Dr. Leigh Weisz 6:37
I always think of like the professor, the brilliant professor example comes to mind, it’s just an it’s the books all over the desk, and the papers scattered everywhere on the floor, and piles. And yet that person knows like where things are somehow, you know, like, it is fascinating. And then there’s people where you come in, you know, adults and their desk is perfectly spotless, because at the end of the day, they have a system and they have this ready need to be. So it is it’s fascinating to see, like, who loses their keys all the time and where and who has a system as adults. When I first sort of thought about executive functioning skills earlier in my career, I always paired it in my head with kids with ADHD, that the kids with ADHD seem to struggle, you know, across the board with these skills. Obviously, as I’ve learned more and had more exposure, I know now that that’s it’s not just kids with ADHD, who struggle with executive functions. But I’m wondering if you can tell us a little bit about the different groups of people that you’ve helped besides kids with ADHD?
Susanne Phillips Keeley 7:39
Yeah, I think that’s a common perception is that ADHD and executive functions go together, which they often do. But I’ve seen all sorts of kids who don’t have an ADHD diagnosis. And they’ve got executive function problems. I’ve seen kids who do have ADHD diagnoses, who really aren’t doing that badly. So you know, the, the executive function is kind of like the CEO of the brain. And the CEO can only make good decisions when it’s getting accurate information. So people with a diagnosis of any kind, often have struggles with executive function, because the lower level skills that are being fed up to the frontal lobes aren’t accurate. So somebody with attention problems, they’re what they’re taking in, is different than someone without that the same goes if somebody has an auditory processing disorder, or they’re dyslexic, any number of things that are baseline skills, if those aren’t up to speed, the executive functions are making decisions on less than perfect information. So like you, I really thought that the vast majority of the people that I work with would have a diagnosis of some passion. And I found out that that’s not nearly as many as I thought it would be. So about a third of the people that I’ve worked with, from kids through adults have a diagnosis, any kind of speech, language, cognitive, behavioral anxiety, all that kind of stuff. Then there’s another third that are gifted, they’ve been tested and identified as gifted, and whatever area that they’re gifted in, they can do extraordinary work, intelligence wise, but they can’t do the work involved. So I had one, one amazing child, who was not even in middle school. I think it was still like fifth grade, that was able to be doing high school math, high school calculus, you know, complete genius in math. But couldn’t do the high school level work, couldn’t sit to do 30 minutes of homework, because even though they were brilliant at the math If you didn’t have the attention span to sit and do homework for 30 minutes past, usually were an hour long. You know, that was way too long to make a kid sit and take a test. So those executive function skills, were what we’re bringing him down and making him not look gifted, and not look as talented, when in fact, he really was if we just let him take the test and 15 minute hits, and do half the homework. So a lot of gifted individuals, not just for geeky things like math, but artistic endeavors, but they can operate well beyond their years, but they’re still not beyond their years.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 10:39
And even just, like turning assignments in exactly, we were saying, we were talking earlier about like college students who are failing out of classes, but who are, you know, really gifted in engineering and math and things like that, that, but they, but they need help with basic things like time management and deadlines and, and such.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 10:57
Yeah, kind of as a little sidelight, with college aged kids, if you stop and think about it, it’s so ironic that we put school kids in school, you know, sometimes preschool at age three, all the way through 12 years in high school. And if they’re really good at it, and they have really good grades, we reward them by moving into another level, which is taught and lived in a completely different method than everything that they did for those 15 years ahead of time. So college kids, not just freshmen, they often struggle because the original environment isn’t there, their support system isn’t there, they suddenly have all this time, we always talk about college kids having difficulty with time management. But up until then, they had no time to manage, they got up, they go to school, you go to your after school event, you come home, you eat dinner, you do your homework, you go to bed you do that repeats, you know, yeah, wash, rinse, repeat. And suddenly they go to college. And they may only have two classes a day, or they may have zero classes on a day, they have no idea what the expectation for homework that you should be doing, like three hours of homework, for every hour, you’re in class, they have no idea of that. So they have all this free time. They don’t know what they’re doing with it, they don’t have their support systems. And to me, it’s amazing when they actually do well, because there’s so many systems that aren’t supporting it. Right.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 12:30
And of course, the the parents who tend to be the nags, and the helpers, right are removed all the sudden. So it’s the same, the same time where they really don’t have other adults helping in the same way.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 12:41
Exactly. And there’s also this, this expectation that or anticipation that these kids have, that I’m an adult, now I should be able to handle this. And then there’s the parents expectation of, you know what, I want to give them their space and let them feel like they’re independent. And so both sides realize they need to be asking each other for help, but they’re hesitant to do so. Yeah, right. So I’ve got the kids with the diagnosis, then I’ve got the kids that are gifted. And then I got just kids and adults that are just kids and adults. And they’re, if you tested them on things, nothing would come out abnormal, but they just can’t show what they know. Because they just don’t have the development of those frontal lobes and that executive function strategy that works for them. Yeah, and I was, I was surprised that that took up as much space in my practices, it does.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 13:38
Well, the good news is it sounds like more and more people are really starting to recognize that they do need support and that they could benefit from it even in the absence of a diagnosis or an official recommendation. Because again, being you know, being intelligent is only going to get you so far the executive piece is huge, huge.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 13:56
There have been so many times that I will end up seeing the parents of the kids, the kids where there was actually Yep, the kids are the first ones to come. And then the parents are like, well, I don’t do this either. And, you know, I think as I said to you, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. As parents, we love to brag about the skills that our kids got from us that are good, but they also get our bad habits too. And if if the parents and the adults in the house, don’t have good time management, it’s pretty obvious that the kids are not going to either, right?
