This weekend I’m tackling two activities I’ve put off for several months now.  

First, my husband and I are returning to the task of organizing our garage.  We started about 8 months ago, but got distracted.  The ultimate goal is to organize everything and place the items in cabinets mounted to the wall.  We’ve sorted about a third of the garage storage so far.

Time-Block a Task

On Saturday, we’ll tackle the biggest challenge: a wall-length organizer that holds a wide variety of small boxes. Each box has many odds and ends.  We’ve put this off for a long time, because it’s challenging to decide what to keep, give away or throw away. 

Our strategy is to focus entirely on that organizer and stop at four hours. If we don’t complete it, we’ll schedule additional time for another day.  We hope, however, that a time limit will encourage us to finish. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Patience, Communication … and a Little Blind Faith

As if that task wasn’t daunting enough, on Sunday, my husband and I will attempt to color my hair.  It’s been a long time since I’ve colored my own hair, but since this pandemic hit, it’s become a necessity.  I’m not yet comfortable sitting in my stylist’s chair for two hours, so we’ll be at home in our bathroom putting dye on my hair.

The biggest issue for me will be staying patient while my husband works to get the color on my hair, especially in the back where I can’t see or reach.  It’s a great opportunity to practice giving directions in a calm tone and staying level headed during a new task. 

We have both agreed to give it our best shot.  Let’s hope for the best.  You can see the results in my future Facebook Lives! (Watch them live on the Learning Link Facebook Page)

I’d love to hear about the challenging tasks you’re tackling this week.

Truth be told… The year I moved from second to third grade, I was both double-promoted AND held back a grade.  

Because my family moved to a new house, that meant I transferred from public school to private school. The rumor in my public school classroom, at the end of second grade was that I was so ‘smart,’ I’d be double-promoted from second to fourth grade!  I LOVED this idea.  But then I got word of our move, and I was completely underwhelmed and disappointed.

Would the new school realize how ‘smart’ I was?  Would they decide I really needed to be in fourth grade, not third?

When I arrived on the first day of third grade at my new school, they promptly informed my parents that it might be a good idea to send me back to second grade.  There were a number of things I was behind on….phonics, memorizing my multiplication facts, not to mention my daily prayers.  The teachers were going to give me a ‘trial run,’ and if I could catch up, I could stay in 3rd grade.

I was sorely disappointed and felt betrayed by my previous teachers.  Had they lied to me?  Was I really dumb and they didn’t have the heart to tell me?

I guess I did ok in my new private school classroom, because I never got demoted to second grade.

However to this day, I really question how I could be smarter than the average third grader in one learning environment and severely lacking in another.

Now I know as an adult that public and private schools can have widely different expectations for the same grade level, but as a child my foundation and understanding of myself as a learner completely crumbled.  I don’t think I really ever fully recovered until graduate school. By that time, well into my thirties, I knew how I learned best and that given the right supports and enough interest in the topic, I could learn anything.

I wasted many years wondering why I was so ‘dumb.’  Why I was consistently behind all my peers.  Why I never really fit in and felt like I was always playing catch up.

Maybe you have a similar story?  Maybe your child has a similar story?

It’s important to keep talking to our children about different types of intelligence. And to let them know that even if their circumstances change, it doesn’t change who they are. They don’t suddenly become dumber. It just means that they get an opportunity to broaden their perspective and rise to the challenge. And, when they do, they will see their strengths and confidence levels soar! 

Summer makes me feel like a kid again. 

Longer days, a more flexible schedule and more outside time, all remind me of when I was a child and I used to LIVE for the summer. 

Those few weeks between one grade and the other.  I longed for the freedom of being ‘out of school’ and away from all the requirements.  

It was also a much needed break from all the students who incessantly teased me.  My mind could truly wander to a place where I felt safe and ok to just be me. 

Even though my family usually stayed close to home (read…we didn’t travel much at all!) I imagined visiting far-away places, California, Hawaii, New York, Paris!  I’d imagine I was performing on Broadway and enjoying every minute of it!

Living in the midst of this pandemic has been frustrating, but it has also pushed me to dream again, especially in summer.  I’m thinking about all the interesting places I’d like to travel to: Italy, Spain, Turkey!  

I’m also daydreaming about the types of classes I can take to energize my creative spirit, like dance, piano, cooking. I’m grateful for these momentary respites.

I encourage you to dream again. Talk to your children about their daydreams. Encourage their ideas with books, art supplies, course catalogues, and journals.

Daydreams are free and you can dream anywhere. It definitely enrichens and enlivens the spirit.  Enjoy!

Is your summer feeling easy breezy, or is a bit of chaos creeping in?

After the burst of euphoria from ditching homework and responsibilities, we can scatter in too many directions, skip sleep, eat junk …. maybe even fill our minds with crazy cat videos.

