Episode 91 Building Executive Functioning Skills over Breaks

Below you can view or listen to Episode 91 of The Personal Brain Trainer Podcast.

In this episode of the Executive Function Brain Trainer Podcast, hosts Dr. Erica Warren welcomes back guest Kim Sorise to discuss effective strategies for building executive functioning skills during breaks. The conversation covers various tactics, such as actively engaging children in tasks like co-piloting during road trips, cooking, reading maps, and even gardening to foster cognitive flexibility, planning, sequencing, and emotional regulation. The hosts emphasize the importance of stepping away from screens, playing games, volunteering, and integrating art into daily activities to enhance executive functioning skills both for children and adults.

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#91: Building Executive Functioning Skills over Breaks

Erica: Welcome to the Executive Function Brain Trainer podcast. I'm Dr. Erica Warren.

Darius: And I'm Darius Namdaran. And we're your hosts.

Erica: Sponsored by the Executive Functioning Remedial Assessment, an online tool that quickly identifies challenges and delivers targeted strategies for success.

Darius: Sponsored by ivvi. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly.

Darius: So you remember what matters. Well, try ivvi for free now at ivvi app. That's ivvi app.

Erica: I'm very excited to welcome again our guest host, Kim Sorise. We had a wonderful conversation a number of weeks ago that was recorded, and you guys should already have heard it. And she's back to talk to us about building executive functioning skills over breaks. So I'm super excited to riff on this topic because I think it's a really wonderful one. So, Kim, how are you doing?

Kim Sorise: I'm doing well. Nice to be with you again. Thanks so much. Yeah, Breaks, right? This is something that parents always have to manage, whether it's childcare or planning a vacation or just we're going to have kids home for a couple months or even a couple weeks. So I think we can always help students build executive skills. And we can also build our own too, as parents. I think refreshers can be good as we continue to age and help our kids build their own executive functioning.

Erica: And I think we have breaks all the time. Sometimes we have a break because we're waiting for an appointment. Sometimes we have a break because something unexpected happened and we, we have some time to burn or we're on a long trip somewhere and we're sitting in a plane or in a car for a long period of time. And those are all. Is what I consider these opportunistic breaks where we can actually exercise executive functioning skills.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely. A lot of times when I, I've been traveling, doing a road trip over the last few weeks, and so I've had some downtime to sit, watch and observe, and I see some behavior that I will say is a bit concerning. And I would like to, I think this gives us also a great opportunity of what can we do with, with downtime with our children, as opposed to saying, here's the phone, here's the device, here's the iPad. Play a game, watch a movie, let's turn those things off and maybe try a different approach.

Erica: So step into the present.

Kim Sorise: Yes, absolutely. Be an active participant. Right. So let's meta cognate for a little bit during that time. So I think learning something new is always absolutely fantastic and all just learning new Material builds executive skill. It's automatically problem solving. It's automatically cognitively flexible. It's automatically exercising the working memory. There might be some planning involved. There's usually some sequencing involved. There may even be emotional regulation to deal with some frustration because I didn't understand what that said and now, I have to read it again. It may be a collaborative effort. So just learning anything new can absolutely help to build executive function skill.

Erica: Right. And it doesn't necessarily have to be academic. It could be learning a card game, learning a new board game, deciding that I'll often say to my students, what's tripping you up right now? And then brainstorming what that is and then how to navigate around it. That's learning something new. Learning something new doesn't necessarily have to be. It just could be you just being cognitively flexible and looking at it from a different perspective. But there's so much value in learning something new. And understand that whenever you do, it's uncomfortable. Yeah, our brains just feel a little uncomfortable learning something new. And the reason why is it really wants to do learn to automaticity so it can do it automatically. That's when our brain is kind of. At least I feel my brain is always saying, okay, let's learn to automaticity. Let's earn to automaticity. And I like to really exercise that. Things like if you use a mouse, putting in your left hand instead of your right hand. I don't do it very often, but sometimes

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Erica: I do, and it's super uncomfortable. But it's stretching cognition. And typically when we are stretching cognition, it is activating executive functions and it's pulling us into the present. And that's always a little bit uncomfortable, but that's okay. We need to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Kim Sorise: Yes, absolutely. I could not agree more. And I think that being able to work within that feeling, sit within that space, recognize that maybe your heart is a little bit faster or that maybe your palms get a little bit sweaty. And that is absolutely okay. It's biology. It's completely normal. And this is your brain saying, I don't have a connection made yet for this. And so you have to start to find comfort in the uncomfortable. And your brain is making this beginnings of connection. And as you work through it, that connection will get stronger and you keep going and it gets stronger yet. And then you sleep that evening and you wake up the next day and you give it a try again. And guess what? It's even easier because those synaptic connections have started to form and build something. And then it is a little bit less uncomfortable. And that is growth and that's learning new things.