Dr. Leigh Weisz 14:34
And systems in place. Yes, checklists, all kinds of all kinds of ways that we keep ourselves organized. Hopefully.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 14:42
We’re not well or not right.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 14:46
Tell us about a kid oh, maybe elementary school age, kind of why they came in and what you helped them with. We’re going to try and do this for you know, one, elementary we’ll go one middle school, maybe one young adult or adult.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 14:59
Perfect sense of the work. So if we’re thinking about elementary grammar school kids, most of the executive functions are controlled by the outsiders, they’re as they should be. The goal is given to them, the steps are provided for them. The sequence, the method, everything is given to them. The the feedback is generally always positive, you know, good work a sticker, the it’s not critiqued is just you did it. And that’s wonderful. And we’re really happy, we want you to do it again. So it’s all very external. How do you get that to become more internal, so it can happen just intuitively. But a lot of times, it needs to be very, very direct. As the adults, we have, basically good executive function skills, it’s hard for us to even imagine steps in the process that are so obvious to us, we would never even put them in, you know, like, it would be like saying, but once you put the food in your mouth, then you’re supposed to swallow. We don’t even include it. A lot of the elementary school kids that I see, they’ll have a an assignment, and the teacher has broken down the assignment quite well. I can almost always double the number of steps, because they made too many assumptions about what the kid knows between step one and step two, there’s actually step one, A, B, C, D. So my mantra, particularly for the younger kids is assume nothing, even for the older kids assume nothing. When somebody looks at you and says, da, of course, then you can quit telling them. But until then, you should assume that they don’t know the steps. And I’m pretty good at figuring out the steps that are not included. But this one got me stumped. It was a girl who was in, I think fourth grade. No, it must have been third grade because it was the ever and never ending third grade report on an animal. Which, if you live around here, what nobody does like a giraffe. Everybody does a skunk, a raccoon or a rat. So it was the animal report. And she was doing skunks. And the teacher gave out the plan, I added steps to it. One of the instructions was you need three resources. To can be online. But you need to check a book out of the library. Perfect. So the girl does the research. She follows the steps she puts together. A fabulous report on skunks is actually an accelerated writer. It was really fabulous. I proof read it her parents proof read it. We’re like this is really good. Turns it in gets it back. And she got to be. And I was like, why was that? Because I certainly thought that it was a pretty good paper. So let’s I said let’s look back over the rubric. And we looked at the rubric. And she met all of those standards. So simple. This is where we need to work on self advocacy. You need to go in and ask your teacher why did I get to be what can I do differently to get an A? The teacher said, Well, you you didn’t. You didn’t have a book. And and then I was like what you did? I saw the book. You did to see I did. So I brought it into her and I said yeah, I have the book. She goes but you didn’t. It wasn’t included in in the paper. She goes, Well, you didn’t say I had to read it. The instruction was you need to check a book out of the library. Oh my gosh, that one to pass me it would never have crossed my mind that you need to say. And you need to read that book. No, of course how so? That’s like, that’s stuck with me forever. Because you think you’ve got all the steps and you really don’t so we can assume nothing at that age group. Right, right. Unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. It’s really interesting.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 19:14
I think about I thought you were gonna say something different, which also could have could have been the case which is that, you know, she did this beautiful report and the morning of realized she was missing that book from the library with the right clothes or she didn’t have time and I feel like a lot of the kids that I work with too, you know, again, like they don’t even realize something till it’s too late because they haven’t planned that or broken it up into chunks. So I think my sense is like fourth grade gets a little bit more challenging with executive function button. Even younger kids, some of them really need that checklist to make sure their backpack is packed. Okay, what in terms of just like keeping track of belongings for the younger for the younger kids.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 19:55
And when when that When you give them all those checklists again, when they finally look at you, and like, of course, I’ve got my lunch mom, and they actually do have their lunch, then you can take it off the list. Yeah. You know, having things be very direct, make no assumptions and make sure that your standard is the same as their standard packing your backpack doesn’t mean things are hanging out, and you can’t zip it up. And your lunch doesn’t fit, you know, define exactly what a packed backpack looks like. Right? And where does it go? I’m big on having everything have a home? Yes. When you’re not using it? Where is your backpack? And what’s in it? So it’s just most of the time? Well, I always think this very, very, very rarely are kids defiant, or lazy, which is what they often get accused of being very, I’ve had a few. But kids are not defiant. And they’re not lazy, they are really trying. And if they’re not doing it, it’s probably because we miss telling them a step that seems so obvious to us. And it isn’t to them.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 21:07
