Program Description

Youngsters with poor executive skills are disorganized or forgetful, have trouble getting started on tasks, get distracted easily, lose papers or assignments, forget to bring home the materials to complete homework or forget to hand homework in. They may rush through work or dawdle, they make careless mistakes that they fail to catch. They don’t know where to begin on long-term assignments, and they put the assignment off until the last minute, in part because they have trouble judging the magnitude of the task and how long it will take to complete it. Their workspaces are disorganized, and teachers may refer to their desks, backpacks, and notebooks as “black holes.”  

This workshop will present an overview of executive skills in the context of brain development throughout childhood and adolescence and will provide participants with evidenced-based strategies to help youngsters overcome executive skill weaknesses. Practitioner’s will leave with a set of tools that include strategies for task/environmental modifications, skill development through cognitive/behavioral techniques, and creation of incentive systems. With these tools, practitioners will be able to give teachers and parents a means for developing and improving organization, time management, impulse control, goal-directed persistence and the host of  other executive skills critical for independent functioning.

About the Presenter

Peg Dawson, Ed.D., NCSP, received her doctorate in school/child clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. She worked as a school psychologist for 16 years in Maine and New Hampshire, and, for the past 17 years has worked at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she specializes in the assessment of children and adults with learning and attention disorders. She has many years of organizational experience at the state, national, and international level, and served in many capacities, including president, of the New Hampshire Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the International School Psychology Association. She has also participated in many of NASP’s leadership initiatives, including the Futures Conference and the development of both the second and third Blueprint for the Training and Practice of School Psychology. She is the 2006 recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has authored a manual on coaching students with attention disorders as well as book for professionals, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention. They have also published a book for parents on helping children develop executive skills, called Smart but Scattered, published by Guilford Press.

Learning Objectives

1. Know what executive skills are and their relationship to brain development and brain function and to understand how executive skills emerge throughout childhood and adolescence.
2. Be familiar with assessment tools used to identify executive dysfunction, including parent/teacher interviews, behavior rating scales, behavior observations, and both informal and formal assessment procedures.
3. Be able to identify how executive skills impact performance and daily living at home and at school.
4. Have access to a repertoire of strategies to improve executive skills in children and adolescents. These will include strategies to modify the environment to reduce the impact of weak executive skills and procedures such as coaching that can be used to teach youngsters how to improve specific executive skill deficits in the context of home or school performance expectations.