mportant to share because I think a lot of times parents are like, OK, my kids have delays in executive function. Let’s catch ’em up and they’ll be fine and life will be good. And what you’re describing is that some challenges of executive function will be in place throughout an individual’s lifetime.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Here’s one more thing we haven’t talked about yet, so let’s talk about this and then we’ll do a break and come back. Here’s the other thing we learned early on that both of us went, oh. And that was the medication for ADHD doesn’t significantly address executive function. It’s not gonna—cannot medicate a backpack; you don’t medicate executive function. You can improve attention, which makes it easier to use your executive function or to organize or to whatever, but you still have to learn the skills to do that. It’s not gonna automatically mean that the kid is showing up on time and getting their backpack together for school and all that stuff. The medicine rounds the corner and reduces the symptoms, but it doesn’t directly tackle most areas of executive function.

 

Diane Dempster

Pills don’t teach skills. We can’t medicate executive function. Sometimes we accommodate it. Sometimes we teach the skills if our kids are ready to learn the skills. And the classic example of that is, you know, a lot of times—we were talking about planners; was that in the last episode we did together? We were talking about planners in schools—that it’s a sort of, everybody in 3rd grade gets a planner. It’s that reminder that your kid may not have the executive function it takes to navigate a planner when they’re in 3rd grade. They may be ready by the time—maybe, maybe not—they may be ready about 5th or 6th grade, and so there might be an opportunity to help them begin to learn how to use those tools later, but they may not be ready and available when the school is teaching everybody to use the executive function.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

And it may be that it turns out to not be a tool that’s good for them at all, and that may need to be accommodated differently. OK, we are talking executive function. We’ve been kind of remembering our friend and mentor, Dr. Thomas E. Brown, who founded the six aspects of a complex syndrome. The area of. The way that we look at executive function in our coaching model, and it really—that piece in our model is fundamental to what makes it a neuro-informed approach—is that we blended, we took a classic coaching model, we blended Dr. Brown’s understanding of executive function and some other areas of knowledge around neurodiversity. And that’s what allowed our work to be really so neuro-informed. What were you gonna say?

 

Diane Dempster

And I think what’s important about that to me is that so many of us are dealing with our kids’ challenges. My kid has a challenge with this. My kid has a challenge with that. My kid won’t hang up their towel. My kid’s not doing their homework. My kid won’t get a job. Whatever that thing is—the challenging behavior—and part of what we do in our model is to say: what’s really going on underneath that? What’s the real problem we’re trying to solve? Most often what we’re really trying to solve is a challenge of executive function. So “my kid’s not doing their homework” because they have a hard time avoiding distractions. “My kid’s not doing their homework” because they have a hard time with time management and it’s taking them 3 hours to do something that should only take 20 minutes.

 

There’s this executive function thing underneath it, which honestly makes it easier to deal with the challenge. So instead of saying, “OK, I’m trying to get out the door on time,” I’m trying to help my kid navigate avoiding distractions when they’re getting dressed. Looking at what’s going on from an executive function perspective helps us see the challenge at a smaller level, which often—especially for parents—makes it easier to address the challenge, cuz we’re really clear on the specific problem, not just the big problem.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Yep.

 

Diane Dempster

So let’s talk a little bit about remediation and accommodation.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Can we do that? Yeah. I was just thinking about—we’re not gonna go through the six areas of executive function here in detail cuz that would be its own full episode—but let’s do it at a high level. There are six areas that are most impacted in our kids.

What was that?

 

Diane Dempster

I’m holding up six, because those of you listening can’t see that I’m holding up six fingers.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Six. I know it’s six. OK, so let’s see if we can get ’em: Memory, Attention, Action, Effort, Emotion, and—what do we call the one for organization? Task Management. So this is our chart that we use for this. Those are the six areas where most challenges tend to show up in at least one, if not multiple, areas.

 

We look at Ross Greene—he talks about lagging skills. Typically, we’re looking at executive function skills. So remediation—we understand that term in terms of dyslexia and reading disabilities—we teach different techniques so that they can learn to read. When it comes to executive function, remediation means helping them see what the challenge area is and potentially learning techniques, tools, or tactics to manage that in a developmentally appropriate way. Right. Do you have an example of that?

 

Diane Dempster

No, I think that it’s interesting because if you’re talking about learning—if I’m trying to capture an assignment and the challenge is working memory, a challenge might be follow-through. There might be several things, but if it’s working memory and, earlier, you were talking about working memory—helping a kid figure out what works for them. I think about my ex-husband who would walk around with these yellow notepads everywhere. He probably had five or six of them in different places—which is a whole other challenge—but Elaine’s gonna show us her notepads. Right? It’s just… but helping a child come up with a strategy that works for them to capture things, whether it’s on their phone or on a notepad or in a planner or whatever else, would be a way of remediating because they understand the challenge and are learning a skill to support the challenge.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

Here’s an example in a classroom: sometimes in an IEP or a 504, you’ll have an accommodation where a teacher is supposed to tap a kid on the shoulder to get their attention. That would be a way of accommodating it, not remediating it. But if the kid has a system that they use on their own to bring their attention back—like the buzzing watch—

 

Diane Dempster

That was a thing with one of your kids, that they had a watch that buzzed every 15 minutes to say, “What are you working on? What are you working on?” Yeah, they did. That would make me crazy.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So that was her way of understanding it and learning to manage it. Right. Well, and technically, there are emotional regulation techniques to calm themselves down. That’s a way of learning to manage the challenge with the executive function.

