Learning to See, Not Fix: One Parent’s Journey to Understand Executive Functioning

(Or “What The Kitchen Table Taught Me”)

Recently, I traveled to Brussels, a place I spent a good portion of my adult life and raised my children. While there, I caught up with several friends, including a parent from the international school I worked in. I became quite close to this mother having worked with her daughter throughout middle school. Like so many parents, she was a regular attendee at the many parent workshops we offered in the counseling department; she was curious, determined and wanted to better understand her adolescent daughter. We caught up over coffee, and she reminded me of her journey and her “aha” moment several years ago with her then 9th grade daughter.

With a few name changes, she has given me permission to share her “aha” moment of her understanding her daughter’s learning journey here…

“The email arrived shortly after school on a Tuesday, right as I was mentally calculating whether we had enough time to get through homework before Maya’s tennis practice.

Subject: Checking in about Maya's recent assignments

My stomach dropped. I couldn’t believe that I was getting yet another email from Maya’s teacher.

Ms. Stafford’s message was polite, professional and carefully worded. Maya had missed three assignments last week, and she seemed distracted during class. Was everything okay at home?

I read it twice, feeling that familiar heat rise in my chest, part defensiveness, part embarrassment and part exhaustion. Everything was fine at home. We had regular routines. We had a designated homework spot in the kitchen. I even checked the assignment portal daily. I reminded Maya, I encouraged Maya and often, I was nearby as Maya completed her homework. And yet, here I was receiving this email.

After tennis that evening, I watched Maya stare at her math worksheet for ages. Not working on it. Not even attempting it. She was just staring at it. Her pencil doodled at the edge of the paper. Her eyes drifted to the window, the clock, her water bottle, anywhere but the problems in front of her.

"Maya. Please focus."

"I am."

"You haven't written anything."

"I'm thinking."

Twenty minutes later and nothing more than circles and sketches on the paper, I reminded her, "Maya, you need to start."

More time has passed. "Maya, please,  just do the first problem." More time has passed, and now she’s in tears. Hers and, almost, mine.

"Why is this so hard?" I heard myself say, the words sharper than I meant them. "You're a bright girl. You know how to do this. Why won't you just try?"

She looked at me with eyes that held something I couldn't quite name. Not defiance. Something closer to defeat.

"I am trying," she whispered.

I didn't believe her. Not really. Because trying looks like doing, doesn't it? Trying looks like pencil on paper, numbers written down, something that demonstrates forward motion. 

I called Ms. Stafford the next day, ready to explain, to defend, to problem-solve in the way I approach everything else in my life. I'm a project manager. I break things into steps. I make systems work, and, more than anything, I wanted her to know that my daughter was capable of doing this work.

But Ms. Stafford didn't start with the missing assignments.

"Tell me," she asked, "what does homework look like at your house?"

So I shared with her that I thought I was doing all the right things to help and support Maya. I described her workspace at the kitchen table. I tell her about the reminders, the gentle encouragement that escalates into barely concealed frustration and the meltdowns. I tell her about hours that should take thirty minutes or less and the way Maya seems to shut down the moment she opens her backpack.

"And after school?" Ms. Stafford asked. "What's she like when she first gets home?"

I paused. "Exhausted. Irritable. She goes straight to her room and doesn't want to talk. I usually give her a snack and some space before we start homework."

"How much space?"

"Twenty minutes, maybe?"

There was a thoughtful silence on the other end of the line.

"Here's what I see in the classroom," Ms. Stafford said carefully. "Maya participates beautifully in discussions. She has creative ideas, and she understands the material. But when it's time to transition to independent work, especially anything with multiple steps, she freezes. It's like she knows what to do but can't figure out how to start. And by the end of the day, after managing all those transitions, all those decisions, all that focus, I really think she is running on empty."

Something clicked, quietly, in the back of my mind.

"She's not being lazy," Ms. Stafford continued, and I felt my throat tighten because that word had crossed my mind, shamefully, more than once. "She's struggling with executive functioning. Task initiation, working memory and emotional regulation. These are skills, not character traits. And they're skills we can support."