No, and I’ve seen kids who got same age, who young kids who seemed to do all of this super naturally, without needing these lists or checklists or homes, you know, that it’s like in their brain, they’re just doing it in a you know, in a way that is simple for them and other kids who, yeah, they cannot find their sports equipment, they can’t, you know, and they really need us to break it down, I say, this is where the lacrosse equipment goes. And this is where the dirty laundry close will be. And for your game. And it really it’s clearly more of a struggle. So I imagine that’s where you get called in.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 21:43
Exactly. And that’s the other thing that makes the development challenging for kids is that there’s a wide range of normal within adults. But there’s also a wide range of development with kids. I mean, there are those, you know, fourth graders who act like 40 year olds.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 21:59
Right, you never know that.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 22:00
So there’s this wide spectrum, that there’s always going to be a kid in the class that is the king or queen of executive functions. Ironically, those are usually the children that teachers perceive as being the most intelligent, because they know the assignment, they do it, they turn it in. So they’re perceived as being the good student, where in fact, maybe the most intelligent one is the one that’s executive functions are growing a little bit more slowly. And intellectually, they can do it, but they can’t get home with all the materials to save the life. Right? The kids show what they know.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 22:38
Yep. Right. Tell us about, I guess the middle school years, I always think about, like the transition from one teacher to, I guess nine or eight however many cores and the locker versus just the backpack, kind of what you’ve noticed, and maybe yeah, teenager you’ve helped.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 22:56
So we can say huge transition. Yeah, because like you said, you’re in a different building. Usually, you have different teachers for every class with different expectations. Oftentimes different places where they post the homework, to some will put it on the website that the school uses, others have to have their own little special website, others just write it on the board, and never posted it outside, others don’t even write it on the board, they just tell you. So every teacher has different expectations, they post their information differently. You may not you may have a class with zero friends in it, which has never happened before. I’m just physically moving around the school of knowing Do I have time to stop at my locker, go to the bathroom, and talk to my friend and get to class on time. You know, they have no perception of that at all. Whereas in grammar school, most all of the executive function, executive function components are external. Now it starts to get a little bit more internal. The teachers give less guidance, they give you less information. They may not all be doing it the same way. And you have to have that mental flexibility. Well, in English, she likes it turned in here. But in math, she likes it turned in there. That can be super challenging. And then not to mention just all the growing that takes place. I mean, there’s a huge, huge difference between a fourth or fifth grader and a sixth grader. So you’ve got that going on, which messes with everything that they’re doing. So Middle School is where you start to see where the breakdowns are. That’s where there’s often a lot of missing assignments, lack of anticipation. I had one boy who since I think probably since he went to kindergarten, every single Friday, there’s a spelling test. Even I knew there was a spelling test every single Friday every single week. And less than was No school on a Friday, in which case there it was on a Thursday, but every single solitary time. And every week, it was a surprise to him. You’d be like, we got another test Friday. I’m like, you’ve had another test Friday for the last three years. I know. But we have another test and then come in and you’d say, there’s no school Friday, there won’t be a spelling test, I might, yes, there will be, you know, just that ability to generalize, just never, never, never got through his head and never quit seeing those patterns, even when they were directly pointed out, just, you know, seeing that progression from time to time. And it also shows up because at that age, with practices, it’s more often that parents drop kids off and leave them, and then come back, so that if they don’t have what they need, it’s really apparent when you show up for volleyball and you don’t have your knee pads, and there’s no one there to run home and get them for you. Yeah. So things like that. I mean, not knowing the spelling test didn’t bother that kid a bit. But you’re the one person who’s on the bench because they don’t have their gear, they can’t practice, or you show up for your piano lesson, and you forgot the music. That that makes them feel badly, too.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 26:17
