Executive function can be understood as the mental ability that enables planning, problem-solving, and adapting to new situations. The core abilities include working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibition control.
During a child's development, executive function and self-regulation skills grow quickly, so activities should match the skills of a child.
Kids love sharing stories. Initially, their stories are often unstructured, with one simple event following another. With practice, children start creating more detailed and organised plots. As these skills develop, the ability to retain information in their memory also grows.
How to boost executive function skills through storytelling?
- When you read a book to your child, pause and ask them if they can remember certain details. This could be, for example, names or events.
- Create quiet times and encourage your child to tell their stories. If they struggle, you can use photos or create a memory book together from the latest holiday. Revisit the story from time to time by looking at the pictures.
- If there are several kids involved in the storytelling, make sure each one waits their turn to talk, to practice patience and impulse control.
- Another fun way of using storytelling with more than one child is to create a group story. One child starts the story, and the next child adds something to it. When doing that, they need to pay attention to each other, consider and remember the story and what they add to it, come up with ideas, and wait for their turn.
- Try to encourage them to come up with possible different endings for the story so their cognitive flexibility gets boosted.
- Children can act out the stories or events they have talked about.
- Encourage your child to think about the story plot by asking them why they think a character did a certain task.
- If families speak more than one language, encourage children to tell a story in their home language to foster fluency in two languages.
All these approaches can benefit different executive function skills, such as attentiveness, inhibition control, cognitive flexibility, working memory, and more.
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