I knew the term, executive functioning. Afterall, I was a regular at the parent workshops at school, many of which addressed adolescent development.

"It’s the brain's management system," Ms. Stafford explained. "It’s what allows us to plan, prioritize, start tasks, manage emotions and shift between activities. For some kids, these skills develop more slowly. It's not about effort or intelligence. 

I thought about Maya at the kitchen table. The staring. The paralysis. The way she'd look at an assignment like it was a locked door and she'd lost the key. She said she was trying, and I didn't believe her. 

That night, I stepped back and observed from a new perspective. Maya came home, dropped her backpack like it weighed fifty pounds and disappeared into her room. Twenty minutes later, I knocked gently.

"Hey, love. Tough day?"

She shrugged. "Just tired."

"What was the hardest part?"

She thought about it. "We had a surprise quiz in English, and I couldn't remember what we read last night even though I did read it. And then we had a substitute in history who changed the whole schedule, and I got confused about what we were supposed to do. And then..." Her voice trailed off.

"That's a lot of switching gears," I said.

She looked at me, surprised. "Yeah. It is."

Later, at the kitchen table, I tried something new. "Okay, you've got math and the reading questions. Which one feels easier to start with?"

"Reading, I guess."

"Great. Why don't you start with that. Can you read the first question out loud?" She did.

"What's it asking for?"

"The main idea of the paragraph."

"Perfect. So step one: read the paragraph. Just that. Don't think about the answer yet. Just read." She read.

"Now, if you had to tell me that paragraph in one sentence, like you were texting a friend, what would you say?"

She smiled a little. "Basically, the guy is scared of making the wrong choice."

"Write that."

"But that's not—"

"Write it exactly like you said it. You can change it up a bit later." She wrote. One sentence became two. Two became a paragraph. She looked up, almost surprised.

"You just answered the question," I said.

"I did?"

"You did."

Ms. Stafford and I started emailing regularly, just short updates, but it felt like we were working together to make sure my daughter felt supported. We worked together on what Maya needed.

But, most importantly, I stopped seeing her behavior as a choice and started seeing it as her struggle:

• When she stared at the worksheet, it wasn't defiance, it was decision paralysis.

• When she melted down after school, it wasn't drama, it was regulation depletion.

• When she said "I'll do it later," it wasn't procrastination, it was her brain's way of saying "I don't know how to organize this right now."

A few weeks later, Maya was back at the kitchen table, working on a science project. She had her planner open, her materials sorted by color and a timer set for twenty-minute work blocks.

"Mom?" she said. "I think I'm getting better at this. At knowing how to start things. Like, I can feel when my brain is stuck, and I know I need to break it into smaller pieces."

I sat down across from her. "That's called self-awareness, sweetheart. That's huge."

"Ms. Stafford said executive functioning is like building muscle."

"She's right."

"I thought I was just bad at school," Maya said quietly, not looking up from her homework.

My heart cracked open.

"You were never bad at school," I said. "You were working twice as hard as everyone else just to manage what they may already know how to do. That's the opposite of bad. That's remarkable."

It took me a while to realize that my months of "just focus" and "why won't you try?" didn’t help Maya.

I know now that executive functioning skills are real, learnable and some may be naturally stronger than others. My daughter's struggles aren't failures of character, they're gaps in development that can be bridged with patience, strategy and support.”

If you’re standing at your own kitchen table, watching your child struggle with invisible obstacles, know this: understanding doesn’t always come quickly, but it does come. And when it does, everything changes, not because the struggle disappears, but because you finally see what’s really happening beneath it.

At Oak & Ivy Coaching, we help students and families do just that, build executive functioning skills with compassion, structure and evidence-based strategies that last. When families learn to see differently, they begin to grow differently.

Schedule a free discovery call today and take the first step toward calmer routines, greater confidence and the kind of progress that lasts well beyond the kitchen table.