Erica: It is. And we have those moments that when we're growing, we have these excitement. You have these moments of excitement where you kind of have these growth spurts or you have these like ahas, or you're like all of a sudden something that was hard is no longer hard. It's easy and it's so satisfying. So I mean, that's the other thing that, that if we are not stepping into that kind of growth mindset and we're not learning things new and we're becoming kind of stagnant and it's the same old thing. It's almost like that movie Groundhog Day. We're just reliving the same day over and over again. So learning really enables us to. Even though it is uncomfortable, we reach new highs.

Kim Sorise: Yeah. New heights of cognitive flexibility and adaptation. And this allows us to be able to push ourselves forward when things get hard. So I think that's the first thing is just do new things. Get outside your comfort zone. Even if you do something consistently every single day, maybe just like flip up the order. Right. Because that's also challenging if your children have chores, because chores are fantastic. Building of executive function. Just change the order around or maybe even how the chore is completed. That can also build executive function for something as simple as things that we have to take care of on a regular basis. And just doing chores, they help people with task initiation. That builds responsibility. You can build time management skill because it should only take so long a one and done activity. And it also supports some sustained attention for growing minds and adults too. I think that having regular chores or regular tasks to maintain a household are absolutely a continued part of helping to build sustained attention and task initiation skill. And if you want to change it up, figure out a different way to do the task.

Erica: What I love about changing it up too is a lot of people tend to in a family choose a role. Like the son might always take out the garbage and the daughter might always walk the dog. And I think it's really important to change those up so that you're flipping it. Maybe the son doesn't ever want to cook, but he has to cook one meal a week. Because this is the thing in life. We have to do things where we don't really want to do, and we don't really like doing. But the other thing about that is that I'm thinking of one student in particular who hated puzzles and never did puzzles. And eventually it became an issue because once he got into high school, he really struggled with anything that required spatial orientation, because he avoided it all his life. And so we have to be careful that if someone hates something, sometimes it's nice to slowly work them their way into that task. Particularly if it's a task that they're going to have to complete later on in life.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely. I think every person needs to be able to know how to start tasks independently

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Kim Sorise: and even complete them, despite the fact that they may not enjoy the task itself. I have this conversation with students quite a bit, just over homework, projects, things that they're learning. I don't enjoy history. Okay, well, this may not be your favorite subject, but let's find the one thing that is of interest to you in here. Let's find one thing, let's talk about it. Let's kind of unpack what you're learning right now. And is there something that connects to maybe an interest that you have? Maybe it's an interest in agriculture, or maybe it's an interest in architecture, or maybe it's art, or maybe it is just the human condition. But we have to find something because life is always a series of things that are not our favorite.

Erica: Absolutely. And sometimes it's not your favorite teacher. It's amazing to me how often kids don't like a subject because of the teacher, and. And sometimes it's a matter of finding a different way of processing. So say you're not a sequential processor and you've got a. We'll stick with history teacher. History teacher that's always sequencing everything, and you find that kind of irritating. You can use different AI tools like NoteBookLM, and it will reprocess it in a different way for you.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, it could give it to you in themes.

Erica: Which themes? That's right. In main ideas, details. It could just. You could just listen to it in a podcast. You can even create a podcast and say, specifically, I don't want to learn it as a sequence. And yeah, as you said, as a theme, I want to learn it in a different way. And even. Just even asking it to present it in a different way that's not sequential. It's always fun to see what it comes up with. So AI is this new amazing tool that enables students to reprocess things in different ways, because typically, if you go back to the teacher, they'll teach it the same way they taught it the first time. I'd encourage teachers not to do that, but that's, I think, the most typical. Yeah, they already have their lesson. They've already. They almost have the. The lesson on automatic pilot, particularly if they've had tenure for a while.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, but when I taught history, I threw out the textbook. So I said, I am not the dates and events style learner.

Erica: I always thought that if I ever taught history that I would have one assignment. I think I've mentioned this one to you, haven't I? There would be one assignment, and it would just be that I'd give them a big roll of paper and say that you have to just do a timeline from the first day of class to the last day of class and you can do it however you want.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, that's great. We did timelines, but we did them by themes. So I taught the class thematically and each theme we would do a timeline and then we took up an entire wall and ran them across so the kids could kind of see where those themes and ideas intersected throughout time. So it was cool. There was still that sequencing, but it also, it allowed the multitude of processors in the classroom to be able to see it visually. It helped with those that sequenced, it helped with those that needed the big ideas. It supported working memory because it was always there.

Erica: So visual learners, it was more multi-processing, shall we say?

Kim Sorise: Yes, yes. As it should be, I think. But kids just shouldn't do chores during breaks. One thing that I love during breaks was, and I think that this is something that parents also could really, with young drivers, turn off GPS and teach your child how to truly be a copilot. Teach your child how to read a map or just go get lost and find your way home. I grew up with a single parent and this was one thing that we would do a lot on weekends. We would pack a bag and get in the car and end up wherever. So. And I was always the copilot. I always had access to the map, and it really helped to build problem solving skills. It absolutely. Because back then you didn't know if there was construction or traffic. There was no waiting in traffic. I had to figure out rerouting, I had to figure out detours, where we were going to stop. Was there a town? Was there availability for a place to stay? So this whole idea of going out and getting lost or just turning off the GPs and in teaching spatial awareness and teaching that cognitive flexibility and

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Kim Sorise: real time problem solving. Because when you are driving and you are in a moving vehicle, you have to make fairly quick decisions if you needed to get off right there, because that was the place you were going to be able to get gas.

