Executive functions, collectively referred to as executive function, are all the mental skills that allow us to manage our thoughts, actions, and emotions. They play an important role in controlling behaviour and in overall learning. Read on to find out more about executive functions and how you can help your child develop these essential skills.
Before exploring ways to improve your child’s executive functions, it’s important to understand just what they are. The basic executive function skills include the following:
- Inhibition (self-control)
- Cognitive flexibility (the ability to adapt solutions to a particular problem)
- Working memory (the ability to retain information)
- Planning (the ability able to organize one’s actions)
- Memory retrieval (the ability to quickly access information stored in the brain)
- Multitasking (the ability to perform more than one task at the same time)
- Etc.
You can use play to help boost your child’s executive function skills even before they start kindergarten. Here are some great activities to try:
- Simon Says (inhibition)
- Musical statues (inhibition)
- Tag (inhibition)
- Storytelling (cognitive flexibility)
- Role-playing (cognitive flexibility)
- Card games (working memory)
- Seek and find games (working memory)
- Puzzles (planning)
- Coding games (planning)
- Nursery rhymes with gestures (multitasking)
- Etc.
Executive function skills develop most rapidly between the ages of 3 and 5. Studies have also shown that children with better-developed executive functions do better in school and have fewer behavioural problems.
Writing : Marie-Ève Cloutier
Scientific review : Marie-Michèle Brossard, psychoéducatrice
Rewriting : Alloprof Parents' team
Bernier, Annie. « Le développement exécutif à l’âge préscolaire : Dépistage précoce et prévention des difficultés scolaires lors de l’entrée à l’école ». Numéro du projet de recherche 2012 — RP-144923. Programme de recherche sur la persévérance et la réussite scolaires, ministère de l’Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport, Fonds de recherche du Québec — Société et culture.