Many parents, educators, and practitioners have encountered the day-to-day frustrations associated with weak executive functioning in teens. While some delay in executive functioning is to be expected as the frontal lobes are not fully developed in adolescence, some teens experience more significant weakness, which can affect academics and family relationships.
Assistive technology, as applied to students with learning disabilities, can be seen as an “equalizer;” it allows students who learn differently to manage certain tasks that they are not able to perform without that specific technology. Assistive technology tools help learning disabled students work around challenges they face in school and at home by targeting the different academic areas they are struggling with.
Parents and educators dealing with children (or adults) with ADHD are likely to have heard increasing references to the terms “executive functioning” (EF) and “self-regulation” over the past few years.
Executive functions are skills necessary for children and adolescents to become successful adults (e.g., maintaining focus and sustaining attention, even when material is boring, creatively connecting ideas and facts while working through a problem, and “thinking outside the box”). Research shows that children with better executive functioning (e.g., children who are more persistent, less impulsive, and have better attention regulation) have better health, higher incomes, better jobs and have a
