Video: Supporting Executive Function in Twice-Exceptional Learners
AI assisted summary:
Executive function isn't one thing
Mason opened by grounding the conversation in the basics: executive function challenges show up differently for every 2e learner, and they aren't a character flaw or a motivation problem. He walked through practical, physical strategies for building routines, including one parents loved: having a student write their own morning routine in dry-erase marker directly on the bathroom mirror, checking off each step as they went.
Defining "done"
Maxwell picked up on a theme that came up again and again in the chat: perfectionism and time blindness. For a lot of 2e kids, "done" is a moving target, and estimating how long something will actually take is genuinely hard. His advice: make time visible, define what "done" looks like before starting a task, and treat time estimates as something to calibrate over time rather than get right on the first try.
Big emotions, real scripts
Presh closed out the presentations with a framework for navigating big emotions: fight, flight, and freeze. She shared concrete scripts parents can use in the moment (and just as importantly, what to say afterward, once everyone's calm) to help kids feel understood rather than judged.
What parents asked about most
Popular Questions from the Chat
Here's a roll-up of the questions parents asked most, with answers pulled straight from our speakers' responses.
Q: Can you share a specific example of a "physical reminder" for routines like brushing teeth or washing your face?
Mason shared a real example: he had a student write their entire morning routine in dry-erase marker on the bathroom mirror, erasing each step as they completed it. The novelty made it fun (and felt a little rebellious), which built buy-in. The bigger idea: create a simple, visible to-do list in each "station" of the routine (bathroom, breakfast table, backpack area) so the reminder lives where the task happens.
Q: How do we build awareness so kids notice (and clean up) the mess they leave after a project?
Mason reframed this as an initiation issue rather than an awareness issue: kids often know the mess is there, they just don't feel it's their job to fix it. His approach: tie access to future project supplies to cleanup ("help me get this cleaned up together, or I can't set you up for the next one"). Presh added a "make it fun" angle: clean up together to a favorite song, then hand off the task once they're ready. Maxwell noted that age and differing "tolerance for mess" both matter a lot here.
Q: How do we let younger kids choose what works for them when they don't have the experience to know their options?
Maxwell suggested giving a limited, curated set of choices (for example, "Google Calendar, a whiteboard, or a paper planner, pick one") so kids get real agency without being overwhelmed. Mason shared a memorable example: his own kids thought there were only three ice cream flavors until they were old enough to order for themselves. As kids show more independence, you can expand the menu of choices.
Q: What do you do with a perfectionist who blows past the time you've set aside for an assignment? Cut them off, or let them finish?
Maxwell's first move is figuring out why it's taking longer: is the extra time productive work, or are they stuck? If they're genuinely working, he'd let them finish and recalibrate future time estimates rather than force a stop. Presh recommended agreeing on a hard stop as a family in advance (e.g., "by midnight, we're done, because tomorrow gets hard otherwise") and having the deeper conversation about pacing when your child is calm, not in the moment. Mason noted that reduced-workload accommodations through an IEP or 504 plan are also worth exploring if this is a recurring pattern.
Q: What if my child won't cooperate with mom and dad on things like hygiene or homework, and what does a typical EF coaching session even look like?
Presh's take: resistance to parents is often normal developmentally, and hearing the same message from someone outside the family (a coach, mentor, or tutor) tends to land better. A good session starts by letting the student explain the problem in their own words, not the parent's version of it, before co-creating a plan. Mason summed up the bigger picture well: there's no such thing as a "typical" EF session with 2e learners. Every student needs something different, and progress often looks like quiet, steady change rather than a dramatic before-and-after.
Read the Transcript
[0:16] Yael Valek
Welcome, everybody! So nice to see you, thanks for joining us tonight. We're just gonna give everybody a minute to get in. Should we give them one more minute, Hadas? Thank you all for joining. People are still continuing to join, so I'll give it one more second, and then we'll get started.
[1:10] Teresa Nair
It's great to see such a big group tonight. Eve.
[1:18] Yael Valek
This event may have… may be our record for most signups, so we're very excited. Okay, I will get started since we have a lot of, I know, eager learners here tonight, and I want to make sure that everyone is aware that there's Spanish interpretation available. On this channel. And Hadas, you'll put that in the chat as well, at times, yeah. Thank you. So, in case you're not familiar with REEL, we are a non-profit. And we ensure Twice-Exceptional students thrive in school by doing events like this with parents, and raising educator awareness as well to understand practical research-based strategies to address the needs of Twice-Exceptional Learners successfully.
And just so we, you are probably familiar with this, but just so we all get on the same page, we use the Bridges definition of 2E, Twice-Exceptional. It's students who have both distinguishing strengths, high ability, and potential in one or more areas. combined with complex challenges, such as dyslexia, ADHD, autism, anxiety, and others, and they combine to make a… the blue and the yellow combine to make a green child, and both the challenges and the strengths have to be addressed simultaneously in this child, not just one or the other, which makes them more challenging to support in a classroom environment.
As you know. And just so you know a little bit about REEL, if you're new to us, we have a lot of free services, such as this speaker series, and I will show you the other events we have coming up this fall. We also offer… oh, I didn't update this, it is now a monthly parent support group. We have a private Google group with over 1,000 members that you can ask and answer questions, finding local resources. We have parent toolkits for different times in your life, how to talk to your teachers at school.
A lot of online resources, including guides for IEPs. A list of student guidance, all kinds of school lists. And then, two things that we offer for a small fee are our small facilitated paid groups and one-on-one consultations. In addition, we offer educator services. We do custom professional development for schools, offer online resources, recorded talks, and we have an educator newsletter. So please reach out if you'd like us to come to your school.
This year, REEL's kicking off a year-long awareness campaign called See the Whole Child, because the way that we see children shapes the way they see themselves, and we hope that, to help people look beyond challenges and focus on their strengths, so we can unlock children's full potential. So, some of the events supporting this theme, this weekend, we will be at the Stanford Neurodiversity Summit, which is accessible online and in person. And, in September 24th, coming right up, we have a private school and educational options panel, where you can learn about different options for schooling for your TUI learner.
On October 15th, we're having, a Stealth Dyslexia talk, which is a really interesting topic if your child's having trouble learning and reading and you're not sure why, even if they read at grade level. And then we are going to do our, Intro to 2E, What is a 2E Learner, if you'd like to learn more about that on October 19th. REEL will be speaking at the AI and Education Summit on October 24th, and then we'll round out our, semester with, Beyond Social Skills, How to Help Neurodivergent Kids Build Authentic Friendships.
We know that's a topic you guys have requested a lot. We also have, more, two more parent support groups, available, this semester, so please join at reel2e.org. I know Hadas is putting a bunch of links in the chat, trying to keep up with me. And again, you will have, you can follow REEL on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and see all of our old events on YouTube. And now I'm going to introduce our speakers, with no further ado. So Mason Tudor is an executive function coach, mentor, and experienced educator who specializes in supporting neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students.
Precious, or Presh Listana, M-E-D, is the founder of Executive Function Tutors and Executive Function Coach who partners with neurodivergent, Twice-Exceptional students and their families. She works closely with parents to co-create personalized systems, tools, and routines with students, empowering them to become independent and confident in reaching their goals. And Maxwell J. Greenberg is a historian of American education and an independent academic and executive function coach specializing in Twice-Exceptional 2E high school and college learners.
So, welcome to the three of you, we're so excited to have your expertise here tonight, and I will kick it off to Mason.
[6:10] Mason Tudor
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. So… I wanted to talk… before I get started into my practical section, I wanted to talk a little bit about the foundation that I have to understand to begin doing what it is that I do. So, I think this will be helpful to you all as well, as you're trying to understand your own 2D Learners. So A bit of… a bit of an introduction. So, executive functioning and the 2E learner is a complex intersection, right? So, where these two meet, we find that some of the unique pieces of being twice exceptional really come out in this Experience.
And when these come out in daily life, academic life, professional, social life, all of the different places where they come out. And some of the concepts that I kind of wrap my head around are listed in the slide. But I wanted to make sure that, like, I'm properly grounding and situating these. So, the first is that when we're talking about executive function and executive dysfunction, The surplus and deficit part of the TUI Learner becomes really prevalent, and we have to respect that as we move into teaching, learning, working with, supporting, accommodating, and that is that we have that exceptionality, but we also have that challenge.
If we lose sight of that, and we focus only on the challenge, or only on the exceptionality while we're trying to teach that executive functioning skill and skill set, and help them develop those associated abilities. then it's… we're gonna lose the 2E learner, and this is a really frequent occurrence. The other concept, and I see this come up quite often, often we recognize giftedness in children before we recognize challenge. This isn't always the case, but when this is the case, it has lifelong ramifications for the TUI learner.