Erica: Yeah, yeah.

Kim Sorise: Because. Or we have an accident, and we've been sitting for the next. For the last 20 minutes. Are we able to get off at this next exit and then be able to take a detour around or. I'm really interested in seeing this place. Let's take a different way to get there. Yeah. Taking a different way home from school. Right. Could even be a very simple thing. We always take the same way home from school. Let's take a different way. Let's look at new landmarks. Let's learn our city, our neighborhood, our town. Things change.

Erica: Yeah.

Kim Sorise: So learning to be a copilot can really help kiddos navigate unfamiliar territory. It can also give parents some confidence that their children can find their way home. It helps them practice, I think, adapting to change. It definitely helps them manage frustration and learn how to deal with that emotional regulation behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Erica: And they're doing it in a safe environment because so typically the kids are in the backseat on their devices. Kind of checked out. And it definitely makes it more fun for everybody as well. It's more connection. So I think one of my biggest concerns with the amount of time that the kids spend on their devices is it also impacts their social skills. So being able to have that interaction with your child. And I hear a lot of parents saying, like, wow, my kids just don't even talk to me. Oh, my God. My daughter spoke to me this morning, and I'm like, wow, really? And they're like, yeah. She never speaks to me. Wow. Okay. Yeah. So create those opportunities where you're not putting them in the backseat. You have them as your copilot and you're solving real life problems.

Kim Sorise: And, yeah, I understand that there's size and weight and all of that before you can fit a child, put a child safely in the passenger seat. But I used to copilot from the back seat, too, when I was small, so it is definitely. It is doable. And cars that have the screens in the back, you could project the map that way, if need be, once a child learns how to read a map. But, you know, those map reading skills are also really, really beneficial. They're great. When you go hiking, what happens when your phone runs out of battery? What if you're out of range? I was driving a few times in the mountains over the last couple weeks, and there was absolutely no range. And I was cool with that. I was fine. Happy to be out of range, happy not to have GPS.

Erica: That's kind of. It's kind of fun, isn't it? Because spatial skills are really starting to suffer because we are relying too much on those external devices.

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: The other thing is when you're in a car trip, just go back to old fashioned games.

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: Sorts of games that I spy kind of games that you can play. And there's so many games that you can play with license plates.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, License plates, signs, different sorts of things that are running the Alphabet. We used to do license plates and where they would line up in the Alphabet. We would do band names, all sorts of. Or different cities that we would see on the road. Oh, yeah.

Erica: Just keeping a list of all of the, the license plates, what state they were from, to see how many states you, you could get. And all of those things are keeping the brain active and.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, yeah.

Erica: So we don't have to be putting our kids on devices to keep them busy. We can act; we can get them to be actively involved socially while we're driving and having fun listening to them play these games.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely. Staying present. But you know, lastly on copiloting, I think that it also teaches organization, and it also very much teaches planning skills. And I think those things are really important. And if you have younger children that know how to do these things, I think they become more confident when it's time for them to start driver's education.

Erica: Yeah, but, but even doing things as simple as, oh, we're on the way to the grocery store and I didn't make a list this time. Let's brainstorm together. And will you write down the list

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Erica: on my phone so that we, have it? Or better yet, why don't we see if we can memorize it?

Kim Sorise: Yep. Yeah. We could do a mine palace and leave. Leave the grocery items randomly around the house. That's one that, that we will do in practice. I left potatoes in the kitchen sink and spaghetti's on the floor and there was milk in the bathroom sink. And these are things that we need to remember when we go to the store.

Erica: Right. So you think of a common pathway that you walk along and then you think of the different food items along the way and the more ridiculous you make it, the better. And so if there's spaghetti on the wall, you could, there could be tomato sauce and it's all messy and it looks like blood, but when you add that kind of emotional reaction, like, oh my God, it's almost scary looking when you bring in the emotion. It makes it that much more memorable, but it turns it into a game. So many of these things. And then we're teaching kids to strengthen those skills instead of weakening them because so many of these Very addictive social media programs that are out there. They're really just trying to grab your attention and trying to sell things to you. Yeah, they. They scroll at such a fast rate that it's really in many ways almost damaging to executive functioning skills because you don't even have enough time to process it before the next thing comes up. And it's just overwhelming.

