In this episode of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter speaks with Nicole Rouleau, Founder of Igniting Your Mind Executive Function Coaching and Consulting, and a seasoned special education advocate with over 10 years of experience. Nicole provides personalized guidance to parents navigating the IEP process through.
Tune in to the episode to hear about:
Executive Functioning Skills: Nicole Rouleau emphasizes the importance of executive functioning skills in students’ success, noting that these skills are crucial for transitioning to the next level after high school graduation.
Educational Gap in Teaching: Nicole highlights the necessity of explicitly teaching executive functioning skills rather than assuming they will develop naturally.
Challenges in IEP Implementation: Nicole discusses challenges in implementing Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) effectively, stressing the need for clearer and more actionable goals.
Need for Teacher Training: Nicole suggests that providing educators with training in these areas can lead to better support for students both academically and emotionally.
Importance of Connection: Nicole highlights the significance of understanding and accepting students to foster a positive learning environment.
Frances Shefter is an Education Attorney and Advocate who is committed to helping her clients have a Stress-Free IEP® experience. In each podcast, Frances interviews inspiring people to share information, educate you, empower you and help you get the knowledge you need.
Voiceover: Welcome to Stress-Free IEP®. You do not need to do it all alone. With your host, Frances Shefter, Principal of Shefter Law. You can get more details and catch prior episodes at www. Shefterlaw. com. The Stress-Free IEP® video podcast is also posted on YouTube and LinkedIn, and you can listen to episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
Now, here’s the host of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter.
Frances Shefter: Hello everyone and welcome to our show. Today’s guest is Nicole Rouleau with Igniting Your Mind, which is an executive functioning coaching and consulting business. So Nicole, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce [00:01:00] yourself to our listeners.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah, hi, thanks so much for having me. So yeah, I have been in the educational world for a little over 18 years, and I mainly worked with middle school, high school students. And one thing that I noticed, um, I’m going to say over the last 10 years, was that our students that struggled with many different learning differences, not just ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, autism.
I’ve worked with all of those types of students, is that they were lacking, um, what we now know is executive functioning skills. And they were really struggling once graduating high school to launch to the next level. And so that was something that, you know, I saw it. I have been doing part time support, part time coaching for about eight years or so while working full time as an executive function learning specialist in the school setting.
And what I realized was that there was a missing link if we don’t support our parents. And we don’t support the teachers. We can coach our students till we’re blue in the face, and it’s not going [00:02:00] to make much of a difference. So I decided to, um, about a year and a half ago, just, um, embark on this journey of, let me try to do this full time.
Let me see if I can do this full time and put, like, all of my heart and soul into it. I’m very passionate about, um, about supporting students and getting them to the point where they are independent and they recognize the abilities they have within themselves because it’s possible. So that’s, that’s what’s landed me where I am.
Resigned from my job back in, uh, 20, late 2021. And I decided I’m just going to try, or sorry, 2022. And I decided to just launch this business on my own and just see what happens. And it’s been great so far.
Frances Shefter: Yeah. That is awesome. Amazing. Cause it is, it’s something that’s definitely needed because the schools do what they can.
Frances Shefter: Um, for those that might be listening that aren’t quite sure what executive functioning skills are, can you elaborate on those a little bit?
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. So, I mean, there’s, there’s the textbook definition about it’s a cognitive process, but that is basically what it is. What we, what we have and what we know [00:03:00] about executive functioning skills is that, you know, They grow and they develop, um, at different levels based on, um, our needs.
So generally, with most of our peer, with our, I’m sorry, with most of our children, um, right around from five to seven years is when, um, our executive functions start to develop. And that happens in our prefrontal cortex, which is the, the top upstairs brain, as I like to call it. Um, and what that basically is, is the idea of being able to, um, access self direction, goal directed persistence.
The idea is, is that if you have executive functioning skills, you don’t need to be prompted and reminded to do all of the important things. Um, so there’s a lot of components that go into it. I don’t want to get too sciencey on anybody, but the, the development of it starts in the, um, in the working memory component and we, um, we have, so we have nonverbal and we have verbal working memory.
That’s where it begins. So it’s visualization and self talk. And so that’s really where, um, executive functioning begins. And, and essentially what [00:04:00] it is. And we also have the idea of emotional regulation and we have the idea of cognitive flexibility. So those are the three big executive functioning skills.
And there’s just so many other life skills that are interwoven into that.
Frances Shefter: Right. It is.
Frances Shefter: And I just, you know, thinking about like IEP process and stuff with executive functioning skills, you can’t, I mean, can you, you can’t, there’s no way you could get everything that needs to be taught in executive functioning skills onto an IEP.
Because as is they’re 50 pages long and like trying to write goals for everything. So what, like, do you have suggestions for like parents that have IEPs of like what to focus on in school?
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. So, so I have done actually professional development for many teachers over the years as well. When I’ve worked in schools, I’ve sort of always been pulled in to do the executive function, you know, professional development and where I’ve always wanted to focus and where teachers need to focus.
Which then can obviously translate to how it can look in an IEP, is again to focus on [00:05:00] those nonverbal, verbal working memory skills, which is the idea of visualizing and self talking through what needs to happen in terms of tasks. Um, we know that our FAR students that have ADHD and, you know, autism and have anxiety and different learning differences, um, they, they really struggle to get started, to ta to initiate a task.
Um, and what happens is, is that so many teachers, so many schools focus on the external behaviors and what that looks like on the outside, which it looks like laziness. It looks like they don’t care. And really at the core root of that are usually a lack of executive functioning skills. So where I would tell parents to really want to focus on that in terms of how it could be written, how goals can be written into an IEP, is that we want to be focusing on a couple things.
One, what does the end result look like of any task? So a lot of times I, I do this when I coach my students and I do it when I coach my parents, is I like to think of it like, Let’s picture what an ice cream sundae looks like when it’s, when it’s [00:06:00] done, right? What’s the done product look like? We can picture the amazing cream and the, and the ice cream, you know, all of that.
And so then we can go, well, what do we need to get there? And we can easily work backwards and think about what we need to do to get there. And then that helps us to then move forward. So it’s quite, kind of like working with the end in mind, essentially. And that actually, that, that one sort of strategy comes from Sarah Ward, who’s a wonderful, um, she’s a speech and language, but she has, she’s an executive function expert.
And a lot of my strategies that I implement have come from her. So I wanted to give her credit, but it’s the idea of helping. If we can write IEPs, what does the end product look like? How can we help our students to task, initiate and get started? A lot of that is self awareness. It’s they don’t know the passing of time.
They need to be really thinking about how things look when they’re done before they get started. And then the other thing that I think is really important that is not talked about enough is [00:07:00] prompt dependence, right? So we see all of these goals and what ends up happening is when you really read them and you see how they’re being implemented, we’re having our kids work on organization, but we have a case manager, a learning specialist who is then.
You know, organizing the child’s backpack because there’s only so many hours in the day, right? But we’re not ever teaching the child how to do that So one thing I tell parents all the time is when you’re thinking about how goals should look in the iep We always want to think of a scaffolded approach Where there’s a lot of support in the beginning and we slowly release the responsibility to the student as they gain skills so when I work with a lot of the ieps and I do a lot of meetings with schools is I always want to make sure that language looks like You A lot of support until the skill is built and developed.
And how are we releasing that responsibility to the student once they’ve shown independence?
Frances Shefter: That makes sense. Right. Reverse engineering it. And what automatically popped in my head is [00:08:00] like independently or, you know, like the goal of independently keep your bag organized and then the objectives. Of like within three prompts within two prompts, you know, so the fading prompt is I’ve seen that a lot and that’s used a lot There’s been I don’t know if you’ve seen this also, but I’ve seen a lot of times in schools and stuff that Schools are like well, we want them to be independent.
So we can’t have them so dependent on us. I’m like Yes, we want them to be independent, but we need to teach them how to become independent. It’s not like you just learn how to be independent, right?
Nicole Rouleau: And that’s, that’s the hardest part is that all of these things, I mean, you know, we have this buzzword executive functioning, but it’s their skills.
Our kids are not born with these skills. We’re born with the potential to develop these skills. with the right coaching with the right environment. Um, I like to tell parents, you can be your child’s coach, but you need to learn the skill. Um, and I, you know, it’s, it’s a tricky thing because we expect our kids to just sort of [00:09:00] naturally develop these.
And for some kids, they can develop them.
Nicole Rouleau: Um, but for some, and I’m seeing this, this is something I’m sure you, you’ve seen this as where executive function skills, um, or, you know, a deficit, they are very tightly woven to ADHD. So if you have ADHD, you have executive function developmental disability, essentially, or a delay, let’s say, but what I’m seeing and what I had seen, you know, as a full time teacher for years was that we have students nowadays that don’t have a learning difference that don’t have a diagnosed disability, and they have executive function deficits.
Why is that? And how is it being addressed? You know, it’s so it’s such a wide range. I mean, I, I coach students from, you know, 10, 12 years old all the way up to adult age, but where I really see it being such a huge issue is our high school and college students, because there’s so much expected of them.
There’s so much independence expected of them, but if they’d never learned these skills, They’re floundering. [00:10:00]
Frances Shefter: And it’s so true because in elementary school, there’s a lot more coddling and teaching and holding hands because they’re just learning. And then middle school, you’re expected to, you know, have more independence and be able to do it on your own a little bit more.
