Executive functions

I’m not an expert on this and will leave most of your questions for people who know more.

But the idea of “lack of intrinsic motivation” really raises my eyebrows. This does not seem reasonable. Someone who *really* lacked intrinsic motivation would lie on the floor and waste away from starvation, like a severe drug addict. (In fact that is one big problem with hard drugs, that they short-circuit the motivational channels). Since the kids in question are generally anywhere from normally active to hyperactive, they are certainly motivated to do *something*, just not necessarily what other people want them to do, and just not always successfully connecting the motivation to the result.
Another poster here, I think Sue, noted a distinction between *compliance* and *responsibility*. Compliance means doing what other people want you to do easily and without argument; responsibility means choosing your own goals and working towards them because they are important to you. The results of compliance and responsibility may be the same, or they may be the opposite, depending on whether the outside authority really has the person’s good in mind.
A lot of people who claim to be “teaching responsibility” are actually teaching compliance, quite a different thing.
I get the feeling from what you report (not enough detail to be certain, but this is what first comes to mind) that this author is more interested in compliance, and wants the kids to be intrinsically motivated to please him or other authority figures, not to develop on their own. This is *not* a lack of intrinsic motivation per se, but a lack of people-pleasing motivation — and people-pleasing motivation can be either positive or negative, is appropriate in come contexts and not in others.

My personal choice would always be to first teach the skill, and then reward success. Humans are thinking beings and our goal as parents and teachers is to help them get better at being human. Pure carrot-and-stick systems are used in animal training becasue you *can’t* communicate abstractly with animals. OK, with a pre-verbal child you may have to use some non-verbal approaches, but the goal is to get into communication as soon as possible, I hope.

Your question really goes to the heart of the issue, and shows why this area is and will remain enormously controversial. The correct answer to your question is “No one knows”! Or perhaps, as the last poster suggests, “It all depends on what you want!” So really, there is a PHILOSOPHICAL question that underlies all of the supposedly medical research on the issue: what is really best for children? If you believe that children should do as they are told without giving you a hard time, you will go with the compliance-centered approach. (This is where I think most schools are and is why parents are often pressured by schools for medical interventions). If you believe in developing skills, you will take a more personalized behavior modification approach. If you believe that we should adjust the environment to fit the needs of the child, you might think alternative education is a better way. Fact of the matter is, no one can really measure or quantify an “executive dysfunction” anyway - it is generally “diagnosed” based on how an adult perceives the child’s ability to do certain tasks that we have decided are important, like planning, organizing, and linear logic. But who says that planning, organizing and linear logic are the be-all and end-all of children’s education? Again, that is a philosophical question that is very much open to debate.

Hence, the disagreement. Don’t feel bad about it - it’s not because you are confused and unable to understand - they really are operating on different assumptions and values, so what they say clashes. While we would very much like to believe in “objective truth”, the Greeks were smart enough to know that science is merely a branch of philosophy, and that “what is true” is always subordinate to the question “what is truth?”

In reality, what matters is NOT whether you call it an executive dysfunction or ADHD, but what are you going to do about it. That’s where YOUR values come in, and those values are every bit as important and valid as the values of Russell Barclay or anyone else for that matter. You are not merely hearing the truth from the experts, you can discover it yourself by observation and analysis of your own experience. That’s the reality of the field, and any REAL scientist knows this “truth” supercedes every theory that exists. A theory is only as good as it predicts reality and helps you to create the effects you want. The rest is academic.

–- Steve

Executive function is an ambiguous term. Theoretically it is supposed to mean how the person orders mental tasks. Some psychologists will wrongly tell you that executive function occurs in the prefrontal are of the brain and that is not entirely true. Chimps have prefrontal but they dont have “ADHD”

Stimulant medications don’t effect the prfrontal lobe therapeutically instead the actually cause that area of the brain to atrophy.

How humans fucntion is dependant on many many many complex factors. Being that ADHD is not a disease but a list of subjective symptoms that seem to be masked in children by giving the amphetamines proves nothing. It is like giving codeine for a cough.

The imporatant question is will a child benefit from amphetamine “therapy”? No evidence exists that giving a child speed as a medication does anything to help them. Infact psych stimualnts cause brain damage.

Every child is different and there is a tiny percentage of kids who are not well organized or have difficulty with impulse control or have difficulty fucusing. Some people would call that a disorder while others would call it diversity.

IMO unless the kid is bouncing out of his shoes and every diagnostic avenue has been exhausted and every conservative treatment has been tried only then would I risk drugging them.

The complexity of the brain is enormous and to take too seriously what a psychologist says is like using a Ouiji board to figure out why your car isn’t running right.

Read the DSM and you’ll see what I mean. If after reading it you think it was written be a committee of chimpanzees you’d be correct but is was edited and published by a troop of Machevellian monkeys who are masters at conjecture and psuedo science.

