Improving Executive Function Skills in Kids

By Dr. Stephanie M. Carlson

As parents and educators, we delight in seeing our children’s mental abilities expand along with their physical skills in the early years. Their increase in knowledge is impressive, to be sure, but a key development at this age is what researchers call executive function (EF) skills – or a child’s ability to manage and control their own thoughts, actions, and feelings.

Studies show that early-in-life EF skills are predictive of near-term achievements (for example, being ready for kindergarten) as well as long-term success. One study found that children’s attention span measured at 4 years not only predicted math and reading achievement at age 21, but also predicted the odds of completing college by age 25. Another ongoing study of a group from New Zealand found that “self-control” in early childhood predicted several outcomes in adulthood, including physical health, wealth, and a lower probability of divorce, drug abuse, and criminal conviction. These relations hold up when controlling for childhood IQ and family background.

What are EF skills?

Working memory refers to holding information in mind and “working” with it. For example, if you give your child a task, like finding their shoes, they might try looking in a few locations. But if they don’t keep track of where they’ve looked, they are likely to look in the same location again.
Inhibitory control refers to resisting temptation – that can mean treats, including chocolate, but also habits, like the “old way” of doing something. To resist distractions, kids need to operate both inhibitory control and working memory together. Consider the child in the above example searching for their shoes. They are likely to become sidetracked, such as coming across an unfinished game on the floor, which further interferes with their memory for their goal and which locations they’ve already checked.
Cognitive flexibility refers to the ability to think about things in different ways. If your child is stuck on a problem or stubbornly refuses a different solution, this is inflexibility. Similarly, children need cognitive flexibility to learn new things. Cognitive flexibility interacts with inhibitory control because children are strongly tempted to do things the old way – they need to use their inhibitory control to “let go” and their cognitive flexibility to reframe the task according to the current goal (working memory). For example, when my daughter was young, she loved singing songs with me in the car, but when she tried to learn a new song, she often blurted out the chorus of an old one because it was a habit and she temporarily forgot that the song – or context – had changed. This example shows how all three EF skills really work together and are nearly impossible to separate.
Reflection is not usually considered an executive function, but it is very important for helping children learn to use EF skills. Reflection includes self-awareness and pausing to consider oneself (including desires, habits, goals, mistakes), the situation they are in (such as home or a place of worship), and what is expected of them. Research shows that children improve their EF skills when their grown-ups model and encourage them to reflect on their thoughts, actions, and feelings. The idea is to help kids be more reflective – and less reactive.