And then high school, they’re like, well, they have to be independent and boom, throw them to the wolves. Um, unless you’re lucky enough that your school has a resource room, that’s a appropriately done. Um, and I say that because so many people have a resource room that winds up just being a homework help, not like teaching the executive functioning skills and saying like, okay, show me what you’ve done, you know, so that you’re fading that out.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. Show me, don’t tell me. Right. Exactly. That’s a hard one. But that’s something to think about too, is that yes, we have these resource rooms, but one thing that we, that I struggle with with my, my students, especially my middle school students, which is really where you start to see these deficits, right?
Where there’s more expectations put on them. The transition into middle school is really difficult for so many of our kids. Um, and I hate bringing up [00:11:00] COVID, but I have to bring it up because what I’m seeing is that for our seventh and eighth grade kids, there’s now writing curriculums that were not in place through COVID.
And so now that there’s such a higher expectation that we have these curriculums where kids are held to grammar standards that they didn’t, they didn’t learn those foundational skills in fifth and sixth grade. So now our middle school students are really struggling with that. But what I’m seeing is that those kids, those middle schoolers do not want to look different.
So they’re not going to go to a resource room. Because they need the support. They don’t want to look different. So really, where can we empower where we can we empower these skills is to have our teachers know this information and kids. Yeah, they need a brain break. They need to get up and move. But can we have a space in the general ed classroom that allows all of our students to take a brain break when they need it?
Not just because they have A D. H. D. Or a learning difference. You know, and it makes sense.
Frances Shefter: Yeah, I remember when I went and got my um, Masters in Special [00:12:00] Ed and I went back and learning all these teaching techniques and I’m like, I’ve been teaching for four years already in Gen Ed. Why didn’t they teach this to us in, you know, in undergrad in the Gen Ed courses?
Because, yes, they’re geared towards Special Ed, but it’s just not the same. Good teaching. Yeah. You know, like it just like, I just imagine if the teachers are trained and not putting more on teachers because I know they’re enough. But if the teachers have it worked built into the curriculum, it’s going to lessen their workload in the long run, because it’s not going to be needed on the IEPs or it’ll still be on the IEPs.
But you’re naturally already implementing the IEP.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. And learning
Frances Shefter: how to do that.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. For sure.
Nicole Rouleau: And then one of the hardest things is when I go to these IEP meetings to support a family, to support a student. When I talk to the teachers about the strategies that I offer, I’ll say to them, it will help all of your students.
I promise. Like do it for everybody. Um, so it’s like the idea of a lot of these students who can’t get started and they just lay their head down. Oh, they’re [00:13:00] being oppositional. Let’s do an FBA. They’re they have behaviors, but the truth is is that they just don’t know how to get started. It feels too hard It feels like it’s gonna take too long And that’s it’s overwhelming exactly and let’s not forget when we go, you know I’ve talked a little bit about the working memory component.
We start out with a certain amount of working memory every day And it depletes as the day goes on. So if you’re noticing that your kids are having behaviors in, you know, the later part of the day after lunch, that makes perfect sense. They’re running out of working memory skills and it’s really, really hard for them to be able to kind of stick it through.
So when teachers can do things to reduce the cognitive load, like give strategy sheets, talk about what the end product looks like of any task, then let’s work backwards. It gives the kids a picture. to work from. And chances are, I mean, I’ve done this with many, many students over the last 12, 15 years, they get started, they figure it out, right.
But they have to have that [00:14:00] visualization and they have to talk through the plan. So it’s kind of like, you know, you know, we talk about, Oh, you know, a lot of times our parents will say to me, my kids can’t keep their room clean. Let’s talk about what a clean bedroom looks like. Let’s, let’s visualize that clean bedroom.
Now let’s work through what steps we need to take to get there. So, you know, IEPs will say things like frequent check ins and breaking down tasks. But I would like to say, what does that look like in the classroom? Exactly. And that’s what we’re missing in the IEPs, right?
Frances Shefter: Well, they’re not, if they’re done correctly.
So, in Maryland at least, and D. C. also, well, not D. C. as much. No, I think, I don’t remember if they changed theirs again. Maryland, um, for each supplementary aid, there’s supposed to be clarification of location and manner. And this is one of my biggest pet peeves right now, because people put across all settings.
Like, how is that clarifying location and manner? So like, for example, preferential seating. That’s going to look different for everyone. So what [00:15:00] I like to put in the clarification of location and manner is to be determined by the student and the teacher at the beginning of each course. Like not every day, but like at the beginning of each semester, because in one class it might be away from the door, in another class it might be away from the window.
And it depends. And. The cohort of the classroom matters. So it’s supposed to be clarified, uh, vocational matter. What I say at IEP meetings often is I’ll say, look, here’s the idea. If we all win the lottery and say, peace out, we’re going to Jamaica tomorrow, um, can somebody else pick up the IEP and know exactly what to do for this child?
What is that exactly going to look like? Um, and so that’s, that’s where like right now that’s where I am and like we need to beef up these IEPs and need to be and that’s not putting more on the teachers because the teachers are already doing it. The teachers do all this stuff. It’s just getting it in writing on the IEP.
So the next people know what to do.
Nicole Rouleau: [00:16:00] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I’ve seen that with the preferential seating for many years as an older school teacher who doesn’t have the training. in knowing and it’s not their fault. They don’t know. I mean, they’re not trained in some of these things, right? Or they don’t have the verbiage, right?
But what that looks like a lot of, I’ve seen this over the last several years, is that a lot of teachers think it’s front and center, but front and center does not work for an impulsive kid with ADHD because you’re going to be teaching to the back of his head. So it’s, it’s kind of like, and then also like we know that our kids with executive function deficits probably have cognitive distortions.
They probably don’t believe in themselves. There’s a mindset tied to this. And so if we can allow them to have choice and some control over things. You’re going to have more buy in, and you’re going to get more out of those kits. You know, Johnny, where do you think the best place is for you to sit? And then how do we teach monitoring, self monitoring, which is a critical skill that falls under executive functioning, is, let’s talk about this in a week, let’s see how this is going for you.
And then what we’re doing is [00:17:00] we’re modeling the monitoring, and we’re allowing that child to go, yeah, you know what, it’s not, it’s not working for me, can we try something else? Because that’s another skill that, unfortunately, it’s not really, really taught in, in schools. And right. And it’s, our kids don’t know how to check on themselves.
Frances Shefter: They don’t know how to check. Right. And it just makes so much sense of like, I didn’t even think of it on that level of the autonomy of giving the kid like that choice and developing and buying into it more. Um, because it also helps them to, um, to advocate for themselves. Um, you know, like thinking about, right, coping strategies is one that we have often is have a list of coping strategies.
Well, what does that look like? And it’s the student and the counselor or whoever they’re working with will develop a list of coping strategies and have it accessible to the child on a regular basis, you know, so again, let the kid buy into it because then, you know, obviously we all know, you Kids are going to buy into it [00:18:00] more if they’re involved in the planning of it.
Nicole Rouleau: Oh, yeah.
Frances Shefter: We can talk till we’re blue in the face telling a kid what to do, and if they don’t want to do it, it’s not going to happen.
Nicole Rouleau: So I mean, imagine if I think this works for adults as well as, you know, if you’re told you have to do something from a boss, that’s going to mean a little bit different than if your boss said, do you want to do this or this?
You know, or, you know, you got to do, you got to do the thing, you got to do something, but would you rather do this or would you rather do this? So it’s always about pushing that sort of accountability and, you know, of course, self advocacy, but also a lot of our kids with, with executive functional weaknesses are going to struggle to make decisions.
Um, that’s one of the biggest challenges I have for, with my high school and college students is that they don’t know how to make decisions. Um, and they need to make a lot of decisions at that age. So if they’ve never been, again, it’s a skill, right? So if we’re not teaching it, we’re not modeling it and teaching it, it does not happen.
So that’s another reason. That’s another thing. Speaking of the IEP accommodations and [00:19:00] things that I think work for students that, that struggle in this way is, you know, if we’re going to do a modification, like less problems on a page, if they’re going to have reduced homework or reduced workload, you give them a math page with 10 problems and you tell them to choose any eight.
What is that doing when they’re allowed to have that choice? How is that helping them? It’s letting them choose the eight that they feel most comfortable with. They feel like they’re a little bit more in control and then they’re gonna pretty much cross out the two that feel the hardest for them. We’re still demonstrating the knowledge.
We’re allowing them to make the decision and they have some control.
Nicole Rouleau: And so that’s where we see that students that take The ones who take initiative, the ones who don’t need to be prompted through their entire day. We know which students those are the ones that have to be tapped on the shoulder 24 7.
The ones who don’t need to be are the ones who have had the opportunities to make choices and have a sense of agency. So I really think that that’s something that we want to focus on in the IEP is having those goals set up to [00:20:00] allow that as well, anywhere possible. Right.
Frances Shefter: No, it’s true. It, it, it gets frustrating though.
Like I, with our middle and high school students, I always have that conversation in the balancing act, because as you said, we know middle school and high school don’t want to look different. They don’t want to be pulled out. They don’t want to be in the resource rooms. if the resource room isn’t run right, if the teachers aren’t taught right, it’s kind of like the school can only do too much, so much.
And I’ve told clients before, more than, or potential clients technically, more than once, like, hey, yes, you can pay me. I can go in and get you the perfect IEP. The reality though, is how it’s going to be implemented, even though it’s required legally, it might not be implemented the way it needs to be. And so I’ll tell them, like, honestly, take your money, go hire an executive functioning coach, hire a language therapist, you know, somebody that specializes in dyslexia, whatever that is, and do it on the outside. Whereas we don’t necessarily want our kids to be doing [00:21:00] more education on the outside, but you also don’t want them missing the curriculum because especially our kids with ADHD, autism, anxiety, and all of that, they’re going to fall farther behind.
