CHAPTER 1
What Makes Young Minds Tick?
If we were to visit any neighborhood or school in the country, and could magically view the lives of children unfolding, we would notice that some children seem destined for success in its many forms. Whether in strong relationships, “good character,” personal fulfillment, or academic or vocational achievement, some kids seem to blaze a trail more easily than others. As a society, and particularly as a generation, we try to understand the psychological and social forces influencing a child’s journey along life’s path. After all, what we understand, we can hope to shape and manage. Yet what if there were an unseen hand—a little understood Factor Ex—influencing the trajectory of children’s lives and their prospects for success? Chances are, we would want to know what this Factor Ex is. How exactly does it impact the lives of children? How can something that has such a profound effect on a child’s life have slipped under the parental radar? And are there ways to manage Factor Ex—to tilt the odds in your child’s favor?
This is a book about young minds, and what makes them work well. It is for parents, teachers, and other concerned adults who seek a deeper understanding of children’s capabilities than can be explained by IQ, personality, or environment alone. An important message of this book is that relatively small differences in the way that children and adolescents think can have an extraordinary impact on their life success. In the chapters to come, you may find examples of this phenomenon that are similar to your own observations as a parent, teacher, or mentor. Above all, you will find ways to help children become and feel more capable—strategies that will benefit children while their window of opportunity is still open.
The brain differences we will discuss emerge early in life and are often detectable by the time a child is a toddler. These differences are expressed almost continually in how children learn, remember, and problem-solve. By necessity, the discussions to follow will take us into the heart of families. This is because the important differences in children’s thinking skills this book addresses will have their first impact at home, shaping the atmosphere of family life. As a psychologist, I’ve helped families, schools, and community organizations find solutions to the achievement, self-esteem, and self-control problems so commonly found among children today. To help you as well, this book includes many ideas and suggestions that have been time-tested at home and school.

What Is Factor Ex?

For most of us, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the vast amount of information we receive from health professionals and the news media these days, especially when that information pertains to something as complicated as the brain. Yet some of these insights, especially when they are informed by good neuroscientific research, can be incredibly helpful to parents. Just as a road map will help you drive from New York to Los Angeles more effectively than simply heading west, a guide to this research can help you navigate the twists and turns of every childhood. My intention is to highlight what science has learned about one extraordinarily important aspect of developing minds—executive control. To understand why psychologists and scientists use this term, it helps to know that executive control is directed by what is called the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Basically, this is the front part of the brain’s frontal lobes. (If you really want to get in touch with this concept, place your hand over your eyes. Underneath your hand and behind your eyes is your prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain critically important in shaping who we are and who we become.)
Although you can’t actually see the prefrontal cortex of your child, you can affect it. In the same way that asking someone to do push-ups accelerates their heart rate, adults can do all kinds of things to accelerate a child’s executive control. When you’ve finished reading this book, you’ll have dozens of tools to get this job done.
The prefrontal cortex acts as the brain’s conductor. Just as the conductor of an orchestra directs the playing of musicians to create the most beautiful music possible, the prefrontal cortex directs diverse brain processes to create the most efficient and productive thinking possible. When the brain’s conductor is underactive, it’s just like what happens when an orchestra’s conductor loses focus—people forget what they’re supposed to do; harmony and optimal performance are undermined. As we’ll see, executive control is the starting point for essential mental tasks such as getting started on something, sustaining attention, remembering critical information, and monitoring one’s own actions. These tasks, among other executive functions, play an undeniable role in determining the pace and success of a child’s development. Although these skills are important to people of all ages, childhood is where we find the greatest differences between individuals, because executive control skills are still in dynamic development. That’s why we must consider what you can do now, when the executive brain can still be molded by thoughtful parenting. The synergy between the innate capabilities of a child’s brain and the strategic care I want to help you provide is the key to improving Factor Ex—and is at the heart of leaving no mind behind.
 
 
Factor Ex is shorthand for executive control. Wherever that term appears, we are discussing the collective functions of the brain’s prefrontal cortex.
Understanding the role of the executive brain, you’ll have a greater appreciation of what is required to manage the demands of growing up, and how evolving aspects of our world have profoundly changed what we expect of children. We’ll explore how the psychological demands of adulthood have had a “trickledown” effect on our perception of what a capable child should be able to do. In every generation, adult expectations and idealizations about childhood influence the course of children’s lives. Although these expectations grow from the hopes we hold for children, it is still our job to understand how those ideals intersect with the natural timeline for developing minds.
Because our primary focus will be children, including teenagers, it seems important to begin our exploration by sharing some stories that illustrate the extraordinary impact of executive control (Factor Ex) in the lives of children.

