My child is struggling 
Now that my child has 
Learning Disabilities and Executive Functioning
Our article, What is Executive Functioning? describes how in school, at home or in the workplace, we're called on all day, every day, to self-regulate behavior. Normally, features of executive functioning are seen in our ability to:
- Make plans
- Keep track of time
- Keep track of more than one thing at once
- Meaningfully include past knowledge in discussions
- Engage in group dynamics
- Evaluate ideas
- Reflect on our work
- Change our minds and make mid-course corrections while thinking, reading and writing
- Finish work on time
- Ask for help
- Wait to speak until we're called on
- Seek more information when we need it.
Problems with executive functioning may be manifested when a person:
- Has difficulty planning a project
- Has trouble comprehending how much time a project will take to complete
- Struggles to tell a story (verbally or in writing); has trouble communicating details in an organized, sequential manner
- Has difficulty with the mental strategies involved in memorization and retrieving information from memory
- Has trouble initiating activities or tasks, or generating ideas independently
- Has difficulty retaining information while doing something with it; e.g., remembering a phone number while dialing.
These problem behaviors are often the descriptors we hear about students with learning disabilities (LD) as well as those with AD/HD and language processing disorders. Parents and teachers complain that they:
- "Forget to look ahead," and have trouble planning and setting goals
- Have difficulty sorting, organizing and prioritizing information
- Focus either on details or the big picture at the expense of the other
- Have difficulty shifting from one activity to another (especially when rules/task demand change)
- Have a hard time juggling multiple details in working memory
- Struggle shifting between information that is literal vs. figurative, past vs. current, etc.
- Are often overwhelmed by the increased and varied work load in the middle and upper grades
- "Get it" (e.g., the information being taught, the work tasks assigned) but often "don't know what to do with it" (e.g., how to complete the task in a way that demonstrates their knowledge).
For individuals with LD, problems with executive functioning are often complicated by performance anxiety. Feeling anxious about what to do and how well you're doing (especially when, as is the case with LD, you are "winging it" without a strategy or plan of attack) can easily lead to feeling overloaded and overwhelmed. This in turn leads to exhaustion, inattentiveness, and a cycle of insecurity and feeling out of control. Not a great scenario for learning!