So that is, start doing all of this amazing stuff, and, you know, you're living your best life, and you're the smartest little boy or little girl ever, and you get compliments, and… Adults gush over you, and you get used to it, and then something happens, and the first challenge comes up, and it is a devastating shift from you can take over the world to, oh, now there's… now there's all these challenges that you have. Okay, well, let's… let's fix you, and let's fix your problems, and that takes a turn that is detrimental, right?
So, I think that's one of the patterns that I see pretty frequently. And the last one is uncertainty in the common. And this is probably hard for some people to understand, where Most people are… really comfortable with common things, and making predictions about common things, and learning common things, and being in that world where all of these really common and shared skill sets are just part of daily life. However. with a… I've heard parents say, easy's hard, hard's easy, and that is talking about that exceptionality and how it's expressed in skill sets, right?
And so. This leads to a learner who looks at something that is common, that is easy for everyone else in their mind. And defines it as hard, and so there's avoidance, there's resistance, and this, this keeps being a recurring thing of, like, well, I don't want to do those things that are difficult for me. And that… becomes even part of the sort of culture around them is that everyone else is doing this, I can't do it, I don't want to do it, I'm not going to learn it, it's not… it's not going to make any difference, I'm broken.
Kind of those kinds of ideas come out of this. Again, these are very personal, and they are very, contextual, but I think they happen often enough that they're worth saying, hey, let's put some basis on this executive function stuff, because oftentimes it comes up with fairly normal things that are coming out of these conversations. And just because it's normal doesn't mean that. We can just treat it like that sort of easy skill that everybody can master in no time, right?
So… Executive functioning. is a confusing field. I think when you're getting into it, you do all of this research, and you write pages and pages, and get these informational packets, and you want to find the experts, and you want to just really dive into it, and we end up building a list that just keeps growing. And every time it keeps growing, you find something new to fix, right? I've even known sometimes, going through some of the things that are related to executive functioning, parents will begin self-diagnosing and being like, oh, I have, I have executive functioning problems.
Sort of, but not really, right? That's not really how it works. I mean, at the end of the day, though, I really like a simple model that we can build from with some confidence, without having to sort of explode the view. Certainly could explode the view, but I think it's better to kind of think about it in simpler terms. So the, the Harvard… I've got to look at my slide, and it's over there. The Harvard Center for the Developing Child has to find executive functioning based on the parts of the brain that it activates, which is working memory, self-control or inhibition, mental flexibility, also cognitive flexibility.
So this simplifies what we're talking about when we talk about an actual biological anatomical feature of these are the parts of the brain that are activating. So, when we have a deficiency, it is, the deficiency is with brain development in those areas, right? So, this isn't, again, something wrong with a person's personality or anything, and two, it can develop. It's a physical feature that can develop, right? So this helps us kind of root all of that sort of optimism in a little bit of neuroscience, right?
So, the second part of It's Confusing is that there are some… overlapping words that come into play when we're talking about, I want to change the executive functioning skills of my 2E Learners so that they are more autonomous, or they have more autonomy, they have more independence, right? And that is, we're kind of overlapping or interchanging words like skill, strategy, and ability, right? So, as we're thinking about this, I want you to keep in your mind that some of these are different, right?
Even though they can overlap, right? So we have skills, and these are things that you should be able to demonstrate in a physical world. You should be able to demonstrate that you have the skill to do something, right? To a certain degree, right? strategy is usually a teaching device, sometimes it's a… I don't want to call it a crutch, but sometimes it is a mechanism we use to get through tasks, right? Because they're complicated, because we're worried about our own memory failing, or things like that, right?
So sometimes they can be a useful tool, but in general, when we're talking about developing EF, we're talking about a teaching device, right? And so the system then is presented to help develop. the… skills of the learner, right? And so, oftentimes, this is, like, put into a system, or it's incorporated into a routine, so that these pieces can… it's not autopilot, but these pieces can get easier and develop a sustainability, right? Then we look at the ability, and this is where we start talking about accommodation.
versus scaffold to independence, right? So ability, it can grow, but once you get to, sort of, the ability ceiling, it's going to be diminishing returns. So there's going to be a lot of effort, not much movement when you get to the ability ceiling, right? So once we get there, we're really waiting for the brain to grow, to catch up a bit, and then that goes on, or we're waiting for that sort of flag that this is what we can develop, and now we need to look into accommodations past this point.
Right? So, hopefully, that kind of demystifies some of executive functioning. before I really jump into my practical example. So, I want to focus on 3 pieces, and no, these are not executive functioning terms, by and large. This is more about helping embed, sort of, instructional pieces into daily, practical EF application, right? So I want to focus on outcome and result, I want to focus on teaching and scaffolding, and lastly, I want to talk about preparation and revisioning.
And this is kind of a specific metacognitive, approach, so I do want to make sure I highlight that, executive functioning, word. So… So there's two routines that come up almost every time I've worked with a student who's 2E and struggling with executive functioning. One is the homework routine. I believe Max and or Precious will be talking more about that at length, and so I'm gonna… I'm gonna keep my… my grubby hands off of that, but the morning routine happens to be one of the ones that I think is really important.
It sets the tone for the day, it sets the tone for family tension, and this is a really big deal, and can lead to… it can lead you to a lot of other things that are going on as well. Particularly the things that are happening in day-to-day life that are kind of absent school pressure, even though part of the morning stress is from school, but these are the These are the daily living in the home instead of, you know, the pressures that may be coming from being at the school location or being pulled into school activities, right?
So, in the first phase of this piece, we would be looking at doing a sort of planning piece, right? So, when you're looking at your morning routine, you want to sort of break it down into the phases that it is, and you want to try to… and I'm saying you, and I mean you as a team, because if you do not include the 2B learner on this design process, you will probably have zero buy-in. If you just make all the decisions for them. I think you can hire any of the three of us, and we'll pick up where you failed, because without that mutual, collaborative approach.
It's almost doomed from the start, because even if they comply, there will be at some point where they do not understand and cannot figure it out, and at this point in the process, it's all your system, so when it doesn't work, it'll be all your fault, and that's a really easy way to make you the scapegoat. So you want to make this a collaborative learning, environment, where we're we're working on the morning routine together, right? Once you have that agreement, now you can work through it and help understand, and you can understand them, and there's a whole lot of learning going on once that arrangement has been made.
So we're gonna… like, what are we gonna do once we have that agreement, right? You're gonna tackle known issues, right? So it could be waking up, you might need practical strategies for waking up, like, for instance. Do they need something to physically move them? So, are you shaking them awake, right? We might try to figure out something later on to replace you, like a vibrating, they have those little… it's like a watch. but it vibrates on your wrist.
Maybe they need some tactile sensation to wake up. Maybe they need lights or noise, or maybe an automatic blind opener for the windows, right? There's all kinds of different strategies you can integrate. Once you've identified that waking up is an issue. Now we can deal with that, and we can look through How can we teach that to be a more independent task, right? the… oh, that's not even the one I want to talk about! I forgot about my example. I love this example because it's the first thing I try.
It doesn't always work, but it's the first thing I try, and I usually get my students to have a little bit of fun with it. So you create a physical reminder of what has to be done in each location, so each location becomes this sort of station, right? So what do you need to do in the bathroom? Things like brush your teeth, put on deodorant, maybe wash your face, right? If I can get people to do that before they step out of the door, it's usually a win, right?
So you would have one, you know, in the area where they're eating breakfast. You might have one where they're packing their backpack. It's a really good thing, like, if you're doing… they're packing their own lunch, say, or even if you're packing their own lunch, you know, you're making it, and then they… they start taking over certain tasks, right? They put their drink in the lunch… lunch container, right? And you can build off of that, but if you have that sort of physical list of what happens in each location, we're not losing it, we're not figuring out you know, what I'm supposed to do over here, we're not… depending on our own working memory, all that sort of stuff, right?
And I've created some pretty obnoxious ones so that we'll notice them, too. So, sometimes it pays to be obnoxious and in your face, as a hint there. So, as we're implementing strategies, we want to look at scaffolding, and that is being able to take a step back, right? So, once I start this sort of strategy, it's probably going to be with the adult or the parent doing a lot more, right? But we're looking for those steps to remove as the child is capable of more.
Sometimes that's a maturity thing, sometimes that's a learning the routine thing, but as we're looking at Pulling back up. pulling back as the parent, and here's where I put the wake-up strategies. Got it all out of order. But we're looking at pulling back so that the child can do more and more as we progress. Sometimes you will pull things back, and it is something that is beyond their capacity, beyond their, capability. make sure you have a conversation about that and see, like… and try to get them to be honest with you.