Have You Met . . .

Phillip can’t understand why other kids don’t seem to like him. No matter how many times he tries to initiate a “get-together”—to play at his house, or meet up at the mall—he is rebuffed. “It’s like I’m contagious,” he complains. In Phillip’s mind he is acting just like everyone else and there is no logical reason for how he is treated by peers. At first, Phillip felt hurt, but more recently, he gets angry. “He’s in a cycle of defensiveness and anger, which only makes matters worse,” says his mother. “Phillip has to slow down and pay better attention to what other people are talking about. He thinks he’s joining in, but half the time he’s talking about things they don’t get, or don’t care about. He talks fast and interrupts. The other kids look at him like, ‘What’s up with you?’” Phillip’s teachers agree. “Phillip likes other students well enough, but he just doesn’t see how he comes off to others,” comments one teacher. Phillip is a child whose heart is in the right place when it comes to social relationships—he’s interested in others and is friendly, but his lack of self-awareness limits his ability to fit in. Rather surprising for a boy with an IQ of 135—or is it?
Deidra is a seventh-grader with a strong appetite for adventure. In her quest for popularity she takes all kinds of risks: sexually provocative behavior on the school bus, high-speed rides on the backs of motorcycles, sampling liquor provided by her older brother’s friend. Deidra wants to be noticed and she wants to have fun. She almost always lives in the immediacy of a moment, rarely connecting choices in the present to consequences in the future. Her mind doesn’t grasp time very well, so cause-and-effect understanding often eludes her. An important clue to Deidra’s difficulty is that she’s late for almost everything.
Without question, Deidra has an attitude problem. But could her skewed priorities be affected by a brain that doesn’t easily regulate emotional needs? Does Deidra need help understanding the signals she’s sending to older boys and how those boys perceive her? At thirteen, Deidra is at a major fork in the road, and her choice of path may well have consequences that last a lifetime. How can Deidra’s parents activate her executive brain to help her avoid the unthinkable?
Kelsey has just been expelled from a private school that offers small classrooms and a wide variety of enrichment programs. Despite the fact that the school gave him what it felt was maximum leeway, Kelsey twice hit another student hard enough to make him cry. According to his father, “Teachers complained that Kelsey was constantly disruptive, argumentative, and temperamental, and ‘not ready for school.’” “My eighteen-year-old nephew has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and my sister thinks Kelsey’s bipolar, too,” said his mother. “My husband admits Kelsey’s strong-willed, but he thinks the school is overreacting. I want to help him but I don’t know if we have a real problem or not. It’s a confusing time for us. We never imagined one of our kids would be expelled.” Surprisingly, Kelsey is only five years old—an age when executive control is the most important determinant of a child’s readiness for school.
A Preschool Dilemma . . .
Did you know that preschoolers are more likely to be expelled from school than any other age student? Preschool expulsions occur at a rate of about 6.7 per 1,000 students, compared with a rate of 2.1 expulsions for children in kindergarten through twelfth grade. What has happened to children or school that so many young kids can no longer meet the behavioral demands of early education? Part of the answer lies in recognizing the increased demands made on preschooler’s executive thinking skills. While preschool used to be dedicated almost exclusively to developing self-regulation skills, we now expect children to gain learning skills, such as reading, much earlier—and if “no child is to be left behind,” there isn’t a whole lot of wiggle room for those kids struggling to meet the basic behavioral demands of school.
Trent’s parents are industrious, often putting in long days. They don’t mind working hard except when they see fifteen-year-old Trent lounging around the house until early afternoon, unable to get started on anything—even taking a shower or making plans with friends. An evaluation by a therapist rules out depression. “Procrastination rubs us the wrong way,” admits Trent’s father. “He’s letting all his potential go to waste.” When Trent is asked why he can’t get started on things, he just shrugs his shoulders, averts his eyes, and gets quiet. Even Trent doesn’t know what’s wrong. All he knows is that in his mind, directions get jumbled, and he’s always behind in finishing things. As a result, he’s perpetually stuck, typically impressing others as lacking ambition. This otherwise bright and likable boy is in jeopardy of sabotaging his prospects for college. Because no one understands the roots of Trent’s problem, family time is an unfortunate exercise in frustration and hurt feelings. “Doesn’t he know what’s at stake?” demands his father. Trent does feel the pressure, but the solution has less to do with trying harder than defining new strategies to help Trent organize his thoughts and initiate action—indispensable skills for the transition to college.
Cara just turned nine and should be able to remember to put her dirty clothes in the hamper, brush her teeth before bed, and pack her book bag before she is off to school. Yet no matter how many times she is reminded, Cara constantly forgets. Both her parents and teacher have grown frustrated with Cara’s forgetfulness and privately wonder if the forgetting isn’t actually some type of resistance or defiance about accepting responsibility. Cara is often reprimanded and will soon face being grounded for a problem over which she has little control—a very weak working memory. No one realizes that just because Cara is smart doesn’t mean she can always remember things long enough to learn them—in essence, to transfer information to longer-term memory where it can be recalled and applied on an everyday basis. Even Cara has started believing that her problem stems from being “bad,” rather than understanding what’s actually happening—Factor Ex is asleep on the job.
These are just a few descriptions of what happens when executive control is underactive. The achievement gap—the difference between a child’s ability and what he is truly capable of achieving—gets bigger and bigger. And make no mistake, problems with an expanding achievement gap extend well beyond the realm of school. The value of understanding the cognitive roots of the achievement gap is nearly impossible to overstate. From this understanding, we can find the compassion and strategies to help our children accept their personal challenges, and to work toward doing their best. You may be thinking, “But my child’s problem is a learning disorder, emotional problem, or simply a stage of life.” That may be true, but a common denominator for most kids affected by these concerns is an underactive Factor Ex.