And all that work you just did to bring them up is just going to, you know, Slip them back down again.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. It’s difficult. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Nicole Rouleau: And I also think, you know, we have this kind of push to sort of, there is more of a push to address the executive function skills. Like I’m seeing a lot of schools that are creating an executive function class, right?
They follow a curriculum, but again, we’re not teaching self awareness and time awareness. We’re not teaching awareness at all. We’re just teaching, let’s talk about time management, but we can’t teach kids to manage their time. If they don’t know how time passes. So schools, unfortunately, are missing a critical step.
And I wonder if they are creating these executive function classes to check a box to make it look like they’re doing something, right? But then we also have the schools that are so [00:22:00] focused on the standardized test and teaching the academic, delivering that academic content to teach to the standardized test.
Are they really focusing? Do they think that executive functioning skills are non academic? I think there’s a lot of administrators out there that think it’s not academic. Right. And they don’t realize it.
Frances Shefter: I mean, part of executive functioning skills is learning how to take a test. Yeah. Knowing how to take a test.
Knowing how to Metacognition. Right. Exactly. Like, you know, I remember in the LSAT training, the LSAT, how they’re like, you know, don’t spend too much time on one individual problem. Stop. Go on to the next one and then go back, but you’re going to spend all that time on that problem figuring it out and you’re going to miss the next three.
Whereas the next three might be easier that you can finish and then go back to the harder one and If you don’t do that one, that’s fine. You just didn’t do one instead of three more
Nicole Rouleau: yeah, and
Frances Shefter: like I had never been taught that and I was in my late 20s when I took my late 20s. Yeah. When I took my, um, [00:23:00] took the LSAT.
So you know what I mean? Like, so I had gone through all of life and never realized of being taught that. And I’m assuming that’s what they do like in the SAT prep courses and stuff is teach kids how to study and how to take a test. Yeah.
Nicole Rouleau: I mean, there’s an element to understanding the content. And being able to pull that information out.
But I used to actually do SAT prep and ACT prep years ago when I was a full time teacher trying to make that extra money to pay my bills, you know. And, um, yeah, I mean, there’s a huge element to test taking strategies, but there’s also the idea of we put a lot of emotional ties to like what is being asked.
And at the end of the day, it’s really application. There’s really some science behind and math really behind how you approach an exam. And how you can be really successful at it. It’s a lot easier than a lot of people think.
Nicole Rouleau: But I always say, like, think about all the skills that we need, life skills, right?
Anytime the word skill is attached to anything, it’s got to be something that’s taught and learned. And that’s the thing, is [00:24:00] that we need to be teaching these executive function skills to our children explicitly in order for them to really learn it. They’re not going to learn it otherwise. Right. You know, why do all of our students have such a struggle with with planner like planning and prioritizing because they’ve never been taught how to use a planner, then they go to college, and they don’t even know how to plan anything they don’t know how to prioritize.
And so they don’t have a system and and then there’s that idea of like we have goals right at the end of the day if we don’t have a habit to support that goal. Or ways or systems to support that goal.
Nicole Rouleau: We’re not going to get there or maybe we get there once, but then we don’t continue, um, you know, chaos ensues after the fact, but there’s, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things that I think need to be improved in terms of how we can build executive functioning into an IEP.
Um, but we need, we need more support, I think, from administration, more support from the schools. Our teachers need to be trained.
Nicole Rouleau: You know how many hours of PD I used to do as a [00:25:00] teacher? They could easily, easily create some, some great courses for us to, to learn these executive function skills. Yeah. You’d be surprised.
Frances Shefter: Oh, I know. I’m thinking back to my teaching days and like, I remember most of the time the PDs that they required us to do or they brought in were like, not, not really useful, you know, um, and, you know, you’re required to do all this stuff. I don’t know what they are now. It’s been quite a long time since I taught.
Um, but yeah, I mean, it’s just, but it, it totally makes sense.
Frances Shefter: Cause you look at it and like, you know, and I think about the emotional dysregulation also like with kids, yeah. We teach them how to tie their shoe. We teach them how to brush their teeth. We teach them how to use a fork. We need to teach them emotional regulation and we need to teach them executive functioning because, you know, at least by modeling.
And then I think about home and teachers and how many Parents and teachers and everybody else have ADHD as well or on the spectrum. And [00:26:00] if they don’t have it or they don’t have that skill, they’re not able to teach it. So how do we come in and fix that issue? Right.
Nicole Rouleau: Well, I can say that, right. For sure. I mean, that’s definitely a component.
And again, our teachers didn’t become teachers knowing how to deescalate. a student.
Nicole Rouleau: In fact, I think where it really comes into play is focusing on the foundational skills, right? Like we always need to focus, we always sort of like skip a couple steps and then jump in and it’s not going to work because we didn’t, you know, really focus on the foundation, but I’m a huge proponent for co regulation and the idea that we have to connect with our students before we can expect them to comply, before we can expect to, um, have any kind of discipline in the classroom.
We have to know that we, uh, they have to know that we understand and accept them. And I always did a great job. I loved working with my middle and high school students. And people would say to me, how do you deal with that age group? How do you do it? And I’m just like, because I just, I get down on their level and I, and I understand them and I accept them, [00:27:00] even if I don’t fully understand it, they think I do, but it’s such an important thing to have that connection for them to know that they have you, um, you kids will learn from you if you connect with.
That’s so true. But there’s just,
Frances Shefter: right. Yeah.
Frances Shefter: I was just going to say, I taught, um, I taught middle and high school at an alternative, uh, middle and high school. And like, I remember my classroom, I, I don’t like middle school. I did not like middle school, but my high school kids, and I remember there was one class and they were just like, you know, the kids, they’re an alternative, they’re court ordered to be there most of the time.
Most of them are not the kids that are learning naturally and stuff. And I remember walking into the class one day and I’m like, okay, all of you have an A right now. And they’re all looking at me like, what? What? And I’m like, you all have an A right now. I’m like, okay. I’m like, now you got to keep it. Can I tell you the difference in the kids in just that one thing?
Cause they knew they had an A like, Oh dang, they didn’t have to earn an A. They started with an A now just keeping it. It’s basically the same skills
Nicole Rouleau: and doing the same thing. It’s just how you’re presenting it. It is right.
Nicole Rouleau: And [00:28:00] that’s, I mean, there’s a lot of, and that’s another thing that I think teachers need to, they need to have these, these, um, trainings.
They need to learn this. Um, a lot of people, I have a Facebook group, a private Facebook group that I created about a year ago for my current clients, my past clients, just to give them a little extra support, right? When I’m not meeting with them. And a year later, it’s become 12. 5, 000 members. And so now there’s a lot of teachers in there, which I think is amazing because they are trying to learn these skills and the way that I would teach it to parents is similar to how I would teach it to parent, uh, to teachers as well.
But it is, a lot of it is in the verbiage and they don’t always realize, for example, here’s another IEP goal that I’ve read many times and I’m just like, or a combination essentially, is if so and so has questions. or ask if they have questions. But I have seen this in practice. If you say to a student, um, Joe, do you have questions?
They’re probably going to say no because they don’t want to look weak in front of their peers. They don’t want to look [00:29:00] different. But if you go up to them and you say, what questions do you have? You’re causing them to really dig in deep and think about that. And so I’m a huge fan of reflexive questioning, which is really helping them to attach how they feel to certain things and just kind of learn those critical thinking.
Because we, we just don’t have critical thinking skills nowadays, combined with the fact that our students aren’t resilient, they can’t persevere. Um, and you know, I have my speculations for why that is, but we need to be teaching them. We need to be teaching delayed gratification. You know, we don’t always get what we want right away.
I just don’t know that
Frances Shefter: these days they don’t know
Nicole Rouleau: it that. And that’s why we have our students who can’t work under, you know, they don’t have any frustration tolerance. So how do we build that? How do we help them to learn that they can sit for five minutes and try to figure this problem out without giving up again, these are all, these are all tied to executive function skills.
Without even realizing it.
Frances Shefter: The patience is [00:30:00] crazy. My kids all the time, they’ll ask me a question. I say, I’m not sure. They’re like, well, ask Siri then, you know, it’s like at the time, you know, we have it right there. And, and, you know, it’s not like, oh, well, let’s go get the encyclopedia and let’s go look it up.
Like when I grew up that we didn’t have the internet. Um, but yeah, it’s a lot of skills. You don’t even think about that. We learned naturally because we didn’t have the technology and the kids now need to be taught it. Yeah,
Nicole Rouleau: the number one thing that I always tell my parents that I work with is you have to allow your kids to be bored.
That’s the problem. That’s the problem. Because as parents, we have this inherent guilt that if our kids are bored, we have to entertain them. And we can’t always entertain them. So we go, here’s an iPad. Here’s the TV. And it’s not, unfortunately, it’s not the parent’s job to have to entertain their child. Go outside unstructured play.
And there’s so much, um, science, scientific evidence that talks about unstructured playtime outside can naturally develop [00:31:00] executive functioning skills. How is that? You know, well, we all kind of, you know, people, a lot, I mean, yeah, we have our people that are, that are our age group, probably that have ADHD and struggle with some of these things.
But in general, we probably have more executive function skills overall than our younger generations, you know, and there’s a reason for that. I spent a lot of time outside when I was younger. It was like, you got, you got kicked out of school, out of your house from school. Right. Yep. So come home
Frances Shefter: and the streetlights are on, you know?
