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Parenting Advice with John Rosemond: 'Executive function' the latest iteration of ADHD
John Rosemond Color WEB
John Rosemond
The new school year is still fresh and "it" has already begun, "it" being the ongoing effort on the part of schools to persuade parents that there is something wrong with their kids' brains. This year, this effort is about something called "executive function," which the Harvard Center on the Developing Child defines as the "mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully. Just as an air traffic control system at a busy airport safely manages the arrivals and departures of many aircraft on multiple runways, the brain needs this skill set to filter distractions, prioritize tasks, set and achieve goals, and control impulses." (Full disclosure: According to HCDC, I am not qualified to be an air traffic controller.) A number of teachers have told me that over the past year or so, they have been required to attend seminars on executive function led by psychologists, psychiatrists or pediatric neurologists who claim that the frontal lobe moderates executive function; therefore, deficiencies in executive function are due to frontal lobe dysfunctions of one sort or another.
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