Oh, totally. Or you’re letting them on the team? I could see that being real. Right? And again, you’re right, a lot of times, you know, they feel a sense of shame around. I’m not good enough, right? Yeah. hard enough. And it’s often again, that they just really do need more practice and support doing these, you know, learning these skills.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 26:38
Especially, I mean, you can speak to him more than I can but middle school, they really start getting that concept of what other people are thinking about them and, and how they interpret other people’s expressions and their words, and there’s something that seems very non consequential to us can be devastating and mess them up for the whole rest of the day. They forgot their knee pads, and therefore they’re not going to study for their science test.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 27:04
Right. Right. Yeah. Right. And their and their brains are flooded with all the other emotional pieces of fitting in and T so it’s, it’s a lot, it’s a lot at once, for sure. It is.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 27:14
Yeah.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 27:14
Do you have an example of a maybe a teenager or middle school or high school that you’ve helped, kind of what they came in for and the work you did?
Susanne Phillips Keeley 27:24
High school kids are fun, well, middle school and high school, but particularly high school, I always say, I never knew I liked high school boys as much as now that they’re not living in my house. Because high school boys tend to be painfully honest. So if you will spend an entire session mapping out this project that’s due in two weeks, every step what are you doing each day, Bob, you know, couldn’t be better. Their audit, I’m gonna get an A, this is gonna be great. I see in the next week, I’m like, Okay, where are you with that project? didn’t do it. Okay. Why? Why did you? We worked on it. You remember that? We worked on it? Yeah, I remember. Why didn’t you start? It? didn’t feel like it. Okay, you know, I can I can work with that same situation with a high school girl comes in? Did you do it? It was so unfair. I can’t believe that, that my teacher did this. My friend did that. It’s all external. Everybody did something to sabotage their ability to get going with that plan. Right. So it’s really one of the that’s one of the kind of the first digressions that I start seeing with the male female roles have who’s, who’s working hard with it, and taking the ownership and just not caring, and being comfortable saying that.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 28:46
Exactly. And initiation of tasks is is an executive functioning skill. Exactly. And it is, it’s like if you can’t even start because, you know, there’s probably a million whatever, right? You’re, you’re paralyzed by the anxiety or you’re avoidant, or you just don’t feel like putting in the energy, you know, it’s hard to get going, whatever the piece may be. It really, it’s hard, because then it’s more likely that they’ll procrastinate because they’re again, it’s a bigger task in their mind, versus if they just start something even teeny tiny. It typically is easier for them to do the next step and the next step.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 29:19
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I have one story that was a girl who I didn’t start working with until after this happened. She was a junior, she was a senior applying for colleges. And incredibly, incredibly bright young woman and overachiever, good student was working on a presidential campaign was the head of the pom poms was part of the debate but like just all around, oh, yatta yatta yatta yatta every single thing. She had always wanted to go to Dartmouth and clearly could get into Dartmouth. And that was her goal. She was also her time. management was abysmal. And so she was always behind and things but because she was so bright, she was also very charming and very cute. So she’d go and she’d say, I’m sorry. I know I’m supposed to get my French presentation today. But I was out campaigning with Dick Durbin, and I couldn’t make it. So could I do it tomorrow and the teachers would be, of course, that’s fine. So everybody cut her slack all the time, comes time to make your applications. She’s doing it. And of course, she’s doing it at night. Because, you know, she should be asleep, but she isn’t. And she fills out everything. She gets the final stuff for Dartmouth. And it was due on whatever day at 1159. She clicks Submit. And she gets a flash that says application not accepted past the deadline. Oh, she looks up. And it’s 1203. Oh. So she her mother is just like, you know, ready to explode. Right? But the young girl was like, Don’t worry, I’ll just call them tomorrow and tell them what happened. And in her mind, that made perfect sense. And in my mind, I’m thinking, Dartmouth is thrilled that there’s one one less well qualified candidate that they might have to reject right. Now, it ended well, she was applying early action. So she was admitted she could reapply as she was admitted, regular decision, she ended up going. But after that we worked with the remaining six months on knowing how much time she has, and how much she has to do. By the time she went to college. She was ready to go, wow. But it took something I mean, it worked out for her, but it could have just as easily not worked out.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 31:44
