Executive Function

Image via Wikipedia

Executive function. Sounds like a cocktail event for senior management. We auti-moms know better; not because our kids have it. Because our kids don't. Executive function is planning, organizing, strategizing and following through with a plan. So we guide our kids with verbal cues and explicit instructions and prompt, prompt, prompt.

After being home with a cold for three days, Diver felt well enough to go outside today. He stank from his three days in bed, so I sad, "Bathe, and then you can go outside and play." I went off to Target and returned to find him outside, rosy-cheeked, digging in the snow. "I even took a bath, Mom!" he reported cheerfully. In the bathroom, I saw towels on the floor, but no clothes. "Diver", I asked, when he came in, "you said you bathed, but where's your dirty clothes?" "I'm wearing them. You didn't say to put on clean clothes."

True. I didn't. I assumed he would put on clean clothes, but his literal mind heard the "Bathe" instruction; nothing less, nothing more. Clean boy, dirty clothes. And now I have the cold.

,