Executive function: Managing frustration

Plant the seed early on that winning is not a guarantee. And when you play games of chance, defining what chance means to a child and helping them understand the concept, will help them accept loss more readily.

Licensed Clinical Social Worker Talia Filippelli

Success in life — that looks different for everyone. But skills like persistence, managing frustration and emotional regulation tend to scaffold that success, no matter what the end result looks like.

These skills are all part of what scientists call executive function, something we’re focusing on this season. We like to talk about executive function, because young children have lots of chances to practice these skills!

In this episode, we look at how to build frustration tolerance. One of the best ways to do that is to play games — games where your child occasionally loses! Joining My New Life Host Jessica Rolph is Licensed Clinical Social Worker and founder of Starr Therapy, Talia Filippelli. She is a Genius of Play ambassador and has contributed to the Emotional Wellness Playbook.

Transcript:

Executive functioning skills and its impact on learning

Jessica: So oftentimes as parents, we do have an underlying goal where we really want our kids to be successful in school and life. That is something that we think about. And so we want them to have these skills that they need to be good at something. But as my children have grown, I’ve learned that there is so much more to it. That these skills like persistence and tolerating frustration and regulating emotions, that is where it’s at. Around being even be able to be primed for learning. So, tell me what the science says now about this concept of executive functioning skills and their impact on learning.

Talia: So, just to give some background here, let’s make sure that we put this in the right context. Anytime I talk to kids or parents, I always educate them about their brains functioning and why it’s developed the way it’s developed. Because executive functioning is more higher level, higher order learning. And if we look at evolution and how our brains developed, our brains developed back to front, actually. And so the more primitive processes happen in the back of the brain, which developed first, and then as you go forward to this space kind of behind your forehead, that’s your prefrontal cortex. That’s where executive functioning is happening. So when I describe that, it becomes kind of obvious that if we know our brain develops back to front over our lifespan, and some research says that our brains aren’t actually fully developed till close to 30 years old.

Some of our expectations that we have on our children in terms of their capabilities can be a little unreachable, a little beyond what they’re capable of. And so sometimes I think when we’re talking about what we’re expecting to see or what our goals are for our kids, we have to couch it within what’s realistic and what is possible for a child at different developmental stages. So, executive functioning, just to go back to your question, executive functioning skills are time management, task initiation, being able to start a task and bring it to completion, being able to manage time, work with others. These types of things are difficult for our young kiddos. So the building blocks of that to me, are always great to start within playtime. It’s a fabulous setting to start building some executive functioning skills. And so that’s been my big focus in my role with the Genius of Play as an ambassador, is really helping to teach parents how to use the play setting to grow different skills, including executive functioning.

Practice makes better

Jessica: Yeah. And is it true? I read somewhere that we’re born with the capacity to build these executive functioning skills and the brain is developing, goes on this developing path, but that there is this nurture component too, that role modeling. And that some kind of, I don’t mean to say curriculum, but that practice and role modeling really help to build these executive functioning skills. Can you tell me more about that? 

Talia: Yeah, so I love to say practice makes better. And so, yes, young children have the potential or the capacity for these skill sets, but actually acquiring them takes place in real time in their life. We’re not born with these skills mastered. So there’s a process, right? A beginning, a middle and end to master and acquire a skill. And so if we take playtime, for example, learning how to lose a game. Learning how to recognize that you’re not going to win every single game, I think that part of it is where parents come in, because children, we expect them to be emotional, we expect them to have “overreactions”. But it’s all they got at that young age. And so as parents, we can come into those experiences with our children and help be that scaffolding and do that coaching, so that they do actually acquire the skill. Left without a coach or without somebody to facilitate that skill set and the acquisition of that skill, they likely won’t get there.

Managing emotions with games

Jessica: Before we actually started this episode, we had sent you one of our play kits for four year olds. And there’s a game, Montessori alphabet game. And you had talked about appreciation that there is a collaborative element to it because we’re trying to phase children into being comfortable with losing and winning and then trying to bring this sort of blanket of collaboration to hold them through that process. Tell me more. What do we do when they lose a game? How do we work through this? One of my children has such a hard time with it. It almost derails our ability to play games that are competitive at all.

Talia: When we’re playing games with our kids, I think it’s important to acknowledge that their feelings of upset about losing a game are totally normal and well founded. And that’s okay. That we expect. That’s part of the human experience. The overreaction, where it can really create dysfunction in a child’s life, is if the child can’t return to the game or after a few moments or a few minutes of deescalation and calming down can’t come back to the game, or the game is broken by a child who might be really angry in that moment. That’s when we talk about it becoming dysfunctional.

Now, if we reverse back to how is it that we cultivate these skills? There has been a lot of focus, at least in my work and some of the organizations I’m collaborating with, to help parents stop rescuing. What we see is, and this is to what you had said in the beginning of this interview, which is that we all want our kids to be smart, we want them to be successful, we want them to go out in the world and do great things. But sometimes our desire for them to do those great things actually causes us to interfere in their acquisition of really important skills. And so we see parents who are rescuing their children. And what I mean by that and we can apply that to a lot of different settings. But rescuing during playtime might look like always letting your child win the game, or secretly manipulating the game beyond your child’s awareness. And they always end up the winner, and you end up the loser. So that’s where our need for them to be smart and successful and all that can actually inhibit their ability to lose, learn how to cope with losing, get through that tough emotional experience to the other side where they can now develop the skill of tolerance.