Maybe they were just being lazy, right? I do that, you do that, we all get lazy from some… sometimes, and no need to make a big deal out of it. Okay, do you want to try it again tomorrow, right? Like, and if the answer is no, then maybe we should put a pan in that, come back to it later, now look for somewhere else you can take a step back, right? It's about progress, right? So, the last one… is… and I sort of previewed that with the conversation that I just modeled.
But when you do this, you're constantly addressing things that they are struggling in. You're constantly looking for those places of challenge. And you're constantly looking for opportunities for growth, right? For them to step in and do the thing. So we're monitoring, and I'm gonna call them blind spots. We're monitoring for those blind spots, right? We don't want to get hit with blind spot after blind spot after blind spot. While we want to develop some resiliency, we don't want to keep being bombarded with a bunch of unexpected things.
So we're going to develop strategies until we get, say, 95% of the blind spots kind of out of the way. We can't account for all of them, just life is surprising sometimes. But we want to get those processed as much as possible, and we want to have a plan, some strategies, and be building skills around those Those things that are challenging. So, and I'm gonna say, find one thing to improve at a time. Many of the parents I've seen get involved with 2E individuals, they are at a level that the child is not capable of.
There's a mismatch, and even if the two individuals wasn't struggling with executive functioning, there would still be a struggle because they're… they're immature They're a child, they don't have experience, and so the level of that parent with high scheduling capacity and high networking capacity and high… all of those high skills that the parent has, right? those are mismatched to the child, not only because of TUI, but because it's parent and child, right?
So, the child will never take a step into that role and do it at that level. That's not going to happen. So. Monitoring that appropriate expectation for the one thing you're gonna improve. We need to make sure that the bar is where it should be. We don't want the Tubi Learner to trip over it, but we also don't want them to feel like they have to do it exactly like the parent, right? Because oftentimes that's a… that's an unrealistic expectation, right?
I've even heard parents say, no, I've lowered my expectations so low, and then they will list out their expectations, and I'm like. blow for who? Like, that's… that's not it, right? So, a lot of times, we get lost in our own sort of plan and all that sort of stuff, and we… we set those expectations a little… little too high. We want to be incremental. We want to find that first step. We're going to be incremental, and we want to celebrate every single inch forward, right?
So instead of, say your goal is to be 10 minutes earlier getting everything ready so that Maybe they want to do something in the morning, maybe they want to draw for 10 minutes, or something like that, right? Don't do 10 minutes all at once. Do 3 minutes first. See how that goal goes. Then maybe do 5 minutes, then maybe do 6, and then 7, and then 8, and then 9, and then 10, right? Being incremental is allowing that Sort of to settle in and develop those skills as you move along.
But this is the part where conversations become really important, because Them developing awareness in this case, them developing planning strategies, them developing improvement strategies is the point, not the morning routine. Right? Okay. I think I gave some practical things there. I will turn this over to Max, sir.
[25:27] Maxwell Greenberg
Thank you, Mason. I think that was fantastic. It was really helpful to get a primer for everybody on what exactly we're trying to talk about here. I agree that I think executive function can be quite tricky and challenging, and I think it can come to encompass so many things that parents are hoping to try and address for students that are struggling in school in various ways. So, After I speak, Presh is gonna have a fantastic presentation dealing with, emotional regulation and emotional dysregulation.
And Mason was giving us an example of something, at an… as an at-home routine. I tend to work with students who are slightly older, typically high school and college, and so my presentation is going to focus on Practices that deal specifically with school tasks in particular. And the goal, I think a lot of Parents worry sometimes that how do we balance, sort of, natural consequences with scaffolding and with support? And the goal here is to try and work towards independence, but that that is actually built on layers of support first.
So… The first thing I want to sort of talk about is what causes what looks like inconsistency? IM. 2E students, you know, and so, I… I start this presentation with the… baseline of understanding the assignment, right? So, if they don't understand it. we're talking about something different. That's another kind of intervention that might be required to help that student. But if you know that they understand it, if you know that they are capable of doing it, if you have seen them do it before, and they're not doing it this time.
well then, what gets in the way between this understanding and beginning the assignment or finishing the assignment? And so there are these sort of eight gaps that I've identified, that can be hurdles for students. To get tasks. finished. So one is sequencing. So, what is the order of operations in which I do a particular task? So, sequencing within a task, what is the first step? but also prioritization, sequencing of tasks. Okay, I have multiple assignments that need to get done.
How do I sort of figure out which one to start first? The second is… time estimation, and this can work both ways. They think something is going to take much longer than it actually is going to take, and so that leads to avoidance, or they think something is going to take much less time than it is actually going to take them, and then that leads to procrastination, because they think it will be simpler Than it turns out to actually be. Third is task initiation.
That relates to sequencing. Okay, I know what I need to do. How do I actually get started? I think there are environmental factors related to that as well, which I don't necessarily touch on in this. presentation, but being in a place where you can be productive is quite important. Or it's resuming. Initiating the task is not super challenging, but if they have to walk away, if they can't finish it in a single setting, coming back to it is challenging.
or task transition. So, I finish this one thing, now I need to start this other thing. How do I move between them? The fourth, or the fifth, sorry, this is one I see especially often in 2E Learners, would be, how do I narrow down the unlimited range of things that I can do in a particular assignment. This is especially true on writing tasks, or sort of open-ended projects where they have that creative license, but it's almost so broad, and they have so many deep interests, that it's really hard to even narrow down, okay, what am I even going to do for this assignment?
Sixth is… stopping. And this is particularly for students who have a kind of perfectionism. What does done look like on this assignment? For them, it almost feels like it's never done. And that can make getting started hard, and obviously that can make actually turning something in hard. There could be a sort of shame around the quality of it, that it doesn't reflect what they're really capable of. Those things can be really challenging. And then these last two are… A little bit different, so… The seventh is valuing, and this, to me, isn't really an executive function challenge, but I think it is important, is that does this task make sense to the student in terms of why they're being asked to do it?
And so, I wrote a blog for REEL a few months ago about, sort of, the historical origins of schools, and Schools really ask us to do these incredibly arbitrary tasks. And, like, most of them don't really make sense, and most of them don't really have real-world application, and this sort of emerges out of historical context about obedience, whatever. But I think that's really important. If, like, if the assignment doesn't make sense to you. why would you do it?
I sort of dealt with this as a student myself, in a 10th grade geometry class, I was acing every test, and so I thought, well, why do I have to do the homework? If the homework is meant to be additional help, but I'm acing every test, then why would I have to do this thing that I'm wasting my time doing? And no one can really ever… no one was ever really willing to explain it to me. And so I ended up doing quite poorly in that class because I wasn't doing this thing that was required of me, but had no real explanation, and I didn't value it.
And lastly would be asking, and this is about, sort of, self-advocacy. The gap would be you're not willing to articulate what some of the gaps that you're experiencing are, not willing to ask for help, or not able to ask for help. And so, I think I won't spend too much time on this, because it reiterates a lot of what Mason shared, but… I think for many of us as adults, we tend to make these assessments now. Maybe it took us some time to get there, but without taking up much bandwidth.
Like, we don't have to think about them nearly as much. As students have to, and with the kind of regularity of deadlines, that students have to in school. And so, because school is so abstract. These things can look like, I think, what often gets articulated as a kind of lack of motivation. But what I want to try and dispel is that, like, that's not really what this is, and a lack of motivation, I think, is often just a way that we obscure actual underlying executive function challenges.
So I wanna, walk through 6 different sort of approaches, principles, etc. for executive function with your students. And again, I won't spend too much time on this slide because Mason already primed us on this, but I'll articulate it a little differently. Mason talked about collaborating, Presh is gonna talk about co-planning, the historian in me thinks about structure versus agency. So, to what extent are sort of, like, the structural factors getting in the way of student success, and to what extent do they need agency in that process, or to what extent is their own agency a hurdle that they need to overcome?
And so often I hear parents say, like, oh, we have the color-coded folders, we have the 24 by 24 calendar. Like, we tried all that, nothing's working. And my first question always is, like, well, okay, whose eye… whose idea was that? And I think… Mason… said it well, a little bit of the magic of the work that we do in particular is that we're just not mom and dad, and there really is a lot of… a lot of power in that. But there also is a lot of power in student agency.
And so, what does that look like? That looks like Giving options, so we have systems that work for us, but we need to sort of maybe be willing to expand the range of possibilities for our students. And allowing them to choose, to try. and to reflect. And that relates to what Mason was talking about with building that metacognition. Okay, this… this paper planner worked really well for you. Why? What about it worked well? And then moving from there. Getting to sort of name, what challenges it resolved for them, or it didn't work, and things are still missing.
Okay, what went wrong? What's getting in the way? And trying to reflect and revise our practices. So we need to build their system, not ours. I have my preferred way of doing things. That's not gonna work for every student. Next is a launch pad. This is, like, just the simplest thing that I can possibly think of. But it clears all of these hurdles, between starting and actually starting. So, you sit down and you say that you're starting, but when are you actually getting started?
