September 15, 2023
Cindy Lopez:
Welcome. My name is Cindy Lopez, the host of this CHC podcast, Voices of Compassion. We hope you find a little courage, feel connected and experience compassion every time you listen.
Natalie Tamburello:
Welcome, Stacey and Sharmila, before we get started, I’d love to hear a little bit more about yourselves and your backgrounds, and I know our listeners would as well.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
Hi, my name is Stacy Soderquist, and I’m a learning specialist at the Schwab Learning Center. I work with students from high school and in college and as well as individuals who are transitioning into the workforce after college or possibly after high school. I have worked for a number of years with individuals who are twice exceptional with learning difficulties as well as those who have executive functioning needs to help develop their skills. And I work from a strength based perspective on helping individuals recognize where their strengths are and the opportunity to help them lift themselves up from those strengths to strengthen their struggle points.
Hi, my name is Sharmila Roy, and Natalie, thank you for having me today. I have been working in the area of ADHD and executive functioning since at least 15 years now. I work as a consultant here at Schwab Learning Center. I work with the learning specialists and the executive team to work on certain aspects of the program, and I also am program chair for the educational therapy program over at UCSC Extension in Santa Clara. I am a practicing educational therapist, and I work with younger students working on their number sense, that’s if they have dyscalculia, and also, executive functioning. So, very glad to be here today.
Natalie Tamburello:
Thank you both for coming. So let’s start off with defining what executive functioning is and why it’s important to understand and talk about.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
Executive functioning is our day to day abilities to kind of go from a to b and move about in not just physically move about, but our ability to organize and coordinate ourselves from getting up in the morning all the way through going through school, having a job. So it’s really looking at our organizational skills, our planning, our attention, our focus, emotional regulation, working memory. They’re all the skills that help us kind of function from day to day. And there’s a lot of motivation involved, but it’s also a skill that is something that you really just have to develop over time.
Natalie Tamburello:
So you hear executive function and ADHD mentioned in the same sentence a lot, and I’m curious for our listeners if you can help distinguish between what is ADHD and what is executive functioning and what are the overlaps.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
People with ADHD have differently wired brains. So recent neuroimaging studies have revealed that structural differences in the ADHD brain exist. So what may look to us as behavioral choices, sloppiness, laziness, forgetfulness, are really likely due to differences in brain structure. This is very recent coming out of like Harvard studies last year, but the good news is neuroplasticity, your brain retains this ability to change from birth to old age and whatever deficits you’re experiencing, your lived experiences are areas that will kind of attempt to rewire themselves. So ADHD is neurobiological. Executive function, on the other hand, is all about, like what Stacy said: planning, organization. And it impacts mainly four areas of our lives, which is attention, emotion, planning and also memory in the hippocampus. So I guess you can have ADHD and not have severe symptoms of executive functioning trouble and you can have executive functioning trouble, but not be diagnosed with ADHD. While I say that, people with symptoms of ADHD frequently carry them through to adulthood, okay, so even if they don’t actually qualify according to criteria, symptoms of it persist. So it’s more about executive functioning, getting it under control early, so that even if you are treating your ADHD and you have ADHD symptoms of executive functioning troubles, you are attacking both and not just one.
Natalie Tamburello:
As I’m listening to you, I’m thinking to myself, oh yeah, I guess every kid struggles with executive function because it’s a part of a developmental process. It’s not just special to people with a diagnosis of ADHD. So learning these skills and tools are helpful for all students. And if it, you know, lasts beyond our twenties and thirties, that’s more of a indicator of ADHD, is that true?
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
It’s true. And you know, the other thing about executive function is in the part of the brain, the frontal cortex, which is just behind your forehead, is the last place to develop in terms of maturing of the brain. So, we are asking students at 12, 13, 14 to perform organizational tasks that really the brain is not ready or mature enough to do. So, the link between the frontal cortex and the amygdala, which is the seat of your fight or flight response becomes really acute.
Natalie Tamburello:
So, what I’m hearing you say is that we’re expecting a lot of kids, probably their most highly organized need in their life time is when they’re in high school or potentially college. And we’re saying this is when we’re going to really exercise executive function as much as possible, but their brains are not fully developed in order to be able to do that. So how can we have these high expectations and how do we encourage students to develop executive function when they’re not necessarily ready to do that?
