Malik's Story Part 2

Welcome back to Malik’s story. If you’re just joining us, head back to the first post to learn more about him. Today, we’re going to talk about how his home life has been impacted by his executive functioning challenges.

Malik’s mom says that he is easily distracted during any multi-step instruction or routine he sets out to do.

“I can say 100 times, ‘Go brush your teeth,’ and he will start walking toward the bathroom and then go off into another room. Then kind of lounge against a wall, jump on his bed, walk around the edge of the bathtub. Anything but do the next task. It has gotten to the point where I have to make sure I’m 100% ready and shadow him through every task to get it done.”

Last year, Malik still required cueing to get started with each task. But this year, his mom says it seems like he needs even more cueing.

Don’t executive functioning skills improve with age?

Aren’t we taught that as children get older, their frontal lobe develops and, in turn, executive functioning skills begin to refine?

Yes. That’s true.

Without a brain scan and a neurologist to analyze and interpret it, we can’t conclude that Malik’s executive functioning skills are actually declining.

However, there is one reasonable assumption we can make.

First, it’s possible that Malik doesn’t have consistent access to his frontal lobe this year like he did last year. Think of the frontal lobe like a shelf and executive functioning skills, like focus and attention, as boxes on that shelf. It’s not that Malik has fewer boxes this year. Maybe the shelf has been raised and he can’t reach it as easily. He needs to jump higher or ask for assistance.

Translated: I wonder if Malik’s nervous system is more taxed this year, making early morning routines more stressful and creating a barrier to accessing the executive functioning skills he already has.

Another angle to consider is that maybe this year, Malik has a higher threshold for stimulation that isn’t being met in the morning. When that stimulation, whether sensory or dopamine-seeking, isn’t met, tasks get sidelined.

It’s like his brain can store “what to do,” but struggles to turn that into action when the job is boring, when his internal drive is low (like in the morning), and when the next step isn’t cued up for him. So he creates imaginative play schemes in his head, building “the floor is lava” paths to the bathroom, all while forgetting the original mission: GO BRUSH YOUR DANG TEETH.

Executive Functioning Support in the Morning

If you didn’t already know, access to executive functioning skills, being able to reach those boxes on those shelves, depends on a regulated nervous system. One that is not in high sympathetic activation.

When you’re in chronic stress and your sympathetic nervous system is activated, your cognitive resources get rerouted to optimize survival, not completing your morning routine.

So, knowing that Malik seemed to be operating under some level of stress, based on his mom’s report of increased emotional dysregulation at home and ongoing sibling and friendship dynamics at school, it makes sense that his brain was reallocating resources.

This is when I emphasized tools his mom was already using or had tried in the past.