High Performance in High School

In today's episode, I’m sharing a webinar I did on executive function challenges. If your teen struggles with time management, stress, or staying organized, this session is for you. Join me to discover how you can help your child have a more successful school year!

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Transcript

Sheila Akbar: 0:00

I'm doing all this work, but it doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. I'm just spinning my wheels. So we need to find ways to help them get into the right gear for the challenge, and build systems and routines that help them feel confident that nothing is falling through the cracks. You music. Hi folks. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode's a little bit longer than normal because I wanted to offer a replay of a webinar I did this summer. It was towards the end of July, kind of looking ahead to the school year, which has now started for most students, and encouraging families to reflect on the challenges their students may have faced last year and think about ways to help them shift gears and be as successful as they can be this upcoming school year. So you're gonna hear me talking for a really long time about executive functions, about how to help your child understand what's going on for them and help them clarify where their challenges lie, so that they can come up with solutions. Or maybe you can help them come up with solutions, or you can engage an executive function coach, or an academic coach, as we call it, at Signet, to help them move through these challenges sooner rather than later. These are things that are going to not only help them succeed in the classroom this school year, but they will lay the foundation for strong academic skills and good time management practices and things like that, going forward when it comes to standardized testing, if that's going to be something that they embark upon, or their college applications or just making it through that transition from high school to whatever comes next for them, executive function skills are really at the heart of a lot of things that Mark success in our society, whether you like that or not, and so it's worth paying some attention to the development of these skills in your kids, because everyone can get stronger at these things, and they can learn to accommodate them. But it's not like you're just born with it, or you absorb it out of nowhere. You have to practice it. So this is an important topic. You'll hear me talk about a lot through the school year, but especially at the beginning of the school year, I think it's important to kind of take stock of where you are and anticipate where you might see some challenges, and try to get some help navigating those before you're really in the thick of things, and it's even more challenging to get the help that you need at that point. So take a listen, and I'll see you on the other side. Thanks. Tonight, we're here to talk about high performance in high school, executive function coaching for teenagers. And there are a couple things I just want to point out before we really get into the content here. One is performance, high performance. What does it mean? And I'm not talking about getting straight A's and getting perfect test scores. Yes, that is one way to define high performance. But what I'm really thinking about here is that differential between what a student is capable of or what they know and how they actually demonstrate that knowledge on a test or in the classroom or on some other academic measure. Often there's a gap between those things, and what we want to do is close that gap between how hard they're working and the results that they're getting, and executive function coaching is one way to do that, and we'll talk about what executive functions are in a moment, too, in case that's unfamiliar to you, but time and task management is usually what people are talking about when they say, we need an executive function coach for our kid. And coaching is a really special word. It's actually different from tutoring or teaching. Coaching is really about setting up a very trusting, open relationship with a student and holding up a mirror to them, reflecting to them what patterns we're seeing or helping them focus their attention and energy on a specific problem. And it's not prescriptive. Here's what I want you to do, take this calendar and do X, Y, Z. It's much more collaborative and creative. That helps a student kind of get through all the noise and all of the sort of emotional blocks they may have around their challenges, to really focus all of their wisdom and intuition on the problem at hand. And of course, you know, the coach can also be there to offer suggestions, but it's really about empowering the student to take action in a way that feels right to the student, and action around a thing that they're actually motivated to change. So coaching deserves its own kind of. Definition there, and then what we do at Signet we call academic coaching, which includes academic skills and some personal growth stuff as well, which we'll get into. But I might use those sort of interchangeably, but do know that they are three really different things? All right, let's get in to our content tonight. I've got a bunch of really common scenarios that we see all the time at Signet. So first I'll talk about the strong start, weak finish. Student. Now this is someone who is just relying on their sheer willpower to get through the semester. And you know, they have every intention, and they're very ambitious, and they're usually very, very smart, all of these kids are, and they really are trying hard to stay on top of everything right at the beginning of the class. But couple weeks in, that willpower starts to fade a little, and it's hard to maintain that level of effort, and everything just kind of peters out and starts to, you know, crash in slow motion. I'm sure you've seen it. We also have our roller