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
As a parent, I think that you have to be some of that executive functioning support at home. And for sure getting a learning specialist to help you with the organization, especially long term projects, tests, time testing, those kinds of areas, study skills. This can be definitely taught explicitly and by a professional.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
I would say that definitely having somebody be, I always refer to it as the executive of the individual to help execute those executive functioning skills. In the beginning, we really do have to be that person, model, scaffold, and structure for the individual so that they can be successful. And as they’re able to be successful with developing these executive functioning skills, those neural pathways will start to develop and allow for them to accomplish things more independently along the way.
If they continually are hit with failure, if they try to do something and it doesn’t meet expectation or they try to accomplish a task and they’re unable to accomplish the task, then what ends up happening is students pull back and they stop trying, and they feel like, oh gosh, you know, I haven’t been successful, why bother trying? And really what’s happening is they don’t have the structural capacity to do that at this point, so we have to teach them, scaffold for them, support them, loop back around to make sure that they have the ability to accomplish things. And through that, then you will be developing those executive functioning skills that then they will start to be able to move on and do things independently, but we can’t expect independence until they’re actually directly taught and given the tools and the strategies in order to be successful with that.
Natalie Tamburello:
I’m glad you mentioned scaffolding because I think that there’s often lots of jumps in expectations in our education system, and a lot of students aren’t ready for those,and, you know, creating minor successful moments means a lot.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
And I see a lot of that right now out of the students that were affected in those transitional periods by the pandemic and the shutdown. The scaffolding stopped and we really look at, oh, you know, there’s all this learning loss, and we need to combat the learning loss, but we’re forgetting that there is developmental loss. And a big part of that with our high school and younger college age students is that learning loss was executive functioning learning loss. They didn’t have the opportunity to develop those skills. And then what’s ending up happening is we’re expecting the same catch up from them, but we’re not focusing on developing those organization, planning, time management, emotional regulational skills, attention, focus that they would have been practicing had they been in the classroom.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
So I’d just like to add here that the expectation is that here you go, let’s try and do Cornell notes for your science test. And so you show the student who’s struggling in this area how to pick out important notes, take notes, etc. and study for the test, it does not mean that they will execute it the same way every single time. So that’s the scaffolding is that you have to be there to do it every single time till it becomes automatic, till it comes from the student that, hey, I need to make my notes. Until that point, you are very much the scaffolder and the person who is actually going to insist on that outline. And very frequently you do get resistance to that, but I think that we all have ways, tricks up our sleeve to work around that and have students buy in to how good they feel when they hand something in on time, when they get a good grade on a test, those are great reinforcers.
Natalie Tamburello:
Yeah and I think about Stacy’s comment where if they’ve not been successful for such a long time the feeling of handing in something on time doesn’t feel so good. There isn’t that incentive because they’ve never been rewarded for that kind of behavior. Teaching that is really important.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
And it’s about differentiating our expectations. So that student who has struggled to just do the basic of handing something in on time, if they hand it in on time and they still get a C on the assignment, then they end up saying, “well, why, would I bother? I got the same grade.” And so then they regress in those behaviors that we want to lift them up. If you can provide that scaffolding and support them to get to the point where handing things in on time becomes a regular behavior, that’s when we can start to improve on say the quality or the output of the work that they’re putting in, but we do really have to look at having varied expectations for individuals, especially those who struggle with executive functioning because they’re still developing those basic skills. Their output is not necessarily going to be at the same standards as, say, a peer who is a little bit more organized or who maybe has a little more time management or who has a better, you know, executive at home who’s scaffolding for them. So it really does come down to making sure that we are having clear expectations for each one of our students in a very differentiated way.