Right? Well, we and we talk a lot in our practice, you know, with parents about how the more we help as parents, you know, again, at that age, not little kids, we need to but you don’t have to kind of like pull back because sometimes you just do too much for them. And then by the time they’re college age, they actually really don’t have all the skills that they should to function independently. In this case, it was not the parent, it was just that she was so charming, and you know, like, right. And she’s she’s squeezed by a French teacher, right, giving her an extension, right? That thought, of course, but if it happens across the board, doesn’t really serve the kiddo. So that’s really a kicker wins three minutes over that deadline for your dreams.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 32:28
Right? Wow. But you know, a deadline is a deadline. And as parents, it’s just so hard to know, because you feel like most of the time you’re wrong, no matter what you picked. And I think that’s just because a lot of these things are very high stakes.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 32:42
Yes, yes. Yeah. Have you worked Susanne, with college aged kids remotely, tell us a little bit about things that you do.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 32:50
And that lots of lots of college aged kids, because, again, everything’s different. So whatever they got good at in high school, may or may not be working in college. Also, you tend to go to a college that is your interest in your appropriate level. Whereas in high school, you know, they have different ranges of classes. But during lunch, you can sit with whoever you want. So the woman who was going to Dartmouth, she was going to school where everybody there is just as smart as her. And she’s used to being the smartest one. And now she may not be and how do you adjust to that? But the biggest part is just what do you do with all that free time? And how do you study when there’s only a midterm and a final and nothing else in between to support your grade, you can’t wait until the week before the midterm. You know, the teachers are expecting you to do a little bit every single week. But the professors don’t tell you that they think you know that. They think you know how to be a student because you’ve done it for 12 years. But this is a whole different way of being a student. And then how do you fit in an appropriate social life? Because when when people have too much free time, it tends to be sex and drugs and rock and roll. And we need to find some better substitute behaviors for those free time periods. Right. How do you build a structure? For the Yeah, right, right. And how do you a lot of the extracurriculars that were so important in their life are either gone, or they’re at a lower level, or less frequency, less intensity. So those things that brought them joy, or particularly for athletes, they’re physically accustomed to working their tail off every day, and then that comes to a screeching halt. And their body’s got all this pent up energy, and they don’t have a practice to go to. So finding ways that they can harness the things that were successful in high school, and then build on them to do in a whole different environment. Right, which then kind of segues exactly into them what happens with adults, so you’ve got the obvious ones where suddenly everything that you have done On well on, for 1415 1617 years, you’re good at it, we reward you by making you go do something entirely different. You’ve been a great student, now, you’re going to actually have to be a great psychologist, which is entirely different. And there’s no guidebook for it. And there’s not even in every profession, or every job you get, there’s not even a mentor assigned. So how do you transition an assignment notebook? To learning what you have to do in your workforce? Right. Right. And a lot of the people that I see kind of, they come and go at different life stages, you know, it’s, I have a lot of people that I have seen on and off, whenever there’s one of these transitions, because it’s hard to figure it out.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 35:47
Right, it’s nice that they can go back to you again, at each stage understand, like you said, that they may have mastered, you know, one executive function challenging in that stage, but it’s going to pop up again, and another Right, right. Can you give us an example of, of maybe some strategies for adults who struggle with time management, there’s always those people, we always joke in our family, like, let’s tell him to come at, you know, 10 minutes before the actual time because you know, he’s never going to get there on time. But whether it’s like setting your own alarms, or reminders, or how do you help people with time management, who practically you know, struggle.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 36:26
Their time, first way to realize how complicated time is time is massively, we could talk for three hours about time. And there’s some mysticism to time, and you don’t want to take away from that. But the way we have time is completely arbitrary. And there’s been, I think, in my humble opinion, there has been a big decrease in time management, when suddenly everything became digital, as opposed to an old fashioned, like, around my office that you’re not seeing all of I have analog clocks everywhere.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 36:59