And so, this, depending on, what TUI looks like for your particular student, because we know it looks so different for every student. Sometimes this is a great task to add to, a routine at the start of the evening, or at the end of the evening, when things are calmer, etc. Other times, it is a way for students to get into actually starting the routine, so building the launch pad can be the first step to sitting down and actually starting the work, but there's an expectation that we have that they're just gonna sit down and get things started.
That is relatively tricky, so we want to make sure we curate this space for them. That they already… that their computer is charged, that they know what the, expectations are for the assignment that they're starting. They have the Google Doc open, they've already named it, they have everything that they need here, so that starting is just that much easier. They know exactly what they need to do, and they have everything that they need to do it. And this is especially powerful for writing.
For writing tasks in particular, if they have everything that they need, it makes getting that first sentence down all that much easier. So, a launch pad, this is really part of that building a productive environment, creating that space where you can be as productive as possible, because the environmental factors really do matter. So, curating that space, building that launch pad for students to Be able to get into the task as quickly as possible.
Next is, something that I find extremely helpful, for students is to… Get as far away from abstractions as we can. So if we move away from nouns. and we move towards verbs. And so, whenever I'm working with my students, I always really encourage them to not make a to-do list, but a you-do list, which makes things actionable. Okay, what do you actually need to do? Study for biology is not actionable. What does that actually mean for when you sit down the next time to do that task?
And so moving into these more descriptive, actionable ways of of, getting into a particular task. So, I try to get them to be as specific as possible, and the kind of test for this is, can someone who is not you read this and generally understand what is meant to be done? And that just takes away some of that thinking about what do you actually need to do? What do you have on your agenda? So moving away from these sort of passive, static kinds of to-do lists, I have to do math homework, I have to do the… okay, well, how about I have to do problem set.
12, page 134, odd questions only, something like that. So something that is just… moves into a more descriptive Language than this sort of passive, static typical to-do list This one, this one works both ways, so, when I… when I put this slide together, I'm mostly thinking of… of kids who have a perfectionism. But it also… works in the opposite direction as well. So… with a no-stopping rule or without defining done, what does that usually look like, especially for a kid with perfectionism?
That looks like they… they work beyond what they have the capacity to actually do, and they're not even producing something worthwhile, or they're not gonna even start it. But a third thing that I can add here is The kid who isn't super interested in the topic, they don't like it, but they've internalized that they do need to get it done, and they… you… you look at this task together, and you think in your head, this is gonna take them 15 minutes.
And then they come back, and they're done in 5. And you're like, wow, that was… how did you get that done so fast? And then you read it, and you realize it's because it is the worst thing that they have ever possibly produced. And it's like, okay, you've… I guess, sort of met the basic baseline for what they've asked you to do. But you haven't actually met the expectations at all. And so, being able to define an endpoint, an expectation for a particular assignment is really helpful, and it doesn't always have to be something that you come up with.
Oftentimes, it is already articulated by the teacher, but it's reiterating that, or making sure that is reflected throughout the assignment. So, for example, they might have a… in a history class, they have to read, an assigned reading, and they have to respond to these 10 questions, and every single question requires a quote from the reading, but it only says that at the very top of the page, and so by the time they get to question 6, question 7, that has sort of fallen out of their understanding of what the expectations are, and then that's how they finish in 5 minutes in a task that you thought would take them a lot longer.
So just reiterating to them, having it written down, either editing the document itself if they're doing this online, a sticky note next to them at their launch pad, like, this is what this expectation actually means. More often, it's maybe this other end of the spectrum, which is a student who really wants to just do something that they really feel reflects what they're capable of. But they need to articulate to you either what that means, or you need to help them set their own expectations.
Especially if this is, like, just a homework assignment. This is… this does not need to be your best work. So working through those emotions and those… those self-perceptions, I think, is really helpful. And, Allowing them to have some agency with you to define what does it actually mean to finish this assignment? What does that… look like. Next is making time visible, which connects just exactly to what I was talking about at the outset, and also with defining what done looks like.
is that… I think people in general are really bad at estimating how long something is going to take. I know when… when I teach in the classroom, this is something that I struggle with mightily. Something that I think might take students 10 minutes, takes them 20 minutes. Something that I thought was going to be a 20-minute activity is, like, they're actually not that interested in it, it only takes 7 minutes. And so those things are really challenging, and they're challenging for students as well.
And so. making that time visible, talking through it in advance, and creating, like, a time log is something that I ask students to do. Not forever, but just to try and calibrate, expectations with reality. Okay, you thought this was gonna take 10 minutes, it actually took you almost double that. That's going to significantly impact your time management and your ability to get other things done that you need to get done. So being able to sort of manage your time and plan ahead really requires that ability to be introspective about how long a task is actually going to take.
And a good way to do this is by actually just logging. What is your expectation for how long it's going to take? How long did it actually take? Another option… is to use something like a Pomodoro timer, and say, I'm going to work until the timer sounds, rather than setting a sort of concrete endpoint. I need to finish this assignment, rather than a sort of… endpoint like that, it will just be, let's do focused work for X number of minutes, and that is accomplishing the task as well.
So making time visible for students, whether that is them tracking how long something actually takes. Or tethering, tethering an assignment to a prescribed amount of time, especially if they have multiple days. To work on it. This relates to making time visible, Time is… Extremely abstract. It doesn't really mean much of anything to most kids in particular. And also, our lives are really not that neat and nice and tidy. And so one thing that I think is really tricky is if you're asking someone to do something at a particular time.
One thing that I have seen time and time again is that if someone commits to doing something, say, at 6pm. something gets in the way, and they didn't get home until 6.15, usually that's, like, a little bit of a license to say, well, I was gonna do it at 6pm, but it's already 6.15, and now I'm not gonna… do it at all. The worst version of that looks like someone who's really flustered about not having met a particular time deadline for themself. And so, rather than trying to tether something to a particular time.
I find it much better to tether it to a familiar event. So, when this task ends, when this event ends, then I will do this thing. And then the time sort of becomes irrelevant. So, whether dinner is at 6 o'clock, or if it ended at 6.30, or 6.45, or 7.15, it doesn't really matter, because you are going to do this thing after dinner, regardless of when dinner. happens. So, I do this thing, and then I follow with this. So, tethering new routines to familiar and often recurring events.
So, these are sort of my five basic principles of supporting 2E Learners. Agency is the best efficiency. So, maybe you think that your system is actually the most efficient and it works the best. That might be true for you, but it might not be true for your student. We want to shift from verb… we want to shift to verbs rather than nouns. We want to move into the actionable rather than the passive. We want to try and set the table for them, but we don't want to cook the meal, right?
Help them build that launch pad, help them set those expectations, help them keep that time log. But… we want to try and help them build that independence. Make sure we define done, and again, that works in both directions for kids who struggle with perfectionism and for kids who just rush through something to get it done as quickly as possible, and also tethering new routines to existing ones. And I think I have a little bit of time flexibility, so I wanted… I wanted to go back, to something like this, just for a minute to say.
I know parents are often asking, like, well, how do I get my kid to do this? Or something like that. And something that I found especially effective with Twice-Exceptional students that I've worked with is You don't need to start these things in the context of school. So, like, you can ask them to make a you-do list for a task or an activity that they really already like to do, and that they would be really excited to explain in really actionable steps for someone who isn't them.
The same with, defining done. Whatever the task is they're doing, like, what does finished look like to you when you are building this LEGO set, when you're you know, making something on this Minecraft server, when you're building this, when you're making a beat online or something, what does done look like? To you, in this, in this environment, and also making time visible. You can have, like, let's time something that you're already really good at and you're already really familiar with.
And that's especially effective if they are already quite good at, Being able to meet that expectation, So, I will hand it over… to… Precious now.
[47:55] Presh
I was muted. Awesome. Well, thank you, Mason and Maxwell just for… really giving us a good foundation and just giving a lot of practical tools and routines to try with two e-learners. The part that I will focus on is big emotions to self-advocacy, and my goal is for all of you to walk away with a framework and some scripts you can use when your 2E learner has big emotions, and I think there's some questions and scenarios already being put into the chat, so hopefully this will be very useful to you all, so that, a little bit of background With myself?
I am the founder of Executive Function Tutors. Before that, I taught high school math and computer science, and I worked with a lot of students with IEPs, 504s, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and just wonderful students. And this picture to the right is my sister's recent high school graduation. She is a learner that I think has a lot of amazing strengths, and when it comes to co-creating routines and tools that I think could be more efficient with her, I think that there tends to be some, just challenges.
