Executive Function
& Self Regulation in Children
by Jane Gilgun
Copyright 2010 Jane Gilgun
Smashwords Edition
Summary
Executive function and self-regulation are two capacities important to child development. This article describes what these two terms mean, illustrates main points with case examples, and provides guidelines for parents and professionals.
About the Author
Jane Gilgun, Ph.D., LICSW, is a professor, School of Social Work, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA.
Executive Function
& Self Regulation in Children
Executive function (EF) is a term that covers a broad range of capacities related to judgment, problem-solving, organization of self, anticipation of consequences, working memory, and following rules and directions. Regulation of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors is part of executive function as well, but in the NEATS assessment, self-regulation is a separate category because of its significance in social work and other applied settings.
The neurological basis of executive function is located primarily in the prefrontal cortex, which is in the front of the brain and is the seat of reasoning. The term “executive” fits these sets of capacities because an executive is someone who is in charge. The neocortex, however, is connected to many other areas of the brain, such as emotion and motor centers.
Like brain functioning in general, executive functions or skills arise from a combination of genetics and experience. Adequate nutrition and good prenatal care as well as genetics lead to good executive functions at birth. Subsequent experience contributes further to executive function development. With sensitive, responsive care, children build upon existing skills to continue their optimal development.
Stress, trauma, abuse, and neglect may undermine the development of executive skills in children with a good genetic makeup. These children can recover or develop new executive skills if their circumstances change for the better, where parenting is sensitive and responsive, except if the damage to neural circuits cannot be reversed.
Conversely, many children are born with brain functions that predispose them to executive function issues, but their quality of care is so high that they develop new neural circuits that appear to compensate for what might have been executive function deficits. How much neural growth is possible is related to genetic makeup and whether or not any brain damage has ceiling effects. For example, there appear to be ceiling effects for some of the executive functions of children with fetal alcohol effects.
Parents of children with executive function challenges may require emotional support and psychoeducation and the children’s development of executive skills could take longer than with other children. Once again, however, there are limits to the brain’s plasticity and some individuals may have life-long issues with executive functions.
Executive Function Issues
Executive function issues include difficulties with attention, following directions and rules, organizing the self, self-soothing when stressed, and self-regulation, and impulse control. Impulse control and following involves capacities for holding information in working memory and in considering alternatives and consequences, as well as resistance to distractions.
Childhood issues connected to problems in executive function issues are those listed under “neurobiology,” including fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, autism spectrum disorders, conduct disorders, oppositional disorders, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders (ADHD). In general, children may have good executive skills in some situations and not in others.
Children with executive function issues require structure in their daily lives, clear and simple directions in how to accomplish tasks, clear expectations, and heaps of praise when they show the smallest executive skill. They benefit when others show them how to do things and when the adults around them also have good executive skills.
As with other challenging child behaviors, parents of children with executive function issues benefit from psychoeducation, parent support groups, and professionals who themselves have good executive skills. Parents’ executive functions are compromised if they have chemical dependency issues and untreated mental illness.
Practice Note
Once practitioners have reason to believe that children have executive function issues, it is advisable to assess parents’ executive functions. Children learn good executive skills from their everyday experiences of care that parents and others provide. The case of six year-old Jack who has a diagnosis of ADHD will illustrate this point. Almost by definition, executive function issues are part of ADHD. To develop an effective treatment plan for Jack, practitioners would assess parents for executive function skills as well and then recommend a course of action for them if they have executive function issues. Typical referrals are parenting classes, parent support groups, and psychotherapy, which can be a combination of individual, family, and couple treatment.
Another important application of the concept of executive function is to assess who is in charge of the family; in other words, who has the executive functions for the family. In traditional families, where fathers and husbands are in charge of household finances and child discipline, women may struggle with executive function issues if their husbands die or leave the family. An older child may assume executive roles, but not have the skills to fulfill them.
For example, Pang, a Hmong refugee, a widow, and the mother of six children ages sixteen to six, depended upon her sixteen year-old daughter Moa to use the cash card that county social services agency provided every month. Pang did not know how to use the card and asked Moa to do it. Moa spent the money on clothes and entertainment for herself and her friends, leaving the family in serious financial difficulties, and showing her poor executive functions in this situation. An effective treatment plan would assist Pang in taking on executive functions.
Self-Regulation
Self-regulation is defined as capacities to manage and make sense of one’s own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in times of stress and in the course of everyday life. Some view self-regulation as one of the executive functions. Capacities for self regulation are both genetic and experiential in origin. Subjectively, children experience dysregulation as a loss of control, of unmanageability of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Heart rate and breathing may become accelerated.
When dysregulated, individuals throughout the life course may become fearful, anxious, withdrawn, depressed, hyperactive, lethargic, and experience emotional outbursts, bed wetting, sleep disturbances, and oppositional behaviors. Some individuals are euphoric while in dysregulated states. Dysregulation typically is very painful and persons seek to re-regulate as a means of managing the emotional pain.
Self-Regulation as Process
Learning to self-regulate is a process. Temper tantrums in toddlers is normative and is a type of dysregulation. Parents and other adults help infants and young children re-regulate when they have tantrums. Children eventually develop internalized capacities for self-regulation in response to sensitive, contingent caregiver characteristic of secure relationships.
Children with insecure attachments have a much harder time with self-regulation because parents and other adults have not consistently provided the soothing, comfort, and structure necessary for internalization of capacities for self-regulation. In addition, these children may not trust adults to help them manage their strong emotions.
Four General Styles of Self-Regulation
When children and persons of whatever age are under stress, they seek to re-regulate which means to get themselves back on an even keel. For the purpose of the NEATS assessment, schemas that activate themselves in response to stress and trauma can be of four general types: prosocial, antisocial, self-destructive, and inappropriate.
Prosocial responses at their core are secure attachment behaviors, where children seek safe havens that will soothe them and help them to re-regulate. How children re-regulate varies with their experience and development. Young children may soothe themselves through thumb-sucking and seeking a soft toy or blanket. They may want to cuddle.
Older children may also seek attachment figures, but want to talk about what happened and to work out strategies for dealing with situations that triggered the dysregulation. Physical exercise, meditation on something pleasant, drawing, and writing out feelings are some of many different strategies that can contribute to prosocial self-regulation.