I feel like the kids are hardly taught to read analog clocks.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 37:03
They have no idea. It’s, they have no idea. And they don’t they, they don’t understand that time isn’t based 10. Because when they see it, just as numbers on the phone, they try to use math. So I’ll ask somebody, okay, so if you get home from school, or from work, or from whatever, at six o’clock, and you want to be done by 10, how many hours is that? They’ll say four? Because they did math, they subtracted. Great. Okay, so let’s say that you go to bed at 10. And you wake up at six, how many hours of sleep are you getting? And even adults, they’ll be like, well, some of them will be like, they want to say four. And they realized that’s about right, but they have no idea how to fix it. Others will argue with me, they’ll say, oh four, and I’m like, really, really? Like, you go through your days with four hours sleep, though? Yes, yes, I do. So they don’t even understand that it isn’t based hint. They don’t. They don’t feel time. They can’t tell time. They can’t calculate time. They can’t estimate time. So how do you how can we expect them to manage time, right? That you have to start way, way back at the ability to feel time. And so that’s kind of one of the things that I like to impress upon parents and teachers, the adults in the room, not only for ourselves, but for the kids, what can we do? That is modeling behavior that’s going to want to be able to help them. So if we’re stepping all the way back to being able to feel tired, analog clocks are great. You know, when I was in school, there were back in the dark ages, there were analog clocks. And when I was bored, I would be sitting there like this, and then I’d be trying to count in my head a minute. Now, a minute, and then I’d look and see oh, it was the minute and five seconds. Okay, let’s see if I can get it better next time. And then, so I got to where I could feel a minute.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 39:04
Yes, we do that a lot with with kids who are, you know, not understanding how long it’s gonna take to do an assignment. And I’ll just say, gas, like, is it gonna take 10 minutes? Is it gonna take an hour, you know, and we’re not holding them to it exactly. But like you said, if they’re not even budgeting, even close to where it’s gonna take, right?
Susanne Phillips Keeley 39:18
They don’t. They don’t stand a chance. I’m still quite analog clocks are good. Referencing time is good. But again, you’re giving them a reference that they don’t understand. It would be like, you asking me, How far is my office from home? And I told it to you in kilometers. Yes, you would be like, okay, whatever, you know. So when when you say to your kids, okay, we’ll leave it in five minutes. Okay, whatever. Right? So these I love. Oh, you can see five minutes you can see that there’s not much time left. Yes. So this is so much better than timers. And all the timers do is tell you. Oops, I didn’t make it in time, right. There’s no vision at all, there’s no visual. And then also give them a reference to something that they understand. So if they’re watching a TV show, and you can say, okay, bedtime is going to be in three more commercials, right, or if they’re playing a game, you know, when you when you get to this level, that’s when you have to stop period, you don’t give it in something that they can, and then tell them what that actually was. So bedtime is going to be in three more commercials, that’s 30 minutes. Okay, now, that was the last commercial. So that means that it’s, it’s time or we’ve got five minutes until we have to leave for school, that’s when this is going to be done. Right, so that they start getting those visuals and that you are telling them how long it is going to take. So that they can see, like when they’re starting the task, oh, you’re making your own breakfast? Well, that should take you about a minute, oh, you’re going to set the table that should really only take you three minutes. That’s kind of a segue into the one of the concepts that I think is important for adults. And it’s what I call share your story. So our executive function calculations take place in our head. As adults, we are talking to ourselves all day, we ask and answer a ton of questions. We ponder outcomes. Which way should I drive to work today? Do I get a lunch break? What am I going to wear all of these things, and we keep it in our heads. And to the kids. Everything magically happens? Magically, my uniform is clean. And on my bed. Magically. My test has been graded, and it’s been given back to me magically, food is in the refrigerator when I’m hungry. They have no idea. They think we’re magicians, they think we just and they’re waiting for that. They’re waiting for the ability that, oh, I can do this, when that’s never going to happen, because it isn’t magic. So the more of our self talk that we let out of our mouths, the better. So, you know, kind of read just speaking out loud about what’s going on? Well, I picked you up from practice, we got to squeeze in dinner. Before homework time, I thought that I was going to make chicken. But when I open the refrigerator, I realized that chicken was bad. So now we’re not going to have chicken. But now I had to come up with something new. And in the freezer, there wasn’t anything. So we’re just getting takeout tonight. Whereas Otherwise, they would just see the takeout. And think that you just decided to have takeout? Well, no, that was not the case at all. Right?