And… creating this presentation allowed me to really reflect, like, how did I support her in her, development as an adult, towards independence, and then how do we also support our students towards the independence and confidence that, they want and parents want as well. With that said, I think it's important to take a little bit of time to really understand what's actually going on in the, learner's brain. illustrative representation to the right.
I got it from a YouTuber named Emma McAdam. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, and she shows a representation of a 10-year-old's ADHD brain versus a neurotypical brain. You can see from here that the biggest difference between the two types of brains are that one of them is just more colored, or more activated. So, the neurotypical brain just has a lot more connections happening from the front of the brain to the back of the brain. And when we specifically look at this 10-year-old's ADHD brain.
Some of the less activation includes the poor executive function skills. We heard that from Mason, we've also seen a lot of applications around that with Maxwell. And then, really, this is just challenges around planning, prioritization, reasoning, decision making. This part that is really activated is the amygdala. And the amygdala in our brains serve as our own alarm system. So whenever you as an adult experience, like, a fight, flight, or freeze response, that is that small part of your brain alarming you about a stimuli that you're experiencing in the environment.
So with this 10-year-old ADHD's brain, that emotional part of the brain is just way more active than the front part. So that means that they just have bigger emotions. Because it's harder for them to regulate it, because developmentally, that part of their brain is just more active. The other parts that are less active, that, again, we learned from Mason, as well as the inconsistent dopamine. We heard from Maxwell that starting tasks, sticking with a task, attention, motivation, all those pieces are hard because, when you look at their brain, that part of… is just less activated.
And then lastly, there's, like, the poor, impulse control. So if they want, desserts after you said, you know, 10, like, you said no 10 times, it's just, part of it is just, their impulse control is a work in progress. So I think just understanding that there are actual, like. differences in the brain, I think when I think about supporting my own, like, sister, think about supporting my own, like, 2E students, I think it just helps to recognize that, their brains just are wired differently, and they have their own strengths with their different wirings.
With that said. when thinking about big emotions, I think it's important to recognize what exactly do these look like. So, in fight mode. These can be triggered in your student from a simple question like, hey, did you, do your homework? Hey, how are you preparing for that, like, upcoming test? And if they're already dysregulated for XYZ reason, they might yell at you, they might just be defensive and, like, say, stop asking me, or stop nagging me, and they might have a physical response of stomping and maybe even, like, raising fists.
Another piece is flight mode. This could be you ask them a question, and they just don't want to deal with it at all, so they try to leave, they try to hide in the room, or maybe even put on their headphones to really shut, the conversation out. And then there's also freeze mode, where they, are just unresponsive, you ask a question, you try to learn a little bit more, and they're just really not, giving you, anything. Physically, they may be putting their heads down.
If you also, and you could just see from their body reaction that they're just giving you a lot of, like, heaviness. Just to get a little bit of engagement, because I am the last one presenting, I am curious, like, which of these reactions do you commonly see in your child? One is fight mode, two is flight mode, two is flight mode, and then the other one is freeze mode. Just put in the chat real quick which one you typically see, when you… are working with your learner.
Seeing… Right now, looks like Fight tends to be a popular one. Okay, let's give it another moment. Sorry for the REEL team who might have to copy the previous questions at the top, but loving this engagement! Yes, thank you all for sharing and giving me a little bit of energy, here. Okay, from my quick scanning, it's really feeling like, fight mode goes first, and then it's like a mix of retreating or freezing. So thank you all for sharing, and I hope that shows you that you're not alone in this journey.
It really is a community to be able to raise students into independent adults. So, knowing a little bit more about these big emotions, I think, something you might be wondering is what Does my student, what does my child really need for them to listen in that moment? And it falls into three steps. And these are the same three steps that we try to support the parents that we partner with. So first is your calm connection, second is your collaboration, and three is your celebration.
You're going to hear parts of this as well, kind of reiterating what Mason and Maxwell shared as well, but I'm just going to put it all into a framework, which I try to just share with parents as the 3C process. There's a lot of seeds here, but there's the connect, the co-create, and the celebrate. I think the best way to really understand how this process or framework works is to just think of a scenario. So, I picked one that is, I think, just a very common scenario that I felt with my sister, when whenever I would try to support her with homework, and the scenario goes where Student is sick for 2 days, and they have homework that have piled up.
And during dinner time, as a parent, you ask them, hey, how's your missing assignments going? And they just don't say anything, and then they start to put their head down. So, how does this 3C process work in this scenario? The first one is the column connection. The first step to doing that is you gotta keep yourself calm first. When we think about traveling and you get on a plane, the first thing they always tell you is put your own oxygen mask first before you go and put it on other people.
It's the same concept when your student is fight, flight, or freezing at you. So, some tips that can help with keeping your calm first is to do box breathing. There's a wonderful GIF that shows you 4 seconds of inhaling, 4 seconds of holding, 4 seconds of exhaling, and 4 seconds of holding that. That just gives oxygen in your brain so that the stressful situation feels less stressful. Another one is just say a mantra. I think for me, my mantra is, my sister is a good… a good child, my student is a good sister.
Like, I just need to say that sort of positive thing, just so that I can see them in that lens, because they're having a difficult moment that they're showing me, but I need to ground myself to see them in a positive light to truly be able to support them. And then the third one is just think of a happy memory. For me, with my sister, it's all the times that I'd drop her off, or picked her up from middle school, and her eyes would be super big and just light up and get so excited, because It's been a while since I, you know, picked her up and hung out with her, so I just try to think about these happy memories, just so that I can brace myself for the reaction they might give me.
So once you're grounded. Then, the next thing you can try, just to give you a little bit of scripts, is to help them name their emotion. Oftentimes, when students are dysregulated. they… again, it's their… that small part of their brain is super active, that that prefrontal cortex, or all the logical thinking, it's just deactivated. So you cannot fight… you cannot go in logic mode when your child is giving you emotion mode. So you have to just co-regulate with them, and the first step of co-regulating is helping them name their emotion.
How that could look like is just saying what you're noticing, and you… and seeing it as calm as possible. Like, it looks like you're feeling down. If you say that in a way where you're dysregulated, and you're already angry, and you say, like, it looks like you're looking down or feeling down, they're gonna give you a different response, because they're gonna match your energy. Once you help them name their emotion. Next thing you want to try to do is to connect with them.
Students really just want to feel like whoever they're engaging with gets them, and part of how you can connect with them is to just put that emotion to something that relates to you. It could be, I also feel down when I'm behind at work. In this scenario, they're already down because of the missing assignments, so you can connect that to you feeling down if… when… whenever you also feel behind at work. And then, lastly. If, let's say, that, you help them in their emotion, you connect with them, you tell them, I also feel down when I'm behind at work, and they're just not giving you anything, maybe they're still shutting down, or maybe they're just, like, saying, like, oh, I don't want to talk about this, you could always table the conversation.
And, that… if… By doing that, you're just giving them a moment to self-regulate, versus trying to push them in that specific moment, because their emotional brain might still be activated, so you want to give them the time to try to get themselves to also calm down. So tabling the conversation could look like you can say, I don't need your answer right now. can you tell me what you think after dinner instead? So, like what Maxwell said, you're giving them an option on, when they can engage with you, you're giving them the agency versus demanding or, like, wanting it in the moment when, again, they're dysregulated.
The takeaway here is that when their emotional brain is the one that's most activated, you're… it's just super hard to really reason with them. I think giving them the time to, just calm down and regulate. That is really the first step to them listening to you. Easier said than done. Nope. let's say that they're at the point where they, are able to engage with you. So this is the second part of the C, which is co-creation. And, let's say after dinner, they, Just feel… they're not shutting down, they're, more engaging with you, maybe instead of giving you one-word answers, they're giving you, like, a sentence or so.
and then you still want to, like, get the answer on missing assignments, the next thing you want to do is you want to ask for permission. The way you could do that is you can say, hey, can we look at your missing assignments together now? And then, I think the next line that your learner might be super surprised if you say, hey, I promise I won't judge you. I think if they shut down, there's… probably, like, a really important feeling that they're not communicating with you.
It could be shame, it could be fear that you might reprimand them, it could be something else, but if you just tell them, hey, I won't judge you, I think you're giving them the opportunity to really be honest with you. And then once you have their permission, you really want to learn their process non-judgmentally. And the way to do that is, like, the questions that I think Mason and Maxwell shared, just really asking them, like, hey, what have you tried so far?
What do you think you need to do before you go to bed? And what can you push for tomorrow? So these questions, these are questions that I ask when I'm working with my students. They know that I'm not judging them in whatever that they've been able to do or not do. To me, those are all data points, and I treat it like data points, not a reaction. And asking these questions help their reflection and their metacognition when it comes to helping them really plan and come up with realistic things.
