Send us a text Keeping up with the pace, load, and challenge of learning requires emotional and self-management skills – best described as Executive Function. However, when these skills are either delayed, under-developed, or absent it is easy to question the child’s motivations and intentions. The truth of the matter is that some kids simply need more support, scaffolding, and a greater appreciation for their differences. On this episode, counselor, author, Washington Post contributor, and free...
May 04, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 147
Send us a text Even though studies after studies show that more than 75% of job success is determined by soft skills ,which in business refers to effective communication, professionalism and work ethics, critical thinking, teamwork, and leadership, the word soft often undermines its nuanced nature and diminishes it potency. In the neuroscience and science of effective communication however, soft skills are nothing but a combination of Executive Function, pragmatic skills, and social cognition an...
Apr 27, 2021•51 min•Season 1Ep. 146
Send us a text A difficult to teach child slows down the learning for others and accentuates the burden of teaching a group of diverse learners that often looms heavily on the teacher. What if disruptive children are actually facing challenges that result from the lack of critical “to not be challenging” skills such as adaptive flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem solving? On this episode, renowned author, clinical psychologist, documentary producer, and adjunct professor in the Depar...
Apr 15, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 145
Send us a text What do wigs, cookie jars, pizza dough, supermarket flyers, unpaid invoices, airplane menus, and a mummified human foot have in common? Those are some of the Andy Stuff found amongst 641 boxes left behind by the Pop Art legend Andy Warhol, which is now on display at the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburg. Truman Capote was once said to refer to Warhol as 'a sphinx without a riddle’; a callous jab at the artist whose quirks and idiosyncrasies accentuated his highly restrictive interes...
Apr 05, 2021•1 hr 6 min•Season 1Ep. 144
Send us a text The true meaning of empowering children is to help them claim the rights to their own life so that they can lead with a sense of confidence, clarity, and courage. The key is to trust children to make their own mistakes while trusting yourself to resist the temptation of wanting to do everything for them. On this episode, leading American educator, author of the book How to Raise Successful People , Vice Chair of Creative Commons, journalist and mother of three accomplished daughte...
Mar 23, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 143
Send us a text In the increasingly complex world, raising children to become adaptable, communicative, open, creative, and self-reliant thinkers is a tall order. As the raging pandemic is taking its toll on the American psyche, some groups are proving to be more vulnerable than others. The American Psychological Association’s 2021 survey reports that the parents of children under 18 years of age are the highest stressed groups of people in the United States. So we need a universal healing approa...
Mar 18, 2021•48 min•Season 1Ep. 142
Send us a text What is limited, valuable, and scarce? Attention. As society as a whole tries to navigate the new terrain where attention is the commodity supporting a large part of the economy, it is imperative that humans understand that attention is the gateway to information processing and “knowing what to pay attention to” is probably far more important than simply paying attention. Since the act of paying attention presents itself in more than one form such as listening, loving, cooperating...
Mar 04, 2021•53 min•Season 1Ep. 141
Send us a text Its no joke, adulting is hard. To adult is to do all the things that grown-ups regularly do because they have to including finding a job, keeping it, living independently, paying bills, keeping a thriving social circle and handle the unexpected curve balls that life throws. High school to college and then college to life are transitions marked by the need for a substantial upgrade to one’s own executive function proficiency; if delayed or under-evolved, it can cause massive disrup...
Feb 26, 2021•54 min•Season 1Ep. 140
Send us a text The most basic human experience is to be able to communicate; express thoughts and ideas clearly and meaningfully while being fully understood. Most of us are unaware of the nature of these true gifts that allows humans to construct and build relationships from the ground up by launching nuanced skills such as reading faces, reading the room, and reading between the lines. Hence, the foundational skills of a self-regulated learner always includes strong emotional literacy skills w...
Feb 15, 2021•36 min•Season 1Ep. 139
Send us a text Yogi Berra once said, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” High achievers often bring perfection in their work; however, perfectionism can impede ongoing high achievement. The diligence in being perfect is time-consuming and exhausting and since humans can’t give up on the ideas of perfection, it’s prudent to remember that if left unchecked, perfectionistic tendencies can create barriers to transcendence. On this episode, renowned author whose books have been translated int...
