In one ear, out the other
Even though my daughter is very capable of understanding and appreciating the routines of our lives, the reality is that I still have to remind her to do some very basic, basic things. As much as I try to heed my own advice of not nagging at her, I still fail sometimes. Other times, I let things slide so she deals with whatever consequences that may arise. But, invariably, I still find myself telling her to do things that she doesn’t have the luxury to put off. I’m not sure whether she’s stalling or just being forgetful!
Let’s set aside the purposeful forgetfulness that comes along with growing up. Kids come up with all sorts of excuses for not doing something: they’re tired, too much effort, they’re exerting independence; it didn’t come with a pony, blah, blah, blah. For my daughter who typically beats me handily at the memory game, her purposeful forgetfulness rarely fools me. But when she’s stressed or has multiple priorities, she’ll struggle and even exhibit temporary amnesia! She’s not faking it. Nor can she help it. Her brain’s just not developed, yet.
Even at the rate of a million new neural connections forming every second in the first few years of life, the very characteristics that define human beings still take years to develop and cognitive abilities for long term planning are developed over a span of decades.
The most advance part of our brain is the prefrontal cortex and is responsible for cognitive functions including goal-directed behavior. This frontal lobe is akin to the CEO and has executive functions that govern attention, planning and problem solving. It’s crucial for short term memory and it is also the least developed in children. When infants are born, only their brainstem is wired for basic homeostasis functions. Gradually, other systems come online: limbic system for emotion, behavior, long term memory and the midbrain for motor functions and auditory/visual processing. Even at the rate of a million new neural connections forming every second in the first few years of life, the very characteristics that define human beings still take years to develop and cognitive abilities for long term planning are developed over a span of decades. However, fight or flight is a mammalian response and it’s immediate. That’s why my daughter is able to beat me in the memory game because even at a very young age, her brain is wired to recognize shapes that look like cheetahs so she can run away compared to my brain which has focused on fashioning tools and developing (hunting) strategies.
The only thing you can do as a parent when you are frustrated with your child’s apparent lack of long range planning is to cut them some slack. Your elementary school age child still requires you to remind her about things that need to be done and in what order to perform them. Your child is doing the best she can while her brain is multitasking an inordinate number of sub-processes. Remember also that executive function skills have little correlation to your child’s emotional and intellectual abilities. So hastening their development or getting frustrated when they don’t understand will only exacerbate the problem and forestall their development of higher cognitive abilities.
It’s analogous to writing instructional source code. You’ll want the option to incrementally review and debug your instructions, line-by-line, through an interpreter versus a compiler which produces execution code all at once—errors and all. Nobody writes a best app on their first attempt and certainly it doesn’t happen at all without some deliberate foresight and formulation. Anything worthwhile will take time to develop. Executive function skills are life skills and as such, they will take decades to learn and to iterate.