So one of the things that I always coach parents on is to plant that seed early on, that winning is not a guarantee. And when you play games of chance, defining what chance means to a child and helping them sort of understand the concept will help them accept loss more readily. When you are playing that game, or if they have a playdate and they have a buddy over and they lose or they get sent back to start, it really helps children be able to understand, “Oh yeah, my mom or my dad or grandma told me about this. That’s going to happen from time to time.” And we see them be able to move on faster and get back to the game rather than being derailed emotionally.

Jessica: So when you sat down with your five-year-old and you were playing the Montessori Alphabet, Movable Alphabet game, did you give some coaching around chance before you started? Or talk me through exactly what you say to your own child, and how you work them through this question around winning and losing.

Talia: Yes, I always plant the seed ahead of time. My children… I’m sure they’ll be in therapy when they’re adults, but being a therapist, and for him having a mommy who’s a therapist, I insert this stuff ad nauseam. So my kids are probably annoyed at me half the time. Like, “I get it, Mom, I get it, I get it.” But I always plant the seed of we’re playing, and I’m excited to play. I always set the tone of enthusiasm to play. I always make sure he knows, “Hey, you might win, you might lose, we’re going to see.” And so I can attend to the competitive nature of games, which, again, I was an athlete my whole life. I don’t want to eliminate competition. Competition is a very healthy thing and actually can bring out our best performance in certain circumstances. So I do try and support the idea of competitiveness, but also make sure that he understands, “Hey, we’re going to see who wins.” So I’ll say something like that so he knows, we don’t know. I can’t tell you who’s going to win. I can’t predict the future. We don’t know how this is going to go.

And so if I end up getting ahead in the game, let’s say, that’s normal. I’ve normalized it, I guess I would say is the right word. I’ve just normalized it. That’s part of play. And because he knows it’s normal when he does lose, and of course, I allow the games to unfold naturally. I don’t interfere. I don’t manipulate it. So he wins. And so he’s gotten used to it, and it’s not a big deal. It actually makes for a lot of fun to see who’s going to win. Like, the whole idea of it being a chance and we’re not sure is part of the fun.

Jessica: And what about skill and chance? So what about siblings playing together and there’s skill involved as well, and you could pretty much win all the time. Do you do that with your younger child? 

Talia: So if I was to think about… We play chess together, there’s skill involved for sure. That’s probably a mixed bag, because I do a lot of teaching when we’re playing a game like chess, where I’ll say, “Hey, how many moves could you potentially make right now?” So we can kind of point out the different ways that he can take his turn.

Emotion coaching

Jessica: So you coach too. If it’s a skill based game, you’re coaching them to also have a better chance of winning because you’re giving them that insight. What happens if siblings are playing or you’re not involved. A parent is not involved, or two children are playing, their friends. And one child… And I’ll just give this as one of my examples from my own children. One of my children has such a hard time losing, and when it’s starting to go bad, he gives up, and he just exits the room and says he doesn’t ever want to play again. Talk to me about managing that frustration, and that giving up. What do we do in that situation? 

Talia: Yeah. So I would say initially the goal is to do some emotion coaching. Now, emotion coaching is a concept and sequential formulaic approach to parenting children through big emotions. This was developed by the Gottman Institute. John and Julie Gottman, they’re like rock stars in the psychology field. And they’ve developed these steps to help parents coach their kids through big emotions. And what we know is that there’s warning signs that lead up to the ultimate meltdown or the big expression of emotion or abandoning the game like you’re talking about. There are warning signs that happen before that explosive moment. And if we can help our children pay attention and learn about their bodies, what ends up happening is they can listen to their body sending them those little cues, those we call them little cues or warning signs. And if we’re listening, we can do something about the big emotion to prevent a real outburst.

And so, in these situations, that’s what I would teach children to start to notice. And the steps are pretty simple. Notice, label, validate, and then do. Notice what’s happening in your child. So you might offer a comment of, “I can see you’re getting frustrated. And I can tell because I can see you’re moving all your pieces around or I saw you get up and walk away from the game for a minute or two.” Just state what you see, state what you observe. And what that does is your child’s leaning on you to learn a little bit about him or herself. And so when you state your observation, it allows the child to then think about themselves and say, “Oh, okay. Yeah, I am frustrated, Mom. Yeah.”

And so when they state their emotion, frustration, our goal is to then validate it and say, “Yeah, tell me about that. Tell me about what’s making you feel frustrated in this moment, in this game.” And so now what we’re doing is we’re cultivating their ability to use words in order to express their feelings. And if they don’t have the language and the emotional vocabulary to name their emotions, what we will see is children will default to their behaviors in order to show us what they’re feeling and to express those emotions. And that can become very dysfunctional. Breaking the game, throwing stuff. I mean, anger and frustration can come out in all kinds of unhealthy ways. So we’re trying to normalize it while also helping them rely on their words and a conversation with mom or dad or brother, sister, whomever, to talk about what’s going on.