Yes, it’s nice to have a break, a staycation. In fact, brain research shows we get a rush of feel-good dopamine from new experiences of any kind!

But, we also need a daily routine to help us to feel more in control and be more prepared for the next school year. Routine also reduces stress levels and helps us sleep!

So, I recommend a summer schedule to all of my clients. 

????️ Here’s my proven plan for a successful schedule:

1. Make child-specific daily schedules (here’s a free template). 
   
2. Schedule bed-times. If appropriate, use staying up late as an incentive.
   
3. Add fun, outside time, and lots of movement!
   
4. Assign family contributions (aka chores) with a specific time so they get done!
   
5. Try to review one academic subject daily.
   
6. Schedule at least 15 minutes of independent, age-appropriate activity. Mom and/or Dad need a break, too! 
   
7. Include caregiver (Mom, Dad, Grandparent, Nanny, etc.) work time on the schedule – you don’t want to have clashing zoom dates or a vacuum running while you’re on a call! 
   
8. Take a few moments at the end of the day to sort out what worked and what didn’t.  Focus on progress, not perfection. 

???? Post your schedule in a spot where everyone can see – maybe even in two places, like the kids’ bathroom and the kitchen. 

You did it! Congratulations!

Put a reminder in your calendar 3 weeks before school starts to slowly adjust the schedule to retrain them for school.

In case you missed it, heres a daily schedule template. 

I recently met with a student, let’s call her Cindy, who was feeling under a lot of pressure. She had multiple quizzes and tests coming up at school, so she was trying to juggle studying with her regular nightly homework. Plus, she had a few missed assignments she was still trying to complete, and in between all that, she had family obligations that were making her time scarce. 

Cindy had so much swirling around in her mind that she just worked on whatever came to the forefront first. This only relieved her stress for a moment though, before all the other items on her to-do list came flooding back in and increased her stress levels and resistance. 

It’s safe to say she was overwhelmed.

In this week’s installment of our 6-part series: Time Management Skills to Help You & Your Child Today, we’re going to take a look at working memory and time management, and how they helped this stressed out student gain control over her to-do list. 

I like to think of working memory as a whiteboard in the front of your brain where you are holding onto a variety of information, while working through your day. Once you use information in your working memory, you can release it and move onto the next piece of information. However, if your brain is not well-trained to stay focused, i.e. you start and stop a lot of projects, you will be holding in your working memory your’re entire ‘to do’ list for the day.  Not a good use of anyone’s time.  

So the first thing Cindy and I did was use our session time to prioritize all of her tasks and take action on the things she could get done right away. These were tasks that only took about two minutes to complete, like sending an email to a teacher to ask a question about an upcoming assignment or connect with a fellow student about a project.

Once these quick tasks were off her list, she didn’t need to hold them in her memory anymore. 

Next, we took a look at the other tasks that required more time and pulled out a calendar. I asked Cindy, “When are you going to schedule those tasks so you can get them done by their due dates? Where are the holes in your day, free time you can set aside to get these tasks done?”

These questions are the crux of time management. 

For middle school and high school students, their projects are typically due in a relatively short period of time. So this process of scheduling involves thinking through the immediate future to find the times when they can plug in extra tasks around their daily homework schedule. 

Once you have a complete schedule, the next step is to organize it in a visual way. Online calendars are great tools, but if you’re struggling with time management, having your plan open in front of you, as much as possible is a better way to ensure all tasks will get done, on time. 

Time is an abstract, vague concept, so with a planner, you have a tangible record of your time, making it easier to track and manage. In addition, the physical act of writing information down is shown to increase your chances of committing it to memory (and following through) as well. 

Plus, you don’t want to be constantly checking your phone for assignments if you’re someone who is easily distracted while working or studying. 

As you can see, working memory and time management are two critical skills in terms of executive functioning. They keep your student, just like Cindy, on task and able to manage everything and anything that needs to get done each day, without feeling panicked or stressed.

In my private practice, I commonly see children and teens struggling with time management skills, whether they have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or not. I encourage parents to put more thought into this area, not only for their children, but for themselves. We have all experiences at some point in life, either at work or at home that are more than we know how to handle. These essential life skills make managing your home, career and family a little easier. 

In the first installment of our 6-part series: Time Management Skills to Help You & Your Child Today, we discussed metacognition – ‘thinking about your thinking.’ This week, we’re going to explore flexibility and response inhibition. 

I know those sound like formal (and probably dull) terms, but bear with me, and you’ll see how integral they are to our everyday lives. 

One quick note before we begin: Different professionals define these skills and/or brain functions in different ways, and this is just how I have chosen to organize them. 

Now, when I say “flexibility”, I’m not talking about physical flexibility, though if you have stellar yoga skills, I envy you. 😉 I’m talking about mental flexibility.

