Is your child struggling to manage their time efficiently and often leaves their homework until the last minute? Do they throw tantrums when they're not allowed to play their favorite game? To prevent these situations, it's crucial to educate them at a young age and equip them with the necessary skills and tools to lead a successful life.
One effective approach is to help them develop executive functions, which are critical for their future success. These functions include appropriate distraction, task initiation and completion, scheduling, self-motivation, self-control, decision-making, mental flexibility, self-esteem, memory, and information retrieval. This guide will provide you with the information you need to help your child develop these essential functions.
Executive functions are a set of cognitive skills that control and regulate other abilities and behaviors. They are crucial for successful adaptation and performance in real-life situations. These functions include the ability to initiate and stop actions, to monitor and change behavior as needed, and to plan future behavior when faced with novel tasks and situations.
Inhibition: The ability to stop one's own behavior at the appropriate time, including stopping actions and thoughts.
Shift: The ability to move freely from one situation to another and to think flexibly in order to respond appropriately to the situation.
Emotional Control: The ability to modulate emotional responses by bringing rational thought to bear on feelings.
Working Memory: The capacity to hold information in mind for the purpose of completing a task.
Planning/Organization: The ability to manage current and future-orientated task demands.
