A Routledge and Guilford Press Freebook
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A Routledge and Guilford Press FreeBook EXECUTIVE FUNCTION HOW TO SUPPORT YOUR CHILD TABLE OF CONTENTS 003 • INTRODUCTION 009 • 1: BUILDING A CONNECTION BETWEEN HOME AND SCHOOL from The Organized Child by Richard Gallagher, Elana G. Spira and Jennifer L. Rosenblatt 022 • 2: LANGUAGE, WORDS AND SYMBOLS from Nurturing Natures, 2nd Edition by Graham Music 036 • 3: EPIGENETICS: THE END OF THE NATURE-VERSUS-NURTURE DEBATE from Getting Ahead of ADHD by Joel T. Nigg 052 • 4: THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE SKILLS from Understanding Child Development by Sara Meadows 089 • 5: LINKING ASSESSMENT TO INTERVENTION from Executive Function Skills in Children and Adolescents, 3rd Edition by Peg Dawson & Richard Guare 112 • 6: PSYCHOLOGY from The Science Inside the Child by Sara Meadows 155 • 7: ATTENTION, EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING, AND MOTIVATION PROBLEMS IN TEENS from Parent-Teen Therapy for Executive Function Deficits and ADHD by Margaret H. Sibley 175 • 8: WHAT CAN MY NEWBORN DO? from Little Kids, Big Dilemmas by Sarah Kuppen INTRODUCTION This FreeBook brings together a selection of chapters from Guilford Press and Routledge books dedicated to the development of executive function skills in children. This collection is a valuable resource for parents and therapists alike and covers diverse topic within the field: from supporting executive function development in babies and guiding schoolchildren through their development, to helping your teenager with executive function difficulties and looking at why such difficulties exist. Guilford Press is an independent publisher of books, periodicals, software, and DVDs in mental health, education, geography, and research methods. Guilford Press is distributed in the UK and Europe by Taylor & Francis. To order in other countries, visit www.guilford.com CHAPTER 1: BUILDING A CONNECTION BETWEEN HOME AND SCHOOL Are you sick of nagging your child to write down homework assignments? Is his or her backpack a black hole that eats up papers, books, and gym clothes? Organizational skills problems aren’t just frustrating—they get in the way of school success and wreak havoc at home. The Organized Child is a unique resource based on a scientifically tested program that shows how you can teach your child to develop important skills. In this chapter Richard Gallagher, Elana G. Spira, and Jennifer L. Rosenblatt explore the importance of identifying a “point person” at your child’s school who can help support your child’s organizational skills. “[I]t’s important for teachers and other involved staff members to understand the challenges your child is facing and your plan for addressing them. The key issues you want them to understand are that your child struggles to learn organizational skills that are easier for many kids to develop (in other words, she is not just lazy), and that you are working with her on developing these skills in a step-by-step fashion. A teacher who understands that a child is working on writing down assignments and will get to time management later is more likely to notice positive changes in assignment tracking, rather than just focusing on a late assignment.” ROUTLEDGE 3 GUILFORD PRESS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 2: LANGUAGE, WORDS AND SYMBOLS Nurturing Natures, provides an indispensable synthesis of the latest scientific knowledge about children’s emotional development. Integrating a wealth of both up-to-date and classical research from areas such as attachment theory, neuroscience developmental psychology and cross-cultural studies, it weaves these into an accessible enjoyable text. Graham Music covers how children develop language understanding and communication and the challenges brought by developmental disorders, as well as highlighting the impact of background on development. “What distinguishes human language from the rudimentary copycat words that parrots can use, or the alarm calls that monkeys make, is such psychological understanding. Language use is not just about signs, that one word ‘stands for’ a thing. It requires the ability to ‘tune in’ to another’s mind, to make sense of their intentions.” CHAPTER 3: EPIGENETICS: THE END OF THE NATURE-VERSUS-NURTURE DEBATE Does toxic pollution cause attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)? What about screen use? Are alternative treatments worth exploring? Can dietary changes help? From leading ADHD researcher Joel T. Nigg, Getting Ahead of ADHD presents exciting treatment advances grounded in the new science of epigenetics—how genes and the environment interact. “Epigenetic change is to DNA as control dials are to the electronic circuits on your car stereo. The stereo plays something very different when you change the bass–treble ratio, change the volume, or