Kim Sorise: Yeah. It's also depleting the dopamine that the brain produces throughout the course of the day, which actually when kids have to sit down and do a task and they've spent all that time scrolling and they don't have any left in their brain to even begin the initiation part of the beginning of a task. So because they've depleted that, that coffer of dopamine that the brain only produces so much of at any given day. So it actually makes it harder. But yeah, we do visual grocery lists a lot. I do this for myself also just to build my own executive functioning, to keep things smart, to add to my working memory, because I feel as if, as when I get older and also with hormonal changes, like I forget things a lot more than I did before. But when we go to the grocery store, we got to do something with that food. And cooking is another incredibly beneficial executive functioning skill because a great transition.

Erica: I just have to say that that was a good one.

Kim Sorise: Thanks. Cooking requires time.

Erica: Yeah.

Kim Sorise: Management. There is some planning involved. There is some working memory involved. There is some sequencing. There can even be a little bit of impulse control involved too. But I think if you follow a recipe that requires the sequencing piece and.

Erica: The planning, measurement, and learning how to use all the tools within a kitchen. Because a lot of kids, they don't know how to cook because they don't really understand how to use all the tools.

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: Learning to use the tools but also learning how to read a recipe and make sense of a recipe and the timing. So time management is a huge one. So that you don't burn it and.

Kim Sorise: To make sure that your different items are ready at the same time. And even when I, I work with clients, my adult clients, I ask, they ask me this question a lot. They're like, I know you like to cook. How do you get things to be done at the same time? I don't know how to have three or four things cooking all at once to be done.

Erica: Yeah. Some people really struggle with that. Absolutely. And that's what executive functioning is. It's really conductor.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, absolutely.

Erica: Conduct a meal. But part of it is the answer to that question is usually planning Yep.

Kim Sorise: Backward planning. And that's usually what I let them know. The nice thing is, is that recipes will tell you about how long something should take. They should tell you about how long the preparation should take and also how long the cooking should take. So if you have three different items and one says that the cooking time is 30 minutes and the other one is 20 and another one is 45, you're going to start the one that takes the longest first and then you are back planning. And I usually tell you should be using your stove timer for something to keep track of a cooking time. But this is also where your phone can be helpful. I think some people could use their Siri or Google or whatever the device is to set reminders of when to begin, things that can definitely help within cooking. So this is another way also to support your child,

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Kim Sorise: teach them absolutely useful world skills but also using technology in a resource way rather than just for sheer mindless entertainment. Having Echo remind you is a good way to use technology when you are trying to do many things at once, like cooking, where a lot of adults are constantly multitasking to be able to manage a household. That's a good use of technology for being a resource. So I think there's a lot of different things that can be folded in, in the cooking process.

Erica: Yeah, volunteering. Volunteering is a really, really interesting way of developing executive functioning skills. And what I like about this is it really brings in somewhat emotional regulation, but it's really more compassion. So it's not necessarily regulation, but it's more of an externalizing instead of the. I like how I read Mark Nepo's passages every day. He's a poet and he was talking just yesterday about eyeing and mying.

Kim Sorise: Nice.

Erica: And that's not a great way to go through life and it gets us into a lot of trouble. But you said that's nice. Tell me what your thought was on that.

Kim Sorise: Well, I think volunteering helps to build empathy. Right. And so many of us are stuck in this. I, me, my. How does this impact me? What is my response to this? What is my input here? How is this going to benefit me? So, so yeah, I think there is a lot of I, me, mine in our daily life. But when we go and volunteer, it's not about us at all.

Erica: Yeah.

Kim Sorise: At all.

Erica: Well, well, it kind of does in, in the end become about us because it shifts us. And Dan Siegel says something that I really love. I've seen him a couple times and he uses this term. So he's combining me and we into Muy and I think it moves you from the eyeing and mying to more of the muy. And that's a lovely, that's a lovely thing because I think that at the heart of existence, we didn't come here to be alone.

Kim Sorise: Right?

Erica: We didn't come here to serve ourselves. Perhaps there's some people on this planet that do. But we won't go into that but. Or it appears that. But I think that true happiness happens through connection.

Kim Sorise: I agree.

Erica: It's such a vital skill to teach kids that it's not about me and I, it's not why we're here. And when we do teach kids about that too much, it's almost setting them up for a lot of pain in life.

Kim Sorise: I think that volunteering allows children to build emotional and social resiliency in action. And when we volunteer, we're not taking ourselves out of it, but we are there for a different purpose. We're there to support a community, a person, an entity, whatever that is. So children have to learn to adapt to new roles. They have to follow through on commitments like yeah, pen palling was something that we always did years ago when I was a kid. Yeah, that was absolutely teaching you to follow through on a commitment. Because if you didn't write back to that person that wrote you sat down and gave of their time and themselves to write you a letter, man, that really. That taught a lesson.

Erica: Usually it ended. You severed the relationship.