Yeah, exactly. So there’s, it’s, it’s. It’s hard though, because today’s world is different, and it’s not quite as safe to do that, depending on where you’re living, unfortunately. But, but it’s true, like, I just think about it with my kids. I talk about it with my kids a lot on the show about, um, when they say they’re bored, I’m like, okay, so go clean your room.
I don’t want to do that. Okay, so here’s another option. Go clean the kitchen. I don’t want to do that. Okay, so you figure out something to do. And they realize like, okay, you know, because like, I’m fine. I’ll go clean. I’ll help you clean your room. Let’s clean. And that’s not [00:32:00] what they want to do. And that just puts it back on them to figure out something to do.
Um, I always give them like I don’t give them. Oh, why don’t you play with your Barbies or why don’t you play a game or anything like the fun stuff I give them the stuff I know they’re not going to want to do. So it makes them think of like, Oh, wait, what do I want to do? Yeah,
Nicole Rouleau: exactly. I’ll have students a lot of times brainstorm in the moment of boredom.
What are the activities that we can do? Let’s get a visual list. Because again, anytime we want to have our children because a lot of times our children are like truly don’t know they don’t know what to do. Right. Because they’ve never had to really try to be bored and try to just like, come up with their own ideas.
But so a lot of my students that I coach, especially my younger ones will brainstorm a visual list of all of the things that you can do that don’t involve tech, that if you’re feeling kind of bored, what can you do? Can you draw, can you play Legos? Can you go outside? Can you walk your dog? Like there’s a lot of things you can do, but truly the kids go to their parents and go, I’m bored.
I don’t know what to do. Well, you got your list. So pick, pick an activity off of that. [00:33:00] And that helps them to rely less on their working memory. Right? Because they’re not able to hold that piece in mind. So the more things we can externalize, the more systems that we can, you know, put into place for them.
And that’s really not a hard thing for teachers. Going back to the IEP situation, that’s not a hard thing for teachers to implement. A lot of teachers are already given their kids formula sheets and strategy sheets so they can know what they need to do to complete something like, say, in math. Right. Um, they’re already doing these things, but Like, is it consistent? It may not be consistent though.
Frances Shefter: And it saves time in the long run anyway, because like, if you have it there, you’re not going to have the questions. You know, so like, let’s teach it, and then you’re only going to get the questions that are like, the deeper questions that they really need an explanation.
If you have a task analysis of like, do this, do this, do this, um, you know, I know some of the schools teach it, like, you know, okay, you need to come up with your topic sentence, now you need to take notes while you’re reading, and that’s due on Wednesday, and then the, you know, [00:34:00] your outline’s due on Thursday, or whatever, however they do it, they teach that.
But that doesn’t happen all of the time in the schools. Naturally.
Nicole Rouleau: Exactly. And that’s what I see is I think the biggest, the biggest concern is the consistency. Because there’s not a framework for teachers. There’s no system that they follow even, right. You’re just, sometimes as a teacher, you know, you’re trying to just keep your head above water.
Well, you’re there and here’s your right.
Frances Shefter: Here’s your math curriculum. Here’s your reading curriculum. Here’s your science curriculum. Here’s your social studies. Now teach it all. It’s not intertwined. There’s no, here’s your behavior system, you know, like none of that classroom management stuff. Um,
Nicole Rouleau: but that’s, yeah.
Yeah, and that’s another thing too is that we don’t see enough classroom management and how can we teach executive function skills and emotional regulation skills where it comes to classroom management. There’s a lot of things we can do.
Nicole Rouleau: But the other thing with executive functioning skills that I think is overlooked in the school setting is learning perspective and situational awareness.
You know, I used to have a [00:35:00] student that would announce himself. He’d come into school late. I taught first period and it was an, I was a, believe it or not, it was an executive function class and he just couldn’t, he was, he was not a good sleeper. He was late every day to school. He came in consistently 15 minutes late every single day.
And when he would come in, he would announce himself. Hello, I’m here, everybody. He had no situational awareness to what was going on and he needed to be taught that. But what he didn’t need was he didn’t need to be taught that because I emailed his parents and said, he’s in trouble, or he’s staying for detention, or he’s got a lunch detention.
He needed to be taught that in the moment. And this is where executive function skills are developed is in the moment where there’s context. It needs to be taught at the point of performance. And that is something that is much, much overlooked in my opinion. So for example, what I did one day, cause I knew it was going to happen.
So I prepared myself for this. I gave my students a job, you know, gave them all something to do. And I said, when this boy comes in, I’m going to pull him out in the hallway and I’m going to tell him right before he gets a chance to [00:36:00] do that. I’m going to tell him to read the room. I’m going to tell him to look around and see what’s going on.
Do you know, from that day on, and this is the truth, he never had that problem again. He just needed to be taught that in the not, not in, he wasn’t in trouble. He needed situational awareness. And again,
Frances Shefter: where we go, I was going to say, if you got him in trouble and punished him, he would probably continue doing it because he, not that he didn’t know better, but like, yeah, whatever.
I’ll have detention. You know?
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. And a lot of those kids with those types of behaviors, the detention doesn’t mean anything anyway. And if they do stop the behavior, it’s out of fear. It’s not teaching a skill. And believe me, I, I’m not one of those people, those parents that thinks that kids shouldn’t have consequences.
I definitely believe in that. However, that situation, he needed to know what message he was sending to his peers when he was doing those behaviors. And that’s one of the things that our kids with executive functional weaknesses lack. They don’t know what that, and that’s a great question to ask. You know, parents can ask that teachers can ask that in the moment [00:37:00] when you act this way, do you know what message you’re sending to them?
Your peer, you know, do you know how your actions impact other people? Chances are they don’t know. They truly don’t know
Frances Shefter: because they’re just in their world. Right. I know we can go back to Ross. Yeah,
Nicole Rouleau: I was going to say going back to Ross Green’s, um, quote is children do well if they can. Right. So we know that every behavior they have, they’re doing it based on the skill set that they have.
So we have, we have to build more awareness around this. That’s so true. Yeah.
Frances Shefter: So I want everybody to find out like, where, where are you based out of?
Nicole Rouleau: So right now I live in Florida. I was based out of for years and years. And I taught mainline Philadelphia for a long time. But when I decided to do this app and kind of grow this business and be out on my own and leave the pub, the school sector, I was like, why not do it in an area that I love and that’s warm.
And so I live just like, um, not far from Sarasota. [00:38:00] Okay, but I work with yeah, I work with families all over the country and a lot of a lot of my clients are Still from up north just because I have a really good network up there Makes sense.
Frances Shefter: Yeah, I love florida. I was down there for that’s where I taught.
I taught down in miami. Oh, nice Uh, yeah, so, um, so great. So you’re in florida and I know we’re gonna put all your information in the um, In the notes, but like for somebody that might be watching this and going, well, I don’t know if I need her help. I don’t know. What are some key things that they might want to look at?
Just like a couple of quick things of like, Hey, if you’re doing, your kid is doing this, call me.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. Um, I, so what I like to tell families and, um, I think it’s an important thing to really think about is, um, We want to put attention to the behaviors that are going to keep our kids from becoming 22 solid members of society, good functioning members of society.
And so if you’re seeing behaviors and you think about this and go, well, my child is really struggling to emotionally regulate, they, you know, they have tantrums on the daily. That’s probably a behavior that we want to think about that [00:39:00] they can’t go do that when they’re 22 years old when they have a job, they can’t do it.
Um, you know, other behaviors that we see that are really going to keep them from being successful and being independent. Those are the behaviors we want to be thinking about focusing on. And I also think that so many of our students, whether it’s an ADHD student or a student with any kind of an executive function developmental delay right for whatever reason.
They are told so many negative things their whole life. And so it’s a really tricky thing because we see a lot of anxiety come kind of with this. Could it be comorbid with ADHD? Sure, it could, but we don’t know about the chicken or the egg. I mean, I know if I couldn’t manage my time, couldn’t stay organized, couldn’t find anything, I probably have some anxiety.
So, I often tell parents, talk to me. Like, let’s just do a, I do complimentary calls all the time. Let’s just have a phone call and see if the anxiety could potentially be coming from an executive function weakness. Um, so I, I, you know, I, I work with a lot of families. I do, like [00:40:00] I said, I do truly believe that parents can be their coaches.
So I do a lot of parent coaching to get them to teach these skills in the natural environment. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think, I think there’s a lot of things that executive function coaches can do. And we all sort of have a different background, right? We all sort of have a different educational background, but at the end of the day, my job is to build self awareness, right?
I don’t help students with a planner. I don’t say, let’s learn how to plan. Let’s, let’s organize. It’s, it’s about self awareness. It’s about building those verbal and nonverbal working memory skills. And it’s about teaching regulation and flexibility. So that’s the core root of where I build my, my, um, coaching programs.
That’s awesome. You know, if you, if we have, if we also, if we have a parent who’s really struggling with their student’s IEP and they’re not getting what they think they need. I do a lot of collaboration in that way, too, sort of full circle. We’re all a team, right, to help our kids be as independent as they can be.
Frances Shefter: Exactly. We’re all a community. [00:41:00] That’s all about.
Frances Shefter: Thank you so much, Nicole. This was so wonderful. I love like every time I talk to different people, even in the same fields, it’s always a different show, you know, this was absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much.
Nicole Rouleau: Of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And, um, I’m here, I’m here.