And then, with, I think we've seen the, part of it is really being able to externalize it. A lot of the overwhelm happens because learners live in their heads. If they can start to see it and visualize it, sticky notes, Google Doc, pen and paper, literally a napkin, then I guarantee you their overwhelm will start to go down, because now it's no longer in their head, it's somewhere else that they have, like, delegated those big things. So write it down is really key.
And then, lastly, you want to give them specific praise, and then help them start. I think positive reinforcement works really well with students, and the more specific you are, the more that they will remember it as well, and some examples of specific phrase is… saying, thank you for writing a You Do Now list. What is the smallest thing here that you can do while I wash dishes? So this, you're kind of passing it to them to do something while you do something else, to give them, again, agency.
And… I think, moving on, after you have to co-create, let's say that at the end of the scenario… oh, this drif, I think. Ultimately, you just want your… your child, like, in this, like, office episode, you just want them to feel like, that you get them, because if you walk away with your conversations, make… with your child feeling like you get them. I guarantee they will share more, they will show up more for you, they just need to feel safe that they could do these things, like, with you, fundamentally.
And then lastly, which is my favorite step, is to celebrate. We covered a little bit of, like, giving specific praise, and… I think the key here is just, instead of saying, good job, or nice, or nice job, or amazing, you really want to ground it with that specific thing that they did, because the next time it happens, they have a reference point. So… next time you think about something that they're doing well, try to challenge yourself to be specific in that phrase, and something you can ask yourself is, like, what exactly did they just do that, like, made me feel, like, happy or proud of them?
And I think that's how you want to give that specific praise. And then lastly, like, do something fun together, like, Doing this helps you invest in your relationship, but also in what you want out of your relationship with your student, where if they feel like they can trust you and they connect with you, you will have lots of influence in the things that they have in their day-to-day. So doing something fun together is, like, super important. That could look like eating ice cream together.
That could look like if they love, watching shorts and YouTube, watch those things with them, and just learn about what they like, or maybe if… If they don't want to share, like, don't ask them questions, just literally watch it with them. And then, whatever both of you enjoy, try to make time for that, too. I think that your learner, I'm sure, wants to hang out with you outside of school, and if they feel that connection with you, they're gonna show up differently.
Okay, so, and this is another GIF that, with my sister, whenever I want to hang out with her, we just watch cute otters and, cute, dogs and animals. So, when it comes to self-advocacy, this is the last part of this presentation, is that think of it as, like, a muscle you're building. Like, if you're going to the gym, you're working out your upper body, you're working out your lower body. Self-advocacy is also, like, a skill that you work out, and it also needs repetition for people to become independent in it.
So doing the… connecting with your learner, co-creating things with your learner, and celebrating with your learner. You're really giving them reps to be able to build that skill, one big emotion at a time. So the first time you run this, you might, you know, have to ask a few times, hey, what's missing? And then maybe you have to walk them through the routine. And then maybe, like, a month later, two months later, you kind of keep having this sort of framework.
Instead of you always leading it, maybe now they reach out to you, and they say, hey, can we look at this thing together? And then, eventually. the skill you're teaching them with co-regulation is they can then name the feeling, they can then find the next step, and they can just tell you the plan. But I think the key takeaway here is that it takes time, it takes… Again, it's easier said than done. We know how hard it is, and we understand that parents have a very difficult role in playing that, because you have full-time jobs as well!
So… but I think that if you think about it as a long game, and if these are things that you practice with your learner. eventually it will happen, and this is how you kind of shift from raising a child to raising an independent adult. And then lastly, I know that, things, again, are hard, with doing it and managing things on your own when your child is… goes on fight-flight-freeze mode, so if you, just… we hear from parents time and time again that, doing this makes them feel like a project manager, makes them feel like an enforcer, and they just have a hard time having that sort of relationship, with their child on top of their full-time job.
If you… want to connect, you can definitely scan the QR code to, one, get this slide deck, and then, two, more than happy to do, like, a free call to just learn, what you're looking for and what EF coaching, can look like for your family. We do have, like, a Tudor match guarantee and a money-back guarantee just to make it easier for new families, so feel free to, just scan this code, put in your information, and I'm definitely happy to make time to just give you a call and just learn more what you're looking for and how EF Coaching can support your family.
That's it from me. I think I need to pass it back to the REEL team, and thank you all for the engagement and the questions.
[1:08:30] Yael Valek
Thank you so much, Precious. Thank you so much to all three of you. We have gotten some questions in the chat, and everyone, feel free to add more questions to the chat, and we will ask them of our three speakers. So, Hadas, maybe we want to pin all three of them, so they can answer the questions. So, the first one is to Mason. Can you please share a specific example of a physical reminder? I see the list of examples, such as wash face, brush teeth, etc, but I'm not understanding where the support is.
[1:09:05] Mason Tudor
Sure. I'll give you the obnoxious one that I… that I came up with, with the… with the student and the parents. I had to talk to the students to get by… or the parents to get buy-in. So the bathroom routine was really problematic in the morning, so I encouraged the student to get a dry erase marker and to write their entire routine on the bathroom mirror. This was very present. They wrote it the night before, and then they could erase it off each time they did one of the things.
So, it was just fun enough, and felt rebellious, and they really, like, got into it, but then when they got bored with that. they had already built this routine and had kind of taught themselves how to do brushing teeth, washing the face, putting on deodorant, just… just by that kind of knowing that it was, like, a little… little obnoxious for their parents, but it's… really what you're doing is creating this sort of to-do list in each area, right?
And so. the one that I… that I picked for that student was based on them, sort of saying, oh, the paper… the paper copy won't work, the sticky note won't work, the whiteboard won't work, and I finally got them interested because they wanted to be a little bit of a jerk to their parents, right? So… We played off of that, and the parents kind of gave a little bit of attention, which gave them some motivation to do it, until they learn the whole process by themselves, and they do it without the listener.
[1:10:33] Yael Valek
Very cool. I love that. Someone asked for tips for building awareness. Any three of you, all three of you can answer this. My children don't tend to see the mess they make after working on projects that involve a lot of materials strewn about. I can point out to them to clean up, but I want to build their awareness so they can work toward doing it themselves. I know the ADHD gets in the way as the dopamine has worn off, and they would rather move on to something else.
Any… who wants to… Ideas for awareness.
[1:11:07] Mason Tudor
I'll go first, and I'll let Presh Max follow up. So my first question here is, we don't see the mess, or we don't think the mess is our responsibility, or… I have a hard time believing that we did an entire project and then went blind. So I think, like, the living with clutter is a different level, kind of, for everybody. So, I'm not sure that this is an awareness issue, this is an initiation issue. So, how do we get them motivated to clean up the mess that they make?
probably not notice the mess that they make, but probably actually do something about it, right? And so, there's a lot of different ways, and it probably depends on how old they are. So, if they're younger. you know, the tactics that you would use would be different than when they're older. So if you have, like, a 17-year-old who's still not cleaning up their own messes. are they supplying the things that they need for these projects? Because if… If they're not, then you control starting the project, right?
So if you don't clean up the mess after the project, then I am not going to provide you the the things that you need for the next time you want to do a project, right? So, like, we need to get in this together. How can I help you get started on this task, right? And so, sometimes a little bit of threatening is okay, mild threatening. But I would say it's that initiation piece. I would say they didn't go blind, they just don't think it's their job, right?
[1:12:43] Presh
I think to, quickly piggyback on that, you could try phase one of just asking questions to help them develop the self-awareness. Like, maybe there's… a time in dinner where things feel orderly. It's like, hey, what are you noticing that makes things feel, like, like, efficient? Or efficient is probably a bigger word, like, just feels, like, orderly, or feels organized? Or, you could also ask them in that specific moment, like, what, like… These glue and these construction paper.
who is gonna clean this up? Like, you could bring it back to them, basically, so that they could have that sort of awareness, but sometimes students would just either resist, or they want to chase the next dopamine, like, event, and I think with Mason, the part of making it into, like, a routine that I think can make it feel fun is beat the song. Like, play their favorite song, or play your favorite song, and just clean up with them together, just so that they can see that, expectation.
And maybe in the beginning, you know, you do it with them, and then the next time, when it's done, you could say. wow, like, I can't believe we finished cleaning this up before the song ended. Next time, do you think you can put the song on by yourself? Like, name it, and then give them, like, the next thing to try on their own, if you think they're ready to be independent, but… I think the more ways you can think of how it's fun for them and just try that with them first, I think you'll see a lot of success if you try to make it fun for them.
[1:14:27] Maxwell Greenberg
Yeah, I don't have too much to add to that. I think those are great suggestions. I think one thing could be… I do think the age is really important, and that matters a lot, and also, are they not cleaning up at all, or is this just, like, your… your version of cleaned up is different than their version of cleaned up, like, different levels of tolerance for mess, as well. But also, yeah, just getting back to, you know, defining done, or what is the endpoint, part of the expectation, like, the project isn't done until it's cleaned up.
