Executive Function Strategies Blog

Does your child start to panic when they get an essay assignment?

As coaches, we see this frequently. Writing can be hard for students, especially when they have challenges in Executive Function areas like organization, planning, and task initiation. Here's a useful guide to help your student overcome that hesitation and write a paper they (and their teachers) can feel proud of. Let's dive right in.

Editor's note: This week, we invited Sara Sullivan, a rising senior at Brown University, to share her experience transitioning to college, and the advice that she wished she had known in high school. 

Put yourself in your student's shoes: You’ve got an essay due in a week, and perhaps you’re not particularly looking forward to it. You set up your study space, turn on your computer, open a blank document, curl your fingers over your keyboard, and…nothing. You’ve got nothing. 

We can feel the buzz in the air and vibrance in everyone’s step. I’m not talking about spring fever, I’m referring to our hope and excitement as we begin to imagine living in a post-pandemic world. As vaccinations become more widespread, so does everyone’s anticipation for a life resembling what we once had prior to COVID-19. 

But will your child be ready? 

We will never forget the fear as the pandemic blanketed us and the outside world closed. Overnight, schools went online or hybrid and Zoom became a student’s platform, while life as they had known it stopped. No one is living the same life as they were before COVID.

Now, finally, it’s here… you may be feeling cautiously optimistic about the big reopening. But wrapped in this optimism may be the undercurrent of anxiety in your child, and frankly, in all of us. 

What can we do to help our children prepare?