Natalie Tamburello:
I like all these examples, these real life examples. So let’s do some more of those and provide some context to executive functioning. So can you give some scenarios or tasks, assignments that students may be getting? I know Sharmilla already gave one and so did Stacy that correspond or require executive functioning skills and how we can support students in completing them.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
I would say, you know, when we look at a task of a project, you have maybe a long term project that could be lasting the whole quarter or the whole grading period. And if we give the blurb of the project, here is the expectation of the product, a student who has difficulty with managing time, difficulty with organization, planning, creating a task analysis, is really going to struggle with being able to see this product expectation, but figuring out all the steps involved in being able to complete that product. So what we want to do for that individual is teach them how to, okay, let’s figure out, let’s read this project description. Let’s go through and highlight all of the expectations. There’s this, there’s this, there’s this, maybe you’ve got to find 10 articles. Then what are you going to do with those 10 articles? You need to read the articles. You have to make connections with the articles. And then you need to do an interview with an individual and so you’ve got to research various individuals. You have to email the individuals or make phone calls, schedule the interview with those individuals. There’s a lot of different steps involved to get to this end product and being able to break that down with them. And then, okay, now I know all the steps that are involved in this product. Next, what I need to do is I need to complete each one of those steps. I was talking to a student just this morning about looking at the three D’s. You have the do as in physically doing something. You have the due date as to when it needs to be turned in. And then you have that done point. You need to really look at those three D’s and figure out when am I going to do each one of these steps in order to meet the deadline of when it’s due. And the other piece of that is, it’s that turning it in, giving it to somebody when you are done with it to make sure that you get the credit for the work that you did. And we oftentimes see a breakdown in those areas with our students because maybe they haven’t started it in time. Maybe they’ve missed a step. And once those steps break down, they really struggle on getting back on track. And so that’s where having an adult to support them whose executive functioning skills are more advanced to support and scaffold them through that process so that they can get to the point where they turn something in and they feel accomplished.
Natalie Tamburello:
And as you were describing that process, I, you know, envision first a parent walking a kid through that, but also it’s a potential curriculum point for an educator where instead of this is the project at the end of the year and it’s 25% of your grade. There are actual steps along the way where you’re graded for the executive functioning steps of that project. Is that something that you would recommend would be helpful?
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Scaffolding throughout and having those check in points is really important, and I see that happening in high school, and I think the biggest difficulty that a lot of our college students face is that scaffolding starts to pull away and so they lose those check in points and then when you get to say graduate school where you are working on a thesis or a project, and this project is your brainchild, you’ve developed what that product is going to be in your mind and being able to complete all of the tasks that are involved, being able to analyze that is very difficult for those individuals who have not developed those skills over time.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
So at the other end of the spectrum, First, let’s find out what the homework is, where it resides in the backpack. Is it at the bottom with the, you know, rotting banana peel?
Natalie Tamburello:
The pens.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
Right pens with everything.
So, I think that can really start at home, and educators can do this in the classroom as a class exercise and grade it so that they know that neat binders with separators, with notes, homework, sections, uh, really helps. Physical organization helps mental organization. I mean, that’s very clear. If you have a neat desk and you have a neat binder, you have a sense of pride in it, and it starts really early, really in grade school. By the time you are a PhD student, there is no structure in your life. So no one is telling you that you need to do this, when to do it, how to do it, which is a big stumbling block for people who have executive functioning. So it’s like whether you’re 13 years old, 23 years old or 28 years old, you’re struggling with the same set of conditions. So, being self-regulated is so important with executive functioning, to be self-aware and to know that, hey, you know what, I need to be more organized in this area. I need to plan. Some folks don’t even have that awareness.
Natalie Tamburello:
Mm hmm. Yeah. Even as adults.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
Even as adults, yes. So, if we start in school, and we continue it through high school, college, it is very beneficial for those of us who have struggled in those areas.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
A lot of the times when I have students come in, I will sit down with a student and say, “okay, here are some ideas on how to organize. Let me show you some samples of how different students have used organizational tools.” There’s paper pencil. There’s computer. There might be note cards. Whatever it is going to work for you. Let’s find what works best for you. Let’s try some things out. Let’s model this, but maybe we’re going to tweak it. Maybe you do very well with color. So we’re going to use color. Other people know that color can be distracting. So it’s really important to help students going back to that scaffolding, to find what works best for them and then help them to develop from there because they’re going to be more motivated when they have some ownership in the work that they’re doing in those organizational tools so then it makes sense to them. It’s useful to them, having them all do the same thing can be very difficult at times for a student who maybe is struggling and doesn’t think the same way, say, as the adult or the rest of their peers.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
You can work one on one. In a classroom, it becomes that much more for a teacher. In SLC, that is great because the one on one interventions work the best. They’re the most efficient, successful interventions that we can have for folks who are coming to us.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
Yes, and parents can also kind of figure those things out and start to teach their kids at home, like, I see that this part of this is working. Let’s see what we can do to help this part work, and then teach them how to modify the system that is maybe going on in the classroom so that it is as effective as possible for the individual student.