Like, that's part of doing the project as well. But I just think, the age is a bit big piece of it, so I thought that, Presh and Mason, your suggestions were fantastic, and your questions.
[1:15:13] Yael Valek
Thank you guys so much. Okay, super helpful. Next question. How do we let our younger kids choose what works for them when they have no clue or experience to know different options?
[1:15:31] Maxwell Greenberg
I'll jump in on this one. So for me, there is… Actually having agency in the process. And having the feeling that you have agency in the process. And so, the younger you are, obviously, the more that the parent needs to sort of control the bounds of what, what works for them. And so it still looks like, you know, maybe a more limited selection of options. So my example was, like. Google Calendar, a whiteboard, or a physical planner. The younger you are, maybe it's like, you get… you get two options.
But I still think… talking through it, that reflective piece is really, really important. So if something's going well, like, trying to get them comfortable with the metacognitive piece of saying, or being able to recognize, clearly articulate why something works for them, why something doesn't work for them. And also that Like, just a reminder to everyone that Habitual change is a long-term project. This stuff takes time. I'm sure Presh and Mason can attest to this, like, there are students that I work with for… four years, like, every year of high school.
And, like, they get better every year, but they're all… they're still working on something. And for other students, that's not true. And so, yeah, I think limiting, constraining the choices, but still giving, you know, a sort of illusion of choice, but really making sure that you're, talking through them, talking with them through what's working and what's not working, and also sort of modeling that for them. What are you noticing about what's working and not working for them, especially if they don't have the Capacity to sort of articulate what's working and what's not.
[1:17:20] Mason Tudor
I'm gonna jump in here with, like, applied, limited choice situations. My kids thought there were only 3 variations of ice cream when they were younger. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. And one day, they found out there was all these other varieties, and I said, when you order it yourself, you can order whatever you want. But as long as I'm ordering it, you have 3 choices, right? So, it's… you can also use more choices as they get more mature as an incentive, right?
These are the choices, because you're depending on me right now, but as soon as you are doing more on your own, you get more options, right? And this is… this is probably limited not just by you wanting your kids to order ice cream, but this is probably limited by how much time you actually have. Maybe you have other kids and that sort of stuff, so you don't have as much time to give them all of the options, right? So, yeah, I definitely think controlling the options is a really good approach to that.
I just wanted to, like, buzz in with something… something funny. I'll let you say what you wanted to say, Presh.
[1:18:26] Presh
So I, I think you both covered it. I know there's a lot of other great questions. Yeah, I'll bring it back to you.
[1:18:37] Yael Valek
Awesome, thank you. Sorry, between muting and looking at the questions and going back and forth. We have a perfectionistic 7th grader. What do you do when you define an endpoint, i.e. finish 3 paragraphs of writing, and help estimate how long it should take? An hour, but when the hour is up, they're only halfway done? Do you cut them off, results in a meltdown? Let them keep working for another hour to finish? We do use a visual timer, but they seem not to be able to adjust their pace in accordance with how much time is left.
[1:19:10] Maxwell Greenberg
I will also start at this one, since this seems, like a question based off of my presentation. I think this is a great question and a challenging one. I think the EF coach in me is always about, like, taking this Socratic approach, so I have questions about the question, which is, okay, they've worked for this set of time, but how much of that was productive work? Are they really working that entire time? And these tasks just take them longer than the allotted time?
Or is the task taking them longer than the allotted time, because they aren't actually being productive within that time that's been allotted? I think that really changes how you might go about trying to address this. I'm… you know, at all cases, especially with someone in seventh grade, I'm trying to avoid a meltdown. And I think a little bit for me, it's that the visualization of the time is not a tool to adjust pace, at least not for me. It's just a tool to try and either delimit how much time you're going to spend on something, because you might spend too much time on it.
or a way to calibrate what you think something is going… how long you think something is going to take, and how long it actually takes. And so… I think to answer your question directly, I would let them keep working in this scenario, but I think it's really about uncovering what is taking so long, what's getting in the way, and if it just takes them that much time to do the assignment. then that's okay, right? That's about calibrating your expectations with the reality.
But if that's not what's happening, if there's something getting in the way, if they're losing focus halfway through, if they're not being productive, then that's really sort of like a different question with different Solutions that relate to, you know, environment, task initiation, those sorts of things. But that's my… those are my initial thoughts. I'll throw it over to Presh or Mason.
[1:21:29] Mason Tudor
we're playing a game of chicken there, who unmutes first, right? So my idea here would be, I agree with everything Max said, and those questions would be important before I would get into this, but if I've exhausted all of those things, and simply to speed them up, the timer was my first try. I'm going to come up with another try. The one that I immediately am thinking of, and again, I think collaboration is important here because stress tolerance is a deal.
It's a thing. And what I'm going to suggest could be stressful, and it could cause an internal amount of stress that is not what we want. So again. Negotiation, collaboration, all that sort of stuff is important. But what I would do is probably create a music list where the tempo, changes slightly, but by the end, we have something that's fast-paced, and this is sort of that timer, remember in old game shows, they would have that countdown timer, and it would get faster at the end.
You can change your internal pacing Based on the beat and rhythm of music. Because you… you start to move faster when the music is faster and things like that. Not every… it doesn't work for everybody, but, that gives you a different internal sense of time, which adjusts that sort of expectation and how fast you're moving. And if you can do that slowly enough, I think you might actually change their… cognitive speed to some extent. And again, this is an issue where if we're at our cognitive speed cap, you're going to get diminishing returns everything after that.
So if it just takes on that, it just takes on that. So you might impression… I think I… whatever you want to talk about, but if you could add the reduced homework accommodation, you might know a little bit more about that than I do. I think that's a really powerful tool here, so… I'll just… I'll feed you that, and then turn myself off.
[1:23:15] Presh
Yeah, well, I think, with the question directly, definitely agree with, Max's and Mason's, like, approach, and I think… in that moment, the learner is probably already, like, stressed and overwhelmed. They… stopping might just be, like, greater stress and greater overwhelm. They, if they choose to, like, push and continue, I think the best thing you could do as a parent is decide a hard stop. like, if they are continuing and choosing at 10pm, but you know that by midnight they really need to go to bed, because if they don't, then the rest of the day is just super hard for them.
I think having a hard stop, like, they… I think learning that concept and talking creating that as a family, I think, is going to be really important, especially if a student just wants to keep pushing through. And then the only… I think the best way as a parent to have those conversations is when your learner is like, calm and regulated. It's probably gonna happen, like, the next day, or maybe on the weekend, and that's where, like, maybe just write down the questions you want to bring up.
Write down the specific things that you noticed, because I guarantee you that when they are more calm, they're not thinking about that moment, they're not in that, like, deep, deep focus mode. You're gonna actually get more out of them in terms of, like, what to try differently next time. So yeah, hard stop, and then bring that topic In a different moment. I think homework, modifications, this tend to come up in, like, IEPs 504s, and when I was a teacher, we definitely had a lot of… a classroom teacher, we definitely had a lot of, learners with IEPs, where when I would read it, I had to, instead of giving them, like, 10 math problems, I probably had to do 5 because the stress tolerance for math problems were just a little hard, so… or, like, not… not there in, like, that sort of, like, level yet.
So… I think, that's definitely, something to, like, consider if your learner, has a diagnosis and you want to have specific modifications, like the number of problems they get in an assignment. That can definitely be explored with, like, IEPs or 504s. And public schools, like, teachers are liable by law to, like, read that, apply it in the classroom. Private schools have a different way of doing it. They're technically not liable by law to do anything about that, but most of the private school partners that we work with, they tend to have their own, like, systems in place.
So, yeah, I'll end there and go to the next question for you, Yael.
[1:26:10] Yael Valek
Thanks. I also wanted to share, I just put in the chat, I know perfectionism is really hard for a lot of TUE Learners, and we had a great talk about writing and perfectionism by, a neurodivergent young adult named Lucy who, does writing tutoring, and she shares how some kids write and erase, write and erase, write and erase, and never complete the assignment. Because no sentence is good enough, so she shares some tips for overcoming that that I thought… Might be interesting.
So there's a lot more questions than we have time for, but I thought this one was interesting, also related to the IP504. We only learned last week my 5-year-old son has a 2E profile, and we're still trying to understand the right educational philosophy. I think this is for a lot of parents grapple with. Should we adapt the educational environment and resources to his strengths and learning profile? While providing support for his challenges, should we focus on helping him adapt to a typical classroom and typical expectations?
