If you’re like most parents, a number of “standards” start to be compromised at the end of the school year. Wise moms and dads know to choose which battles are worth the effort. With the pressures of exams and end-of-the-year projects, parents might find themselves taking on some of their children’s responsibilities or helping them with schoolwork a little more than usual.

However, your overall goal as parents is to raise an independent individual who can effectively negotiate the rigors of life as well as academics. To do this, children need to develop executive functioning skills, the cognitive processes that control and organize goal directed behavior. Everyone utilizes executive functions, with varying success, to negotiate not only long term or multi-step projects but also activities of daily living. Once an objective is set, executive functions regulate the ability to initiate, plan, prioritize and monitor the steps toward goal completion.

Summer, when the stress of school is out of the way, is a wonderful time to work on improving your child’s executive functioning skills. When a test or exam is looming, it is hard to not step in and help your child prepare for that test. However, outside of school, the stakes are not so high. During the summer, it’s fine to let your child make mistakes and learn how to persevere until a strategy is mastered.

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