The Eight Pillars of Executive Control

Among the many contributions of executive control is the ability to focus, plan, and act in a goal-directed manner. Factor Ex enables us to look into the future, identify a goal, coordinate a sequence of steps, and initiate action to achieve a goal. Talk about valuable! How many times have you needed to use goal-directing this week, this day, even this hour? This apparently straightforward process involves the coordination of many different brain operations, all of which stem from our brain’s conductor, the prefrontal cortex. Before you assume that executive control is only about being efficient and productive, let me suggest that our relatively massive executive brains are a big part of what makes us human. Consider the fact that a person’s frontal lobes make up one-third of her whole outer-brain (cortex), compared with a cat, whose frontal lobes make up less than 3 percent of its cortex. Cats may have wonderful instincts, but we’ve got Factor Ex working for us big time. Over the course of aging, cats may get better at finding a quiet place to nap, while we get better at applying initiative, focus, memory, and self-control. In essence, we develop the ability to regulate our thoughts and emotions and, ideally, to orchestrate them so they make beautiful music. If we can, others will love to hear us play, to be around us, to be our friends, to make us a part of their world.
The Eight Pillars of executive control also help a child grasp a sense of time and place by connecting past experiences with what might happen in the future. This continuity in a child’s consciousness contributes to building identity—“Who am I?” “What do I know?” “How am I unique?” Having this level of self-awareness is precisely how children learn to orchestrate their own behavior more consciously. When I meet with a child who is impulsive, acting in a haphazard, self-defeating manner, I know he hasn’t yet learned how to connect the past to the present to benefit from his own experiences. This type of problem goes way beyond time management. It relates to knowing your own history; how your collective experiences shape your insight, choices, and beliefs about your self. (We will talk about how to help these kids in Chapter 8, when we discuss the pillar of self-monitoring.)
Regardless of how strong or impaired a person’s executive thinking ability might be, it is comprised of eight distinct skills— what I’ve been calling the Eight Pillars. These skills include:
Initiation: Being able to organize one’s thoughts well enough to get started on a particular task without having to be asked multiple times. (Ironically, in our age of productivity, wasting time has become easier than ever. Did someone say Nintendo?)
Flexibility: Learning to adapt by shifting one’s focus and pace as various situations unfold. Imagine how difficult it would be to drive your car if it wouldn’t turn and only went one speed. (About as difficult as parenting a child with only one speed and one direction.)
Attention: Focusing long enough and accurately enough to learn important information. By extension, attention also involves the ability to block distraction. A well-orchestrated executive brain knows its priorities.
Organization: Managing space. It’s also about taking the emotional impact of chaos seriously. Why? Because chronic disorganization undermines forward momentum—a sense of accomplishment.
Planning: Managing time. This is more important than any other executive pillar when it comes to finishing things on time. A planning mind uses time as a tool to clarify priorities and enhance productivity, both of which are indispensable skills to twenty-first-century success, beginning with school and, eventually, careers.
Working memory: Retaining information long enough for it to be stored in long-term memory. Our society has a word for this process—learning. Of all the executive controls, working memory is the most pervasive, contributing to the smooth operation of every pillar. (Working memory is the rocket fuel of the modern mind.)
Self-awareness: Having both sufficient self-knowledge and an understanding of how one is seen by others. This information is essential to making purposeful choices about how to act in situations where one wants to avoid unintended consequences that lead to isolation or ostracism.
Managing emotions: Expressing one’s feelings in proportion to the events that elicited them. When a child under-or overreacts, she is out of sync with people or particular events. Socially, people tend to ignore a silent recluse and run away from an “erupting volcano”—let’s work toward avoiding both scenarios.
 