How do you find the right balance between accommodating his differences and teaching him to function successfully in school and society? Just a small question. Does anyone want to take on a little chunk of that? I know we struggle with this with my kid, as you were saying, like, if it's not valuable to them, how much do you push them to do the thing the teacher said, right? Or when you hit a wall and they just keep not being able to do it, is it time to change learning environments?
[1:27:31] Mason Tudor
I'll knock into it a little bit. I think… the first thing to do is to, in your mind, realize that what you picked today may not be the right answer, and it may not be the right answer because things change, right? So, the answer today would be different for you than the answer when they're 13, and when they're 15, and when they go to college, the answer is going to change based on the profile, right? So. probably what you're going to start out with is the one that we all sort of would default to, and that is, how can I help them adapt as much as possible to traditional learning?
If that isn't working, or if that looks like it's not bringing them to their full potential, then we start looking at what are other modifications? What are adaptations we can make? And then, at some point, we might need to change that philosophy of adapting to the traditional classroom into something else. So we may be looking for, I'm sorry if I'm not supposed to advertise this, but Bridges Academy, to me, has looked great, and I've talked to… or I've listened to their founder talk several times, and I would recommend taking a look at that when things aren't going well, or if you have a feeling that things aren't going well, it is a great model for 2E education, and it kind of has the things that are important to think about there, so… I will cut off now.
Somebody else can pick…
[1:29:08] Maxwell Greenberg
I don't think I have much to add. It's, I mean, certainly not my area of expertise, because I tend to just work with students who are a little bit older, so the decision-making process transitioning into high school looks slightly different. The process of transitioning into college looks a little bit different. But, I would just plug all the REEL resources here, and especially just, like, the community. The Google group is such a great place to ask a question like this and get so many varied perspectives, from parents who are dealing with it, and also, professionals who navigate this kind of landscape.
So yeah, I just… I would just plug REEL again to say, like, there's so… there's so much great community, and people that can answer these kinds of questions with more, specificity than I can.
[1:29:59] Presh
Yeah, and I think to wrap that up, like, the, it is, like, for sure true that your decision now is going to be different from, like, when they're in middle school and, like, high school, and I… I think… when I was in the classroom, I think the biggest feedback I've gotten from my students was that they just felt like they were never a part of these accommodations and these modifications. It's just like these adults were the ones creating it, and… I think that's, something that I want to encourage all of you to, especially if your learner has, like, accommodations and modifications, is, like.
how much were they a part of that conversation and that co-creation? I mean, ultimately, they're the ones that are benefiting from that, so they should have a really big seat in the table. And if they don't yet have the skill to advocate for that, like. then how do you meet them where they're at to be able to, have that agency and, like, those ideas as well? Because, yeah, I do think ultimately that the learner is going to be a big part as they grow up and see what's working for them and what's not working for them, teaching them to advocate for what's… what their strengths are and what's hard, it's something that I think is going to be really fundamental in their learning, and just centering them in that decision is going to be really key.
[1:31:22] Yael Valek
What's the typical age you guys start working with kids at? Would you say the youngest is 4th or 5th grade, usually more like middle school and up?
[1:31:33] Maxwell Greenberg
I'll just jump in up. For me personally, I just decided that I would only work with students with whom I had first-hand classroom experience, and so I taught 8th grade through 12th grade, and now I teach at a university, so I've just sort of constrained the work that I do to students in those… grades or that… that age range. That's how I landed on that for me.
[1:31:57] Mason Tudor
Depends heavily on the student. If you can't get them to sit in front of the screen, it doesn't work remotely, right? There may be some in-person options, and some of those can use something that looks a little like gaming to and gamification of tasks to, increase executive functioning skills. But even then, I would say you're looking at third grade as an early point, and online I think that middle school range is usually more typical. Sometimes that fifth grade, 4th, 5th grade range can work out, but yeah, it highly depends on the student.
[1:32:36] Yael Valek
Yeah, we…
[1:32:38] Presh
We primarily serve 4th grade to, college for those same reasons.
[1:32:44] Yael Valek
Okay, we are, 2 minutes over, but I want to be respectful of your time, but there's one last kind of thing to wrap this up that I thought would be nice, kind of combining a few questions. What about getting cooperation with parental, societal, and school expectations when they don't want to work with mom and dad? For example. Hygiene or homework, as you were saying, like, the test scores are high, but the homework is poor. Slash, what does the typical EF coaching session look like for a reluctant teen?
So, I thought we could maybe How do you get… what do you… what do you do if they won't work with mom and dad, and what does the coaching session look like? And then we'll wrap it up.
[1:33:28] Presh
I can share on, this for a quick moment. we're in, like, calls constantly with a lot of families, and, this… I, like, love this question, because, Ultimately, what it tells me is, like, the parent-child dynamic, means that the child didn't have buy-in for the session in the first place, that if they hear it from someone else. it tends to land better. So, whenever I talk with, parents where that is, like, the main resistance, I just, like, say, hey, like, can I… can I talk with, like, Jimmy, right after this, or can, I find time to connect with Jimmy?
Like, Jimmy just needs to be able to share their own, I think, preference, and… and talk, I think, directly with, with, with Somewhere else other than mom and dad, so that tends to help a lot with getting buy-in, because as they age, they just want to kind of, show more independence, and part of it is just Sadly, the parent-child development is… child just resists parent suggestions, sadly. And I think the typical session around, like, life routines, like hygiene, eating, sometimes even taking their medication.
It's, like, just truthfully, being able to learn from the child, like, what is the challenge in their lens? Not, like, what mom and dad said, but have the student try to verbalize it, and then try to, Figure out with them, like, how is that a… Problem in their day-to-day, and then once the problem is really clear, then, like, co-create the next level to try to make their life a little easier. But that process feels more like an art than a science, because it's ultimately getting buy-in, and you can try so many things in your toolkit, but every student's different, and it's just a matter of, like, truly having a good connection with them, truly understanding their problem, and then having their trust that you can guide them to that next, like, thing that can help them.
Yeah, I'll pass it to Mason or Max.
[1:35:34] Mason Tudor
I would say it's not art, it's actually magic. And it does look like a magic trick, because I want to do something Or I want to tell you something. If you're expecting typical EF sessions with two e-learners, prepare to be disappointed. There is no such thing as a typical session. I have had students show up week one, and they are tight-laced and ready to go week two. It is a totally different student, and they need totally different things, and I have to put I put on different hats.
For some of my clients, I use different accents, I keep them engaged. I also engage them in their interest at a deep level, which a lot of adults cannot do. And all the while, there's this sort of distraction going on. I'm working on EF so… Under and underhanded and sleight of hand. That… the parent's like, what are you even doing with my kid? And then all of a sudden, things start to fall in place, the magic trick comes together, and they're brushing their teeth without a reminder, right?
So, I will tell you that the typical EF session doesn't exist with 2E students, and that we can't even really bank on a routine one, and it is really more like a magic show than something that you can standardize and put metrics to, and that you can have a packet that the student works through, and a workbook, and, you know, all of these branded templates can get burdensome with many of my students. So, yeah. I think it's a magic trick, half entertainment, and half, sort of, doing… doing the strange things, and I think that's part of the reason that it doesn't work with your own kids, because you can't do magic with your own kids anyway.
[1:37:25] Maxwell Greenberg
Yeah, to wrap us up, I think… to go even… I think there's no typical EF session, with a… with a 2E learner. There's no typical EF session just at all. Like, everyone does it very differently. All three of us probably approach the work very differently. We focus on different things, we have different things in mind, we have different tricks up our sleeves. But I think the one thing that we would certainly all agree on is that buy-in is super important, and the way that we get buy-in is by developing that relationship with, our students.
And just like Mason, really getting into the nitty-gritty of their, sort of, who they are as a person, not just who they are, like, as a student, that's really important. It also, like. like everyone said, it helped… it just helps that we're not mom and dad, and that, you know, for me in particular, like, I could speak… I could speak the language of Gen Z, like, we can… sure, we can lock in, like, whatever, whatever you need to do. Or you… you wanna play some Roblox?
You wanna… you wanna play some Clash Royale? Like, cool, I'm down. I'll do whatever you want, as long as you know that you can trust me that we can sort of build these things together. So, I think that really is the magic of it, is that we're just not mom and dad, and we're getting to know them and trying to build that trust to be able to. Get to the things that they really need to work on.
[1:38:53] Yael Valek
Thank you both so much. I'm so sorry. Mason actually has a student right now, even though it's 10.30 PM his time. So we can see how hard these EF coaches are. Lots of great positive feedback in the chat. Thank you so much to you both for coming and staying even later, and thanks so much for everyone who attended, and we put your emails in the chat so people can reach out to you, and we will be sending the recording out, as soon as we can get it up. So, there are lots of nice thank yous in the chat.
Thank you so very much for sharing your expertise. East with us.