coaster kids, sometimes I call these boom bust, where they procrastinate for whatever reason, and then in order to catch up, they have to pull an all nighter, or maybe a series of all nighters. And then they are so spent from that effort that they crash and have to take some time to recover. And in that period of recovery, actually, all their work is piling up again, and then they have to do it all over again, and it is a cycle that repeats, and it's a lot of ups and downs. And of course, the emotions that go with that are really intense, low to even lower, engagement. These are kids who maybe don't quite fit in, like socially, they don't feel like their school is the right place for them, or they might have some other challenge that is keeping them from engaging. And when they do try to get engaged with a teacher or a class or even an extracurricular, something just goes wrong. It kind of blows up in their face. And so then they end up engaging less. So it's like declining engagement no matter what they try, and they get to a point where What's the use in trying? And then we have our kids who are suffering from a derailment of some sort. This is like, maybe a sickness. Maybe they got covid and missed a couple days of school, and then everything came crashing down because they couldn't catch up. Or, you know, sports injury, or other personal challenge, a mental health challenge, something external is causing what is really not a very solid foundation to just fall apart, right? They might have actually just been hanging on by a thread there, and then, if anything else goes wrong in their life, it's over. And then perfectionism, anxiety, heightened stress. These kids, a lot of people don't see them falling into the same category as the other kids, right? These kids in this category might actually have really good grades, and maybe students that teachers love, and they seem to really be succeeding in school, but the amount that they're working and stressing to keep their grades at that level or to please other people, to make sure nothing falls through the cracks, to make sure they feel prepared for, you know, the test, or whatever small thing it is, just it feels like a huge deal to them. They have to get it exactly right. They are also suffering from some executive function challenges right. The the underlying skills and systems are not quite where they need to be. So they're they're working a lot to make sure nothing falls through the crack. And these kids are really in danger of burning out. Actually, all of them are. But I do want to acknowledge that a lot of times it's not just one or the other. Some of these things happen all at once or at different times of the year. And of course, they're all very nuanced, but these, like I said, are really typical situations that that we do see, and I will share a solution that will stick, that will help all of these kids move through these patterns break out of where they're stuck, and get to the place that they actually want to be. So stick around before we can talk about, what do you do about it? We got to talk about what's going on. And before we talk about what's going on for kids, I want to talk about what's going on for you. You're a busy parent. You're probably stressed out about whatever your kid is going through, but you have your own stressors in your life as well. And when I talk to families about a child who needs executive function support, usually they fall into two camps. One is the parent who absolutely recognizes the challenge that the student is facing, because they themselves face it too, and now maybe they faced it in their past, or they're still still facing it now, but there is this sense of guilt, maybe shame, some responsibility that this kid inherited these challenges from me, or I wasn't able to help them avoid it. I don't know how to solve this problem because I'm still struggling with these issues. So how can I possibly help my kid? And there's a lot of hopelessness, and it is really, really painful and hard to watch a kid struggle in this way, if you you know, have that sense of familiarity about it as well, the other half of parents. Is our parents, who maybe don't have the same challenges as the kid and really can't understand what's what's going on here. And even that first group of parents, if they had some sort of learning challenge or organizational challenge, they had to kind of brute force their way through it. And they've created, you know, systems and habits that work for them now, and it just feels like, Well, why can't my kid figure that out? Right? And one thing I want to point out is that the world your kids are going to graduate into are expecting them, is expecting them to have strong executive function. It's a sort of a given, that you can do a job or you can get through college. And you know, we're evolving as a society to be more inclusive of neurodiversity. But think about the reality of your life. You know, how is your kid going to step into a role like the one you have right now? And that's really something I want you to keep in mind, because high school is exactly the time to work on these skills, so that when they do leave home and they go off to college, they've got these skills in place that they can rely on right life only, unfortunately, gets harder from where they are, and so we want to make sure they're prepared for it, and that, I think, is really an important task that parents can stay focused on, because they're not going to learn it explicitly in school. So I'm glad you're here. You're taking it seriously. You want to get them some help. Let's talk about what's going on for your kids so we can start moving towards solutions. So I mentioned executive functions. Now for those of you who may not be super familiar with that term, executive functions are higher order brain functions that help us stay on task and get things done. The most common ones are time and task management. But we can also talk about impulse control, being