We’ll discuss each of the pillars in depth in the chapters to follow, but for now please remember that these skills are invariably performed in concert with one another. In other words, when we consider how kids apply executive thinking skills to everyday life, we will see that they are using more than one at any given time.
For example, suppose your son has been asked to participate in a school fund-raiser selling candy bars, but he forgot to show you the letter and order form (working memory) until there’s only one week left for the sale. So you remind him to ask people at soccer practice that night, but he gets so caught up in the game he forgets to make requests (initiation, flexibility). You offer to accompany him around the neighborhood one night after work, but explain that he will need to let you know what night so you can leave work early. He forgets and, when prompted, says he doesn’t care what night, failing to notice your irritation (working memory, self-awareness). When advised that he has only two days left, he runs over to solicit the neighbors, but doesn’t bring a pen (organization). He has a “meltdown” the day the order forms are due, because besides the neighbor, Mom and Dad represent his only customers (managing emotions). With an impulsive burst he sets off down the street to get a few orders before school, and almost misses the bus (planning). To identify such a child as being irresponsible or unfocused would be a gross oversimplification of what is happening (and not happening) in his executive brain, and would unfortunately lead to interventions that only partially address this child’s needs. Don’t think for a minute this child is unaware of having “failed.” All the supportive talk in the world won’t help if he isn’t provided with a viable plan for doing better the next time.
As individuals, we all have slightly different executive thinking profiles. You may have great self-awareness, be able to effectively change your verbal and nonverbal communication as needed, but have significantly more difficulty with planning or organization—for example, pulling together a party or packing for a family vacation. In a similar way, many intelligent kids have significant executive control deficits. Clichés—which often carry at least a kernel of folk wisdom about the nature of things—capture some of the essence of this: the absentminded professor who loses the glasses perched on his head, the mathematics genius who lacks social skills, the explosive boss who shouts but never listens, the reliable but stodgy executive unable to “think outside the box.”

