As a school principal and having also taught Kindergarten through Grade 12 over the past two decades, I have spent a lot of time talking with families about independence, organization, motivation, and executive functioning. Yet despite all my years in education, I still have mornings at home with my own two teens where I wonder how it’s possible to forget a backpack that is sitting right beside the front door.
I’ve even had days where I’ve reminded my son to empty the dishwasher (the one and only family chore on his daily list) and only five minutes after the “okay,” he has already forgotten the conversation ever happened.
Moments like these can build over time into a feeling many parents know well: the heated frustration that rises like an old-fashioned mercury thermometer, climbing higher and higher until eventually it bursts into the regrettably loud lecture: “I’ve told you this a hundred times!”
The problem is that children and teens are not forgetting things because they are lazy, disrespectful, or trying to make our lives difficult. In most cases, what parents are seeing is a completely normal developmental stage in executive functioning and working memory. I sometimes call adolescence, which is roughly ages ten to 17, the “renovation years.” If you have ever lived through a major home renovation, you know it is exciting, exhausting, messy, chaotic, disorienting, and somehow always takes longer than expected. That is what these years can feel like inside the brain and body of an adolescent.
Executive functioning is largely connected to the brain’s prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for skills like planning ahead, organization, emotional regulation, impulse control, attention, and decision-making. Working memory is part of that system and helps us to hold information and use our short-term memory while completing a task.
At the same time, adolescents are navigating rapidly developing emotional systems, particularly the amygdala which matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex. This is part of why teens can sometimes react emotionally before they fully think things through. During adolescence, the “thinking brain” and the “emotional brain” are still learning how to work together efficiently – these systems are still under heavy construction.
If you think about it, as a society we haven’t really designed things well for our adolescents. At a time where their minds and bodies are going through one of the most radical transformations of their lifetimes, we move them from elementary school to middle school. In elementary, they will typically have a single homeroom teacher and a lot of hand-holding from both school and home. In middle school, they are suddenly juggling multiple teachers, changing schedules, and more homework. As if that wasn’t enough, we add in increasingly intense sport and extracurricular schedules, complicated social dynamics, and now, technology designed for addictive attention. It is a tremendous cognitive load for a brain that is still nowhere near full development yet. It’s a wonder they can remember anything at all!
I see this with high school students, too. I work with students who are often exceptional in both academics and their out-of-school passions. They can ace a physics exam, discuss complex world issues, get selected to a AAA hockey team, and sing like a superstar, yet they come to class a mess, wearing the wrong shoes, missing a water bottle, and an essay that’s two weeks late.
Parents often feel confused by this contradiction. How can someone so intelligent and capable struggle to remember basic things? However, intelligence and executive functioning are not the same thing. Experts now largely agree that the part of the brain responsible for executive functioning isn’t fully developed until we are well into our twenties. For some gifted and other neurodivergent learners, that development can take even longer.
When ability, age, and expectations do not align, parents often move quickly toward blame and frustration. We wonder if we are doing something wrong or if our child simply doesn’t care. We get exhausted from repeating ourselves, nagging, yelling, or eventually just giving up and doing everything for them instead.
But it helps to remember that this is normal, and that executive functioning skills are not simply things children either “have” or “don’t have.” They are skills that can be gradually strengthened over time.
One of the biggest shifts I made, both as an educator and parent, was moving from reminders to questions.
Practicing an inner-narrative, sometimes called metacognition or “thinking about our thinking,” is a big part of developing executive functioning skills, and as parents and educators, we often need to model that thinking out loud for children first. Much like co-regulation in early childhood, we can help co-create the conditions that allow executive functioning skills to gradually strengthen and develop over time.
Instead of saying: “Do you have your backpack and volleyball shoes?”
I might say: “Check the family calendar. What do you need for tonight?”
Instead of: “I’ve told you this a hundred times,”
I ask: “Okay, what’s next before we get in the car?”
Those small shifts help gradually build the internal self-talk we eventually want them to develop for themselves: What do I need to think about? Where can I find reminders or answers on my own? What do I need next?
Executive functioning is also built through practice, scaffolding, modelling, and mistakes.
My children are lucky enough to have always had a strong outdoor education component to their schools. Last year, they both participated in multi-day wilderness trips. Before each trip, I ensure they have the most important safety essentials, but they use the school packing checklist to gather what they need and pack their bags themselves.
Instead of going over the checklist with them, I ask questions like: “What does the weather forecast say?” or “What would be the most dangerous thing to forget for this trip?” or “Is there anything you are missing that you need me to buy for you?”
But I don’t double-check their bags or secretly repack afterward. Building executive functioning sometimes means allowing room for discomfort and small mistakes. Forgetting a sleeping pad on a camping trip is uncomfortable, but those experiences will teach them in ways my nagging never could.
This kind of scaffolding, or supported skill-building, started long before middle school in our family. I have never packed lunches for my children. In preschool, I would lay a variety of food across our kitchen island, buffet-style, beside their little bento-box style lunch kits. I’d tell them they needed to choose at least one protein, carbs like crackers or bread, and some fruit and veggies. It was up to them to choose which ones, how much of each, and arrange them how they would like. They also had a side pocket to fill with treats and snacks at the end. At that age, they were excited to have choice, voice, and ownership over their lunches. Meanwhile, it was building executive functioning with age-appropriate support and practice. Now, my teens order their own groceries online, organize space in the fridge, and manage many impressively well-balanced meals on their own.
Yet, there are still weeks where lunches are forgotten and backpacks are left behind despite being placed right in front of the door we walked out of. That’s the exhausting art of it all: the goal isn’t to raise perfect people who never forget things (something I certainly still can’t live up to even as an adult); it’s to guide growing minds through the messy, deeply human process of gradually learning how to manage a life of their own.
Kristi Kraychy, B.Ed., M.Ed., is Principal of STAND, an innovative online and flexible hybrid high school connected to Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School (STS). An experienced educator and school leader, she has spent more than twenty years working with students whose curiosity, talents, and ambitions do not always fit traditional models of schooling.
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