Executive Function Skills and ADHD: Why Your Child Can't "Just Do It" (And How to Help)

ADHD kids are 30-40% behind peers in executive function skills. Learn what that means, which skills matter most, and how to build them at home.

_______________________________________________________________

You've said "stop bugging your brother" 47 times. It's not even 7 a.m. and you're already yelling. Your child KNOWS how to put on their shoes. So why does it feel like nothing is happening?

Here's the thing: the skill that's missing isn't shoe-tying. It's the invisible skills underneath. Task initiation, impulse control, working memory. These are called executive function skills, and kids with ADHD are 30 to 40% behind their peers in developing them. That means your 10-year-old is operating with the executive function of a 7-year-old. Your 16-year-old? More like an 11-year-old.

In this episode, Apryl breaks down the 11 core executive function skills, explains what's happening in your child's brain, and gives you real ways to start building these skills at home (including one that's as simple as a weekly family game night).

You'll learn:

• Why Dr. Russell Barkley says ADHD is actually an executive dysfunction disorder
• The 11 executive function skills and which 3 matter most for ADHD kids
• Why your child "not listening" is a brain problem, not a behavior problem
• How to build scaffolding at home so the environment does the heavy lifting
• What to do when YOUR executive function strengths clash with your child's weaknesses
• Simple ways to build executive function skills through board games and everyday moments
• A free quiz to compare your skills with your child's and find the gaps causing tension

After this episode, you'll stop seeing "won't" and start seeing "can't yet." 

 RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Free Executive Function Quiz – raisingadhd.org/quiz
• Free Workshop: The 3-Step System for ADHD Mornings – raisingadhd.org/training
• Harvard Center on the Developing Child – Building the Brain's "Air Traffic Control" System: How Early Experiences Shape the Development of Executive Function