Feb 08, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 138
Send us a text “The only thing that could impede me was me“ are the words spoken by Amada Gorman, the first ever Youth Poet Laureate. Amanda for many years suffered from a speech impediment and an auditory processing disorder that made it difficult to communicate intelligibly what her beautiful mind was so eloquently able to construct. Amanda’s personal discovery that I am more than my garbled speech encapsulates the growth mindset which comes into play when hardship looms over and seeing the po...
Jan 22, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 137
Send us a text Randomly scattered stars light up the night sky, but it is human inventiveness and imagination that has connected these cosmic dots into the constellations we know so well. As the podcast Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function celebrates its 100th episode, we have the same pleasure of connecting the scattered ideas that experts have shared with us over the past two years into a meaningful constellations of Executive Function concepts. We’ll explore these con...
Dec 31, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 136
Send us a text This is a repeat of episode 101 brought back as one of my favorite episode. Uncertainly, unceasing demands, and all around unrest can provoke the feelings of restlessness, a state of irritability, and intense worrying and general dissatisfaction. But clinically speaking, these feelings of being on the edge are the signs of anxiety and often when they exceed the threshold of bearability a sense of unending despair can follow. On today’s podcast, psychiatrist, author of the book “Th...
Dec 23, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 135
Send us a text If you come across a Wall Street trader, an ER physician, a trial lawyer, a sky-diving instructor, a trapeze artist, or a stand-up comedian, more than likely there is a race-car brain that has been well channelled in spite of its high propensity for intense stimulation and a desire to live on the edge. Experts say that a perennially super-charged and “always on the go” ADHD mode may or may not always translate into the most productive or fullfilling life because of the underlying ...
Dec 17, 2020•42 min•Season 1Ep. 134
Send us a text Our body is a screen onto which our inner experiences are frequently projected. Authors, through their writings, vividly illustrate the imprint of the mind onto the body; for example, Caroline Hanson says “Nervousness made her feel nauseous, almost like she had two hearts frantically beating in her chest, instead of one.” The human interoception system processes the internal sensations and let’s us feel what is happening in our bodies and through body-regulation we can strengthen ...
Dec 12, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 133
Send us a text Nobel prize winner behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman's remarkable work brought the concepts of System 1 and System 2 into the mainstream. Contrary to the conventional wisdom which associates human capacity with rational thought and logical thinking (features of system 2), our system 1 (the autopilot) has a much stronger hold on our psyche. It is only the slower and deliberate System 2, or Executive Function, when engaged in conscious self-regulation can overrule the intuitions...
Dec 03, 2020•51 min•Season 1Ep. 132
Send us a text In her book Mirror: The History , author Sabine Melchoir-Bonnet tracks the curious journey of a tiny reflective glass once thought to be the most fascinating invention which over time eventually has gotten demoted to the status of an ordinary gimmick. The mirror that captures the presentation of self in everyday life comes through with its promise of unveiling fascinating yet terrifying personal information. However, there is nothing equivalent to a mirror that successfully reflec...
Nov 19, 2020•55 min•Season 1Ep. 131
Send us a text The most vital skills of making and keeping friends, figuring out COVID-19 social etiquette, and navigating the social world with adaptive flexibility is far from being innate or natural. While we have barricaded ourselves in our homes and in spite of 24/7 access to the internet that gives us the illusion of hyper-connectivity, many are struggling to artfully connect with others and find meaning in isolation. Figuring out ways to fine-tune our social-emotional acumen by managing o...
Nov 10, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 130
Send us a text Japanese author Haruki Murakami said it well, “A person's life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are linked.” A key ingredient in transforming lonely human nature into a well-linked life is the faculty of mature social skills which make it possible to show interest in others, know how to make friends, read social situations, reciprocate in person or via text, put oneself in others’ shoes and collaborate successfully. Executive Functi...
Oct 29, 2020•51 min•Season 1Ep. 129
Send us a text Legend has it that after forgetting the lyrics to one of her well rehearsed songs during a concert at New York’s Central Park, celebrated singer and actress, Barbra Streisand, lost her confidence. Petrified by the embarrassment and riddled with anxiety, Streisand withdrew from public performances for almost 36 years. Clearly, a bad experience can leave psychological scars including ongoing discomfort of subtle apprehension to debilitating anxiety, making it hard to live fully and ...