So anybody who needs me, I’m here to help out. super passionate about this. There’s such a, there’s more of a need I feel like now than ever. So
Frances Shefter: yeah. You’ve been listening to Stress-Free IEP® with your host Francis Shefter. Remember you do not need to do it all alone. You can reach Francis through Shefterlaw.com where prior episodes are also posted. Thank you for your positive reviews. Comments and sharing the show with others through YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
Executive Function Coaching and Consulting with Nicole Rouleau
Stress-Free IEP® with Frances Shefter, Episode 51
In this episode of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter speaks with Nicole Rouleau, Founder of Igniting Your Mind Executive Function Coaching and Consulting, and a seasoned special education advocate with over 10 years of experience. Nicole provides personalized guidance to parents navigating the IEP process through.
Tune in to the episode to hear about:
Learn more about Nicole Rouleau:
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Stress-Free IEP®:
Frances Shefter is an Education Attorney and Advocate who is committed to helping her clients have a Stress-Free IEP® experience. In each podcast, Frances interviews inspiring people to share information, educate you, empower you and help you get the knowledge you need.
Watch more episodes of Stress-Free IEP®:
Connect and learn more from your host, Frances Shefter:
Read the whole transcript here:
Voiceover: Welcome to Stress-Free IEP®. You do not need to do it all alone. With your host, Frances Shefter, Principal of Shefter Law. You can get more details and catch prior episodes at www. Shefterlaw. com. The Stress-Free IEP® video podcast is also posted on YouTube and LinkedIn, and you can listen to episodes through Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
Now, here’s the host of Stress-Free IEP®, Frances Shefter.
Frances Shefter: Hello everyone and welcome to our show. Today’s guest is Nicole Rouleau with Igniting Your Mind, which is an executive functioning coaching and consulting business. So Nicole, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce [00:01:00] yourself to our listeners.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah, hi, thanks so much for having me. So yeah, I have been in the educational world for a little over 18 years, and I mainly worked with middle school, high school students. And one thing that I noticed, um, I’m going to say over the last 10 years, was that our students that struggled with many different learning differences, not just ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, autism.
I’ve worked with all of those types of students, is that they were lacking, um, what we now know is executive functioning skills. And they were really struggling once graduating high school to launch to the next level. And so that was something that, you know, I saw it. I have been doing part time support, part time coaching for about eight years or so while working full time as an executive function learning specialist in the school setting.
And what I realized was that there was a missing link if we don’t support our parents. And we don’t support the teachers. We can coach our students till we’re blue in the face, and it’s not going [00:02:00] to make much of a difference. So I decided to, um, about a year and a half ago, just, um, embark on this journey of, let me try to do this full time.
Let me see if I can do this full time and put, like, all of my heart and soul into it. I’m very passionate about, um, about supporting students and getting them to the point where they are independent and they recognize the abilities they have within themselves because it’s possible. So that’s, that’s what’s landed me where I am.
Resigned from my job back in, uh, 20, late 2021. And I decided I’m just going to try, or sorry, 2022. And I decided to just launch this business on my own and just see what happens. And it’s been great so far.
Frances Shefter: Yeah. That is awesome. Amazing. Cause it is, it’s something that’s definitely needed because the schools do what they can.
Frances Shefter: Um, for those that might be listening that aren’t quite sure what executive functioning skills are, can you elaborate on those a little bit?
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. So, I mean, there’s, there’s the textbook definition about it’s a cognitive process, but that is basically what it is. What we, what we have and what we know [00:03:00] about executive functioning skills is that, you know, They grow and they develop, um, at different levels based on, um, our needs.
So generally, with most of our peer, with our, I’m sorry, with most of our children, um, right around from five to seven years is when, um, our executive functions start to develop. And that happens in our prefrontal cortex, which is the, the top upstairs brain, as I like to call it. Um, and what that basically is, is the idea of being able to, um, access self direction, goal directed persistence.
The idea is, is that if you have executive functioning skills, you don’t need to be prompted and reminded to do all of the important things. Um, so there’s a lot of components that go into it. I don’t want to get too sciencey on anybody, but the, the development of it starts in the, um, in the working memory component and we, um, we have, so we have nonverbal and we have verbal working memory.
That’s where it begins. So it’s visualization and self talk. And so that’s really where, um, executive functioning begins. And, and essentially what [00:04:00] it is. And we also have the idea of emotional regulation and we have the idea of cognitive flexibility. So those are the three big executive functioning skills.
And there’s just so many other life skills that are interwoven into that.
Frances Shefter: Right. It is.
Frances Shefter: And I just, you know, thinking about like IEP process and stuff with executive functioning skills, you can’t, I mean, can you, you can’t, there’s no way you could get everything that needs to be taught in executive functioning skills onto an IEP.
Because as is they’re 50 pages long and like trying to write goals for everything. So what, like, do you have suggestions for like parents that have IEPs of like what to focus on in school?
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. So, so I have done actually professional development for many teachers over the years as well. When I’ve worked in schools, I’ve sort of always been pulled in to do the executive function, you know, professional development and where I’ve always wanted to focus and where teachers need to focus.
Which then can obviously translate to how it can look in an IEP, is again to focus on [00:05:00] those nonverbal, verbal working memory skills, which is the idea of visualizing and self talking through what needs to happen in terms of tasks. Um, we know that our FAR students that have ADHD and, you know, autism and have anxiety and different learning differences, um, they, they really struggle to get started, to ta to initiate a task.
Um, and what happens is, is that so many teachers, so many schools focus on the external behaviors and what that looks like on the outside, which it looks like laziness. It looks like they don’t care. And really at the core root of that are usually a lack of executive functioning skills. So where I would tell parents to really want to focus on that in terms of how it could be written, how goals can be written into an IEP, is that we want to be focusing on a couple things.
One, what does the end result look like of any task? So a lot of times I, I do this when I coach my students and I do it when I coach my parents, is I like to think of it like, Let’s picture what an ice cream sundae looks like when it’s, when it’s [00:06:00] done, right? What’s the done product look like? We can picture the amazing cream and the, and the ice cream, you know, all of that.
And so then we can go, well, what do we need to get there? And we can easily work backwards and think about what we need to do to get there. And then that helps us to then move forward. So it’s quite, kind of like working with the end in mind, essentially. And that actually, that, that one sort of strategy comes from Sarah Ward, who’s a wonderful, um, she’s a speech and language, but she has, she’s an executive function expert.
And a lot of my strategies that I implement have come from her. So I wanted to give her credit, but it’s the idea of helping. If we can write IEPs, what does the end product look like? How can we help our students to task, initiate and get started? A lot of that is self awareness. It’s they don’t know the passing of time.
They need to be really thinking about how things look when they’re done before they get started. And then the other thing that I think is really important that is not talked about enough is [00:07:00] prompt dependence, right? So we see all of these goals and what ends up happening is when you really read them and you see how they’re being implemented, we’re having our kids work on organization, but we have a case manager, a learning specialist who is then.
You know, organizing the child’s backpack because there’s only so many hours in the day, right? But we’re not ever teaching the child how to do that So one thing I tell parents all the time is when you’re thinking about how goals should look in the iep We always want to think of a scaffolded approach Where there’s a lot of support in the beginning and we slowly release the responsibility to the student as they gain skills so when I work with a lot of the ieps and I do a lot of meetings with schools is I always want to make sure that language looks like You A lot of support until the skill is built and developed.
And how are we releasing that responsibility to the student once they’ve shown independence?
Frances Shefter: That makes sense. Right. Reverse engineering it. And what automatically popped in my head is [00:08:00] like independently or, you know, like the goal of independently keep your bag organized and then the objectives. Of like within three prompts within two prompts, you know, so the fading prompt is I’ve seen that a lot and that’s used a lot There’s been I don’t know if you’ve seen this also, but I’ve seen a lot of times in schools and stuff that Schools are like well, we want them to be independent.
So we can’t have them so dependent on us. I’m like Yes, we want them to be independent, but we need to teach them how to become independent. It’s not like you just learn how to be independent, right?
Nicole Rouleau: And that’s, that’s the hardest part is that all of these things, I mean, you know, we have this buzzword executive functioning, but it’s their skills.
Our kids are not born with these skills. We’re born with the potential to develop these skills. with the right coaching with the right environment. Um, I like to tell parents, you can be your child’s coach, but you need to learn the skill. Um, and I, you know, it’s, it’s a tricky thing because we expect our kids to just sort of [00:09:00] naturally develop these.
And for some kids, they can develop them.
Nicole Rouleau: Um, but for some, and I’m seeing this, this is something I’m sure you, you’ve seen this as where executive function skills, um, or, you know, a deficit, they are very tightly woven to ADHD. So if you have ADHD, you have executive function developmental disability, essentially, or a delay, let’s say, but what I’m seeing and what I had seen, you know, as a full time teacher for years was that we have students nowadays that don’t have a learning difference that don’t have a diagnosed disability, and they have executive function deficits.
Why is that? And how is it being addressed? You know, it’s so it’s such a wide range. I mean, I, I coach students from, you know, 10, 12 years old all the way up to adult age, but where I really see it being such a huge issue is our high school and college students, because there’s so much expected of them.
There’s so much independence expected of them, but if they’d never learned these skills, They’re floundering. [00:10:00]
Frances Shefter: And it’s so true because in elementary school, there’s a lot more coddling and teaching and holding hands because they’re just learning. And then middle school, you’re expected to, you know, have more independence and be able to do it on your own a little bit more.
And then high school, they’re like, well, they have to be independent and boom, throw them to the wolves. Um, unless you’re lucky enough that your school has a resource room, that’s a appropriately done. Um, and I say that because so many people have a resource room that winds up just being a homework help, not like teaching the executive functioning skills and saying like, okay, show me what you’ve done, you know, so that you’re fading that out.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. Show me, don’t tell me. Right. Exactly. That’s a hard one. But that’s something to think about too, is that yes, we have these resource rooms, but one thing that we, that I struggle with with my, my students, especially my middle school students, which is really where you start to see these deficits, right?