able to set and hold priorities or readjust priorities as situations change. Emotion regulation is a really big part of this. Being able to calm yourself move through the stress cycle so that you can get back to the work at hand is really fundamental planning, task initiation. You know, I could go on and on and on, but I think you're getting the sense of these are sort of control functions within your brain that help you move on to the next task, switch tasks, know when to stop a task, things like that. And these skills grow with experience when you transition into, let's say, a new job or a new learning environment, it may take a little bit of time for your executive functions to catch up to the new challenges in that environment, and that's the learning curve that your child may hit when they get to high school or when they get into a more Advanced class, or when they hit puberty, things change. So you know many of you may be here tonight because you don't recognize the student that you're seeing now, like everything was good until, I don't know, last spring, and then it all fell apart. And this is a challenge you and your student are not used to dealing with, right? And so we got to help them build those executive function muscles to rise to the challenges that are now before them. And summer is a great time to be thinking about this. What can we be building towards? Because we know what to expect once the school year starts, and because the executive function skills are so foundational, you may not even realize that an academic challenge actually has its roots in executive function, right? I talk to people all the time who say, Oh, we need a math tutor. And when I'm talking to them about what's going on, why do you think you need a math tutor? What happens in the classroom and on homework and on tests? It turns out, well, the kid knows the math really well. Gets all of the homework, you know, really done on time, and it's getting a high score, they really understand the concept, but then something just happens on a test where they can't reproduce that knowledge. Well, a math tutor may not actually be very helpful there, because they know the math. What they need is an executive function coach to help them learn how to study, to work on recall, to work on emotion regulation in stressful situations, and impulse control so that they can, you know, be their best self on the test and show their knowledge on the test. I had a woman speak to me just last week who was looking for a reading tutor for their child. And you know, that's a thing, like we can give you a reading tutor. But again, as we get underneath what the problem is, it actually looks like this may not be a straight reading issue, or the way to accommodate this reading issue is not through just having someone read texts with you and ask you about it. It's rather about building systems, learning how to take notes, learning how to do active reading, learning how to anticipate questions, and all of those sort of we'll call them study skills, or really executive functions. And academic skills are the things that we need to shore up so that the student can improve their reading comprehension, right? So we always want to get underneath whatever the symptoms. On the surface are and get to that root cause, which is usually in the executive functions. So let me give you an example from the world of standardized testing of how executive functions are actually precursors to the kind of success that we hope to see in that situation. And let's take a look at what happens as they move through high school and into the college process. So Sarah is taking the ACT in an unfamiliar high school classroom, she couldn't get a spot at her own high school, and just those of you who are starting to register for tests know that that is something that's really common right now, there aren't enough spots for people to take tests, so get your spot soon, sooner, rather than later. Sarah's been diagnosed with a processing speed issue. She also has anxiety, and these two things make the other worse, right? She knows she's a slower reader. She has a lot of anxiety about that. When she's feeling anxiety, she's spiraling. She's not as focused of a reader, and that gets in the way, right? So she's got, she's got some challenges here to really overcome. She does get lost in the details, overwhelmed easily, and she gets time accommodations, which are great, but they do mean that the whole test is about a six hour experience, which is just hard for anybody to sit through. She also has a really itchy t shirt label, and she can't stop thinking about it, wanting to just scratch it or rip it off. And then, because she was so nervous, because this is a high stakes test. She only got four hours of sleep last night, so she's moody. She's already feeling like this is going to be a disaster. And for those of you who really feel this is going to be your kid, my next learning session, the one we're going to do in August is all about standardized testing for kids with ADHD or executive function challenges. Let's talk about what what happened. So because we knew there was this processing issue and anxiety, and because this is just how we do things at Signet, we focused on performance. Not just here's what's on the test, here's the math rule or the grammar rule. We focused on, how are you going to show up on test day, focused and ready to demonstrate what you know, what we know you know. So in addition to lending her a little confidence that she can get through it right, that's through the partnership with the tutor, we really did a lot of practice and explicitly talked about executive functions. So you know when she gets into this situation, you might think it's going to be a disaster, but she knows how to self monitor and tell when she's starting to spiral in anxiety. And then we had exercises that she could do to reground herself and recenter and calm down she had impulse control. We told her that when