Health and Development

Growing the Executive Branch, pt. 2: Ages and Stages of Executive Functions

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

Executive function is a group of cognitive processes that help us analyze information to appropriately complete tasks or respond to social situations. A lot skills that make up this collective and many developing the moment your baby opens their eyes and see your face (Aww). It’s not until they enter their school years where cognitive struggles start to arise, like recalling info, adapting to changes, or having self-control. So how do we know what’s typical, what isn’t, and how to help? Well, let’s break it down by age.

Executive functioning is essentially an umbrella term involving cognitive control, and it can be divvied up into three main areas: working memory, cognitive flexibility (aka flexible thinking), and inhibitory (or impulse) control.

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Growing the Executive Branch, Pt. 1: Experiences and Executive Functions

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

If you have ever witnessed your child work through a problem, wait for a reward, or make plans for an upcoming event, you’re watching their executive functions in action. When they’ve easily lost their temper, forgotten what you said, or were too rigid to view a situation from another angle; that’s evidence that those mental skills are still developing. We talked about basic executive function last fall but here’s a deeper look into what makes it grow.

Executive functions refer to a set of mental skills that allow us to appropriately engage with our environment. Together, they manage our thoughts, actions, and emotions to accomplish tasks throughout the day. It’s housed in the prefrontal cortex. Although it gathers information from other parts of the brain to determine how to plan, organize, and manage situations, it is the last of the brain regions to mature. Children are not equipped with executive function skills when they are born. Instead, they develop them through quality of experiences.

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Late Bloomer: The Prefrontal Cortex

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

You ever think back on the things you did during your childhood and just ask yourself, Why? Like, what was I thinking?

Now that we’re parents, we find ourselves like a broken record, repeating instructions to our kids or cringing at their decisions and asking the same question: Why? What are you thinking?

Honestly, no one thinks as critically as an adult and for good reason: the prefrontal cortex. We’ve mentioned this brain structure and its significance in many of our previous posts, but it’s time to put a spotlight on this region and give it the credit it so genuinely deserves.

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Child(ish) Reads: Mother Brain

| Patti Webb

One of the things we love writing about at Child(ish) Advice is not only the practice of parenting but the science behind it. When Mother Brain popped up in my forthcoming Audible titles, I immediately pre-ordered it. A perfect title that fit right into our wheelhouse.

This book explores how children physiologically alter our brain. People have been giving birth and having families for thousands of years and yet we have a societal expectation that runs contrary to how we biologically adapt postpartum. Part-science, part statement; this book brings some much needed knowledge to how we care for ourselves post-baby.

Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood by Chelsea Conaboy

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Role Models: Raising a Mini-Me

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“You’re a chip off the old block.”

Our kids can be like us in so many ways, from their physical resemblance to how they carry themselves. Although genetics has a hand in how similar they are to us, the majority of how our kids develop comes from what they observe and experience. It’s fun to have a mini-version of ourselves running around, but it’s important that we allow them to find their individuality and embrace who they are. How do we do that, especially when we are their main models?

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