Dr. Leigh Weisz 42:31
I have a client I’m working with and she she said, you know, her, her high school aged son. And she’s a real Cook, this woman, the high school aged son, like opens the frigerator and says, you know, we’re out of milk. And the man says, I don’t drink milk, it’s in a store, I have a grocery list that we’ve been using for you know, all 18 years.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 42:53
So you’re all your life.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 42:58
And if you want milk, you’re old enough that you can write you know, when it’s getting well write it on the list, I go to the grocery store once a week, every week, I will absolutely buy you milk. But if you’re gonna start going to the store and getting the milk if you notice it at the last minute, because I don’t open that door for the milk, you know. And all of a sudden, he started to kind of like do that step himself because he wants us to cereal every morning. And you know, it’s not hard, he’s able to do it. But it’s like she never narrated before. If it was magic to the lesson, she probably did it when they were growing up more. And she was realizing, oh, you know, this is actually something that that they can do. And so I agree. It’s like just being able to say the steps that happen by kids. When it’s time for breakfast in the morning and younger kids. One of them will say like, can I have, you know, pancakes like from scratch? And some days? I’ll say, Sure. And other days, I’m like, Are you kidding? We have five minutes to go out the door to cereal, you know, so But you’re right, just trying to say how, how many minutes does it actually make to take us there now make the pancakes. It’s a great example that we should sort of narrate more, so they start to learn it.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 44:03
So they see what’s going on. And I think it’s important to do it for emotions, also to teach some of that self regulation. And you don’t have to do it right at the moment. But you know, so you’re driving and somebody cuts you off and the kids are in the car. Then you can say, okay, you know what, that made me really, really mad. And my first instinct was to slam on the horn and scream at that idiot. But I realized that that wouldn’t get us to school any quicker. And it might get them really angry. So instead, I’ve been taking some deep breaths, and now I feel okay. I’m going to forget about it. But instead what they see is somebody cuts them off. The kids thinks, ah, I’m angry about it. And by magic, you just dealt with it. Well, it wasn’t magic. You experienced you felt what you felt you had a strategy, you use the strategy, and now you’re moving on. So for high emotions for low emotions, it’s the if we don’t show err, that they’re waiting to have this mystical realization within them that I can produce milk in the refrigerator. You know, I can not get mad when someone does something that maddening, which is false. They’re never going to get that they have to see that. Yes, adults get mad. And then but we don’t always act on it.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 45:21
Emotional regulation is a learned skill as well.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 45:23
Exactly what you’re exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I think that share your story is very important.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 45:27
Tell us about the importance of sleep. And kind of how parents can help.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 45:32
My favorite topic these days, though, sleep. This is my new hypothesis that I’m going to test over the next 100 years. Is ADD really ADD? Or is it lack of sleep, though executive functions in every body are reduced, when anything within our body isn’t right? Our brains number one job is to keep us alive. And we don’t want to inhibit that, because that’s what keeps us alive. But when your brain feels like something is at risk, it shuts down higher level thinking the limbic system that primitive fight or flight, it spurs its head, and it takes over and it should. But the problem is that we’re doing things that cause our executive function skills to go down when there is no fight or flight. So executive function skills are never good. When you’re tired, when you’re hungry, when you’re thirsty, when you need the bathroom. When you’re stressed, when you’re emotional, high or low, when you’re sick when you’re in pain. Anytime you’re not right, your executive function skills are a little bit down. Many of those are within our control. So simple things that you help kids with from the beginning is before you sit down to do your homework, have a snack, have something to drink and go to the bathroom. None of us can concentrate when we need the bathroom. And none of us would ever say no, you can’t go to the bathroom, suck it up and do it. And yet we do that with things like particularly sleeping and eating. When we are short on time, we think we can steal time by not sleeping, and not eating. And those are the two worst things you can do for your brain. So kids are, I find I asked kids all the time in a non judgmental way because they don’t live with me. You know, how many hours of sleep did you get that last night? It is shocking how many are like it four or five. When I tell them that the recommendation for their age, we have anybody under high school or high school and under, it’s like eight to 10 or sometimes 12. I don’t know, a single person that walks through my door that gets eight hours of sleep a night. Other than me. We’ve got a sleep deprived multiple generations, and that’s affecting their executive function. A lot of it is there’s many reasons, a lot of kids are way over scheduled. They go to school, they’ve got three hours of practices, they get home at seven, they shower, they eat and they don’t even start their homework until 830 or nine o’clock at night. So by the time they finish their homework and they wind down, it’s 12 or one. And at best, they go to sleep at one, and