Kim Sorise: You absolutely severed the relationship and there was no more communication. Volunteering really teaches flexibility. But another thing that I think volunteering works is it teaches us to be good self-monitors. I think it can be really impactful about. Wow. I am feeling a certain kind of way about this situation that I'm seeing or engaging with people that are different from myself and my family. And I have to sit again sometimes in a little bit of uncomfortableness. So I can take some time to process how I feel about what I'm seeing. And I also have to use

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Kim Sorise: self-monitoring because sometimes when people are in places of uncomfortability, they say things that may be deemed as inappropriate or uncomfortable or sometimes people laugh or sometimes people get emotional, and they might tear up. Being able to handle oneself emotionally in those sorts of situations is also self-monitoring.

Erica: So tolerance, tolerance for anybody, that's different. So many kids, they're just uncomfortable with people that are different because they've never been around them and they don't even necessarily see them as human. And when they can be in their presence and they interact with them and they see that these are human beings, that we're all just human beings on a planet doing the best we can. It softens them. I think it's the perfect antidote to bullying, which is very present.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely.

Erica: Volunteering is a really, really lovely thing to do with your family during those breaks.

Kim Sorise: One last piece on this. And it was also how we could do it in a classroom. I had a teacher a few years ago. Kids were. It was Spanish class. And the kiddos were like, ugh, I don't want to learn a secondary language. This is how. Why am I going to need this? This is really not fun. And they were really struggling with buy in from their students. And I said, just a suggestion. Because they came to me and said, how? How do I try to get by in? I said, we have conversation clubs all the time around the city for our. That support the refugee ministries in town in Louisville. I said, why not take your class to a conversation club? Let them be on the other side where they see people trying to learn a new language and see actively how they are struggling to get through their daily activities of life because of a shift in their communication. And it will also put some of your students in that same position. And that might be a feeling they've never had before. And it might give them a different way to look at why learning a second language can be so beneficial and why so many people try so very hard to be multilingual. And they did that. And it was a drastically different class for many of those students after that field trip. So I think that we can learn all kinds of things by volunteering of our time and our efforts.

Erica: Beautiful.

Kim Sorise: Another one that I think is fun is the power of 10. It might even be 20 in your household or 50, it depends. But the power of 10 bucks. Figure out how to spend a small amount of money and the forces that can impact one. When you have a certain amount of money, how do we say, what could.

Erica: You spend this $10 on that would offer the greatest good?

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: For the family.

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: Or for a person. You can buy a $10 present for someone. What do you think would really mean a lot to them?

Kim Sorise: Yeah. Tapping into values and the way we think about things and what is special to us. It supports prioritizing and decision making, creative problem solving. We got 10 bucks, and we got four people in our family. We're making dinner tonight. How are we going to do that?

Erica: Yeah. That's an interesting way to look at it. You could even flip it and say, all right, it's your dad's birthday. Coming up. I'm not going to give you any money, but I want you to give him the best present he's ever gotten. What could it be?

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: To really get them to think about. And you can use anything in the house. You can repurpose anything you want. What could you make for your dad that will blow him away?

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: You know, just. You kind of almost create these challenges. They have all these kind of like, game shows right. On TV where you have to do these challenges. So it's a matter of creating these challenges, whether it's the power of 10 or it's the power of creativity or the power of repurposing. The power of recycling. Right. Just turning it into a game that makes it into something fun and memorable where people will end up in the end saying, wow, that was really creative. That was really new. And doing anything creative also is a fantastic way of really spurring on executive functions.

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Kim Sorise: Absolutely. This is also a great way that you can add on four mundane things that have to be done around the house. Turn it into a competition, turn it into a game. Make it a challenge. We got two bathrooms that both need to be clean. We got two kids. All right. You have this amount of time.

Erica: Go.

Kim Sorise: Who's doing the best?

Erica: Who's going to have the cleanest bathroom?

Kim Sorise: Yeah. And absolutely.

Erica: And you both get the same tools.

Kim Sorise: And we can make it fun. And no phones are involved.

Erica: Timers are really interesting. For some kids, they're very motivating, and for other kids, they'll fall apart. So you have to be very cognizant of weather, time, timing. For me, it was very motivating. When I was a kid, I loved nothing more than my mother saying, that was so fast. That was like, that's what I wanted to hear out of her mouth. You did that so quickly. How did you do that so quickly? That's what I was going for. But for some kids, it doesn't work. So be mindful of what you can change it.

Kim Sorise: You don't always have to use a timer. Use a song. I'm going to get. We're doing two songs. You pick a song that you love, and child number two, pick your song. We play these two songs. That's the amount of time. So it's just the power of music. Can absolutely create a timer without anybody ever seeing one or any kind of countdown. So use your favorite songs. You can also. I think I love sound. I think you could use a podcast if it were something longer. You could always use audiobook, story, audiobook. Anything like that. Can Also help to be a timer for people that do struggle with that sense of countdown.

Erica: Yeah, yeah, it's a great idea.

