My son’s (11 y.o.) 5th grade teacher has “serious concerns” about an executive functioning disorder. He has had BIG problems in math and organization that affects math and writing. He has wonderfully creative ideas and is extremelly articulate but can not seem to get his thoughts organized and down on paper. He has difficulty in writing and fine motor and arranging his work. He has been CORE’d throughout his school experience and has always been found ineligeable for services. Has anyone heard of anything that may help a child “learn” executive functioning and/or organization?
I’d probably look at improving his motor skills first, as that could have an impact on organization. Has he had an occupational therapy eval for the fine motor problems?
Interactive Metronome is a therapy that helps with motor planning and motor sequencing skills, and also tends to help attention skills and handwriting skills as a side effect.
PACE, LearningRx and BrainSkills are cognitive skills training programs that can help overall functioning in the academic setting. See http://www.processingskills.com, http://www.learningrx.com and http://www.brainskills.com.
None of the above work explicitly on executive function skills and organization skills. Improvements in those areas would be side-effects of strengthening other skills. Organizational skills can be explicitly taught to some extent. It typically takes patience and persistence to teach basic organizational strategies. Executive function is a much broader and hazier area, with wide variations in both cause and effect. I don’t know of any program that directly addresses executive function as a whole, although there are probably individual strategies that can be taught to provide coping mechanisms for specific problems.
Nancy