Where there’s more expectations put on them. The transition into middle school is really difficult for so many of our kids. Um, and I hate bringing up [00:11:00] COVID, but I have to bring it up because what I’m seeing is that for our seventh and eighth grade kids, there’s now writing curriculums that were not in place through COVID.
And so now that there’s such a higher expectation that we have these curriculums where kids are held to grammar standards that they didn’t, they didn’t learn those foundational skills in fifth and sixth grade. So now our middle school students are really struggling with that. But what I’m seeing is that those kids, those middle schoolers do not want to look different.
So they’re not going to go to a resource room. Because they need the support. They don’t want to look different. So really, where can we empower where we can we empower these skills is to have our teachers know this information and kids. Yeah, they need a brain break. They need to get up and move. But can we have a space in the general ed classroom that allows all of our students to take a brain break when they need it?
Not just because they have A D. H. D. Or a learning difference. You know, and it makes sense.
Frances Shefter: Yeah, I remember when I went and got my um, Masters in Special [00:12:00] Ed and I went back and learning all these teaching techniques and I’m like, I’ve been teaching for four years already in Gen Ed. Why didn’t they teach this to us in, you know, in undergrad in the Gen Ed courses?
Because, yes, they’re geared towards Special Ed, but it’s just not the same. Good teaching. Yeah. You know, like it just like, I just imagine if the teachers are trained and not putting more on teachers because I know they’re enough. But if the teachers have it worked built into the curriculum, it’s going to lessen their workload in the long run, because it’s not going to be needed on the IEPs or it’ll still be on the IEPs.
But you’re naturally already implementing the IEP.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. And learning
Frances Shefter: how to do that.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. For sure.
Nicole Rouleau: And then one of the hardest things is when I go to these IEP meetings to support a family, to support a student. When I talk to the teachers about the strategies that I offer, I’ll say to them, it will help all of your students.
I promise. Like do it for everybody. Um, so it’s like the idea of a lot of these students who can’t get started and they just lay their head down. Oh, they’re [00:13:00] being oppositional. Let’s do an FBA. They’re they have behaviors, but the truth is is that they just don’t know how to get started. It feels too hard It feels like it’s gonna take too long And that’s it’s overwhelming exactly and let’s not forget when we go, you know I’ve talked a little bit about the working memory component.
We start out with a certain amount of working memory every day And it depletes as the day goes on. So if you’re noticing that your kids are having behaviors in, you know, the later part of the day after lunch, that makes perfect sense. They’re running out of working memory skills and it’s really, really hard for them to be able to kind of stick it through.
So when teachers can do things to reduce the cognitive load, like give strategy sheets, talk about what the end product looks like of any task, then let’s work backwards. It gives the kids a picture. to work from. And chances are, I mean, I’ve done this with many, many students over the last 12, 15 years, they get started, they figure it out, right.
But they have to have that [00:14:00] visualization and they have to talk through the plan. So it’s kind of like, you know, you know, we talk about, Oh, you know, a lot of times our parents will say to me, my kids can’t keep their room clean. Let’s talk about what a clean bedroom looks like. Let’s, let’s visualize that clean bedroom.
Now let’s work through what steps we need to take to get there. So, you know, IEPs will say things like frequent check ins and breaking down tasks. But I would like to say, what does that look like in the classroom? Exactly. And that’s what we’re missing in the IEPs, right?
Frances Shefter: Well, they’re not, if they’re done correctly.
So, in Maryland at least, and D. C. also, well, not D. C. as much. No, I think, I don’t remember if they changed theirs again. Maryland, um, for each supplementary aid, there’s supposed to be clarification of location and manner. And this is one of my biggest pet peeves right now, because people put across all settings.
Like, how is that clarifying location and manner? So like, for example, preferential seating. That’s going to look different for everyone. So what [00:15:00] I like to put in the clarification of location and manner is to be determined by the student and the teacher at the beginning of each course. Like not every day, but like at the beginning of each semester, because in one class it might be away from the door, in another class it might be away from the window.
And it depends. And. The cohort of the classroom matters. So it’s supposed to be clarified, uh, vocational matter. What I say at IEP meetings often is I’ll say, look, here’s the idea. If we all win the lottery and say, peace out, we’re going to Jamaica tomorrow, um, can somebody else pick up the IEP and know exactly what to do for this child?
What is that exactly going to look like? Um, and so that’s, that’s where like right now that’s where I am and like we need to beef up these IEPs and need to be and that’s not putting more on the teachers because the teachers are already doing it. The teachers do all this stuff. It’s just getting it in writing on the IEP.
So the next people know what to do.
Nicole Rouleau: [00:16:00] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I’ve seen that with the preferential seating for many years as an older school teacher who doesn’t have the training. in knowing and it’s not their fault. They don’t know. I mean, they’re not trained in some of these things, right? Or they don’t have the verbiage, right?
But what that looks like a lot of, I’ve seen this over the last several years, is that a lot of teachers think it’s front and center, but front and center does not work for an impulsive kid with ADHD because you’re going to be teaching to the back of his head. So it’s, it’s kind of like, and then also like we know that our kids with executive function deficits probably have cognitive distortions.
They probably don’t believe in themselves. There’s a mindset tied to this. And so if we can allow them to have choice and some control over things. You’re going to have more buy in, and you’re going to get more out of those kits. You know, Johnny, where do you think the best place is for you to sit? And then how do we teach monitoring, self monitoring, which is a critical skill that falls under executive functioning, is, let’s talk about this in a week, let’s see how this is going for you.
And then what we’re doing is [00:17:00] we’re modeling the monitoring, and we’re allowing that child to go, yeah, you know what, it’s not, it’s not working for me, can we try something else? Because that’s another skill that, unfortunately, it’s not really, really taught in, in schools. And right. And it’s, our kids don’t know how to check on themselves.
Frances Shefter: They don’t know how to check. Right. And it just makes so much sense of like, I didn’t even think of it on that level of the autonomy of giving the kid like that choice and developing and buying into it more. Um, because it also helps them to, um, to advocate for themselves. Um, you know, like thinking about, right, coping strategies is one that we have often is have a list of coping strategies.
Well, what does that look like? And it’s the student and the counselor or whoever they’re working with will develop a list of coping strategies and have it accessible to the child on a regular basis, you know, so again, let the kid buy into it because then, you know, obviously we all know, you Kids are going to buy into it [00:18:00] more if they’re involved in the planning of it.
Nicole Rouleau: Oh, yeah.
Frances Shefter: We can talk till we’re blue in the face telling a kid what to do, and if they don’t want to do it, it’s not going to happen.
Nicole Rouleau: So I mean, imagine if I think this works for adults as well as, you know, if you’re told you have to do something from a boss, that’s going to mean a little bit different than if your boss said, do you want to do this or this?
You know, or, you know, you got to do, you got to do the thing, you got to do something, but would you rather do this or would you rather do this? So it’s always about pushing that sort of accountability and, you know, of course, self advocacy, but also a lot of our kids with, with executive functional weaknesses are going to struggle to make decisions.
Um, that’s one of the biggest challenges I have for, with my high school and college students is that they don’t know how to make decisions. Um, and they need to make a lot of decisions at that age. So if they’ve never been, again, it’s a skill, right? So if we’re not teaching it, we’re not modeling it and teaching it, it does not happen.
So that’s another reason. That’s another thing. Speaking of the IEP accommodations and [00:19:00] things that I think work for students that, that struggle in this way is, you know, if we’re going to do a modification, like less problems on a page, if they’re going to have reduced homework or reduced workload, you give them a math page with 10 problems and you tell them to choose any eight.
What is that doing when they’re allowed to have that choice? How is that helping them? It’s letting them choose the eight that they feel most comfortable with. They feel like they’re a little bit more in control and then they’re gonna pretty much cross out the two that feel the hardest for them. We’re still demonstrating the knowledge.
We’re allowing them to make the decision and they have some control.
Nicole Rouleau: And so that’s where we see that students that take The ones who take initiative, the ones who don’t need to be prompted through their entire day. We know which students those are the ones that have to be tapped on the shoulder 24 7.
The ones who don’t need to be are the ones who have had the opportunities to make choices and have a sense of agency. So I really think that that’s something that we want to focus on in the IEP is having those goals set up to [00:20:00] allow that as well, anywhere possible. Right.
Frances Shefter: No, it’s true. It, it, it gets frustrating though.
Like I, with our middle and high school students, I always have that conversation in the balancing act, because as you said, we know middle school and high school don’t want to look different. They don’t want to be pulled out. They don’t want to be in the resource rooms. if the resource room isn’t run right, if the teachers aren’t taught right, it’s kind of like the school can only do too much, so much.
And I’ve told clients before, more than, or potential clients technically, more than once, like, hey, yes, you can pay me. I can go in and get you the perfect IEP. The reality though, is how it’s going to be implemented, even though it’s required legally, it might not be implemented the way it needs to be. And so I’ll tell them, like, honestly, take your money, go hire an executive functioning coach, hire a language therapist, you know, somebody that specializes in dyslexia, whatever that is, and do it on the outside. Whereas we don’t necessarily want our kids to be doing [00:21:00] more education on the outside, but you also don’t want them missing the curriculum because especially our kids with ADHD, autism, anxiety, and all of that, they’re going to fall farther behind.
And all that work you just did to bring them up is just going to, you know, Slip them back down again.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. It’s difficult. Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Nicole Rouleau: And I also think, you know, we have this kind of push to sort of, there is more of a push to address the executive function skills. Like I’m seeing a lot of schools that are creating an executive function class, right?
