Methods of developing your child into adulthood.

Executive functioning is a set of mental skills that are a core component into your child’s academic success. Last week we went in depth to find out what executive functioning is.

Here we will be going into more depth about the methods you can use to help your child prepare for adult life. 

Help your child create a planner or working schedule. Planning and organisation skills are used when creating a list of weekly assignments and simply highlighting and colour coding specific tasks can help prioritise important responsibilities.

Encouraging hobbies and activities. Help your child find an engaging activity that they are passionate about. Examples of engaging activities can be – learning to play musical instruments, or storyboarding.

A lot of these hobbies and activities will also help to build executive functioning skills by planning self-directed learning. However, it is often easier to develop these skills during a pass time you genuinely enjoy as opposed to an assigned responsibility such as homework.

If your child has an activity that they find engaging, this should be encouraged to assist in developing these skills.

Create a dedicated homework space and environment. Provide your child with a distraction-free and quiet environment to complete their assignments. This includes unnecessary devices such as televisions and mobile phones.

The environment should be well lit and somewhere they can have easy access to their work such as a dining table or computer desk.

The goal is to minimise all possible interruptions and distractions that your child may experience while completing a homework session.

By creating an environment that encourages learning you can help improve your child’s attention span, ability to focus and retention of information.

Encourage emotional expression during difficult moments. We all know that sometimes a child can be challenged by work and something that may tick them off, let your child know that you are there to provide an open ear during these moments.

Venting to somebody else can be a great healthy way to relieve stress or anxiety, this helps to build emotional regulation skills.

If your child is dealing with a situation that involves multiple people, try and get them to see the situation from the other person perspective. This is a great way to encourage flexible thinking skills.

These skills can be used throughout your child's life to help them become more independent and ready for the adult world.