Parent-Child Executive Function Support Groups with Dr. Judith Whitfield

Do you see your child struggling with time management, planning, organization, getting started, or staying on task? Do you want to help but don’t know what to do? Are you looking for a way to bring peace and harmony to your household?

My Parent-Child Executive Function Support Groups are designed to help you and your child explore how the executive function-challenged brain is different yet capable. Together, you will learn strategies to support brain functions such as metacognitive awareness, a critical skill needed to change behavior and increase-self advocacy.

This group course consists of eight 1-hour sessions in a safe and supportive environment, conveniently located close to the waterfront in Poulsbo, WA. Space will be limited to ensure individual attention for each family.

What Are Executive Functions?

Executive functions are the “higher-order” thinking skills that are most impacted by ADHD and other disorders, housed in the frontal lobes of the brain. This is the final region of the brain to develop, sometimes as late as age 25. Each executive function affects how we process information from our world, respond to it, and plan what to do with it. Executive functions are critical to learning. The good news is that they can be taught, practiced and remediated.

When executive functions are impaired, every area of an individual’s life is affected. Students struggling with underdeveloped executive function skills are often mistakenly labeled as “lazy” or “unmotivated,” despite their best efforts to improve. These students require additional tools and strategies to support themselves at home and school.

This group course is designed to help students and parents understand why they struggle so that they begin to create true change.

The executive functions of the brain include:

  • Metacognition, or “thinking about your thinking”
  • Planning and prioritizing tasks
  • Organization
  • Sustained attention
  • Goal-directed persistence
  • Mental flexibility
  • Response inhibition, or your ability to check yourself before reacting
  • Working memory
  • Time management
  • Task initiation
  • Controlling emotions

You will come away from this course with an understanding of how your child’s brain works – as well as your own. Together, we will discuss, explore and practice how the application of executive function strategies to our everyday lives can effect changes in behavior and academic success. The course provides practical, actionable strategies that you can implement at home right away. If desired, these can easily be added to an IEP as accommodations or to a 504 Plan.

What are the Benefits of this course?

Families of students diagnosed with ADHD and other executive function challenges are a great fit for this group course. Parents are trained as coaches, while students learn valuable skills to work both smarter and more efficiently. Students are placed according to their school level: elementary, middle school or high school groups are all available.

Who should take this course?

There are many benefits to joining this group course.

-Parents learn alongside their child and often recognize gaps in their own executive functions to reduce stress and help their own productivity.
-Resolves conflicts, frustration and tension between parent and child
-Addresses underlying emotional pain, anxiety and lack of self-esteem
-Helps understand the connection between the brain’s executive functions and their application to real life
-Develops the metacognitive awareness needed to change behavior
-Led by a clinical psychologist / school psychologist with over 15 years of professional experience

To register: Use the blue button below to contact I directly. Please include your child’s age/grade. I will contact you.