you're feeling stress, weird things start to grab your attention. Like the kid on the other side of the room that is sniffling, or somebody that is like, has a, I don't know, squeaky chair, or something like that. Like those noises are really going to bother you. So how can we practice you ignoring them? Right? And so one of the things that we do is have students practice in realistic but also not perfectly quiet settings, like go to a coffee shop and try to do your full practice test there and see what happens right and as they build up a tolerance for that, that's those executive functions getting stronger and rising to those challenges. So when she does go into the test center, that itchy t shirt label is not even going to phase her, right? And we also worked out emotion regulation, knowing that she only got four hours of sleep, we don't want her to be hard on herself, right? Let go of the, you know, self lecturing and the negative self talk about, oh my god, I can't believe I didn't sleep. And, you know, I really set myself up for failure. Here I shot myself in the foot. None of that is about to happen. We are focused on positive we are focused on her strengths, and we also worked on recall so that she can she had other ways of remembering in these stressful situations what her tutor taught her about how to approach this kind of question or that section, or how to pace herself. So we really worked on those executive functions so that she could perform. And because we did that, her confidence grew in herself right at first, we had to lend it to her, tell her we're getting get through this. I promise you, we've seen this before, and as she started to see how she was more and more able to tolerate distress and navigate tricky situations and be flexible in her thinking. She had a lot more confidence that she could handle whatever came up on test day, right, not just on the test but in the room. And because of that, she came out with a perfect score. Like perfect score, it was amazing. She was so happy. You know, her parents, again, didn't think it was possible, but we saw it in her, and we helped her see it in herself. So this is one of those real, you know, proud moments that that I've had. And of course, this is a very remarkable story. Not everybody's gonna come out with a perfect score, but I hope that illustrates for you how. That just your standard test prep is not going to help a kid necessarily perform well on the test. And you really need to be thinking about, how do we strengthen these executive functions again to meet the moment? All right, so I'm going to give you another example. Imran is an ambitious and like many students over committed rising senior, he took on way too much, against my advice, against his parents advice. He's juggling a summer job. It's actually a sailing instructor. So he's outside in the sun for like eight hours a day volunteering. He's got a couple of online classes that he wanted to get out of the way. And then he also volunteered to organize the student government retreat, and because, you know, he knew he was taking on a lot, he really tried to convince us all it's going to be okay. I have this great schedule. I'm planning to work on college applications two hours a night. But what happens when he gets there? He's always too tired to work on his college essays. Right? He's tired. He's physically exhausted. He's just not being creative, and because he's over scheduled, like many of us, we don't have time for our feelings when we got so many things on our to do list. So he's really blocked emotionally. And if you've ever looked at college essays, you know that these are vulnerable pieces of writing. You really do have to go deep into your emotions and get that onto the page. And so not only is he too tired, but he can't access the part of himself that he needs to be able to access in order to write these well. And as he's starting to kind of work through this, he's just now realizing, Oh, I have to write a main essay, but I also have to write all these supplemental essays, two or three of them for every school that I'm applying to, and now he's completely overwhelmed by the amount of work that's in front of him, and it's, you know, the end of July, and he feels like his time is gone. He's really kicking himself for the situation he's in. And so again, it doesn't have to be a disaster, right? What we were able to do is just not talk about the college essay for a second and say, All right, when are you actually sharpest? When are you the most flexible in your thinking, in your day? And we started a journaling practice where he just writes three pages in the morning. And it actually comes from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. One of the exercises she puts in there is something called Morning pages, where it's just fill three pages every morning, and it's a way to clear out your head and get you focused. And one of the reasons I like this for Imran was because he had a lot of fear of the blank page, right? Like he had a lot of ideas, but could never really get thoughts down on in writing, mostly because he was self censoring. He wouldn't let himself write the thing until he felt it was perfect. But of course, that's not how the writing process works. You got to start somewhere, and then you revise, and it gets better. But this journal activity just didn't have that pressure. I told him, nobody has to see it. If you write something that you want to show me, you can bring it in to our session. But really, this is just for you, and it really helped him open up emotionally. He was doing it in the morning before he was tired, everything just started clicking, and it's a habit he continues, which is great. You know, he's already in college, and he's continued this habit, but it really helped us just get those essays all done in a way that didn't feel so painful, and he didn't have to be beating himself up about what he had committed to. So again, it's not just what are