Back to School Book Series: Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay by Michael Delman

We understand the pivotal role parents and teachers play in supporting our students as they go back to school. That's why we are bringing you excerpts from Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention. 

Starting on August 15th, and every subsequent Tuesday for six weeks, we will feature a new excerpt that addresses strategies that both parents and teachers can use to build Executive Function Skills in their students. These skills enable our children to manage time, set goals, focus their attention, and adapt to new situations. They provide the cornerstone for effective learning, emotional well-being, and lifelong success. Bridge the gap between home and school with Executive Function skills!

Below, get a sneak peek with an exclusive excerpt from ©Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention. Reprinted here with the permission of author Michael Delman.

Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention book cover.

Introduction

It seems like it was just a few years ago that we were living in the Information Age. Going to a top college meant having access to the best professors, who would share the most current knowledge with those privileged enough to attend. That emphasis on knowledge seems quaint now. It is a different world—one where being a walking encyclopedia does not guarantee success. Information is easy to attain; dealing with all that information is the new challenge. We are no longer in the Information Age, where knowledge reigns supreme. We are now in the Age of Attention, and, as a society, we are struggling to make the best use of the most precious commodities we have: our time and our attention.

To manage the infinity of well-designed grabs for our time, focus, and money, we and, even more so, our children, need to master a different set of abilities known as Executive Function skills in the Age of Attention. In a nutshell, Executive Function skills are generally regulated in a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex (pfc) and help people set and achieve goals. More specifically, Executive Function skills include some of our most foundational abilities, such as being able to manage our impulses and emotions and being able to start tasks and stay focused on them. They also include more complex skills, such as being able to prioritize, plan, organize, problem-solve, and make adjustments when we’re off base. As you can imagine, having problems with any one of these skills poses a challenge; if we see that our children have significant deficits in several of these skills, we naturally worry if they’re going to be okay.

In this book, I will share with you the tools and strategies I have learned and/or developed over the past twenty-five years as a parent, teacher, school principal, and founder of the nation’s largest Executive Function coaching company. I will also share a few of the many mistakes I made as a child, some just misguided, and others a bit more mischievous. The lessons I’ve learned were the result, not only of academic study, but of personal failures, journals full of reflection, and the ongoing decision to use myself as an experiment to see how much I could grow and improve.

My goal is to help you understand how children learn and grow, to add tools to your parenting repertoire, and to show you the skills you need to offer support in a way that your child will appreciate rather than resent. As a result, your child will become more capable and more confident both in school and beyond.

Since academics are my own first love, they get the lion’s share of examples in this book. As I’ve spent more than twenty-five years teaching, hiring and supervising educators, developing curriculum, and advising schools, academics are what I know best. In addition, school is where most kids spend a great deal of their time and energy: seven or more hours a day, 180+ days a year, for at least twelve years, not counting pre-school, kindergarten, college, and graduate school. Add in everybody’s favorite activity—homework—and we are looking at the central part of a young person’s life.

Moreover, school matters. Whether or not we remember and use the Pythagorean theorem every day, or discuss the ins and outs of ancient civilizations with our friends, we all need the broader Executive Function skills that school demands. To succeed in school, children need to learn how to control their impulses and treat others with respect, how to stay focused, how to break down directions, how to be aware of what they know and don’t know and then seek help when they’re stuck, how to stay organized and manage their time, and a host of other relevant skills that this book will explore. School matters because it’s a training ground for life. School matters because it is a place where Executive Function skills, whether they are taught or not, are always expected.

The skills of managing frustrations, being persistent, and the rest of the Executive Function suite of tools apply anywhere we go. One parent, for example, recruited me to work with her son John, a junior in high school, on a number of issues. The goal was not only to do his very best on homework each night, but also to become a better writer and clean his room. He had no diagnosed learning disabilities, but he, like virtually all kids his age, still had Executive Function challenges, including starting “boring” tasks on time and staying organized.

From the book ©Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention. Reprinted here with the permission of author Michael Delman.

Want to read more? Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay is available for order through your favorite online bookstore. You can also return next week for another exclusive excerpt from the book!

Educators can help students build their Executive Function Skills, and BrainTracks can help! Learn more about BrainTracks’ school programs.  

Head to our parent company’s site if you are looking for 1:1 Executive Function coaching.