 

Diane Dempster

Well, and I think that’s the distinction: remediation—there’s this fine line between what’s an accommodation. If I’m accommodating it myself, like you said, is it a remediation? There are times that kids are ready to learn a skill. And so it could be a skill of organizing. So like, OK, I’m gonna figure out a filing system that works for me.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

I’m gonna learn how to sequence, plan, or prioritize. Those are ways that we might remediate. Yeah. So accommodation happens when we’re accepting that there’s a gap in skill capacity for that time, and we wanna work around it to help set them up for the greatest amount of success. We wanna make sure that they can learn and demonstrate their capacity to learn.

 

Diane Dempster

And how often do our kids have accommodations at school? I mean, most of you who are listening—statistically, the majority of you—will have kids with 504s or IEPs at school. But the piece I always remind parents is we need to have accommodations at home, and we need to be conscious and say, “Where am I accommodating? What are my homework accommodations? What am I doing to support my child? Or what is my child doing to accommodate their own challenges in the home environment?” And not just, “The IEP and the 504 is enough,” because challenges of executive function don’t just exist at school. They exist everywhere in their way. Right?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So here’s what’s jumping at me as I’m listening to us. When we talk about the challenge with managing all of these issues, we want to understand the issue so that it’s an explanation we can work with and not make it an excuse. Parents always come to us and they say, “I don’t want them to use their ADHD as an excuse. I don’t want them to use their autism or their anxiety as an excuse.” And I think that’s where the upset about accommodations can rise up because people get worried: “Well, if we accommodate it, then we’re giving them an excuse.”

 

Right. And the truth is that sometimes when somebody breaks a leg and you give them a crutch, they use crutches for a while because they need the crutches until they’re able to get to a point where they can put weight on it again and walk again. And the point of accommodations in a school environment, or in—as you say—a home environment, is to allow them to be as successful as they can and, as they build the skill, to increase and reduce the need for accommodation. And to recognize when they need it or when they don’t. I’m not gonna remember everything I have to do if I don’t use a calendar, and a calendar is a way of externalizing my memory.

 

Diane Dempster

Right. And if you think about that—so I was looking at your glasses; I’m wearing glasses today too—we would never suggest that we don’t give our kids glasses, because we are accommodating challenges of sight with glasses. And using a calendar is an accommodation for keeping track and remembering things. And our kids may not be able to self-navigate a calendar by themselves right away. Eventually, we might get them to the place where they can do it on their own—manage a calendar or a reminder system—and we want to eventually get them to the place where they are self-accommodating. Which is technical, right? 

 

Yeah. So we’re not giving them an excuse. We’re helping them develop a set of tools. We’re acknowledging that they need support, and we’re helping them to become as independent in using those supports as they can be over time. I’ve got an example.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

1. Parents come to us a lot and say, “My kid’s emotionally dysregulated and I feel like a punching bag,” right? It’s not OK for you to feel like a punching bag, and your kid may need some support and accommodations to manage their emotional reactivity until they’ve been able to manage it. But that doesn’t make an excuse for it to be directed at you. And so that doesn’t make it OK. We don’t have to just say, “Well, I have to be a punching bag for the next 5 years because they’re emotionally dysregulated.” No. That means we help them learn how to manage what they can and how to direct it in a way that’s safe and healthy for their relationships until they’re able to regulate it better and better over time.

 

Diane Dempster

And even with that example, it takes time. I was working with a mom, and she had to be in the thick skin for a while while she was focused on, “OK, so he’s losing his cool. He is yelling at me. He is calling me names. OK, let’s be OK there for a while because we’re over here trying to help our kids learn the skills, develop the accommodations, and how do I help the family system move everything forward instead of just being like, ‘This isn’t OK. You have to change.’” Cuz it’s really clear that if they don’t have the skills to manage their emotions, just saying, “You have to stop yelling at me,” is not a realistic expectation in most instances.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

No, but if we could break it apart and say, understand that you’re yelling, that you’re dysregulated, that there’s this emotional intensity, and let’s help you direct it in a way that’s not damaging to you or to your relationships.

 

Diane Dempster

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

So, this is a really deep topic. I think the bottom line for me in this is recognizing how pervasive executive function is. Two, knowing that if you have a kid who has executive function challenges, it’s not just about, “OK, let’s teach ’em the skills and we’ll get ’em caught up.” It’s about consciously saying, am I accommodating or am I remediating? And over time, setting our kids up—both at home and at school—to be able to handle, as independently as possible, the challenges that are impacted by their executive function. How’s that for bottom line?

 

Elaine Taylor-Klaus

That was excellent. Well done. So to those of you listening, take a minute, check in with yourself. What are you aware of from this conversation? What did it bring up for you? What insights do you have? What A-has? What are you thinking about differently than maybe you were half an hour ago?

 

Diane Dempster

And as always, thank you for what you’re doing for yourself and for your kids. At the end of the day, you really do make a difference. Take care, everybody.