Monthly Archives: March 2021

Ms. Ward’s “mental spatial time travel” can also be helpful in getting your child to organize and clean his/her room especially if your child has difficulty getting this done. One technique she mentioned was taking a picture of your child’s room after it has been cleaned and organized. You and your child can then sit down and study the picture of the clean and orderly room (see how the toys are arranged on the shelves, the clothes are folded and piled neatly in the cabinet and the bed sheets neatly covering the bed). Your child can then work on portions of the room and clean/organize it so that it looks the same way as the picture (either by copying the picture or doing it from memory). The picture helps the child to pre-imagine how the shelf (or cabinet etc.) will look like after he/s he fixes it

According to Ms. Ward, “90% of the time, we pre-imagine our plan, so that the minute we get into that space…we just think about carrying out the plan”. This technique to improve organization skills is certainly worth trying on your child!

I attended The Executive Function Online Summit organized and run by Seth Perler and it was very interesting and helpful. Most of the speakers spoke about strategies to improve executive function in children and adolescents. One speaker, Ms. Sarah Ward, had an interesting view about executive functioning. According to her, “the heart of executive function is this ability to pre-imagine and literally see yourself moving through space and time to achieve a goal…”

For instance time management involved “mental spatial time travel” the capacity to envision yourself going from point A to point B to point C. For example, budgeting your time between doing a math assignment, walking the dog, washing and cutting vegetables which mom will cook later and finishing one-hour online lecture for history – all to be done in 2 hours.

Using mental spatial time travel the student imagines her/himself going from point A (doing the math assignment) to point B (finishing the 1-hour online lecture for history) to point C (walking the dog) to point D (preparing the vegetables for mom). Visualizing (or pre-imagining) what he/she will be doing may make him/her realize that there is not enough time to do all these. The student can then revise his/her plans so that he accomplishes most, if not all, of his/her goals within the time he has (either do things faster or eliminate one activity & schedule it for another day).