I will attempt to walk the fence between these points of view. It is what seems to best fit my own son.

He does lack intrinsic motivation to clean his room. He doesn’t lack intrinisic motivation in general, however. He seems to have no need for real order. Unlike my other two children, he is never in the mood to clean his room.

It used to be that he was truly overwhelmed with the task. I then would break it down into pieces—clean up your clothes, now do x, ect. I don’t think that is the case anymore. He has learned through modeling and can do it. He just doesn’t want to.

He is not medicated but my reading suggests that skills like this are not impacted by medication. I don’t use extrinisic rewards either. He is just told he has to clean his room now. I do help him if I want more than a cursory cleaning (like cleaning bookshelves ect).

I work hard with him on organizational skills and his teacher has too (she does use extrinsic rewards). He is better than he was but still not near the “normal” child.

I never thought of myself as disorganized until I worked with a therapist for my son who wants me to keep meticulous records. I have realized that I have minimized the organizational demands on myself because I find them too much work. I tend to get by the seat of my pants until it becomes too inconvenient—in other words until I spend too much time looking for things!

I think this may be key. Kids with weak organizational skills find being organized much more work than other kids. They don’t find it intrinically rewarding. They may lack the skills to do it as well. But even if they have the skills, they still may not like to do it. Rewards/punishments may help by providing extrinsic motivation. I think the rewards and punishments are important only to the extent that they help insure that a kid will automate the minimum level of skill necessary to get by in life.

Beth

I think Beth has hit the nail on the head here. I also find organization very difficult and do the minimum until I have to excavate my desk. It’s annoying but not the worst thing that could happen; teach your child to deal with it. Breaking down tasks (any tasks) to teach them is vital — we do it in reading and writing and math and history and swimming and skiing and baseball, so why would anyone assume that organizing is any different?

As far as Jerry, the funny thing is that I actually prefer non-drug interventions as far as possible and in that way might be said to actually agree with him; but his scare tactics, nasty comments, and fake reports from untrustworthy sources are doing the opposite of what he intends, making people reject his whole message. Treat his posts with the same respect (or rather lack of it) that he shows to others.

Hi Folks,

I am a person with ADHD/NLD who definitely has executive function issues. Basically, from what I have read, this is a definite physiological issue and has nothing to do with psychological reasons for not wanting to do something.

I can no more motivate myself to do what I consider to be a boring tasks such as cleaning my room than someone without LD/ADHD can to motivate himself/herself not to fall asleep while driving a car even though the person may be exhausted from lack of sleep. Of course, since it is a world predominated by people without my issues, I have to do what I can to fit in. Thus, when staying organized is a necessity such as at work, I have to put forth my best effort even though it is never going to be as good as the average person who doesn’t have LD/ADHD.

Yes, I now know how to be organized just like your son, Beth. But I don’t have the brainpower that the average person without LD/ADHD does.

Last year, when I had to take over alot of tasks for a relative who was recovering from surgery, I got so tired that I literally froze at a stop sign while driving a car one day.. My brain had shut down from cognitive overload. Fortunately, I was’t hurt and the only damage was that a car honked at me for lingering so long.

But it scared the daylights out of me and made realize that I was trying to act like a “normal” person and that just wasn’t going to work.

So when uninformed folks say wonder why can’t someone with LD/ADHD do an activity that they did before, while they might have been able to do it, it was taking every last bit of their brainpower to accomplish the task. They simply have run out of brain fuel.

Steve„ I do get what you are saying about how the environment can influence whether you really do have a disability or not. When I worked under a boss who was quite tolerant of employee differences and how they accomomplished tasks, there was no need for me to disclose. I definitely did not feel like a person with NLDADHD. Unfortunately, this person was the exception to the rule.

Finally, I work in a private school and come across many incentive plans. I know I am in the minority on this but personally, I feel that providing a reward to someone with ADHD/LD for being organized is like rewarding someone with a broken leg to run.

PT

The above mostly makes good sense to me. I do believe (from direct experience with my kids) that “executive functioning” CAN be improved dramatically using the correct behavioral approaches, but intrinsic motivation will probably never be there. I don’t expect my kids to ever become “organized” from an outsider’s perspective. They are a lot MORE organized than they were before. I think we have a responsibility to take kids where they are and build whatever skills we can in areas where they will continue to be challenged, but a big part of it is revising expectations to meet the current ability and needs of the child, rather than chastizing them for being who they are. I am glad that you had a boss who understood this, PT. Different people have different strengths and different interests. That’s the beauty of our world. Why we expect everyone to be the same, and call them “disabled” just because they don’t act the way we expect, is really beyond me. An interesting study I read about years ago looked at ADHD-diagnosed children and how they fared later in life. While they struggled in school and got lower grades, etc., once they were employed, their employers expressed just as much satisfaction with their performance as they did non-ADHD diagnosed employees. The author theorized that in school, the child has to deal with whatever environment they are put in, but once they leave, they can choose a profession that takes advantage of their skills and minimizes their weak spots. So ADHD kids would choose to be attorneys, or computer programmers, or entrepeneurs, or salespeople, focusing on things they liked to do or felt good at, and they seemed to succeed just as well as anyone else.