we working on, or how do you do it? Sometimes is, when are you doing it? And our kids can't always see that for themselves, right? So thinking about how executive functions underlie just getting the college applications done is a really helpful, helpful thing to be aware of as you move into that season. And so what's happening with all of these kids is that they really need to shift gears right. It may be how they get started when they work on something, what they're working on right executive function stuff instead of just drilling math. But at the end of the day, it's about making sure the effort that they're putting in is commensurate to the results that they're getting out, and that those results matter in some way right matter to them, of course, but also matter in the grand scheme of things, like, do we really need an a plus in every single class, or is an A fine most colleges are going to strip that plus right off of there, right you don't get bonus points. So, you know, thinking practically, I think, is really important as well, and calibrating your efforts to those practical results is super important. So let me take you back to where we started. We have these situations that our kids find themselves in, and I want to apply this shifting gears metaphor to each of those situations. So, strong, start, weak, finish, the gear is too high and they cannot sustain that effort. They need to know where they can pull back so that they can sustain the. Effort in the places they need to sustain that effort, right? Again, you can't give 100% to 100% of the things, right? So we got to figure out what is actually meaningful, what is actually useful, what is actually feasible, and then put our efforts there. Shift those gears, roller coaster students, sometimes that gear is too high and sometimes that gear is too low, but it's never actually at the gear where it should be for what's in front of them, right? So they're going to need some help understanding how much time and effort different things are going to take so that they know when to shift into what gear, right? And sometimes part of the underlying executive function challenge here is, like, their conception of time. It's not really how they manage their time, but it's like, how long is this thing really going to take me and that that we need to work on to help even out that roller coaster our low engagement kids, when they are trying to engage, often, they're trying to engage at too high of a gear, and it just doesn't move. It's skills stuck, right? And then they get discouraged. So we need to start with low hanging fruit, easily achievable goals that will help them have some confidence, right? And then that can snowball into the next thing, right? If we think about executive functions, like muscles that need to be built, you don't go into the gym trying to bench press 500 pounds on your first day, right? Maybe you just start with the bar, or maybe you start with some two pound hand weights. You start small, and you slowly increase the reps, and then you increase the weight. And that's the kind of thing you want to do with students who are a bit disengaged. You also want to do that with the students who are derailed their their chains fell off the gear, and we got to put that chain on. And you start at the lowest gear, and you slowly work your way up. They also need more resilience in their systems, so that things don't fall down right. So we need to work kind of from the ground up to rebuild and our hyper, anxious, overworking students. This may be counterintuitive, but the gear is too low for them, right? They're doing all this activity, all this pedaling, but it's not actually moving them forward, right? In fact, they're moving much slower, and that even might increase their anxiety. I'm doing all this work, but it doesn't seem to be getting me anywhere. I'm just spinning my wheels. So we need to find ways to help them get into the right gear for the challenge, and build systems and routines that help them feel confident that nothing is falling through the cracks. Right I've got my system as long as I do that routine around it, I don't have to keep all this stuff bouncing around in my head to make sure I remember it. We can outsource the memorization of all of our projects and worries to a piece of paper or a computer program or a phone app that will help us keep track of all of that stuff. So that's what we really need to do with our perfectionism students and you want to remember that there are emotional responses to all of this. And so just telling them, all right, you're going to do this, we're going to build this system. You're going to start with a low hanging fruit project is not really useful here, and this is where coaching can really be a helpful way to relate. Right? What we do with students is, as we understand what pattern are they falling into, what pattern maybe they want to change. We just try to clarify that issue. We're not giving them a solution. We're saying actually, you know what I think your gear is is too high and you can't sustain this effort. Let's think about what you can do, where you can pull back so that this effort is more sustainable, or what you can do to refuel yourself so that you can sustain this effort, and then the answers come from them, right? All we're trying to do is clarify the problem, clarify their understanding of the problem, clarify their understanding of themselves and how they've reacted to this problem in the past, and get them to reflect on whether that's serving them or not serving them, and when we do that, that's when we have a solution that sticks. Their problems are usually hidden and often tangled up with other challenges. So we got to clear some of that away and help them identify the real issue they want to solve at the root of that issue, and once we clarify that, they almost always know exactly what to do next, and even if they don't have like the full solution, the problem seems much more solvable, and