

Yes, I’m a proud mamma watching my daughter involve herself fully in an activity that is far beyond her years and non-stereotypical for her gender. But I’m also a PhD psychotherapist and school psychologist here at Mackintosh. And I couldn’t help but notice that soldering had helped my sometimes-a-particle, sometimes-a-wave daughter achieve an emotional state that is really, truly hard for her.

Was it just her or is there something about the activity that could help other kids?

I work with a three-part strategy that helps kids (and adults…) learn to calm their bodies and minds. First, I try to help them realize what it feels like to be elevated or dysregulated – how does it feel a frenzied “10” on the scale of emotional regulation? And how does it feel to be more regulated, say below a “5”? The second step is working to discover strategies that can help move lower on this scale – to get from a 10 back into a more manageable range. And the third step is adding the components of self-awareness and language – being able to say, “I’m starting to feel [blank], I really need to [blank].”

By far, the most difficult part of this process is the first step. How often do you have those moments of clarity in which, just for a split second, you look from outside yourself to find that you’re gritting your teeth with stress, or spinning your mind in anger, or clenching your shoulders high with tension, or even vibrating with excitement (and not in the immediate aftermath of a trip to Ozo…)? Even as adults it can be tremendously difficult to see the forest for the trees – it can be desperately hard to recognize and monitor our emotional states. And we’re supposed to know better!

Now imagine how hard this awareness is for a child. Nothing you say can help a child truly know how these emotional states feel in their bodies. No wall chart with cartoon faces of emotions or silly board game that “leads” from angry to calm can allow a child to experience these very real states of being. I know how to help a child process an elevated state: we can work carefully with traumatic memories or I can encourage struggles in the therapy room with challenging toys.

One of my clients finds calmness with my Labrador. For another, it’s sifting kinetic sand. But for some kids (and, again, some adults…) it can be nearly impossible to find an exercise or game or activity that creates real, profound, organic calmness.

So I’ve started introducing soldering with some of my clients – just the ones that show interest and have been difficult to reach in other ways. Here’s the thing: if you’ve ever done a soldering kit (SparkFun or another), you know that it’s impossible to get anything done without steady hands and a pinpoint focus on the tiny parts in each step. Deeply involved in a soldering kit, I’ve seen tricky clients find a level of focus that I’ve been unable to help them reach in any other way.

That’s the first step, this true feeling of focused calm. From this point forward in our journey together, this feeling can provide a known target that we can aim for. I don’t expect my young clients to carry a soldering iron and a pair of clippers in a fanny pack wherever they go, but once they know this experience of self-regulation, we can work to find it in other ways. And for absolutely everyone I’ve ever worked with, this state just feels good. True focus, precision and selfless involvement may be something kids (and adults) have never felt before.

Take it for what it’s worth: just an idea. But my daughter and now my clients have helped me to place soldering into my quiver of ideas that can artificially create a first experience of calmness that can create a template for self-regulation moving forward.

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