Kim Sorise: One of my favorite things. It gets a little science; it gets a little messy. You get some good, delayed gratification. It's gardening. Kids really enjoy gardening. We have a garden at our school. It is one of our largest clubs. It is a family club in the summer and a student-based club in the school time. We produce food and cook it in our kitchen at school. But man, do our kids love gardening and gardening. Not only is it therapeutic, not only is it grounding. Let's talk about just putting our hands and our feet in dirt and what that does for the body and the mind. Especially if we're struggling with kiddos that need some emotional regulation. I take my students outside and we kick our shoes off in nice weather and we stand in the grass, and we feel the earth beneath our feet, and we put our hands in dirt. And that really lowers blood pressure, it lowers our heart rate. It can really create a beautiful sense of relaxation. We need vitamin D. Most of our children and adults in this country are suffering from a lack of vitamin D. So gardening is huge.

Erica: I agree. I am an avid gardener myself and I garden once a week. I garden with my. I have a gardener, a Russian gardener, who's absolutely wonderful and we'll even put music on out in the garden. But there's so much great executive functioning there because you're planning out the flower beds you're planning. And you're also time management. Right. Cause you want to make sure if you have a perennial garden that you're planning out when the flowers are going to be blossoming so that you've always got color throughout the season. Learning the names of all the flowers, that's something. I have a Quizlet so I can learn the names of all my flowers. But that's another great executive functioning. Yet there's so much that's wonderful about executive functioning in the garden, whether it's a vegetable garden or a flowering garden or even just doing chores in the garden. Like in the fall, picking up all the leaves in the winter, shoveling the snow in the summertime, perhaps just running in the sprinkler.

Kim Sorise: Sure, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it teaches patience, care over time. Because gardening is not immediate. Right. Unless you're putting a start in the ground, but still you're not getting the benefits of the fruiting. When you put a start in the ground, it is delayed gratification. There is memory. You have to remember to water you have to remember to feed and fertilize whatever you're using.

00:40:00

Kim Sorise: The importance of sometimes just leaving things be. You have to learn. And there's also this consistent conflict of human versus nature out there. Because gardening also has an incredible amount of problem solving and also flexibility built in. Because sometimes, like I have this week, I had a beautiful, gorgeous squash plant and then I woke up the next day and it is wilted. Well, I do know what this means, but I have to find my predator. I can find no holes; I can find no evidence. I have no seed, no eggs. So this is again, it is problem solving of what? Am I going to get the fruits of my labor or am I going to have a good plant?

Erica: Right.

Kim Sorise: And it's, it's against. When you're dealing with insects and things, it's a battle against time. Because I had a beautiful plant at 8am but by 3 o' clock I had a drastically different looking species out there.

Erica: With other critters that have different ideas on what they want to do with that plant.

Kim Sorise: Yeah. So I think gardening for students, there is sequence involved, there is observation involved, there is adjustment and pivoting, regulation. Emotional regulation. Yes.

Erica: Cucumber, yes.

Kim Sorise: Or when the squirrel runs away with the nicest tomato on the vine. But it does, it helps build all kinds of executive functioning skills. But also, I think truly one of the most important pieces is that nature is a healer to our body and can help us calm down and can help us find. Yes. It's so wonderful.

Erica: Yep.

Kim Sorise: It's so wonderful.

Erica: We get along on that one.

Kim Sorise: Art. Let's talk about the importance of art. Yeah. And just grab a canvas, grab some crayons, some pastels, some old paint that's been hanging out.

Erica: My thing is wonderful.

Kim Sorise: Learn to make play out of stuff in your backyard. Yeah, but like just that idea of having art supporting executive function because there is some planning, there is some working memory, there is that cognitive flow flexibility, there is natural problem solving, there is self-control and there's sustained attention and there's so many things that are built. What happens? How do I fix a quote unquote mistake when I'm doing a new drawing or starting a new sculpture or with a piece of clay? How do I fix a mistake? Is it a mistake at all?

Erica: Right, right. You turn it into something new. Maybe it's just, it's communicating with you that it wants to be something different.

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: But art is an incredible executive functioning tool, and I've had a lot of fun with it. It's funny because whenever I Have a student that has poor fine motor skills, and they're shut down and they don't even want to pick up a pencil. Most of them are willing to do some form of art. And I found that one of my favorite things to do is to find a YouTube video, and I find out what they're passionate about. I can think of one little boy who was really into Pokémon, but he wouldn't pick up a pencil. And I was like, what if I could teach you how to draw Pokémon? Well, all of a sudden, his eyes lit up. Really? Yeah. There's this guy online and why don't we do it together? We'll both draw together. And we would be doing. He's like, oh, I don't like mine. I like yours better. I was like, you want to swap?

Kim Sorise: Yeah.

Erica: And so there's some really, really good, simple tutorials that will help them to make something that looks really good. It's sequenced step by step, line by line, and painstakingly videotaped. So you can pause it, you can replay it. But all of those things helps them to work through those areas where they're stuck. That resistance of, I don't want to learn something I don't want to. It was funny. Nobody could teach him how to hold a pencil. But when he said, well, how did you draw like that? I was like, oh, because I hold the pencil like this. Then all of a sudden, he wanted to hold the pencil like this. I wasn't telling him he was doing anything wrong. I was just showing him how I did it, and he wanted to emulate

00:45:00

Erica: that. So art is. It's funny how they have art class, because I think art should be integrated into the classroom. They shouldn't be. It shouldn't be separate. I think gym should be integrated into the classroom, into the lessons. There's no reason to separate them because to me, what you're doing is you're speaking another processing language.