even change the station. After you change the settings, the new volume stays that way until you change the dial again. Yet the underlying electronics have not changed.” CHAPTER 4: THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVE SKILLS Understanding Child Development introduces the main areas of developmental psychology in childhood. It covers both classic and contemporary theories and research, while also examining child development in real-world settings. Sara Meadows outlines in this chapter what we know about the development of specific cognitive skills - perception, executive functions, attention, memory, metacognition ROUTLEDGE 4 GUILFORD PRESS INTRODUCTION and social cognition – and draw some conclusions about the developmental processes involved and how they can be facilitated. “Being able to be attentive on demand is an essential skill for success in relationships and social settings. Being able to distract oneself from an emotional difficulty or an insoluble problem may contribute to one’s emotional wellbeing and mental health. All of these attentional skills have roots in infancy and become better with practice and brain maturation.” CHAPTER 5: LINKING ASSESSMENT TO INTERVENTION Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents, 3rd Edition presents effective ways to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses, create supportive instructional environments, and promote specific skills, such as organization, time management, sustained attention, and emotional control. Strategies for individualized and classwide intervention are illustrated with vivid examples and sample scripts. In this chapter Peg Dawson and Richard Guare look at a number of interventions designed to address specific problems and a case example to illustrate the process. “The goal of assessment is intervention. To meet this goal, the assessment process is designed to gather behavioral information relevant to intervention. It is not enough, however, to be able to describe the behaviors of concern to design an effective intervention. We must also have some understanding of why the behavior occurs.” CHAPTER 6: PSYCHOLOGY In The Science inside the Child Sara Meadows presents some of the ways in which science can describe and explain how and why children develop in the way they do. It looks at children’s individual development within the development of our species, at genes, at the hormone systems that flood our bodies, at the neuroscience of children’s brains, and at patterns of behaviour. It looks, in other words, at the different influences on child development according to the scientific disciplines of evolutionary theory, genetics, epigenetics, endocrinology, neuroscience, epidemiology and psychology. This chapter explores parenting behaviour and how it affects child development. ROUTLEDGE 5 GUILFORD PRESS INTRODUCTION “‘Developing’ children is analogous to developing a photograph; there’s what the picture is doing as it gains detail and clarity (‘tasks’), and there’s what the photographer is doing to bring about that change (‘frames’).” CHAPTER 7: ATTENTION, EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONING, AND MOTIVATION PROBLEMS IN TEENS Parent-Teen Therapy for Executive Function Deficits and ADHD: Building Skills and Motivation is a user-friendly manual presenting an innovative, tested approach to helping teens overcome the frustrating organizational and motivation problems associated with executive function deficits and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The Supporting Teens’ Autonomy Daily (STAND) approach uses motivational interviewing (MI) to engage teens and their parents in building key compensatory skills in organization, time management, and planning. In this chapter, Margaret Sibley gives a case study example of handling this difficult period and tools for professionals to help parents. “Most therapists who treat teenagers have met Marcus. He may be a typically developing teen who stumbles with the increasing demands of adolescence. He may have a clinical diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or another diagnosable neurocognitive deficit. What is clear is that Marcus struggles in a way that significantly affects his daily life. Marcus could benefit from intervention—but which approach would be best for him?” CHAPTER 8: WHAT CAN MY NEWBORN DO? What are infants capable of? Sarah Kuppen, expert in early child development, uses her scientific expertise to sort through the hype and give you the facts. Using the latest developmental research, she provides practical tips and solves more than 50 familiar parent questions in Little Kids, Big Dilemmas. In this chapter she covers how newborns first develop skills. “Babies come pre-programmed for learning, and are very choosey in how they focus their attention. Babies tune into the things that matter and quickly block out those that