PARENTS

Parents

The role of parents is crucial to the LearningWorks for Kids process. Parents serve as coaches and teachers who help their children apply executive function skills to their real-world environments. We believe that application of executive skills used in game play alone results in, at best, modest gains in the child’s real world.

In the LearningWorks for Kids model, parents play a number of important roles, including:

1. Student – Your first step is to educate yourself about executive functions; their role in learning, attention, social, and emotional difficulties; ways to identify real-life situations where executive skills are required; and developing methods to talk to your children about executive function.

Click here for information and guides: What Are Executive Functions.

2. Observer of Children – Parents are encouraged to complete LearningWorks questionnaires to get a clear sense of their child’s executive strengths and weaknesses. Some parents may pursue psychological or psychiatric evaluations for a further assessment of executive strengths. 

Click here for information and guides: Parent Executive Function Questionnaire.

3. Coach – Parents are given methods to select appropriate digital and non-digital tools to enhance executive functions. Strategies are given for coaching children to help them to generalize executive skills practice to the real world.

Click here for information and guides: How to Coach.

4. Teacher/Trainer – Parents are encouraged to use our technology coaching guides to prompt conversation about executive function use in game play and help the child with self-observational skills. Technology guides give specific talking points for “making it real” in the child’s environment. Strategies are provided to engage a child in this process, make learning goals explicit, help them to be an involved partner in learning and to develope a positive mindset to facilitate growth.

5. Observer of Children -- Parents are encouraged to look at their own use of executive skills in their day-to-day experiences. Difficulties with executive functioning are an inheritable trait. As a result, many parents, after becoming aware of the executive dysfunctions in their children, find that they have similar problems. LearningWorks for Kids has a full section describing how adult executive functions both help and hinder adults in their real-world experiences. For more information about adults and executive functions, click here.

Click here for information and guides: Generalized Guides, Digital Technology Guides