They follow a curriculum, but again, we’re not teaching self awareness and time awareness. We’re not teaching awareness at all. We’re just teaching, let’s talk about time management, but we can’t teach kids to manage their time. If they don’t know how time passes. So schools, unfortunately, are missing a critical step.
And I wonder if they are creating these executive function classes to check a box to make it look like they’re doing something, right? But then we also have the schools that are so [00:22:00] focused on the standardized test and teaching the academic, delivering that academic content to teach to the standardized test.
Are they really focusing? Do they think that executive functioning skills are non academic? I think there’s a lot of administrators out there that think it’s not academic. Right. And they don’t realize it.
Frances Shefter: I mean, part of executive functioning skills is learning how to take a test. Yeah. Knowing how to take a test.
Knowing how to Metacognition. Right. Exactly. Like, you know, I remember in the LSAT training, the LSAT, how they’re like, you know, don’t spend too much time on one individual problem. Stop. Go on to the next one and then go back, but you’re going to spend all that time on that problem figuring it out and you’re going to miss the next three.
Whereas the next three might be easier that you can finish and then go back to the harder one and If you don’t do that one, that’s fine. You just didn’t do one instead of three more
Nicole Rouleau: yeah, and
Frances Shefter: like I had never been taught that and I was in my late 20s when I took my late 20s. Yeah. When I took my, um, [00:23:00] took the LSAT.
So you know what I mean? Like, so I had gone through all of life and never realized of being taught that. And I’m assuming that’s what they do like in the SAT prep courses and stuff is teach kids how to study and how to take a test. Yeah.
Nicole Rouleau: I mean, there’s an element to understanding the content. And being able to pull that information out.
But I used to actually do SAT prep and ACT prep years ago when I was a full time teacher trying to make that extra money to pay my bills, you know. And, um, yeah, I mean, there’s a huge element to test taking strategies, but there’s also the idea of we put a lot of emotional ties to like what is being asked.
And at the end of the day, it’s really application. There’s really some science behind and math really behind how you approach an exam. And how you can be really successful at it. It’s a lot easier than a lot of people think.
Nicole Rouleau: But I always say, like, think about all the skills that we need, life skills, right?
Anytime the word skill is attached to anything, it’s got to be something that’s taught and learned. And that’s the thing, is [00:24:00] that we need to be teaching these executive function skills to our children explicitly in order for them to really learn it. They’re not going to learn it otherwise. Right. You know, why do all of our students have such a struggle with with planner like planning and prioritizing because they’ve never been taught how to use a planner, then they go to college, and they don’t even know how to plan anything they don’t know how to prioritize.
And so they don’t have a system and and then there’s that idea of like we have goals right at the end of the day if we don’t have a habit to support that goal. Or ways or systems to support that goal.
Nicole Rouleau: We’re not going to get there or maybe we get there once, but then we don’t continue, um, you know, chaos ensues after the fact, but there’s, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things that I think need to be improved in terms of how we can build executive functioning into an IEP.
Um, but we need, we need more support, I think, from administration, more support from the schools. Our teachers need to be trained.
Nicole Rouleau: You know how many hours of PD I used to do as a [00:25:00] teacher? They could easily, easily create some, some great courses for us to, to learn these executive function skills. Yeah. You’d be surprised.
Frances Shefter: Oh, I know. I’m thinking back to my teaching days and like, I remember most of the time the PDs that they required us to do or they brought in were like, not, not really useful, you know, um, and, you know, you’re required to do all this stuff. I don’t know what they are now. It’s been quite a long time since I taught.
Um, but yeah, I mean, it’s just, but it, it totally makes sense.
Frances Shefter: Cause you look at it and like, you know, and I think about the emotional dysregulation also like with kids, yeah. We teach them how to tie their shoe. We teach them how to brush their teeth. We teach them how to use a fork. We need to teach them emotional regulation and we need to teach them executive functioning because, you know, at least by modeling.
And then I think about home and teachers and how many Parents and teachers and everybody else have ADHD as well or on the spectrum. And [00:26:00] if they don’t have it or they don’t have that skill, they’re not able to teach it. So how do we come in and fix that issue? Right.
Nicole Rouleau: Well, I can say that, right. For sure. I mean, that’s definitely a component.
And again, our teachers didn’t become teachers knowing how to deescalate. a student.
Nicole Rouleau: In fact, I think where it really comes into play is focusing on the foundational skills, right? Like we always need to focus, we always sort of like skip a couple steps and then jump in and it’s not going to work because we didn’t, you know, really focus on the foundation, but I’m a huge proponent for co regulation and the idea that we have to connect with our students before we can expect them to comply, before we can expect to, um, have any kind of discipline in the classroom.
We have to know that we, uh, they have to know that we understand and accept them. And I always did a great job. I loved working with my middle and high school students. And people would say to me, how do you deal with that age group? How do you do it? And I’m just like, because I just, I get down on their level and I, and I understand them and I accept them, [00:27:00] even if I don’t fully understand it, they think I do, but it’s such an important thing to have that connection for them to know that they have you, um, you kids will learn from you if you connect with.
That’s so true. But there’s just,
Frances Shefter: right. Yeah.
Frances Shefter: I was just going to say, I taught, um, I taught middle and high school at an alternative, uh, middle and high school. And like, I remember my classroom, I, I don’t like middle school. I did not like middle school, but my high school kids, and I remember there was one class and they were just like, you know, the kids, they’re an alternative, they’re court ordered to be there most of the time.
Most of them are not the kids that are learning naturally and stuff. And I remember walking into the class one day and I’m like, okay, all of you have an A right now. And they’re all looking at me like, what? What? And I’m like, you all have an A right now. I’m like, okay. I’m like, now you got to keep it. Can I tell you the difference in the kids in just that one thing?
Cause they knew they had an A like, Oh dang, they didn’t have to earn an A. They started with an A now just keeping it. It’s basically the same skills
Nicole Rouleau: and doing the same thing. It’s just how you’re presenting it. It is right.
Nicole Rouleau: And [00:28:00] that’s, I mean, there’s a lot of, and that’s another thing that I think teachers need to, they need to have these, these, um, trainings.
They need to learn this. Um, a lot of people, I have a Facebook group, a private Facebook group that I created about a year ago for my current clients, my past clients, just to give them a little extra support, right? When I’m not meeting with them. And a year later, it’s become 12. 5, 000 members. And so now there’s a lot of teachers in there, which I think is amazing because they are trying to learn these skills and the way that I would teach it to parents is similar to how I would teach it to parent, uh, to teachers as well.
But it is, a lot of it is in the verbiage and they don’t always realize, for example, here’s another IEP goal that I’ve read many times and I’m just like, or a combination essentially, is if so and so has questions. or ask if they have questions. But I have seen this in practice. If you say to a student, um, Joe, do you have questions?
They’re probably going to say no because they don’t want to look weak in front of their peers. They don’t want to look [00:29:00] different. But if you go up to them and you say, what questions do you have? You’re causing them to really dig in deep and think about that. And so I’m a huge fan of reflexive questioning, which is really helping them to attach how they feel to certain things and just kind of learn those critical thinking.
Because we, we just don’t have critical thinking skills nowadays, combined with the fact that our students aren’t resilient, they can’t persevere. Um, and you know, I have my speculations for why that is, but we need to be teaching them. We need to be teaching delayed gratification. You know, we don’t always get what we want right away.
I just don’t know that
Frances Shefter: these days they don’t know
Nicole Rouleau: it that. And that’s why we have our students who can’t work under, you know, they don’t have any frustration tolerance. So how do we build that? How do we help them to learn that they can sit for five minutes and try to figure this problem out without giving up again, these are all, these are all tied to executive function skills.
Without even realizing it.
Frances Shefter: The patience is [00:30:00] crazy. My kids all the time, they’ll ask me a question. I say, I’m not sure. They’re like, well, ask Siri then, you know, it’s like at the time, you know, we have it right there. And, and, you know, it’s not like, oh, well, let’s go get the encyclopedia and let’s go look it up.
Like when I grew up that we didn’t have the internet. Um, but yeah, it’s a lot of skills. You don’t even think about that. We learned naturally because we didn’t have the technology and the kids now need to be taught it. Yeah,
Nicole Rouleau: the number one thing that I always tell my parents that I work with is you have to allow your kids to be bored.
That’s the problem. That’s the problem. Because as parents, we have this inherent guilt that if our kids are bored, we have to entertain them. And we can’t always entertain them. So we go, here’s an iPad. Here’s the TV. And it’s not, unfortunately, it’s not the parent’s job to have to entertain their child. Go outside unstructured play.
And there’s so much, um, science, scientific evidence that talks about unstructured playtime outside can naturally develop [00:31:00] executive functioning skills. How is that? You know, well, we all kind of, you know, people, a lot, I mean, yeah, we have our people that are, that are our age group, probably that have ADHD and struggle with some of these things.
But in general, we probably have more executive function skills overall than our younger generations, you know, and there’s a reason for that. I spent a lot of time outside when I was younger. It was like, you got, you got kicked out of school, out of your house from school. Right. Yep. So come home
Frances Shefter: and the streetlights are on, you know?
Yeah, exactly. So there’s, it’s, it’s. It’s hard though, because today’s world is different, and it’s not quite as safe to do that, depending on where you’re living, unfortunately. But, but it’s true, like, I just think about it with my kids. I talk about it with my kids a lot on the show about, um, when they say they’re bored, I’m like, okay, so go clean your room.