Transcript

The Shoe Battle And A Workshop

Apryl 0:00

This is where parents get very frustrated. Is they're like, my child shouldn't know how to put on their shoes. Why can't they put on their shoes? The yelling and anger get really fired up because we believe that our kids should know this. Well, spoiler alert, your child does know how to put on their shoes. That's not the skill that's missing here. It is the skills underneath. Do you feel like you've said the same thing 47 times and it's not even 7 a.m.? Put on your shoes. Stop touching your brother. Why aren't you listening? And somehow nothing is happening. If this is your morning, I want to help. I'm hosting a free workshop where I'll show you why ADHD kids aren't actually ignoring you and the three-step system to help them follow through without all the yelling. This is the exact shift that took our home from constant chaos to calm, predictable routines. You can save your spot at raisingADHD.org slash training. Come join me. Welcome to Raising ADHD, the podcast for parents and teachers raising ADHD kids. If you've ever felt frustrated, overwhelmed, or just unsure what to do next, you're not alone. I'm April Bradford, a former teacher and ADHD mom, and alongside my husband, Dr. Brian Bradford, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, we're here to give you the clarity, strategies, and support you've been looking for. Every week we break down the misconceptions, answer your biggest questions, and share real tools you can use right away at home and in the classroom. So if you're ready to feel more confident and less overwhelmed, you're in the right place. Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Today you and I are going to be diving into executive function skills. Now, if your mornings start with get your shoes on, get your shoes on, get your shoes on, get your shoes on, this is for you. Or stop touching your brother, stop touching your brother, don't chase the cat, get going. All those things, this episode is for you. Okay, so we're just gonna dive straight in. If you have researched ADHD, which I'm sure you have if you're listening to this podcast, then you're probably very aware of Dr. Russell Barkley. He is the ADHD guru. He has spent his life researching ADHD. And this is what he says about ADHD is that ADHD is improperly named. ADHD is not an attention attention deficit disorder. ADHD is an executive function, an executive dysfunction disorder. That is where the ADHD brain struggles is with these executive function skills. So that's what we're diving into today. We are gonna go through exactly what are these skills, how it works in the brain, what's happening in the brain, and then we're gonna talk about the key ones to pay attention to with our ADHD kiddos. And I have a really, really cool quiz that I'll share with you at the end. And also I'm going to share some ways that you can actually start working with your kiddo to build their executive function skills. So let's dive in. So, number one, people, the one thing that I want people and parents to realize is that executive function skills aren't just learned. Yes, we learn them throughout, you know, our life, but they have to be explicitly taught. Everything that I'm taking today comes from a Harvard research paper, which I'll share in the show notes. It's really good if you want to check that out. But they explicitly say in this paper that executive function skills must be taught. So when you think about it, when you think about a baby, right? We do so much stuff with our little toddlers and infants to help them learn things, things that just come very natural to us. So, like, which one's the red ball? Put the red ball in the bucket, right? That's actually teaching executive function skills, but we don't realize that we're teaching that. I'm sure when you were doing that, you were like, oh, I'm teaching my child the colors, right? Those kind of things, but you're also teaching executive function skills. And as our kiddos get older, we still need to be teaching these skills. So I love the metaphor that this article uses to explain what executive functions are to the brain. And they describe it as the an air traffic control system at a busy airport. Key busy there, because think about, you know, a big airport, JFK. Um, that's a big one, right? So think about all the arrivals and departures and the runways and the planes, all of those things that are going on, right? That is like your brain's executive function system. That's what's happening in our brain. And we have these executive functions that are taking care of everything, making sure that there's not a crash, right? So that's why executive function is so important. It truly is our day-to-day, how do we function in life day to day? That's what's going on when we talk about executive function. So, one thing that, like I was saying, these skills have to be taught. Our environment actually shapes these skills. Yes, our bodies are born with the blueprint of the executive function skills, but depending on the environment that the child is raised in, depends on how well these circuits end up being connected. So, how well these executive function skills develop. We want to make sure that we are building homes where we are intentionally building these executive function skills, especially in our ADHD kiddos. As we know, kiddos with ADHD, their executive function, the gap between their peers of the same age is they're about 30 to 40% behind their peers. That's a pretty big difference. When we think about a 10-year-old child, their executive function skills are on the level of a seven-year-old. When we're thinking of a 16-year-old, we're putting this person behind the will, right? Their executive function skills are that of about an 11-year-old. Those are huge gaps. And so, again, we need to do all that we can to not just teach, but with our ADHD kiddos, the scaffolding that we build in is going to have to stay longer than what we would expect of a neurotypical kid. So, what does that look like exactly? Great question. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about first the core executive function skills. Now, different researchers agree on different amounts of executive function skills. Some think they're like over 30, while some think there's a small few. So I'm going to go with what Peg Dawson says. She is a psychologist. She wrote Smart But Scattered, the Smart But Scattered series, and she is a group guru on executive function, and especially when it comes to working with kids in school. So I'm going to go with her because this podcast is based towards kids. So let's talk about the skills that she identifies as executive function skills. The 11 skills that she defines as these core executive function skills are number one, emotional control. So this is your ability to manage your emotions in order to achieve a goal. Number two is flexibility. So think about if plans change, are you able to face those obstacles, those setbacks, and be flexible with this new information? Number three is goal-directed persistence. And that's exactly how it sounds. Are you able to follow through and complete the tasks that it takes to complete a goal? Number what is this? Four, metacognition. And this is literally thinking about your thinking, like being able to take a bird's eye view of what's happening in your brain. That's metacognition. This is one that is definitely an