Myron sits across from me in the booth, his pancakes mostly untouched, his face smirking in reflection on his seventh-grade self. “I was such a mess back then,” he laughs. “I can’t believe you put up with me.” Myron’s in town to collaborate with fellow rental managers, called on to share his strategies for connecting tenants with community resources. His employer and the communities he serves celebrate his impact.
Seventh-grade Myron, however, was a different story. Devastated by a family death and struggling with undiagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Myron was that student on campus: the one all teachers knew but few had reached. His inner struggles were highly visible in his actions, words, and conflicts. When we met, he had, mostly accidentally, stepped on my foot on his way off the school bus, which was the same foot that had 17 surgeries. It was a painful start to what would be an incredible journey together.
“Did you see my Facebook post a few days ago?” he asks while we eat breakfast. He hands me his phone, and tears well up in my eyes at the photo of us: me in my favorite first-day-of-school dress and him with his backpack looking heavier than him. “It all started with a binder party,” his post begins, “and it was the first time I learned that I could learn how to learn and do school.”
Myron’s post celebrated a turning point that, at the time, felt like just another Thursday when we organized his backpack together. I got him a snack, he chose some music, and we dumped the contents of his backpack onto a table. While we explored his understanding of organization, we tested out systems that might work for his brain. We talked about school, home, and the waves of self-doubt that left him feeling defensive.
“What do you think was important about that time?” I ask him.
He ponders for a moment. “I don’t think I realized that there were options for me, that I could learn ways to do things that were hard for me. I thought everyone else was good at school, and I never would be. Everyone told me to try harder, but you taught me how to do the things. Sometimes, it was like we could hack school together.”
“Hacking” school began when Myron learned about and grew his executive function skills, which are the broad spectrum of mental actions people take to reach goals. When we empower our students, children, and teens to grow their executive function, their school and life experiences change tremendously. Our kids slowly emerge from the fixed mindset of areas like school or chores being terminally hard for them, and they begin to realize their potential for academic and executive function success.
Whether diagnosed with a learning difference or just growing up as an adolescent, inside each young person is a Myron, who may feel lost, defeated, or confused about how to do well in school. While school requires layers of specific skills, such as organizing and planning, our busy schedules at home and at school may not allow time to teach these requisite skills or, better yet, teach students how to identify their own needs and find resources to grow their skills. We may lament that students turn in their work late or don’t seem to focus in class, and yet we may also feel lost about how to address these challenges. It’s not like we can hit pause and teach How to Be a Student 101. How would we even teach these executive function skills?
Developing students’ executive function skills can take time (albeit not a lot of sweeping changes to your parenting or teaching). It often requires you to think about your own brain, learning, and the systems you use to facilitate your life. It will feel overwhelming at times. Yet, it may prove to be one of the most important shifts of your parenting or teaching experience.
As with many of the challenging journeys we undertake, developing our kids’ executive function skills is rewarding. It’s a positive snowball, a shot of espresso, an alive time in your home or classroom that begins as a hum and ends as a roar. Stick with yourself and your child during your journey, and the results will amaze you.
Executive Function Essential Reads
Adapted from Growing Executive Function, by Sarah Kesty, Copyright 2026.