It takes all kinds to make a world. Remember that genetic diversity is the key to species survival. Any trait that occurs in 5-10 % of the population has to have some survival value or it wouldn’t still be so common. I always have felt that my kids are normal, if unusual, and just needed guidance in areas not commonly provided in schools. So we provided it, through homeschooling and alternative school programs, and they have turned out to be very hard-working, passionate, intelligent, creative people who I have no doubt will be successful in the world, even though their rooms will never be all that tidy.

Steve,

I had to laugh at the “rooms not that tidy” description. Not too long ago, my husband was upset because he thought someone had thrown away his disposable razor. He wanted to know who had cleaned the bathroom. I told him our middle son had. My son told his father that he had not thrown the razor away, and all my husband had to do was look at his backpack to know that he never throws anything away!

Beth

And someday he will find something useful in that backpack that he left there three years ago! Sometimes being organized is overrated…

[quote:42c4054fe4=”victoria”]I think Beth has hit the nail on the head here. I also find organization very difficult and do the minimum until I have to excavate my desk. It’s annoying but not the worst thing that could happen; teach your child to deal with it. Breaking down tasks (any tasks) to teach them is vital — we do it in reading and writing and math and history and swimming and skiing and baseball, so why would anyone assume that organizing is any different?

As far as Jerry, the funny thing is that I actually prefer non-drug interventions as far as possible and in that way might be said to actually agree with him; but his scare tactics, nasty comments, and fake reports from untrustworthy sources are doing the opposite of what he intends, making people reject his whole message. Treat his posts with the same respect (or rather lack of it) that he shows to others.[/quote]

Victoria, I think it would have shown some class on your part to take this to PM instead of launching a personal attack against me. Just because you are happy with the status quo does not entitle you to tell lies about me.

You’ve made some charges. Now back them up with some facts.

Tell us what reports are you talking about.

For the benefit of the other members of this forum tell us why they are fake.

You’ve made some serious charges now put your money where your mouth is.

For the rest of the posters here: If I post someting relevant to a discussion you can bet it will be valid. Not everybody may like it but it will be legit. I would never post anything that is misleading blantantly and if someone does I will be the first to set the record straight.

So Victoria, tell us all what it is I posted that is wrong and for the sake of the members here kindly set the record straight.

I think you are angry with me because I challenged some of your assertions regarding the competency of teachers and I posted factual information to buttress my position and substatiate it. It is very simple. When the facts don’t support your statements there is a pretty good chance your statements are wrong.

In a more general sense I would like to say that I am the type of person who constantly questions authority. If authorities/experts/professionals cannot bear close examination anything the espouse to be true should be viewed skeptically.

More specifically, the field of psychology is a relatively new discipline. It is not like something like chemistry, biology, medicine or math that have been around as hard sciences for years and employ the scientific method to substatiate claims. Psychology is a theory based discipline that often strays from the scientific method and often is exempt from from proof and factual accountability.

When a psychologist type speaks with authority on matters of the brain, mind or behavior he often is on shaky ground scientifcally. I believe almost everything they know is wronand i think their whole profession is suspect because it does not adhere to the same standard of proof that everything else must adhere to except for religion and politics and we all know how dangers those two farces are.

When is comes to diagnosis for brain based disorders one must view them with some healthy skepticism because the diagnostic criteria is often vague and unreliable.

Finally the complexity of the human brain is probably beyond our complete comprehension. Being that this is such a young field and being that ther vary thing we are studying is the vary thing we are studying it with we cannot rely on the conjecture of a bunch of wacky and nonscientific pontificators who present theory as fact.

So Victoria, if what I say ruffles your feathers you may want to examine why it does.

Overall I see parents quite upset with the quality of treatment provided to their speciall needs kids. I see non of the professionals (educators, mental health, ect) stepping to the plate and fixing the problem. That is because to my way of thinking they are a big part of the problem. The certainly are not part of the solution.

I can go on and on as to why the so called experts are the problem because to me their shortcomings are glaring. I know some of these people personally and frankly I am not impressed with any of them.

When you think of all the financial resorces that go to these people under the guise of helping your kids I think you have to ask, did it help and did I get my money’s worth. Too Often I think that answer may be no.

Jerry,

Not sure what happened here in the record but I read the reply to me earlier and it was Steve that wrote it not Victoria. Not sure if it matters to you or not.