A Revolution in How We Think About Thinking

Looking at the how’s and why’s of young minds through the lens of executive control is tantamount to a revolution in how we approach raising and teaching kids. Once you understand the remarkable implications of the executive brain, there’s no going back. No going back to the assumption that IQ is the sole determinant of your child’s success in school, mistaking a thinking problem for a lack of effort, or using the diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as a catchall for every type of behavioral problem in childhood. This last point is especially important because the introduction of ADHD into the lexicon of family life has in itself been a revolution in the way we view children’s behavior. (And like most revolutions, there’s a burgeoning counterinsurgency asserting that ADHD does not exist.) This book will not try to convince you that ADHD is a figment of our collective imagination—it certainly is not. However, ADHD has become such an overgeneralized term, it is both a disservice to the people who have the syndrome, and to the many children and adolescents whose difficulties are better described as executive dysfunction.
Unfortunately, many books use the terms ADHD and executive dysfunction interchangeably. Clearly, attention is an important executive pillar, and by definition, when a child has ADHD, he or she has an executive thinking challenge. Yet there are many individuals with executive control deficits who do not have ADHD. It’s just as if you had a painful cavity, you would certainly have a dental problem. But of course not everyone with a dental problem necessarily has a toothache. When a child falls behind or has limited self-control, we reflexively see ADHD when we would be better served to look deeper, for a more meaningful understanding of a child’s behavior. This is not always easy. When kids are in trouble behaviorally or academically, parents and professionals alike feel pressured to provide relief and “fix the problem.” This urgency can tempt us to accept simple answers to questions that require more consideration, and especially, more effective solutions.
We live in a time of frequent discoveries about the brain. You have probably heard about such things as endorphins, dendrites, and dopamine, as well as a range of syndromes and diagnoses. People have always been interested in the mind, the factors that make a person unique, and the seeds of excellence. However, the way we conceive and describe these things has been radically altered by neuroscience and the field of psychology.
A few examples of these revolutions include psychologist Howard Gardner’s theory that there are eight distinct forms of intelligence, many of which are not well assessed by standard intelligence tests. Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory describes how people can be smart in very different ways. For example, an athlete might have great kinesthetic intelligence (understanding of one’s body in space), while an artist might have exceptional aesthetic/design intelligence, neither of which would be detected by a typical IQ test. Another example is Daniel Goleman’s highly influential book Emotional Intelligence (EQ), which introduced us to the great benefits of emotional awareness in so many facets of life. He described how emotionally intelligent people have greater prospects for success in relationships and at work, and demonstrated this theory with many examples of EQ in action.
Goleman was so bold as to argue that EQ was more important than IQ when it came to getting along with other people, demonstrating self-control, and “reading” the emotions of others. (In fact, Goleman’s latest research indicates that IQ accounts for only 4 to 10 percent of career success.) EQ was immediately acknowledged by organizations that have since made it a staple of corporate training. Most recently, Malcolm Gladwell’s best-selling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking has shown us that the best answers don’t always require the greatest thought. To the contrary, our hunches and intuition are valuable allies in helping us make good choices, and in sensing the larger reality of things. Although Gladwell relied less on neuroscience to make his point than did some of the other “thinkers on thinking” mentioned, it’s impossible to read his work and not reconsider how we as individuals come to know and sense certain things.
We tend to be a self-reflective, scientific-minded generation. Our collective interest in the mind has evolved from these instincts and values, and continues to transform how we perceive and talk about cognitive abilities. Only rarely does neuroscience have the potential to cause us to rethink what it means to be a capable human being, yet examining the impact of the Eight Pillars is one of those opportunities.

The Gender Divide

One of the most provocative aspects of the revolution in how we understand the mind has to do with the ways in which science has found males and females are different. For example, we’ve learned there are brain-based reasons why boys are often behind in the early years of elementary school, and why girls are often more challenged to mentally map space. The number of boys impacted by neurodevelopmental problems has increased dramatically over the past decade. These problems include a disproportionate number of diagnoses for ADHD, learning disabilities, and autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger’s syndrome. Should we consider how boys might have a timeline for the development of executive control that is significantly different from that of girls? The short answer is yes. The type of brain cells that promote executive thinking skills (gray matter) develop more slowly in a boy’s brain, making boys more susceptible to problems with self-control, attention, and some kinds of problem-solving. The implications for this difference between the genders is substantial. Consider the fact that far fewer males are applying to college today, as a proportion of total college admissions, than were ten years ago. The situation gets even more complex as males enter the workforce. Think about how the cultural archetype of the stoic, noncommunicative male intersects with the multitasking, efficient, time-conscious individual required for success in so many of today’s occupations. Put simply, the pace of social evolution is exponentially faster than the pace at which changes occur in the way our brains operate, causing some individuals to be at risk for being left behind.
Although the genders are overall much more alike than they are different, socially, we experience those differences as very important. They make a big difference in what we like to do, how others view us, and how we think about ourselves. Beyond education, there is also reason to believe that executive thinking skills play a critical role in the social and emotional development of boys. Many of these ideas were explored in my previous book, Boys of Few Words: Raising Our Sons to Communicate and Connect. To be sure, gender differences are a controversial topic with many social scientists stuck in the past, insisting that differences in socialization are the only reason for defining differences between males and females. Given the amount of research now available about biologically based gender differences, that is an unhelpful point of view and a potential obstacle to providing both genders with an optimal education. I strongly recommend Why Gender Matters, by Dr. Leonard Sax, to readers who would like to know more about the significance of brain-based gender differences.