I don’t want to do that. Okay, so here’s another option. Go clean the kitchen. I don’t want to do that. Okay, so you figure out something to do. And they realize like, okay, you know, because like, I’m fine. I’ll go clean. I’ll help you clean your room. Let’s clean. And that’s not [00:32:00] what they want to do. And that just puts it back on them to figure out something to do.
Um, I always give them like I don’t give them. Oh, why don’t you play with your Barbies or why don’t you play a game or anything like the fun stuff I give them the stuff I know they’re not going to want to do. So it makes them think of like, Oh, wait, what do I want to do? Yeah,
Nicole Rouleau: exactly. I’ll have students a lot of times brainstorm in the moment of boredom.
What are the activities that we can do? Let’s get a visual list. Because again, anytime we want to have our children because a lot of times our children are like truly don’t know they don’t know what to do. Right. Because they’ve never had to really try to be bored and try to just like, come up with their own ideas.
But so a lot of my students that I coach, especially my younger ones will brainstorm a visual list of all of the things that you can do that don’t involve tech, that if you’re feeling kind of bored, what can you do? Can you draw, can you play Legos? Can you go outside? Can you walk your dog? Like there’s a lot of things you can do, but truly the kids go to their parents and go, I’m bored.
I don’t know what to do. Well, you got your list. So pick, pick an activity off of that. [00:33:00] And that helps them to rely less on their working memory. Right? Because they’re not able to hold that piece in mind. So the more things we can externalize, the more systems that we can, you know, put into place for them.
And that’s really not a hard thing for teachers. Going back to the IEP situation, that’s not a hard thing for teachers to implement. A lot of teachers are already given their kids formula sheets and strategy sheets so they can know what they need to do to complete something like, say, in math. Right. Um, they’re already doing these things, but Like, is it consistent? It may not be consistent though.
Frances Shefter: And it saves time in the long run anyway, because like, if you have it there, you’re not going to have the questions. You know, so like, let’s teach it, and then you’re only going to get the questions that are like, the deeper questions that they really need an explanation.
If you have a task analysis of like, do this, do this, do this, um, you know, I know some of the schools teach it, like, you know, okay, you need to come up with your topic sentence, now you need to take notes while you’re reading, and that’s due on Wednesday, and then the, you know, [00:34:00] your outline’s due on Thursday, or whatever, however they do it, they teach that.
But that doesn’t happen all of the time in the schools. Naturally.
Nicole Rouleau: Exactly. And that’s what I see is I think the biggest, the biggest concern is the consistency. Because there’s not a framework for teachers. There’s no system that they follow even, right. You’re just, sometimes as a teacher, you know, you’re trying to just keep your head above water.
Well, you’re there and here’s your right.
Frances Shefter: Here’s your math curriculum. Here’s your reading curriculum. Here’s your science curriculum. Here’s your social studies. Now teach it all. It’s not intertwined. There’s no, here’s your behavior system, you know, like none of that classroom management stuff. Um,
Nicole Rouleau: but that’s, yeah.
Yeah, and that’s another thing too is that we don’t see enough classroom management and how can we teach executive function skills and emotional regulation skills where it comes to classroom management. There’s a lot of things we can do.
Nicole Rouleau: But the other thing with executive functioning skills that I think is overlooked in the school setting is learning perspective and situational awareness.
You know, I used to have a [00:35:00] student that would announce himself. He’d come into school late. I taught first period and it was an, I was a, believe it or not, it was an executive function class and he just couldn’t, he was, he was not a good sleeper. He was late every day to school. He came in consistently 15 minutes late every single day.
And when he would come in, he would announce himself. Hello, I’m here, everybody. He had no situational awareness to what was going on and he needed to be taught that. But what he didn’t need was he didn’t need to be taught that because I emailed his parents and said, he’s in trouble, or he’s staying for detention, or he’s got a lunch detention.
He needed to be taught that in the moment. And this is where executive function skills are developed is in the moment where there’s context. It needs to be taught at the point of performance. And that is something that is much, much overlooked in my opinion. So for example, what I did one day, cause I knew it was going to happen.
So I prepared myself for this. I gave my students a job, you know, gave them all something to do. And I said, when this boy comes in, I’m going to pull him out in the hallway and I’m going to tell him right before he gets a chance to [00:36:00] do that. I’m going to tell him to read the room. I’m going to tell him to look around and see what’s going on.
Do you know, from that day on, and this is the truth, he never had that problem again. He just needed to be taught that in the not, not in, he wasn’t in trouble. He needed situational awareness. And again,
Frances Shefter: where we go, I was going to say, if you got him in trouble and punished him, he would probably continue doing it because he, not that he didn’t know better, but like, yeah, whatever.
I’ll have detention. You know?
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. And a lot of those kids with those types of behaviors, the detention doesn’t mean anything anyway. And if they do stop the behavior, it’s out of fear. It’s not teaching a skill. And believe me, I, I’m not one of those people, those parents that thinks that kids shouldn’t have consequences.
I definitely believe in that. However, that situation, he needed to know what message he was sending to his peers when he was doing those behaviors. And that’s one of the things that our kids with executive functional weaknesses lack. They don’t know what that, and that’s a great question to ask. You know, parents can ask that teachers can ask that in the moment [00:37:00] when you act this way, do you know what message you’re sending to them?
Your peer, you know, do you know how your actions impact other people? Chances are they don’t know. They truly don’t know
Frances Shefter: because they’re just in their world. Right. I know we can go back to Ross. Yeah,
Nicole Rouleau: I was going to say going back to Ross Green’s, um, quote is children do well if they can. Right. So we know that every behavior they have, they’re doing it based on the skill set that they have.
So we have, we have to build more awareness around this. That’s so true. Yeah.
Frances Shefter: So I want everybody to find out like, where, where are you based out of?
Nicole Rouleau: So right now I live in Florida. I was based out of for years and years. And I taught mainline Philadelphia for a long time. But when I decided to do this app and kind of grow this business and be out on my own and leave the pub, the school sector, I was like, why not do it in an area that I love and that’s warm.
And so I live just like, um, not far from Sarasota. [00:38:00] Okay, but I work with yeah, I work with families all over the country and a lot of a lot of my clients are Still from up north just because I have a really good network up there Makes sense.
Frances Shefter: Yeah, I love florida. I was down there for that’s where I taught.
I taught down in miami. Oh, nice Uh, yeah, so, um, so great. So you’re in florida and I know we’re gonna put all your information in the um, In the notes, but like for somebody that might be watching this and going, well, I don’t know if I need her help. I don’t know. What are some key things that they might want to look at?
Just like a couple of quick things of like, Hey, if you’re doing, your kid is doing this, call me.
Nicole Rouleau: Yeah. Um, I, so what I like to tell families and, um, I think it’s an important thing to really think about is, um, We want to put attention to the behaviors that are going to keep our kids from becoming 22 solid members of society, good functioning members of society.
And so if you’re seeing behaviors and you think about this and go, well, my child is really struggling to emotionally regulate, they, you know, they have tantrums on the daily. That’s probably a behavior that we want to think about that [00:39:00] they can’t go do that when they’re 22 years old when they have a job, they can’t do it.
Um, you know, other behaviors that we see that are really going to keep them from being successful and being independent. Those are the behaviors we want to be thinking about focusing on. And I also think that so many of our students, whether it’s an ADHD student or a student with any kind of an executive function developmental delay right for whatever reason.
They are told so many negative things their whole life. And so it’s a really tricky thing because we see a lot of anxiety come kind of with this. Could it be comorbid with ADHD? Sure, it could, but we don’t know about the chicken or the egg. I mean, I know if I couldn’t manage my time, couldn’t stay organized, couldn’t find anything, I probably have some anxiety.
So, I often tell parents, talk to me. Like, let’s just do a, I do complimentary calls all the time. Let’s just have a phone call and see if the anxiety could potentially be coming from an executive function weakness. Um, so I, I, you know, I, I work with a lot of families. I do, like [00:40:00] I said, I do truly believe that parents can be their coaches.
So I do a lot of parent coaching to get them to teach these skills in the natural environment. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think, I think there’s a lot of things that executive function coaches can do. And we all sort of have a different background, right? We all sort of have a different educational background, but at the end of the day, my job is to build self awareness, right?
I don’t help students with a planner. I don’t say, let’s learn how to plan. Let’s, let’s organize. It’s, it’s about self awareness. It’s about building those verbal and nonverbal working memory skills. And it’s about teaching regulation and flexibility. So that’s the core root of where I build my, my, um, coaching programs.
That’s awesome. You know, if you, if we have, if we also, if we have a parent who’s really struggling with their student’s IEP and they’re not getting what they think they need. I do a lot of collaboration in that way, too, sort of full circle. We’re all a team, right, to help our kids be as independent as they can be.
Frances Shefter: Exactly. We’re all a community. [00:41:00] That’s all about.
Frances Shefter: Thank you so much, Nicole. This was so wonderful. I love like every time I talk to different people, even in the same fields, it’s always a different show, you know, this was absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much.
Nicole Rouleau: Of course. Yeah. Thanks for having me. And, um, I’m here, I’m here.
So anybody who needs me, I’m here to help out. super passionate about this. There’s such a, there’s more of a need I feel like now than ever. So
Frances Shefter: yeah. You’ve been listening to Stress-Free IEP® with your host Francis Shefter. Remember you do not need to do it all alone. You can reach Francis through Shefterlaw.com where prior episodes are also posted. Thank you for your positive reviews. Comments and sharing the show with others through YouTube, LinkedIn, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google podcasts, Stitcher, and more.
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