Yes! Your Child Can by Victoria Waller

Author:Victoria Waller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Linden Publishing

Because being able to stay focused on a task is so important to executive functioning, one of the best things you can do is to figure out what your child loves. Working with a child on what they love or are interested in makes it easier for them to stay on task, remember what they want to do, organize their thoughts, and stay level during times when they are challenged.

A ROLLER-COASTER RIDE TO SUCCESS

When Eddie, another one of my students who struggled with executive functioning, was in third grade, the doctor concluded that Eddie should be on medication. Eddie had learned to read and write, but he was difficult to teach. He was impulsive and often said, “I don’t want to do this.” Eddie’s dad refused to put him on any medication because he’d been just like Eddie as a child and said he’d turned out fine. When I asked Eddie about his passions, he was the only student who ever said, “Roller coasters.”

Eddie’s grandmother lived near Cedar Point, Ohio, where some of the biggest roller coasters in the world are. Eddie knew the name of each one, their heights, how long the first drop was, their length, and inversions. That year, his third-grade teacher gave each child a subject to work on. Eddie was given strawberries. It was really tough trying to get Eddie to think about strawberries. He didn’t care about strawberries, and it felt like a punishment, trying to sit down and learn about them. Finally, I wrote to the teacher and asked if Eddie could possibly do his project on roller coasters instead. She replied, “Yes.”

Eddie was totally motivated about doing a report on something he loved. I looked at roller coasters and got dizzy, but Eddie googled roller coasters and visited the Cedar Point website. He immediately began writing and making a chart of all the rides, characteristics, and how tall you had to be to ride them. You had to be 52 inches to ride the big coasters and Eddie was 48 inches. He was getting ready to go visit his grandmother, and his mom promised to take him to Cedar Point.

Eddie’s executive functioning skills continued to develop on his trip to Cedar Point to visit his grandma. He took his notebook with him with questions he’d devised to ask people he met, coaster operators and anyone else from the park. The question he was most excited about was how people rate the coasters—a big deal to coaster enthusiasts.

He came back with a decision to not only write his report but design a roller coaster and construct one to go with his report. This idea took a tremendous amount of executive functioning skill. He made a huge book (3 feet by 3 feet) with pictures of coasters he’d imagined, using real math dimensions. Then with boxes and junk from my garage, he built a model mini roller coaster.

In an amazing coincidence, the next weekend there was an article in the New York Times about

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