they wake up at six or seven at best. But what typically happens is they go to sleep at one or they don’t finish their homework because they’re engaged on their phone, either during homework or once they go to bed or both. So they’re engaged in something that is not only just keeping them up, but the light from it affects your brain, there’s so many things that are bad about sleep, and light. And so we’ve got an entire generation of sleep deprived people. And that means that their executive functions are automatically not at their height. Because that limbic system is saying, Hey, you are tired, you need to rest, right? It’s the same as skipping meals. So I don’t have time to eat dinner, I’ve got it or I’m going to eat in the car on the way. And so your brain doesn’t get its nutrition. Right, your brain burns a lot of calories. And those are the two things that I think that are really harming people’s ability. You know, maybe they don’t really have an executive function problem. They just aren’t getting enough sleep and they aren’t eating at a regular time.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 49:23
Right. I think of it like the gas tank is the gas tank. Yes. Yes. Oh, you know, people are tend to be able to deal with the driver who cut them off in a calm, relaxed way. People kind of like lose it kids and adults is if like you said the gas tank is depleted. You know, they didn’t get enough sleep, they’re hungry, all of those different factors. And you know, all of a sudden you see them fragment. So Right. That’s a good it’s such an important kind of last take home message for parents that especially the parents of the younger kids, but even through high school, you know if they can instill in their kids a way to to honor the importance of this.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 50:02
Model at themselves. And recognize that you know, the kids are not signing themselves up for 15 activities. Somebody has to write the check. Yeah. And so if your child is routinely having only two hours of, quote unquote free time, in the course of their whole day, that’s probably not sustaining good sleep. Right?
Dr. Leigh Weisz 50:30
No, totally makes totally makes sense. So as we wind down, I just have one final question. This is incredibly informative. I want to know if there’s any, either apps or tools, resources, tricks for parents, you know, things that they should sort of start implementing in their day to day life for themselves or for their kids.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 50:50
I think the best answer to all of those comments is the best one is the one that works for you. And so for students, and then for adults, a good planner. And there are two entirely different kinds of planners, you need a good student planner, most of the planners that are handed out in school are abysmal. Then it will take too long to explain what’s going to make a good planner. But clearly, people are welcome to email me and ask for suggestions and stuff like that. But having a good planner, somewhere that you can get stuff out of your head, you’re that good, high level frontal lobe shouldn’t be weighted down with the minutia, if it can get out of your head and onto a piece of paper. And it gives you that forward thinking and that ability to plan. Because you’re not just wondering when is the spelling test? So having a good planner is great.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 51:46
Is it having a piece of paper type planner could be online? What are your thoughts there?
Susanne Phillips Keeley 51:49
There’s some apps that are decent, they’re decent, and they work for kids who have decent skills to begin with. So like you and I could use one on on an app, because it’s missing a couple of components. But we’ve got that down. For the younger kids who don’t have anything down yet, I’d stay away from the apps. alarms on the phone are great, unless again, that’s tying them to their phone even more. They still sell alarms that are just alarms, you can go to Walgreens and get a little kitchen timer. For $5. There’s still clocks that you can sit on your desk for $5 and can find little things like this for nothing. So having available mechanisms to see time isn’t that isn’t always your phone is really good. Yeah, I think those are the best resources and then just constantly reminding yourself and then when you have to remind others, these are immature brains that are growing. And just because there’s one kid in the class, who is like a 40 year old, doesn’t mean everybody is just because one of your children matured early. And the other one isn’t doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. You just have to meet everybody at the level that they’re at. and provide some supports. And I always opt for more support. Tell them and help them and show them as often as you can. And when they look at you and they’re like, when are you going to quit telling me to put stuff on the grocery list? Well, I’ll quit telling you when you do it all the time. Yeah. When they tell you when when you see they’re doing it, then you back off.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 53:28
And Susanne, if someone does want to call you for services or contact, what is the best mode of of contacting you?
Susanne Phillips Keeley 53:36
Probably the easiest way is to go to my website, which is GoStrong, ggostrong.org. Perfect. Perfect.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 53:46
Well, thank you so much, Susanne, thank you for your expertise.
Susanne Phillips Keeley 53:51
I’m so glad you’re interested in it. I could talk about it forever. So I appreciate you.
Dr. Leigh Weisz 53:55
It’s always wonderful to talk to you. And everyone who’s listening. Please check out more episodes of our podcast, go to copingpartners.com and click on podcast and articles. And as always, thank you for tuning in.
Outro 54:12
Thank you for listening to The Coping Podcast. We’ll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes, and check out our podcast page at copingpartners.com.