Natalie Tamburello:
Well and today there’s hundreds of apps that help with executive functioning too. And I think about the skills that they’re learning and the tools that they’re learning to use at 18 or 12 years old, they could potentially use in life and in the workplace. I think sometimes kids feel like, well, I’m only needing this for school, like, I don’t need to really, you know, worry about this in real life, but actually executive functioning continues to be an issue in our real lives. And often our lives are so busy these days that everyone struggles with it.
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Natalie Tamburello:
So when you’re seeing executive function issues in school or in the workplace, I’m curious if you see any differences in the symptoms when it comes to gender. And, if it’s a girl or a boy, how does ADHD or executive functioning issues present differently?
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
So yes, it is a big difference, actually. In the last 25 years, we’ve gone from, oh, ADHD in girls is just a milder version of what we see in boys, which is fidgeting, uh, outward restlessness, not being able to focus in class, being disruptive, etc. Girls can have all of those, but actually they have it much worse because they have a greater need for social acceptance. So in addition to all the other things that they are experiencing, they experience this challenging area of never fitting in. And the desire to fit in for a girl, especially in teenage and even later is greater than in boys, so the research says. So, I guess, for boys, missing the social connections is not as big, so it’s not the emotional component of learning exists in boys, yes, but it’s different in girls, especially in their teen years when they are also going through puberty. It’s like a double whammy.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
I definitely think that I see executive functioning present itself differently with individuals. We oftentimes think difficulty with organization as something looking messy, and I do see that there are times where organization, you almost become distracted by the organization and the organization becomes the task instead of the task itself. I will say, I would see that more often with younger girls, maybe they’re color coding things and they almost go so deep. They start to hyper fixate and focus on that piece of it while missing the steps that are involved in actually following through with a task. So their binders may look very neat and organized, but the actual activities that need to be done are not there. And I would follow Sharmila’s perspective on there’s a little bit more of a social drive in a different direction. The social expectation might be that things need to look neat and pretty. So the focus becomes on the neat and pretty and not on the actual task that is supposed to be completed.
Natalie Tamburello:
Yeah, I was thinking about that as both of you were talking is that it’s the actual substance of completing the work might look the same in girls and boys, but women have larger pressure in society to make things look pretty and look organized. And so they can hide behind that more easily.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
And as a result, girls tend to camouflage more, they mask more, because the expectations of them are, well, you have to display self-control, and you have to be polite, and you can’t really raise your voice, etc., etc. That’s coming down the pipeline to them for generations.
Natalie Tamburello:
Do you have anything that you want our listeners to walk away with? Any final thoughts or tangible actions that parents or educators or even people with ADHD or executive function can do today?
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
I would say what’s really important is to recognize where your strengths are. Recognize what you do well and build off of the things that you do well. Find your motivation, find your interest and build off of that. As parents find those things that are positive, that your kids are doing well. Use the rule of five, where you’re really focusing on four positives before we look at something that’s a struggle point If the focus is continually on falling short, if the focus is on your room, just isn’t as clean as it needs to be. If the focus is on you’re not getting tasks done in a timely fashion, you’re not attending to the conversation the way I expect, then what ends up happening is there’s no more to try to put in because they are putting in great amounts of effort. Find where they can excel and build off of that. Help them realize that they’re not failing in all areas, that they really are excelling in many areas. And then that will help lift them up.