Proximity and Familiarity Make Small Differences Visible

Perhaps you can appreciate the enormous significance of small differences between people this way: Imagine that you’re a visitor from another planet, hovering above a Los Angeles freeway in your spacecraft. Looking down from several thousand feet, you see lots of little red cars, and basically they look pretty much the same. Some may be a bit wider or longer, some a slightly darker or brighter shade of red, but from your perspective, the differences appear trivial. Yet consider the alternative perspective of a human being on the ground. Wouldn’t most of us agree that there are significant differences between a Lexus, a Ford, and a Hyundai with respect to reliability, status, and economics? Might small differences in size or color reflect how well a vehicle expresses who we are? When the range of choice is limited, the meaning of small differences becomes magnified. For better or worse, the same is true of our development as people. Small differences make up most of the differences in the world. What’s more, proximity and familiarity make those differences increasingly visible. This is one reason why gender differences seem so much more apparent within the context of a close relationship.

Generation 24/7

Reflect for a moment on how many small details you are expected to remember, or how doing two things at once has become more the norm than the exception. Think about how attentive you need to be to how you are perceived by others, or how our society celebrates the “go-getter.” We are a multitasking society that requires rapid and flexible thought, expanded working memory, and abundant energy. It seems we have less and less time to get our “stuff” done. We are also a society that has become fixated on productivity and efficiency.
Psychiatrist Peter Whybrow’s book American Mania suggests the following:
 
The scramble for “the dream” demands a lengthened work-day, diminished sleep, unusual energy, and a high tolerance for financial insecurity. To be “successful” is to be a multi-tasking dynamo. We rise early and burn the lights late. We exercise to CNN at breakfast and telephone while driving, for there’s not a moment to lose.
 
Although most of us might agree that this scenario has more to do with the lives of adults than children, this is the tempo and atmosphere in which our kids live. Adult values tend to have a trickle-down effect on the lives of children, and that is one reason why many kids get pushed so hard to achieve. Like you, I’d be thrilled to see a shift in personal and professional priorities. Why does work have to encroach relentlessly upon family life? At the same time, it seems unfair to me to let idealism about what “should be” prevent us from giving kids the best possible chance to succeed in the circumstances they will be handed. Consciously or not, we’ve created this multitasking world and we’re going to have to live in it. I am all for limiting the time commitments of children, creating greater opportunity for connection with others, and making time for relaxation. However, it pays to understand the world our children live in and prepare them to meet its challenges. More than any other personal attribute, it is a well-tuned executive brain that enables us to manage the demands of everyday life at home, school, and community.
In his thought-provoking book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink points out that our society is “multi” in many respects— from multicultural to multimedia. Pink believes that we now value individuals he calls “boundary crossers,” people who can efficiently shift between “multiple spheres” of thought or activity. In some ways, this insight speaks to who we might think of as “well-rounded kids.” Most of us want to help our children be confident in multiple environments—on the football field and practicing piano; in the SAT prep class and socializing at the prom. Achieving these broad capabilities means developing skill in multiple roles, and learning to adapt one’s thinking and perspectives rapidly, so that transition between those roles goes smoothly. In the course of a single day, our children are required to work independently, be part of a team, assume leadership, defer leadership, be the chief communicator, and become a good listener. These kinds of transitions are helped substantially by a brain that can simultaneously turn its attention inward and outward, leading a child to respond to important signals that it is time to “cross a boundary.” I’m not trying to make a case for “superkids,” but only reinforcing the point that “capability” is an evolving concept with at least several faces.

Why Didn’t Somebody Tell Me?

As I hope is becoming clear, Factor Ex is a central concern in the fate of our kids. As a parent, you might wonder why such an important dimension of young minds has escaped greater public attention. Executive control has, in fact, been of great interest to the scientific research community, but there’s generally a lag between the time something is discovered in a lab or clinic and when it is applied to problems in everyday life. Sometimes, this lag is caused by reluctance to publicize new ideas or theories that are seemingly complex. I believe that rather than being intimidated by emerging research, parents are eager to know the most up-to-date information available, and can be trusted to sift through that information for what resonates and is helpful to their own concerns.
Thankfully, neuroscience has recently been able to show how the executive brain develops over the course of childhood and adolescence. In particular, a landmark study, conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles’s Neuroimaging Laboratory in 2004, was the first to provide definitive visual evidence of how the brain’s prefrontal cortex develops over the course of childhood and adolescence (between ages five and twenty). For many years, scientists had suspected that the frontal lobes were the last part of the brain to reach maturity. Now we have proof that suspicion is true. These important UCLA findings help us to understand that a person’s executive brain is still in development throughout adolescence, and now—many in the science community believe—through one’s twenties.
Judgment Comes of Age?
It’s no coincidence that automobile insurance companies drop the cost of premiums at age twenty-five. Even without brain-imaging research, they figured out by looking at statistics that the probability of auto accidents drops markedly in a person’s mid-twenties—a tribute to the development of judgment within the executive brain!