advanced skill, one that develops a bit later. Um, that metacognition. Organization, just like it sounds. Are you able to keep your room clean? What does your backpack look like? What does your desk look like? Planning and prioritization. Can you create a roadmap to get to a goal that you want? Are you able to take a big task or a big goal and break it down into small steps and create that roadmap and then prioritize the important steps to get there? Response inhibition. Are you able to think before you act? So that impulse control that we know our ADHDers struggle with. Stress tolerance is your ability to thrive in stressful situations. Sustained attention, again, being able to stay on task for a certain amount of time. Task initiation, being able to get started on a task, time management, which we know this is another struggle with our ADHD kiddos. The time blindness is a very real thing. And then working memory, another one or ADHD kiddos struggle with. Working memory is the ability to be able to hold the information in your brain while trying to complete a complex task. Okay. So those are the core executive function skills that we're gonna we're gonna identify here. Okay. So Peg Dawson says that with our ADHD years, so she has spent years in the school system as a uh school psychologist and then also in her own practice. And so she says that the three skills that she focuses on with ADHD kids, I want you to think if you can guess, can you guess what it is? Number one is response inhibition, that impulse control. Number two is task initiation, and number three is sustained attention. Shocker, right? I'm sure when you hear that, you're like, yes, yes, and yes. Totally makes sense with our ADHD kiddos. In this article from Harvard, it wasn't specifically talking about ADHD kids. It was just executive function skill development throughout the ages, right? And how that happens and how to help them develop. This article said that the three big executive function skills for our ADHD kiddos are working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility. So I actually like the ones that Peg Dawson nailed as the biggest three for our ADHD kiddos, but we can see that working memory and response inhibition, that was both of them. They just call it something different. Inhibitory control, response inhibition, same thing. That is key with our ADHD kiddos, right? And then that flexibility we do see with our kids being able to shut down a task, you know, like turn off the games and come to dinner, that can be hard as well. So how do we actually help our kids then? We know that these skills are important. We know that they're lagging, but what do we actually do? Number one is we have to build support into our homes to build scaffolding, right? When we think about a building, we build scaffolding to support the building that's going on. The exact same thing is happening in your home. You're gonna build scaffolding to support the building of the executive function skills that's happening in your child's brain. Number one, the very first thing that we want to change is environmental supports. When we can change the environment, then it takes a lot off of you as the parent. And think about how much it takes off of your kiddo as well. So we want to change the environment so that it is doing the heavy lifting. Then we want to start working on the skills for our kiddo, practicing them and building them as well. Let's think about a task for just a minute. Think about putting on your shoes. Kids know how to put on their shoes. So this is where parents get very frustrated, is they're like, my child shouldn't know how to put on their shoes. Why can't they put on their shoes? Right. And that's where the yelling and anger get really fired up because we believe that our kids should know this. Well, spoiler alert, your child does know how to put on their shoes. That's not the skill that's missing here. It is the skills underneath. So when we think about shoes and we think about these executive functions and what's happening, there are so many executive function skills that have to take place and have to be working. Think of that air traffic control system, right? What's all going on to get to the point of getting the shoes on, getting them tied, and getting out the door in the morning? There's a lot of tasks, right? There is the task initiation, there is the impulse control of not, you know, chasing the cat. There's the working memory, keeping the all everything in your mind while trying to complete that skill, right? Or that task. So we have to think about that. And when we can see our child's behavior as not they should know how to do this, but that there are skills that are lagging. There is a gap here between knowing how to and the skills to actually be able to initiate and do that. That's where the gap is. And when we know that, our anger tends to dissipate when we start looking at it through that lens. So, some ways that you can build this. Like I said, building scaffolding, look around your house. What is your child's brain having to do in these hard moments? I call them the battle zones. When you have those hot spots in your house where everything explodes, what is your child having to navigate through that air traffic control system? How are they having to support all of that? And what can you put into place that will take some off of theirs? Some cool ways that you can actually start building executive function skills, board games, have a family game night. How cool is that to have a family game night and start building skills like impulse control? Think about that. When you see someone is going to, you know, take your spot in a game, um, or you know, like I don't know, like connect four, right? They're going to drop their little marker in and block your spot. That takes impulse control. It also takes working memory to be able to think through all of the um, you know, the strategy and stuff like that for a whole bunch of different games. One game that I love is the game. We have a little travel Simon game that's super fun. Um, and if you haven't played Simon, it's it's lights, it has four lights and four different sounds for each light. And then it'll like do one light and one beep, and then it'll do two, and then it'll do three, and the pattern gets more and more complex, and you have to remember that. And there's actually research that shows that Simon has been done in research, like four different research things, and it does help build these skills. So things, you know, just as simple as that, like handing the game in the car. It'll keep their hands off their siblings while also building executive functions. Win, win, right there. But, you know, even things like when you're when you know that your child gets upset if they don't win. If they, if it that's a really, really big deal, then you start with cooperative learning games. There's a lot of those are younger games, but older kids still find them fun to play, but then there's not one true winner. You're actually working together to win the game. Like you have to work together to win the game. Then you want to, you know, level out of that to where they actually become the loser and they have to deal with that. And then when they actually deal with it and they don't explode, then you talk to them, like, hey, how did you do that? Way to go. You didn't explode this time. What happened? How did you do that? And