they feel more confident that they can do this. And then here's why it sticks. It's their idea, right? Very rarely are we telling a student do this, do that, do this. You know, we don't take that prescriptive route that a lot of executive function coaches take. It's really about clearing the way for their thoughts and their ideas and helping them find a way to apply their idea like try it out and hold them accountable to it. Okay, and then reflect on that idea and help them see what worked, what didn't work, what might we want to change next time you know, what can you do differently? And just holding space for them to think about this thing, it really feels very organic to them. It's very empowering to them. And it's their idea. So they're not going to be like, Oh, mom wants me to do this thing. I don't want to do it right? It's their idea. So they do actually want to try it. And when you can iterate on that idea until it really does solve their problem, they see the impact that that effort has had, and they can't wait to tackle their next challenge. They're like, Oh my gosh, I put my attention on this thing and I was able to move the needle. What else can I do? Right? They're actually excited about finding problems and making changes and building systems for themselves, right? And it does take time. I'm not going to pretend that this happens overnight, but it is pretty remarkable to watch a child transform in this way and take the reins of their own life. So what I've been describing to you is signets academic coaching model. And as you can tell, it's not just executive function, time and task management that's certainly part of it, right? And we'll work on all of those executive functions, and we'll kind of help your student understand what executive functions Am I calling on, what what might I need to strengthen, or where are my strengths already, and how can I use those in these challenging situations? But we're also working on academic skills. Now, these might be things like, how do you take good notes? How do you actively read and mark up texts that you need to to get through? How do you study for this or that kind of test? How do we work on things like keeping our notes organized? You know, one notebook for each class and the papers that need to be turned in go here or not there. So it's a bit broader that executive functions, and it's very much targeted to their school life, what they need to do to be successful in school. And then underlying all of that is what we call vision. We are working on identifying what their strengths are, what their values are, what is a motivating vision for the future, and we want to borrow from that motivation and apply it to the challenges, so that they have that drive to get through those problems and to try out different solutions and keep going. And vision is such a central part of what we're doing, it also leads to a lot of self knowledge and personal growth, and makes a great setup for the rest of high school when they're gonna have to start thinking about what kind of learning environments are the right fit for me, or what kind of essays do I want to write about, what kind of school culture is really the right fit for my strengths, and how can I contribute to that culture, right? So we're really teeing up everything they need to be thinking about in the college admissions process. So I want to show you the Signet ecosystem and how these things relate. You know, I think I've given you enough examples of how executive functions are really underlying the success in all of these other areas. But executive function, again, it's only a piece of what we do. So if you go to an executive function coach, you're just getting this little piece right here, right with us. You're getting vision and academic skills within coaching. And then, you know, we're always going to be thinking about because we also do college admissions, which sort of houses, right? We need good grades and we might need a test score. Kind of houses these two other areas, we're always thinking like, Okay, what? What's the trajectory of this student? And how can we help them see what they want it to be and help them move in that direction? And then, you know, we're working on some of these coaching skills through these other other services as well. And one of the things that we try to do at Signet is go easy on your executive functions right coordinating across a coach and a test prep tutor and a chemistry tutor and a college admissions person. That's a lot of work. Not only do you have to find all of them and make sure they're good fits for your kid, but then you have to communicate with all of them, schedule with all of them, maybe take a piece of information from one and communicate it to the other, and you end up being the hub that's holding everything together, right? And that's not it's not an easy place for anyone to be, but at Signet, we do all of your scheduling for you. We do all of these services, and you know your tutors, or your consultants, your coaches, are going to be working behind the scenes, making sure that we're working in a very integrated way to support your student and their goals. And you know, let's say you start with coaching, and then you get to the end of 10th grade, and you're starting to think about test prep. We're actually going to call you and say, hey, it's time to think about test prep. This is what we're seeing. Do you want to talk to one of our experts about it? Right? So you don't even have to remember what comes next in this process. We are going to highlight that for you. And of course, I do these learning sessions every month where we're talking about all of these things, so you're going to know what's coming up, and you're going to have experts that you can always call for whatever question you have around anything related to high school. All right? Right? So what now, it's probably your question. What I want you to do is book a free consultation with an expert. So check the