What Is a Capable Brain?

When we think about brain development, it’s natural to think of the brain growing larger, but brain development refers to more than size alone. With respect to understanding how executive control develops, we need to know the difference between the white and gray matter of the brain’s cortex. Gray matter is basically made up of brain cells (neurons) that are primarily cell bodies. Brain imaging has shown scientists that gray matter follows the “use it or lose it” rule. In effect, unused gray matter gets pruned over the course of a child’s life. While no one wants unused gray matter floating around in their brain, ideally, early learning and experience put gray matter to work, preserving it for executive thinking skills that won’t fully develop until young adulthood.
White matter is made up of neuron’s tail, called an axon, which is covered with myelin, a “fatty” sheath that helps long-distance communication between neurons. We can thank white matter for one hemisphere of our brain being able to talk to the other. Up until about age eight, gray matter production outpaces that of white matter, but this changes around the time your child reaches third grade. Then, over the course of the next ten years or so, white matter with wonderfully fat axons is all business, helping to sharpen connectivity within the brain. Before you decide to indulge your children in some fatty snacks in hopes of raising the next Einstein, you should know that myelin doesn’t come from dessert, but is the result of a biological process called protein synthesis, which, while fascinating, is beyond the scope of this book. (Readers who would like more detail about the neurobiology of brain development will find suggested resources in the Selected Bibliography.) Although the size of your child’s brain increases somewhat, what’s most important in brain maturation is how the proportion of gray cells to white cells changes over the years. This is the physical side of the development of executive control, and the best biological explanation for how insight and judgment develop that science has yet produced.
Understanding the natural timeline of brain development can also help to inform adult expectation. How should we understand a friendly eleven-year-old who repeatedly brings home a poor report card when he can speak so confidently about school topics at home? Why does a seven-year-old run into the house crying because her friends are mad at her “bossing,” even though she keeps promising, “I won’t do it again”? Is it reasonable to expect a highly gifted teenager who can create complex websites and rebuild computers to complete his college applications on time? As adults, we set the expectations for children and adolescents. Whether it’s concerning chores at home, behavior in public, design of school curricula, age to begin work, or assessment of guilt in the judicial system, our decisions are derived, consciously or not, from our beliefs about what is reasonable to expect of young minds.
Our expectations are usually bracketed by age—at age A, Sara should be able to do B. But what should we do when the demand for brain performance collides with the pace of the brain’s natural development in childhood? How can we make an important distinction between an ability being “absent” and it being “delayed”?
Consider the implications of education policies that require children to learn according to specific timelines, so they can accurately output information on command as measured by standardized tests. Although assessment-focused policies may be well intentioned, the net effect for many kids with an underdeveloped or delayed executive brain is an experience of frustration and a negative perspective of themselves as students. How might any of us do in a spelling bee if we were prone to performance anxiety? My guess is that we wouldn’t function up to our potential because public confidence propels performance in a spelling bee in the same way that the Eight Pillars propel performance for many academic demands. When kids fall behind, we have to make sure we understand the problem before we start cracking the whip to get them to “try harder.”
Making this conversation even more critical is the fact that our brain “wires itself” in response to its environment. For example, remember those axons we talked about. It turns out that more education causes them to grow longer, in turn making learning and being “smart” that much easier. That’s the impetus behind many early education and enrichment programs. We can reasonably conclude that where learning brains are concerned, the rich get richer. Scientists call this process epigenesis, and it’s one important reason why most families are so concerned about how early life experiences shape a person’s destiny. When we consider the mind of childhood, we have to consider the experiences that can build that mind. And we must accept that school cannot provide all of those experiences by itself. A substantial body of research, and years of working with families, demonstrate that when parents get meaningfully involved in a child’s education, the outcome is better.