Here are a few examples:

• When you’re working on a problem, and you’re not seeing the results you want, can you make adjustments?


• When you’re getting results but they’re not up to your standards, are you open to experimenting with your process to yield a better outcome?  


• When you’re working with another person, and you’re at a stalemate, are you willing to make compromises to complete the project?


• If plans change at the last minute, can you go with the flow and still make use of the newfound free time, or do you waste it? 
  

I’m sure, even as an adult, you can relate to at least one of these examples in your own life. Flexibility is not always innate; some students need to practice it. 

Some people prefer to be on a rigid, regimented schedule, where things happen at a certain time. But when they don’t happen at that pre-assigned time, in the pre-assigned way, it can be very difficult for them to manage that situation. It’s a very real, stressful situation for them. 

This is why working on our mental flexibility doesn’t just improve our ability to learn and grow, but it also aids our mental health. I recommend coming back to the breathing exercise we discussed in Part 1 when these situations occur (you can find a refresher here), to help calm chaotic thoughts, as well as support your child in making a clear decision on how to adapt to and move on from an uncomfortable situation.  

As parents, you can model this positive behavior for your child. Most parents are already pretty adept at flexibility because we know that most things don’t turn out the way we originally planned and often think of alternative plans ahead of time, just in case. 

So, if you are one of those people who can easily maneuver and pivot when plans change, demonstrate these skills for your child in a very explicit way. 

Here are the steps:

1. Acknowledge your child’s feelings of disappointment or frustration when plans change unexpectedly. 


2. Discuss how they can be flexible in their thinking to figure out how to move forward productively, such as rescheduling. 


3. Determine an alternative plan to use the time you now have.  Try to use the time wisely, but also in a way that makes it fun for your child, especially because they just had to do all that heavy lifting with mental flexibility.   
   

For example, let’s say a baseball game was canceled.  Here’s a potential way to help your child work through this disappointment:   

“Wow, we were supposed to have a baseball game today, but the other team didn’t show up. So, that game’s not happening. It’s being postponed to tomorrow though, so we don’t have to worry about it. 

We’ve got a couple of hours that would’ve been spent on this baseball game. What are we gonna do with that time? What can we do to feel good about the fact that the baseball game that we were really looking forward to is not going to happen? 

You know, you’ve got that science project you’re working on. Maybe you could take a half an hour of the time, and use it for your science project. And then you’ve got an hour and a half of free time tonight where we can play a game or read a book. How does that sound?”

This process teaches your child how to practice flexibility in the moment. When you explicitly bring their attention to how often you use the same skills on a regular basis, they will begin to understand that plans often change, and that’s okay (and sometimes a welcome gift!). In time, this practice can help soften their emotional distress in these situations, because they know it’s par for the course and that they have learned how to handle it. 

This leads straight into response inhibition, which, as you might guess, is very connected to flexibility. 

Let’s be real, often our initial response to a sudden change of plans or obstacle is, “Oh [expletive}! I was counting on this. Why isn’t it happening? Why isn’t the world working the way I expected it to today?” 

We all wish we could stomp our feet and throw a fit sometimes, but it’s not always appropriate to respond in that way, at least in the presence of other people. So, response inhibition is the ability to stay aware of our surroundings and understand which responses are appropriate when and where. This also means being able to hold back the responses that are not appropriate for the setting. 

Children often struggle with this skill in the classroom setting, and it can open them up to punishment from their teachers or judgments from other children. So, if your child is struggling in this area, it is important to keep modeling for them that in the school environment, when things don’t go the way they expect, they hold back certain responses. 

This involves finding alternative ways for them to manage those emotions. It may mean excusing themselves to get to the bathroom to release their emotions.  This, of course is a plan set up with the teacher in advance. Or maybe you offer your student a safe outlet like the counselor’s office or the nurse’s office as a place to just vent. 

The most important part is that the child is thoughtful about their triggers, and they know that they are in fact holding an inappropriate response back until they’re in a more appropriate setting. This skill is important to develop over time and it takes a great deal of practice. 

One final note, it’s unrealistic to expect the moon and the sun from a child who is young and still learning how to manage their emotions. However, conversations about our emotions and beginning to understand our responses can and should happen with very young children in age appropriate language. 

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Can you spot areas of flexibility and response inhibition with yourself or your child? What questions do you still have about how to better utilize these skills? 

Be sure to let me know by posting a comment in our online community, Education Alliance, on Facebook. You’ll also connect with other like-minded parents and educators who support children who struggle with learning.  And you can access helpful videos, share resources and participate live Q&As inside this group, all with the goal to support you as you work with your children. 

If you haven’t already, click here to request to join now. 

See you next week for another edition of this six-part series: Time Management Skills to Help You & Your Child Today.