Enhancing Executive Function Skills in Children with ADHD

Learn how executive function skills impact children with ADHD, and discover strategies like games, exercise, and organizational tools to support their development.

Executive Function (EF) skills are the cognitive processes we use to organize thoughts and activities, prioritize tasks, manage time efficiently, and make decisions.
EF skills help you think critically, remember information, learn from past experiences, take the perspective of others, communicate effectively, and plan ahead. It is how we are able to set goals and do things in the right order.
ADHD is sometimes referred to as an Executive Function Disorder because this is something all kids with ADHD struggle with.
Kids with ADHD have a 2 to 3 year delay in their EF skills. This means a 7-year-old has the EF skills of a 4- or 5-year-old. So they will often appear to be less mature or age-inappropriate than peers. Your expectations for your son or daughter need to match their EF age.
EF skills are the skills children need to thrive, but you aren’t born with them. You grow them over time - over a lifetime - with lots of practice and support. When we're talking about kids with ADHD and EF we want to always assume that our kid is doing the best they can. Your children are practicing EF skills every day - and there are things you can do to support these skills.

Support your child in organization - visual checklists, keeping backpacks clear
Work together to break up lengthy or time-consuming tasks into small steps
Exercise. Aim for 30 minutes a day doing something they enjoy
Sports. Organized sports require kids to remember rules, gain skills and knowledge, monitor their own actions, and use strategy.
Games. Require your child to think ahead and adjust their plan as they go. This is a great way to grow cognitive flexibility! Video games like Minecraft, while they may introduce other challenges, can be a powerful tool when it comes to developing EF skills - strategies around understanding rules and how characters act/can be used in imaginary worlds is a complex idea.
Musical instruments. Music promotes working memory, patterns, hand-eye coordination, attention, just to name a few.
Singing and dancing. Singing vocal parts and/or moving your body to planned choreography, helps to build attention, self-monitoring and inhibitory control.
Taking pauses, body or movement breaks, or using a simple fidget toy such as textured putty or squeezy balls. All promote ways to calm down, regulate and take a moment before reacting. This helps elementary school children to practice managing big feelings in a safe and appropriate way.