Kim Sorise: Yes.

Erica: And if you can bring that language into the classroom, you're going to reach some of those kids that aren't reachable.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely. I mean, we've seen, for math, kids that can jump up and down. It can support better counting and better computation. Music can certainly help students in the art room, in the writing lab, even doing different during testing. I mean, there's all kinds of different ways to be able to support a student or a child, to be able to learn to manage their emotions or even task initiation. I had a student who was an absolutely incredible artist. Incredible artist could paint, could sculpt, and also could draw. Did beautiful characters. But the hardest thing for him was starting a new assignment. Because just a new creative project was so overwhelming and so intimidating. And having a new blank canvas, it was too much of. Too much white space, too much of nothing. And that was one of the hardest things. And so we would start with something like, what color do you think you want it to be? Let's start just by picking up a color. Let's just put a color on the canvas and see where you go from there. See what it can turn into. One tiny step at a time.

Erica: You can give them a starting. They could. You can get something to start with.

Kim Sorise: I'm going to draw this line, and you go from there.

Erica: Yeah.

Kim Sorise: Let me take that first step out of your way.

Erica: Yeah.

Kim Sorise: So. And that took some trust to build because at first, they were like, oh, no, I have to. It's my work, I have to do it. Okay. But then eventually I said, would you let me just draw a line and see if you could go from there? And eventually said, yeah, go right ahead. That would be kind of cool. And I was like, all right. Cool. And it turned into something else. And they were like, wow, okay. I think I might be able to use this as a strategy for myself.

Erica: Right, right, right. That's where you get into the metacognition. Right, right. That's what I hear in that statement. Right. Where he's starting to say, hey, here's a strategy I can use.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, absolutely. Or I'm just going to start with blue and see where blue takes me today.

Erica: Or.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, absolutely. So I think art is an incredible means to be able to support so many executive functioning skills for our students and our children.

Erica: And they even have a field called art therapy.

Kim Sorise: Right.

Erica: Because it is so great at helping kids to calm down or regulate emotions or even communicate what are the triggers that are happening that are causing the dysregulation. So it can actually help them to move through and even recover through trauma by acting, whether it's drawing it or perhaps working with puppets or. It's amazing. And to me, that is a form of art.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, it's big. I mean, art is a way of processing. Processing the world around us and the emotions that we have and the challenges that we've come up against. And also the places of wonder and beauty in our lives, too. We can. All of them can be processed through. Through artistic expression in some kind of way.

Erica: Yeah, absolutely.

Kim Sorise: Yeah. I always like to have art as part of anything we do. And music, too. And I think music is not just for the players. Music can be created by anyone. You don't always need lessons. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Erica: And dance, it's bringing in all those creative acting. It goes really go. Goes back to how many little kids do you know of that don't have an imagination? They all do this kind of imaginary play and we. We let it go. When in fact it actually can be a wonderful tool to use throughout school.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely. We used to. My mom and I had weekly dance parties. Those were great ways to break up space, put on a couple favorite

00:50:00

Kim Sorise: songs and dance it out in the living room. It was. It's a great way to take up time while you're waiting for something to cook in the oven. But I think dancing is artistic expression. It also gets emotions out of the. It provides movement in ways that we don't always move our bodies. So I think having an afternoon dance party is great. I remember being stuck on i71 here because it often gets stop for hours trying to get out of Louisville on your way to Cincinnati. And I watched a group of friends have a freeway dance party and stop traffic because we were going nowhere. People pulled out their balls and out of the. The trunk and had a football game and another car got out and had a dance party on the side of i71. And these are just other ways to enjoy. To break.

Erica: That's a great. That's a great thing to. To witness. Yeah. But yeah, I mean I can remember when I was a child, I was a child of disco. I grew up when in the 70s and took a boombox to school and we did the Hustle in the hallways of all girls private school, and I taught everybody the Hustle. I have no idea how I learned it because I didn't have YouTube. I'm very curious about that. I must have learned it somewhere. But that's another. Yeah, great executive function having to the dance moves. There's sequencing, you know, or even coming up with your own dance and. Or even. It's funny, I have this publication called Multi-Sensory Multiplication and I wanted to honor all the different ways of processing. So I have multiple ways of teaching multiplication. And one of them was teaching multiplication on your body. And that there are certain touching. The different body parts represented different numbers. So if you tapped on your belly, your belly was five and tapping on your chest was two. So you would do five times five is 25. It'd be five times five. You'd tap your belly twice is 25. And then you hit your chest and then your belly again so that they would learn their multiplication on their body by touching the different body because they all represented numbers from the very top, which is one to stomping their feet, which is nine, or actually stomping their feet with zero. So that could be 10 would be your head and stomping your foot. But it is absolutely hilarious to see some of these kids doing their multiplication tables and then before they're not getting up and they're not touching their body, but they're sitting in their chair and you can see them kind of wiggling around and their body and moving their feet and it's just darling, but it's allowing the kids to process how they need to process, but bringing the joy and the fun. It's amazing how fun an obstacle course is. An amazing executive functioning at a birthday party, have an obstacle course. Kids will go ballistic over this. It's the funnest thing they've ever done. They love it and it builds those skills.