Performance May Vary from One Context to Another

One of the most perplexing things about trying to help a child whose executive brain is faltering is understanding how performance can vary. In my clinical work, performance discrepancies often come to light when we talk about kids who struggle to focus in school, but who are amazingly attentive when doing other things like playing video games or reading a favorite book. When we see these types of discrepancies, it can be tempting to assume the problem is less related to an innate inability, such as a sleepy executive brain, than to too little effort or an insufficient will to succeed. Regrettably, this is one of the most consequential mistakes that we make in assessing and responding to a child’s lackluster performance. A child can almost totally space out during a task he or she finds unstimulating, and appear totally focused when engrossed by a topic of personal interest. Logically, we think to ourselves that if a child has a brain-based disability, it ought to affect her in all aspects of life—right? Not necessarily. Simply put, effort and boredom are poor partners. Boredom is to the executive brain what water is to fire. Consequently, when kids are not engaged by a task, we rarely see their best. (A good example of this phenomenon is IQ testing. It’s amazing to see how much harder kids will try to do well when the person doing the testing is animated and reinforcing of a child’s efforts. “You are amazing! How did you do that? No, I mean it, how exactly did you solve that puzzle so quickly? Are you going for a world record or something?”) A lack of effort that stems from situational factors might be mistakenly understood as a matter of personal character leading to feelings of blame rather than what is beneficial—stepping up the stimulation.

How Can I Assess My Child’s Executive Thinking Skills?

Before we delve further into the Eight Pillars, let’s review some of the ways you can take stock of your own child’s abilities. Although it is rare for a child to be impaired in all eight executive skills, it’s not uncommon for a child to be delayed in two or three. To help understand the status of a child’s executive brain, take the time to complete the checklists on the next page. They describe a range of typical skills that evolve over time. When reviewing them, compare this child’s performance in relation to her or his peers of similar age. For example, most four-year-olds can’t be expected to keep their belongings “organized and accessible,” but many can put away toys in appropriate places, having a general sense of where things belong in the house. These lists are not comprehensive and are no substitute for a professional evaluation. They are intended to help you understand a child’s executive thinking strengths and challenges, and point to where you can be of most help.
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Executive Control Skills Checklist Compared to peers, my child . . .
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(If you marked “Lags Behind” for three or more items within any skill group on the checklists, there is a good chance the child in question would benefit from some strategic help to building greater executive control in this area. If your ratings indicate a child who has difficulty with three or more items in at least two of the skill groups, there is a good chance he or she would benefit from a more in-depth evaluation and team intervention involving home, school, and qualified professionals.)
Hopefully, these examples have helped you put a particular child’s executive capabilities in perspective. It may be that your concerns are clustered in some specific areas. You may want to use this checklist to guide your reading—the chapters of this book are organized around the categories described in the checklists, and each chapter includes specific strategies for nurturing Factor Ex.

A World of Possibilities

Childhood is a time of great variability. One six-year-old can remember a sequence of five numbers by first grade, while another child may not develop such skills until nearly the end of second grade. One child can make his bed by age seven, while another doesn’t clean his room until he’s eighteen. One sixteen-year-old can be trusted to drive responsibly, while another racks up accidents and infractions. One nine-year-old can fly to Florida with her parents, sleep soundly in a strange hotel bed, and try “grits and hush puppies” with gusto, while another implodes if she doesn’t get a grilled cheese sandwich and an afternoon nap with a favorite stuffed animal.
The very notion of childhood enchants us because it is associated with great possibility. So much is still in flux, and sometimes we hold our breath in eager anticipation of who our kids will become. Whether we’re ready or not, kids materialize into adults before our very eyes. Often, they give us clues as to what shape their life will assume. We might confidently predict that the mathematically gifted child of eight will possess some similar degree of analytical ability at age forty, or that children who score in the top 10 percent in verbal ability in first grade will be among the more articulate in the fifth grade. Even so, the wild card in many forms of achievement is Factor Ex and its ability to orchestrate aspects of raw intelligence.
At this point, it has probably occurred to you that being born with the right kind of prefrontal cortex confers advantages, just as being physically attractive, being born to loving parents, or being a citizen in a “first world” nation does. Yet recognizing that reality is not where our work as caregivers ends, but where it begins. As much as we love the children in our care, we need sufficient tools and strategies to help them gain the thinking skills that will define success in their respective lives.
So that we share a common understanding of what we are working toward, in the next chapter we’ll discuss more specifically how our society is redefining what it means to be a capable child in our time. If our goal is to get results, we must first identify what essential forms of capability look like. When we consider honestly what capability means to us, and how this understanding has taken shape, we will surely find reflections of the ideals we hold for ourselves as adults. Nothing could be more human than using these ideals as a reference point in our hopes for children. And nothing could be more humane than doing so with the greatest thought and care possible.