The Skills Students Need to be Successful in College and the

Workforce:

Executive FunctionSocial Cognition

Age-Expected Independence

Ryan Wexelblatt, MSS, LSWCenter for Social and Executive

Function Skills

www.socialef.com

How Life Looks for Our Kids Until Graduation

The Day After High School Graduation

What can “pulling the rug out” mean in the context of college, post-secondary education or employment:• Higher drop-out rates

• Lower graduation rates

• Propensity for social isolation

• Lower employment rates (underemployment and unemployment)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781280/

“One of the great myths many parents buy into is that school performance predicts performance in adult life. It does not.”

-Dr. Ned Hallowell

Upon graduation, students who received a tremendous amount of support both within and outside of school may be left with:

• Under-developed frontal lobe functions (executive function skills)

• Difficulty with self-advocacy and problem solving skills

• Over-dependency on parents or caregivers

• Difficulty forming new social relationships (friendships, dating)

• Frustration that they can not independently perform tasks that their same-age peers or people younger than them can perform

Once students graduate from high school and transition into college/post-secondary education:• Parents can not speak with Educators • Students are fully responsible for their educational

success.

• There is no more “team” accountability.

Executive Function Skills

Age-expected Independence

Social- Cognitive Skills

What are all the EF skills you need to manage your day? Personal: Waking up, going to bed on time, putting on makeup, picking out what to wear.

Time-spacing: Knowing when to leave for work, how much time you have in between stopping at the market before you have to get home.

Task transition: shifting from typing an email to going into a meeting, ending your phone conversation so you can re-focus on work.

Self-monitoring: Changing your tone of voice if you feel yourself starting to get annoyed with your boss, recognizing when you’re presentation is strong or weak.

Executive function skills aren’t usually fully developed until age 23-26

30% developmental delay in the acquisition of executive function skills

Executive Function Developmental Delay instead of ADHD

How executive function skill challenges look:1.Inability to “feel” time as a concrete concept.

2. Difficulty utilizing non-verbal working memory (Pre-imagining skills)

3. Initiating and shifting tasks

4. Lack of situational awareness

5. Poor self-monitoring skills

Key Strategies to Help Develop Executive Function Skills:1. Teach the concept of time as something tangible that can be felt.

2. Draw on past experiences/knowledge to plan/execute tasks in the present (pre-imagining/future thinking skills)

3. Develop Situational Awareness

Remember these?

Digital clocks do not teach the passage of time because there’s no physical/spatial movement.

Analog clocks teach the concept of time as they illustrate unit volume.

Non-verbal working memory includes: pre-imagining skills/recalling past experiences to enable task initiation.

“If I need to do this, then I need to execute this task”

Strategy to improve non-verbal working memory

Use visual, declarative language:

• What would you look like if you were ready for school?

• Visualize will the book report look like when it’s finished, draw it out first with every page you need.

• Picture the things you need to bring to swimming and put

them in your bag.

• Imagine what your room looks like when it’s clean, it should

look like the picture in your head.

Why lists don’t work for many students with executive function challenges:

What does ready for bed look like? How is the same but different as ready for school?

7:10 AM

Social skills are the application of social knowledge that occurs when we are sharing space with others and want to ensure that we keep them thinking about us in a positive manner.

Common misconceptions about social skills development:

• Students “pick up” social skills from being around their peers.

• Social skills need to be taught in a social skills group.

• Kids who struggle socially will grow out of it as they mature.

The reality of social skills development:• Improving social cognitive skills is an ongoing process.

• If kids could improve social skills by being around peers then no one would have social learning challenges.

• Social learning challenges are a learning issue, not a mental health issue.

• Maturity helps but doesn’t solve all social learning challenges.

The two foundational social cognitive skills to teach individuals with ADHD:

1. Learn to think with our eyes to decode social information (thinking with eyes)

2. Understand other’s thoughts, feelings, intentions (perspective taking)

3. Situational Awareness (understanding the big picture)

How to teach “thinking with your eyes”

Use photographs from magazines or books or examples from TV/movies where you can see the eye-gaze direction of the people. Ask them to make a “smart guess” on what the person is thinking about based on their eyes.

Perspective Taking:Being able to understand other people’s thoughts, feelings and intentions is essential for success in relationships.

Allows us to adjust what we do or say in order to keep people thinking about us positively.

In order to be able to work in a group, collaborate, etc. we need to have good perspective taking ability.

Strategies to teach perspective taking skills

Share your thought process out loud and ask what you (or someone else might be thinking and feeling):

“I’m having uncomfortable thoughts right now because you’re picking your nose.”

“What I’m thinking right now is that I hope you’ll stop talking about anime soon and ask me how my day was because you’ve been talking about anime for 10 minutes and I haven’t said anything.”

“What kind of thoughts do you think Austin is having about you now that you yelled at him? How do you feel that he’s having those thoughts about you?

Social Behavior Maps in the Social Thinking books are a great way to teach perspective taking in a systematic format.

By Sarah Ward, SLP of Cognitive Connections. A strategy to teach situational awareness

Doing things for a child or adolescent that they can learn to do on their own inhibits the development of their executive function skills.

Ages 12 & 13Personal Chores:-Take care of personal hygiene, personal belongings and homework.-Doing laundry independently-Set the alarm clock.-Maintains personal items.-Change bed sheets.-Keep the rooms tidy.Family Chores:-Change the light bulbs.-Dust, vacuums, clean bathrooms and do dishes.-Mow the lawn with supervision.

Ages 14 & 15Personal Chores:-Responsible for all personal chores in ages 12 & 13.-Responsible for library cards and books.Family Chores:-Do yard work as needed.-Make a grocery list.-Help wash windows.-Responsible to earn money for spending.

PROCESS TO LEARNING INDEPENDENT TASKS

1 You watch me2. You help me

3. I help you4. You do it with my

supervision 5. You teach me

Executive Function Skills, Social Cognitive Skills and Age-Expected Independence Skills are interconnected.It’s never too early to start teaching these skills and it’s never too late-you can learn at any age.

Most people can’t learn when they’re frustrated. It’s OK to take a break but don’t abandon the teaching process as a result of your child’s frustration.

Don’t “brush off” these areas by thinking there’s more important things to learn, or you’ll get to them eventually.

www.facebook.com/SkillsforCollege

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanwexelblatt

Ryan Wexelblatt, MSS, LSW

centerforsocialef@gmail.com484-278-1088

The Center for Social and Executive Function Skills

www.socialef.com

@ryanwexelblatt

ResourcesSocial Cognition and Emotional RegulationSocial Thinking®: www.socialthinking.com

Zones of Regulation by Leah Kuypers www.zonesofregulation.com

The Incredible 5 Point Scale by Kari Dunn Buron: www.5pointscale.com

Executive Function Skills

www. CognitiveConnections.com Sarah Ward and Kristen Jacobsen

www.smartbutscatteredkids.com Drs. Peg Dawson and Richard Guare

Age-expected Independencehttp://bahnandassociates.com/Article_Loftin_ASDIndependence.pdf (comprehensive behavioral approach)

http://life.familyeducation.com/slideshow/independence/71434.html

Resources continued..Behavioral Resources

Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (formally called Collaborative Problem Solving) http://www.cpsconnection.com/

Jessica Minahan’s The Behavior Code http://jessicaminahan.com/