that gets them starting that metacognition, thinking, like, how did I do that? And they can pull on those skills next time. So there's some ways that you can start supporting executive function skills in your home. One last thing that I want to say on executive function skills. When we as parents, when there is a gap between our executive function skills and our child's executive function skills, those can be very, very tricky to manage. So for example, I am strong in organization. I like things clean. I like things tidy. That is a strong suit for me. I was raised by a not diagnosed OCD parent, but pretty much. And so that just came in that environment, right? Even if I wasn't explicitly taught, I learned through example of we keep things clean and tidy and neat. However, my daughter, that is a weak skill of hers. And so there's this gap between my strong skill and her weak skill. And before I realized this, that was so irritating to me that all the time I felt like she was like my little tornado, just going through the house making tons of messes. And it would drive me bonkers. But then I literally was like, okay, I have to lose some of the control. Like, I can't control everything. So then I had to step back and go, okay, what? This is a strong skill of mine, right? This is a weak skill of hers. So I had to, for my own sanity, be like, okay, this is passing and this is okay. This is not passing. This has to be done. So for me, our main living areas have to stay clean and tidy. If she wants her room messy, that is up to her. But our main living areas, when those aren't clean, I can't function. So that was a that was a line for me. And are we still working on building her skills? You bet we are. But just being able to recognize those gaps is very, very huge because then you can go, I'm I'm strong in this and she's weak in this, or he, right? Another thing is if you're both weak in an area, you can also drive each other crazy. So, for example, if you are both weak in um organization, we'll use organization again, and you're always losing things, and you know, she or he can't get their homework turned in. They never have their homework. Where's your homework folder? All the things, and you're like, I can't find my phone, I can't find that field trip paper. And your son will do a son this time. Your son's like, but mom, I gave it to you, and you're like, oh my gosh, I have no idea where it's at. And then you go through the backpack and you're like, your backpack's a disaster. Being able to actually work on these skills together is also another great opportunity. You can point out, like, hey, you know what, buddy, I'm really, really struggle with organization. And here's what I'm working on. I am going to put my keys on this hook. That is my, that's what I'm working on right now. And so, you know, I've noticed that your homework gets lost a lot and you're getting in trouble because your homework's lost. What do you think we can do to make it so your homework doesn't get lost? Is there something that you can do, you know, like me putting my keys on the hook? Is there something you can do? Oh, well, mom, I think if I put my homework right here on this cupboard when I walk in, like for us, there's a cupboard like right when you walk in the kitchen through the back door. Maybe we could put a little basket there and I can put my homework there. Great idea, buddy. Let's do that and let's check in on each other. And being able to build the skills that way is also very helpful. One key here is that our golden time of being able to do this is when our kids are still influential. We know that once we they become teenagers, this is going to feel more like nagging instead of coaching, right? And teaching. So when they hit those teenage years, you can still, you know, especially if you're like, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with this. I see that you're struggling with this. Let's work on this together. That can be very helpful. But also approaching it more like a coach and not the nagging parent of, oh my gosh, why is your room so messy? Clean your room, right? And breaking things down very simply is also huge as well. We're having smaller tasks for them, like your teenager, you know, you're like, oh my gosh, their room is a disaster. Okay, well, we're gonna create an expectation that your dirty clothes are picked up off the floor. Okay, that's where we're gonna start. So things like that can be very helpful as well. So to review everything that we've just talked about is the executive function systems are like an air traffic control system with many arrivals, many departures, many planes going all the which ways, arrivals, departures. runways, all the things, all the gates, everything, that's what the executive function skills are doing inside your child's brain. So we want to make sure that we are building scaffolding and support and explicitly teaching these skills so that our children can have the most success because we know our ADHDers are 30 to 40% behind their peers. And we also know that instead of getting frustrated by this, that when we build scaffolding and we build support that and we have that perspective, it's going to help us not lose it and blame this on a behavior problem when really it's a brain problem. So I told you I said at the beginning I have a very cool quiz that I would love for you to go check out and take. This quiz can be found at raisingadhd.org forward slash quiz. What this quiz is going to do, there's two options if you prefer the PDF, think about like when you were a kid and you would get like the I don't know, I can't remember the name of it. I swear it was like Teen Bop or something. I mean they still have them in all the magazines where you like circle and it's like okay you get three points for this answer, two points for this answer and then you figure out you know your results same thing here. I have a digital version that's you can take right there on the website and it's going to show you your strong, weak and developing skills and it's also going to show your child. So there's two sections of the quiz there's the adult section and then there's the child section. So you're going to answer questions for both of those. And then at the end there is going to be a graph that compares you and your child so you can see where are you weak, where are you strong because that gap can create a lot of tension in your home and then it also will separate it out as well. And then like I said there's also the PDF does the same thing it's just PDF instead of digital so you can print it out and you can have it. So you can grab that again at raisingadhd.org forward slash twist. So I hope that you start developing your kiddos executive function skills and it can be as simply as starting a family tradition up a weekly game night. All right I can't wait to see you next week same time same place.

Brian Bradford 24:15

Thanks so much for joining us for today's conversation on raising ADHD. Remember raising ADHD kids doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Small shifts can make a big difference. If you found this episode helpful it would mean the world if you would hit subscribe if you'd leave a review or if you shared it with another parent or teacher who needs this support. And don't forget to join us next week for more real talk, practical tips and encouragement. Until then you've got this and we've got your back