Academics Archives

September 4, 2018

Teenagers with School Challenges: Executive Functioning

Executive Functioning is a fancy term to refer to challenges with planning, initiating, executing and organizing tasks and information.

When students move into high school, they are expected to independently navigate a schedule of 5-8 classes, all with different timelines, expectations and assignments. Students must keep up with materials, deadlines and schedules to be sure work is submitted on time to the right teacher in the right format.

Even with the websites and emails and ways to track and schedule using technology, these skills are not easy for any of us (adults included).

Teens Get Overwhelmed

For some teenagers, these tasks feel daunting and overwhelming.

Many teenagers just give up.

Others try their best but fail to execute a complete plan. They may do the work but never turn it in at school.

Parents are scratching their heads or yelling in frustration. “Why are you failing math?” “Where is your missing geography homework?”

How to Help Your Teen

It is most helpful when a student can have just enough support to learn these skills.

A teenager needs to experience success to have the motivation to keep trying. For some teens, this support means having a teacher or mentor who helps them make a schedule and checks in weekly on the assignments and progress.

Taking big projects and breaking them into manageable chunks with due dates for each part can help a teen maintain organization.

Teens, Teachers, and Parents Working Together

A teacher or mentor also needs to have some email communication with both the teenager and a parent so that a teen can have support at home in meeting deadlines. This small team can really help scaffold executive functioning skills for a teenager.

Students with learning disabilities, ADHD or Autism tend to have impaired executive functioning skills already, making this process more difficult than it is for teenagers who have fully functioning prefrontal cortexes. Often, schools are willing to be more accommodating and provide more scaffolding and support for those students who have a disability.

Connect with CLEAR

If you think your child might be struggling more than other students with executive functioning skills, CLEAR Child Psychology can help. We can assess skills to see if a disability is present and/or consult with families to work out a plan to tackle these issues.

Also, on our companion website CLEAPE, we offer free articles on “organizing” that provide more information and strategies to parents and teens. www.cleape.com

Don’t let your teenager put his or her head in the sand. Executive functioning is an important life skill. Get help before challenges escalate and grades start to fall.

Help your student achieve success, build skills and maintain high motivation.

Contact CLEAR today at 303-222-7923 or visit our website at www.clearchildpsychology.com.

August 28, 2018

Is Your Child Having Trouble with Writing?

Is your child having trouble with writing?

If you ask your child what he or she likes about school, is writing the very last on the list?

Many children dislike writing or find it very difficult. Why is writing so hard? The issue with writing is that it requires so many skills to work simultaneously.

For example, your child has to be able to tell a story (Narrative Coherence), express his ideas (Expressive Language), remember words and how to spell them (Visual Encoding), use fine motor coordination skills to physically write letters (Handwriting & Dexterity), and to stay calm in the face of frustration and difficulty (Self-Regulation & Anxiety).

It can be hard to determine why a child is struggling with writing. If it is possible to narrow down the causes of writing challenges to one or two of the areas mentioned above, it will be easier to target the right intervention. Parents and teachers can help a child achieve success by targeting the area of need. Interventions for challenges with story telling are different from interventions for challenges with handwriting, but both can make writing challenging.

At Cleape.com, all of these skill areas are described, including what you can do to help https://cleape.com/learning/writing/

If you continue to have concerns about your child’s writing or other struggles in school, CLEAR Child Psychology can help.

Started by the psychologists who authored CLEAPE, CLEAR Child Psychology is a primarily web-based psychological practice founded in Broomfield, CO with the goal of making Clinical expertise accessible and reliable (CLEAR). Clear launched services summer 2018 with the mission to: Shorten the time from first concern to diagnosis, free families from the burden of unknowing, and connect kids with the help they need to lead happy lives.

Call or contact CLEAR today to schedule a $99 consultation with these psychologists to identify strategies and resources to support your child. You can receive help within the same week, at times on the same day you call.

Call 303-222-7923 or contact us on www.clearchildpsychology.com

November 6, 2017

We are presenting CLEAPE on Saturday at CSSP

This Saturday (11/9-11/11) in Beaver Creek for CSSP, our team will be presenting on using the Cleape model as a hypothesis testing framework. Rather than puzzling at the many reasons why a child might struggle with writing, School Psychologists and other mental health professionals can identify root causes through a simple framework of related symptoms. Our presentation will help professionals identify interventions, accommodations, and services to address writing problems. We will be doing the Thursday evening event, an exhibit table all day on Friday, the Friday night event, and then a workshop presentation on Saturday morning (11/11). I hope to see you up there or read it for yourself here:

https://cleape.com/learning/writing/