Natalie Tamburello:
And, Stacey, when you said that is extracurriculars because I think a lot of students with ADHD or executive functioning issues might be really good at sports or things external to the classroom. And I think the first thing as a parent or as an educator that you want to do naturally when they’re failing in school is to take away that extracurricular. What you’re saying is let them have that successful moment. And I think that’s also an opportunity to learn executive functioning skills, not in an academic context.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
Absolutely. And finding ways to enjoy working on things that are struggle points is something that’s really critical. I work with a lot of students, and we may work on some really hard things and try to make it as fun as possible, but helping them to use their executive functioning skills in different ways, pointing out to them that you know what, you were able to have all of your things together in order to get to soccer practice, that’s awesome. Look at the organization of your soccer bag. You’ve got your shoes, you’ve got your ball, you’ve got your water, everything that you need, you were able to do that. Let’s now model that in another area and let’s build that up. Taking those things away then takes away that motivation from an individual. And then it also takes away the opportunity for them to thrive and for you to find areas where they are thriving to shape that behavior in other areas. So you really do want to lift them up in ways. Help them find classes that are going to help them excel and be successful at school. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the traditional coursework that you were thinking of is going to be appropriate, but finding classes that are going to help your child be successful is going to be really important.
Sharmila Roy, PhD:
For sure. Yeah, I think that what Stacy said is building on strengths, finding strengths is so important because it builds self-esteem. So teachers generally deliver curriculum, you know, academic content, but I think post pandemic health has become part of wellbeing has become part of the teacher’s plate.
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
I’d also say that as a parent, when you see your child’s strengths, advocating for your child to be able to show what they know in the way that they can show it at school. Help the school to see how your child can perform with different expectations. If they’re struggling with organizing their thoughts in a written format, finding ways to supplement that either through accommodations or through alternative assignments or helping them find a project to be able to do. Advocate for that as a parent, or again, lift them up at home. Find opportunities at home that they can be successful so that way they can recognize those strengths. Because if you go throughout the day and you’re feeling unsuccessful all day long and then you come home. And we’re going to harp on the fact that maybe the environment, you’re not meeting expectation there, then what’s going to happen is you’re just going to fall further behind in how you’re feeling about yourself that you’re not going to lift up. So finding things that are going to help build your child up when they are at home.
Natalie Tamburello:
We’ve talked a lot about scaffolding and supporting your student and accommodating for your child being that advocate. What does the transition look like from being your child’s advocate or their executive function to encouraging them to take that on for themselves? What age would you recommend start doing that? And then also what are some strategies to start pulling away that you might recommend?
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
I would say by the time your student gets into high school, you really want to start setting up the parameters for them, but having them work within that framework. So working with them through that middle school time to figure out what’s the best fit for them and helping them by high school start to develop that so that by the time high school is over, they have a toolbox of things that they know work so that when they get to college, they have the ability to start utilizing those tools independently. We can’t expect them to start using tools that they’ve never practiced with before. So teaching them to use those tools before they leave home is going to be really important. I also think connecting them up with others if they’re really struggling still, even in the high school level because sometimes teenagers, I’m a parent of two s of them, sometimes teenagers are more willing to take advice and support from other individuals, whether that’s at school or professionals in order to learn strategies and skills, and then helping them to carry that over into the school setting when they move on into college or into the workforce or into trades.
Natalie Tamburello:
Is there anything going on at CHC or SLC that might help parents with their kids who have executive function issues?
Stacey Soderquist, MA:
Absolutely. We will be doing a series of both online and in person executive functioning parenting workshops that will have various topics related to helping your students study, related to how to build day to day routines, how to teach executive functioning skills through games and fun and joy, and just overall helping parents to parent through and teach executive functioning skills in the home and helping students to be able to generalize those into the classroom and beyond.
Natalie Tamburello:
For our listeners, you can reference our show notes, later to see how you can sign up for those executive functioning courses for parents.
Natalie Tamburello:
Well, thank you both for joining me. As a reminder if you’re a parent, or a teacher, an educator, or even a student or adult with ADHD or executive functioning challenges, you can seek out CHC by going to chconline.org/slc. Both Stacey and Sharmilla are a part of our Schwab Learning Center and support students of all ages, through that process. So, please reach out to us, and we’re happy to help.
Cindy Lopez:
Visit us online at podcasts.chconline.org. Make sure to subscribe to Voices of Compassion so you never miss an episode, and we’d love it if you’d leave us a rating and review. Have a question? Send us an email or a voice memo at podcasts@chconline.org. We’re here for you when you need us.
