Over the past 20 years, I have worked with thousands of middle school, high school, and college students as a supervisor. I’ve seen what separates those who struggle from those who succeed. It’s not about IQ scores, GPA, or even admission to a prestigious university.
A real prophet? Executive function skills. A set of cognitive skills that help you focus, organize, and manage your emotions. Learning these skills early on will help you better handle responsibilities and build meaningful connections.
Prioritizing grades, test scores, and college admissions as the primary measure of success often undermines young people’s futures and strains parent-child relationships. But if you provide your children with structure and support, they can grow beyond school.
Here are five ways to get started.
1. Help build systems that work
Many students struggle with managing assignments, tracking deadlines, and organizing materials. This can cause unnecessary stress and overwhelm.
I encourage students to self-assess their skills in planning and adapting when plans change. The goal is to find the system that works best for them.
For example, many students do best with a paper planner, while others prefer a digital calendar. Some people may prefer visual color coding, while others may need notifications or alarms as reminders.
An easy way to check the effectiveness of the system you’ve established together is to ask your child if they can find the document or file they need within a minute. If they’re having trouble finding it, talk to them about what you can do to make their system work better.
2. Provide proactive structure and support
Today’s demands of balancing school, activities, family, and information overload often exceed the developmental limits of children’s brains.
Establishing simple daily habits and weekly routines helps children build independence in problem solving and self-regulation. For example, setting aside time to plan your week and review upcoming events creates space to manage tasks alongside other commitments.
In some cases, children just need the responsibility of someone nearby to motivate them to start or finish a difficult task.
3. Focus on solutions
It’s easy to get frustrated with a child’s lack of organization or motivation, but what we often call “procrastination” is actually task avoidance, not a motivation problem, but task initiation.
Instead of nagging or labeling each failure as a failure, create a starting ritual that signals your brain to switch into work mode. Steps like cleaning up your workspace together and writing down all your pressing tasks can make your first steps surprisingly small and build momentum naturally.
The key is to find fun and manageable ways to shift your brain from thinking about work to actually doing it.
4. Prioritize sleep and stress management
Feeling tired and stressed has a significant impact on anyone’s ability to start and complete tasks. It also becomes difficult to control emotions.
Research shows that teens need 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night for the healthy development of their brains and bodies, and these are also important for our executive functions.
For stress management, I encourage kids to create an “emotional toolkit” by identifying three to five ways to overcome stress. Teens and tweens often choose to listen to music, draw, play outdoors, spend time with family pets, or take a bath.
5. Model adaptability and buoyancy in your own life.
Often, especially during times of transition and change, the focus is on resilience, the ability to bounce back from disappointments and challenges.
I encourage my students to think about the related concept of buoyancy. This means reducing the time and energy it takes to process disappointments by learning how to adapt when things don’t go as planned.
Unfortunately, many adults struggle with this skill. However, I have found that children benefit from seeing their parents model adaptability in order to develop it themselves. This highlights an important point. One of the best ways for children to develop executive functioning skills is to see their parents and caregivers consistently model the same skills.
Children observe how we deal with stress, manage our time, and adapt when plans change. Try to show them what success really looks like.
Ana Homayoun is an academic advisor and founder of Green Ivy Educational Consulting, a Silicon Valley-based company that supports students and families. She also founded Luminaria Learning Solutions, a nonprofit that brings executive functioning skills curriculum to schools. She is the author of Erasing the Finish Line: The New Blueprint for Success Beyond Grades and College Admissions. Follow her on Instagram.
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