show notes, you will see a link there to go to my colleague Emma line's calendar. And she's actually more of an expert in this stuff than I am. She has an undergrad degree in psychology from Harvard. She just finished her master's in human development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She's about to start a PhD. She's helped many experts write their books on executive function interventions and learning supports. She has done neuropsych evaluations. She worked at Mass General Hospital's LEAP program, which is learning and educational assessment program, which is like the Top program in the country. And she just has a lot of personal experience around this, having gone to a high pressure high school, worked with her own challenges, and then gone to some very competitive institutions of higher education. So I really want you to talk to her, because she will help you understand what actually makes sense for your child, help you kind of reflect on what's going on for them and what may be most helpful for them. And it may be that working with one of our coaches is the right move for you. It may actually mean no you should go get a neuropsych, or we recommend you talk to this person, or maybe try this sort of thing first. Or here's some books you can read to educate yourself, right? So you've been stressing about this topic clearly for a little while. You know that your kid needs support in this area. Take 20 minutes and have a call with an expert. The worst that can happen is you come out with a little bit of perspective, right? So I really want you to do that. I hope you could see from some of the stories I told you here that working ahead is really key. You don't want to be let's say, end of September, beginning of October, exams are starting to pop up, and then starting the process of finding the right coach for your kid and making sure your kid gets along with that coach, and helping them build a rhythm when you know stuff is so crazy at school, you really want all of that in place so that you know, as soon as the school year starts, you've already got, you know, a good foundation, and you know, you can call that person in as as you need. You don't have to start that process. I also know that a lot of parents who have kids with executive function challenges are struggling because their kid does not want to accept help. Maybe they don't even want to admit that there's a problem. They're like, I got it, Mom, just leave me alone. I could do this, right? That's very, very common. Your kid does not have to be ready to start just for you to have a call with someone to get some more information and prepare yourself with you know, what does this look like and how would it work for us? But if you go through that call and you still feel like, Oh, my kid's never gonna do this, we can actually help you. Think about, how do you engage them? Right? One of the things that we do with everybody who wants a coach is we have the child do a free 15 minute zoom call with the coach. They can hear from the coach directly, what is coaching and how is this going to help me? They get a sense for that coach's personality, and they understand that it's not just, you know, another adult who's going to lecture them about how they do everything wrong. This is somebody who is really there to be in their corner and help them do the things that are meaningful to them, the changes that they want to make in their life. And I know that one of the blockers there is sometimes kids feel like some shame around this, that everybody else can do this without a coach. Why do I need it? Asking for help is a weakness. But I like to remind them that CEOs have coaches. Olympians have coaches. In fact, they have teams of coaches, right? A coach for every major muscle group, because we don't get better without reflecting and asking for help, right? We got to learn from other people. You're nobody's born with these skills, and so I often share that story because it can be helpful for for students to sort of realize, oh, yeah, this isn't going to change unless they do something different, and asking for help is actually a really great life skill that we want them to build. And so if you explain that kind of learning curve metaphor and shifting gears that may really help them open up to just being willing to consider working with somebody, Well, you've certainly heard enough from me today, but if this topic resonated with you, if you have questions either about how to navigate a situation with your child or how we do something, if you want to implement it in your school or share with a friend who might need to hear this information, please reach out. I'm always happy to talk and help any way I can. And also, I do these free learning sessions once a month, and you are welcome to come to them. The next one is going to be at the end of September, September 24 and we are going to be talking about getting your ducks in a row for the college process. So this is. Really meant for parents of eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th graders who have yet to embark on, you know, the craziness of writing essays and all of that that our seniors are going through. But I know that that parental anxiety, the student anxiety, exists long before senior year, and my personal philosophy is, the more you know about what you're going to need to do and when you need to do it, the more you can be engaged in your actual present moment and leave that stuff for when you actually need to be doing it and worrying about it, instead of, you know, falling prey to rumors, the high school Whirlpool, the competition and all of that anxiety inducing stuff. So if that's something that you want to learn more about, check the show notes, or you could go to our events page at Signet education.com/events, and you will see the ability to register for that session there. Okay, folks, but that's all I got for you this week. I hope it was helpful, and we'll see you next time. Thanks.