Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention

Delman, founder of the student coaching company Beyond BookSmart, offers a coherent and accessible approach to helping kids function effectively in the “Age of Attention,” a period when everyone must struggle to optimize “the most precious commodity we have: our time and our attention.” He focuses on the executive function skills that help students set and achieve goals, such as managing impulses and emotions, starting and staying focused on tasks, prioritizing, planning, organizing, and problem solving. Throughout, Delman weaves in anecdotes from students he has helped as well as from his own children (for example, an app one of his daughters initially called “dumb” proved very useful in helping her regulate time spent on her phone). In numerous “Something to Try” sections, Delman equips parents and kids with invaluable problem-solving resources: students with writer’s block can try simply writing “blah blah blah” a few times to get over the hump, those with reading problems are given specific “active” reading strategies, and kids struggling with decision making can create a useful “decisional balance sheet.” Thanks to his reassuring tone, Delman leaves parents with a well-stocked toolbox of practical ideas to help their children organize and navigate their schoolwork, schedules, and lives. [em](BookLife) [/em]