Is your son or daughter exhibiting the following behaviors?
- • Difficulty planning and prioritizing tasks/activities and managing time.
- • Difficulty keeping things organized and is always losing things
- • Difficulty starting any task (e.g. homework) on his/her own and finishing assignments/projects by the deadline
- • Easily forgeting lessons, multi-step instructions
- • Makes careless mistakes and does not notice them
- • Is talkative and/or impulsive
- • Difficulty controlling emotions
If so, your child may have an EXECUTIVE SKILLS DYSFUNCTION.
EXECUTIVE SKILLS are skills a person needs to be able to get things done. In children we call these study skills, in adults we call these work skills.
Examples in children are:
- * accomplishing assignments and submitting these on time;
- * losing ballpens, erasers and water jugs in school;
- * adding numbers when the equation called for subtraction.
Children showing difficulties or dysfunction in executive skills need help.
Neuropsychological/psychoeducational assessments will help identify these problems and point the way toward intervention.
Work with a teacher or an occupational therapist familiar with these problems is often the next step.
For the sake of your relationship with your child, seek professional help. The sooner the better.