Kim Sorise: Well, that was the. One of the last things I was going to say is I know we've talked about things in the car, but planning an activity, planning an obstacle course, planning your own birthday party, or planning the family's next outing, these are also ways of building those executive functioning skills. Not only do you have collaboration and that connection that is so important within the family setting, but you also have some goal setting in there. You also have again, that organization and flexibility. You're also considering the needs of other people because you have guests that are coming or maybe some of your guests have differentiated or special needs. So if you are planning an obstacle course, then you need to make sure that you have one that every single person can be a participant in. And what is that? How are you going to have to adjust? So I think it's a direct application of an incredibly high level of executive functioning is planning activities and games and parties and outings with your children.

Erica: And if the kids aren't really ready for that level of executive functions, they can use AI to assist them.

Kim Sorise: Them.

Erica: They can go on to Goblin Tools and help to. It can help to create a sequence. They can go on to ChatGPT and say, can you give me some ideas of different parts of an obstacle course? It would be really fun. I want to bring balloons in; I want to bring in water. I want to have activities

00:55:00

Erica: that are very physical and. And what can I use as props that are. It's simple and doesn't cost me anything. So that you can just. You can teach them how to. To use AI in a way that also nurtures creativity and. And executive functions.

Kim Sorise: Absolutely. And I think perhaps maybe one of the greatest things is that all of this experience, because that's what you're doing, is being building experience for you also as a parent, to be able to reference back to when your kiddo hits a wall and things get hard. Hey, you've done this before. You've done this really hard thing before. Remember when you got us home in the car and there was that horrible traffic jam, and you used some strategies and read that map and figured out how to get us home. You can also do this hard thing too. So I think being able to always build in, I believe in you, I believe in your ability, and you can do hard things. I think that's a really great tool to be able to teach your child as well.

Erica: And as you said, go to a specific example, because if you're just saying a kid can do it when they feel like they can't, that's not going to help them. That's not going to build the skill. They're just not going to believe you anymore. So we want to. And again, it goes back to Carol Dweck's research on the growth mindset that we really want to be reinforcing effort more than anything. Just saying, oh, but you're smart, you can do this. Showing them, giving them a real-life example of when they were able to do it and really rewarding that effort of trying is the way to go.

Kim Sorise: Yeah, being specific when this is something that teachers do all the time. There is no great job like there used to be on the, on our papers where it would say great effort in a star. No, be specific. I really liked how you use that introductory phrase. It absolutely set off the rest of the sentence. Good use of your comma with that subordinating clause. Like be very specific. And I know that most parents are not doing that in terms of helping to edit their child's paper but be specific in where they hit the ball out of the park, where they were able to shine, because then it will make the next time even more easy for them because skills are built over time.

Erica: And I'm going to end with play games. Play games. And if you don't have any specific games, I just came out with my book Executive Functioning Games for Groups and Classes. And it has 29 new games. Because typically when people are like, oh, what can I do for an executive functioning game? They go back to red light, green light, or they go back to Mother may I to these ones that are really old games. And if you're looking for something fresh and new. I encourage you to check it out. You can come to my website, learningspecialistcourses.com and, and I think somewhere in there you can also get a free game just to test it out. But yeah, that's another way. But even so many of the games like Spot it. What are some of the ones that you like?

Kim Sorise: We always played memory game. That was a big one.

Erica: Yeah, there are all sorts of. I mean, most games are executive functioning or offer executive functioning strategies or they strengthen that skill. So. Yeah. Well, this is great. Thank you so much, Kim. It's actually the 4th of July and we are podcasting on the 4th, and I hope you all have a wonderful 4th. I guess by the time you hear it, we'll be, well, well past that. So thank you, Kim. I really appreciate you spending this afternoon with me.

Kim Sorise: Well, thank you so much for having me. I. I enjoyed this conversation very much.

Darius: Sponsored by ivvi. Imagine turning your meeting's audio into a live mind map instantly so you remember what matters. It's ideal for students and managers with dyslexia or adhd. Try ivvi for free now at ivvi App. That's ivvi.

Erica: Sponsored by learning specialists courses.com courses and resources that support educators and coaches.

Darius: Thank you for joining us at the Executive Function Brain Trainer podcast.

Erica: Check out our show notes for links and resources and follow us on social media.

00:59:48

Episode 91 Building Executive Functioning Skills over Breaks

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