Beth

[quote:99667a1eba=”Beth from FL”]Jerry,

Not sure what happened here in the record but I read the reply to me earlier and it was Steve that wrote it not Victoria. Not sure if it matters to you or not.

Beth[/quote]

I’m responding to Victoria’s uncalled for and dishonest remarks.

Hi,
Thanks for your replies
I always thought of executive functions as a skills deficit and being an Edward de Bono fan I see thinking as a skill that can be taught and learned
http://www.dbpeds.org/articles/detail.cfm?id=119
Executive Functions
These are the thinking skills, associated with the frontal lobe of the brain. They enable one to do the clear, organized, reflective thinking in the midst of frustration that is crucial for solving problems in an adaptive (non-impulsive) manner. The executive skills include:
· shifting cognitive set (the ability to shift gears, to make transitions in activities and thinking smoothly)
· organization and planning, and working memory (allow you to use hindsight and forethought to solve problems in a systematic fashion)
· separation of affect (the ability to put feelings on the shelf to get on with the clear thinking needed to solve problems)
When lacking, these children will have difficulty shifting from one activity. They will have difficulty anticipating problems. In the face of frustration, they will have difficulty staying calm enough to think clearly and will have difficulty sorting through different solutions to organize a coherent plan of action.
The Barkley article is fascinating , especially showing how we are different to chimps despite being only about 1.6% different in brain etc. Intrinsic motivation , inhibition seem to me to be performance deficits , if a kid is very impulsive it is difficult to teach anger control , you have to deal with the impulsivity first hence here medication would be the first step in your behavior plan. interesting new research on Ritalin says it effects both the attention and motivational circuits. However I do feel that reflective thinking , meta cognition are skills which can be taught. Motivational strategies won’t I think help a kid develop self- talk or the ability to privatize emotion rather cause the kid to use his existing resources optimally using a lot of energy.
My kid is highly motivated but does not translate it into action , there is no reflective thinking about what to do, he seems on the one hand to suffer from INERTIA and when he is moving , you can’t stop him.
My parenting style is very much putting education back into parenting so thinking is very much part of the plan. The explosive child , PET, The Myrna Shure series and Edward de Bono have been invaluable , maybe the intrinsic emotion will come with age
Yours Allan

Kids are kids and adults are adults. Children’s brains are still physically growing and developing.

Different kids reach developmental milestones at different times. Human being tend to be that way.

Things like planning and organization are skill that adults have and many children don’t have.

In our culture we tend to treat children like miniature adults. We are wrong to do that. We need to expect children to function like children but we don’t. Instead we rely on psuedo scientific psych-babbling lables and disproven theory to make what amounts to value judgements about our most precious and innocent members of our society within the religion of psychology.

There are certain tasks children are NOT capable of performing but today’s educatiors seem to forget this. There are also concepts that children are incapable of understanding and again educator seem to ignore this too. Actually, educators are quite ignorant about many things.

Most kids are not defective. The criteria being used to judge them is.

The so called executive functions are complex neuro-behavioral processes that in part are learned. Any quack can come up with a convincing sounding dx but time usually proves them wrong.

I am convinced that children do not learn because of educators but inspite of them.

Hi,
As a parent or teacher one’s perception of the child is usually formulated relative to the behavior of his peers , siblings and certainly not adults
My kids have been blessed with great teachers who have understood them , know how to reach them and inspire them. Jerry from your posts I assume you home school and have great ideas how things should be done.
Yours Allan

Allan,

Developmentally kids are on their own schedules. We can’t rush them. It’s like trying to make a seedling grow into a towering Oak tree but in the case of many educators it like trying to grow Willow seedling into a Pine tree.

Kids can be taught cause and effect and responsiblity and how to do thing in a sequence. These are things that are not hard wired as the psychologists would lead you to believe. These are skills that people learn. Some people learn these things easier than others. Giving it a meaningless lable will only cloud the issue.

If we look at how the brain develops we see that the higher functions are the last ones to develop. Children’s brains are still developing.

I didn’t home school my kids per se.

Iremember the shcool making a big deal when my son could not hop on one leg and suggest that indicated he was some how defective. He was a bit clumsy but today he holds a black belt in karate and he is an expert fly tyer. I believe the discipline of karate class helped remediate his clumsiness. He was never even slightly defective just different.

I totally agree - I have seen with my own kids that taking them from where they are and teaching them skills step by step is the way to overcome whatever barriers they encounter. Teaching them that they are unable to do certain things keeps them from trying to learn. They may not ever excel in their challenge areas, but wherever they are, they can improve with practice and application. Which also teaches a more important lesson - that practice and application lead to better results. The Karate class is a great example. Development happens at different rates for different kids. We can assist the process but can’t really rush it. The more we realize that all kids are different, the better our results will be.