Oct 22, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 128
Send us a text Imagine being more than 2,500 feet above the ground; with no harness, no ropes and no safety equipment. Alex Hannold scaled Yosemite’s El Capitan solo, seemingly effortlessly and with great command over the rock. The most remarkable aspect of the near impossible feat of accomplishment is Alex’s grit, a strength-based psychological skill that propels most humans to carve out a path to reach goals that are once thought to be unattainable. The question is, can we cultivate grit? On t...
Oct 16, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 127
Send us a text Every Halloween, when the late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel invites parents to video tape lying to their children having eaten all of their Halloween candy, it never fails to produce funny, hilarious, and some heart-wrenching videos of kids having officially lost their mind over the prank. However, it’s truly astonishing to find a kid or two who mange to stay calm and collected in the face of candy-distress. It is reasonable to ask how children regulate themselves during a co...
Oct 07, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 126
Send us a text “The builder said he was very sorry” writes Louis Sachar in the introduction to his children’s book, where instead of building a school one-story high with thirty classrooms, he ends up building a thirty stories high Wayside School with one classroom per floor. Readers discover that, none the less, the stories from such a strange and silly place are simply delightful. Similarly, however challenging it is to raise complex kids wired for impulsivity, disorganization, neediness, dise...
Sep 25, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 125
Send us a text Napoleon Hill once said, “strength and growth comes from continuous struggle and effort,” but what about those who struggle to know how best to direct their effort during the ongoing struggle? Children and adults with ADHD suffer from this exact problem which makes it hard for them to find their voice, fit in, and fully flourish with all the gifts they have. A true loss for everyone is when the world castigates children and adults with ADHD as disposable assets and inadvertently e...
Sep 17, 2020•48 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Send us a text Solving BIG problems requires big thinking. John Wooden once said, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” Even though preparing children to take charge of their learning and their future happens in the classrooms, in actuality, it is set in motion through the mission and vision of personal and institutional leadership; without which, classrooms will simply be ships without sails. With skills to master, personal and situational setbacks to overcome, and try...
Sep 10, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 123
Send us a text How to nurture a healthy relationship with life experiences, particularly undesirable, uncomfortable or unfavorable ones, is best captured in Pema Chodron’s quote “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” However, setbacks may lead to more setbacks for those with under-developed executive function including a lack of self-awareness, rigidity and a failure to problem solve. On this episode, the former Head of Executive Leadership Development at Nike and aut...
Sep 02, 2020•52 min•Season 1Ep. 122
Send us a text None of us are fans of being bored; a state often marked by restlessness and mild forms of agitation. That’s why we all try and avoid the angst that seems to be associated with boredom. But surprisingly, scientists who study the brain, suggest that boredom isn’t too bad for us, but rather the brain’s nudge to get out of that state, take action, and bring about change. On this episode, neuroscientist, trained Clinical Neuropsychologist, and co-author of “Out of My Skull”, professor...
Aug 29, 2020•49 min•Season 1Ep. 121
Send us a text Emotions are the heartbeat of human existence and the human drama that is full of anxiety, sadness, anger, fury, joy, or love feels like we are either riding a roller-coaster or floating gently in a boat that’s in a calm and placid lake. Emotions that disrupt our relationship with the world require regulation, but conventional wisdom approaches might get us off track as we might train ourselves to either not feel the feelings or not react to them. On this podcast episode, father o...
Aug 20, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 120
Send us a text The parents’ job is to protect their children, offer safety and security, and above all, love them unconditionally. But there are visible and invisible barriers and everyone struggles. In order to raise children with strong executive function, parents need to help cultivate a strong foundation where the brain knows not to go into overdrive or over-react. By activating their own strong executive function, parents can build a nurturing relationship with their children. On this episo...
Aug 11, 2020•42 min•Season 1Ep. 119
Send us a text Popularized by the business community, the term "soft skills" might imply that these skills are neither nuanced nor hard to obtain. But scientists and researchers who study these skills refer to them as pragmatics, the way one uses language and communication to achieve social and interpersonal goals and believe that soft skills are critical to conveying intent, working harmoniously in situations of conflict and help us moving ahead in the world collaboratively. When disrupted or i...
Aug 06, 2020•58 min•Season 1Ep. 118