And the goal at that point when they’re talking about their feelings is really to say, “Gosh, I could see why you feel that way. Yeah, I know you were so close to winning and then you got sent back to start by your brother. Ugh, I’ve been there. That stinks, right?” So we’re really normalizing and we’re showing that we can relate to them. Now, sometimes right at this point is where some parents find their child’s emotions to be inconvenient, overwhelming, annoying, and trust me, normalize all of those things, parenting is hard, and children feel a lot of feelings all day, every day that we are coaching and navigating and helping them through. So I totally understand why some parents have a hard time navigating those moments with their kids.

But if we can get there, what ends up happening is when the child is validated and says, “Gosh, I’m frustrated,” and you look at your child and say, “Yeah, I totally see where you’re coming from.” What ends up happening is the emotional hold that takes over, and sometimes we call it being emotionally hijacked, it starts to dissolve. And the feeling no longer has, once we say it out loud, it no longer has a physical hold on us, and so children are actually able to move forward from being frustrated, and by the time we’re done saying, “Yeah, I see where you’re coming from,” and we’re validating what’s happening, “Why don’t we take a deep breath? Let’s take 10 deep breaths, or let’s have a hug.

And let’s see if you want to get back to the game after that,” and most of the time, and this is obviously practice makes better, this is like strengthening a muscle, so the more frequent we coach in this way, the faster our children will acquire the skill, before you know it, they do their deep breaths and now they’re back playing the game, and it’s, “Wow, you look much calmer. Do you feel better?” “Yeah, I feel better, Mom.” “Okay, let’s get back to our game,” and then we invite them back to the table, right back to what we were doing so that they can see for themselves that big emotions don’t have to derail us permanently, meaning the game doesn’t have to be over for today, but maybe we could take a little pause, attend to the emotion, and then come on back to the game and to completion.

And what a child can then do is look back at that experience and say, “Yeah, okay, I got frustrated but I got back to that game and I finished it, what a win.” And so the next time they feel frustrated, they recognize that there is this way to address the emotional piece without abandoning the game, and it can create that sense and start to cultivate the beginnings of persistence, stick-to-itiveness, all of these things that Carol Dweck has done tons of research on from a growth-mindset standpoint. This is the beginnings, it’s what’s taking place in playtime when we’re doing this emotion coaching.

Identifying the frustration

Jessica: And so what if it’s more subtle? So let’s say a child is working on something and they don’t display this built up of frustration and it’s not quite as exaggerated as it would be in a game with, for example a sibling that they’re competitive with. But it’s a puzzle or it’s something that they’re working on, they’re trying to do, and they were originally motivated to do it, and then oftentimes at four and five and beyond, they start to just give up quickly, they’ll just be like, “I’m not going to do that anymore, I’m not interested in that. I’m not going to do that.” What do we do as parents? How do we encourage persevering when they clearly are frustrated, but they’re not exhibiting that more overt frustration emotion? 

Talia: If it’s not overt, sometimes we do a drawing or art play therapy type of thing where we have kids draw just a little stick figure of their body, and we teach them how to get in touch with their emotions and not just what they’re feeling, but where they feel it. And so someone, a child or a kiddo who might be experiencing a feeling that’s not really obvious from an outside observer, we can teach them how to pay attention to that even within their own body. And so, the stick figure that they draw, we’ll look at the eyes, the hands, the legs, the arms, where do you feel your anger, where do you feel your frustration, and you’d be surprised at how insightful young children are in identifying what they feel and where they feel it. And so that helps children connect with their emotions, and when we make it more visual and more concrete, it’s easier for them to understand. Some concepts can be a little heady and a little tough to put our hands around, and so we have to make it concrete when we’re teaching children, so I find that that visual of their body is very, very helpful.

And I try to honor what a child is saying they’re feeling themselves. So if a child is doing a puzzle or they’re starting to have some of that frustration, and they are saying that they don’t want to do it anymore, we want to validate that too. “Yeah? Gosh, you were so excited to start the puzzle, I’m surprised that you’re ready to move onto something else so soon.” And so engaging in a conversation can be just… It can adequate and sufficient in terms of building up the stick-to-itiveness and the persistence. We don’t have to force our kids back to the activity, and we especially don’t want to do that if they themselves are saying, “Uh-uh, I need a break, or I’m really frustrated,” that is a time to take a brain break, even for adults when we’re feeling frustrated, it should be a moment where we say, “Alright, let’s take a little timeout, take a little break, we’ll come back with a fresh set of eyes, get a glass of water, get some fresh air.”

And so to me, that can actually become a teaching moment to help your child learn how to identify the frustration and then go do something about it away from the activity, go do something to cope and help yourself feel better, and when you feel better, come on back, come on back to that puzzle. Because we all know if our brain is hijacked by frustration and anger, it disrupts the efficiency of our brain processes. And so if we try to do something when we’re really emotionally hijacked, it takes far longer, and we typically have a lot more errors, which again, is going to be like compounding frustration for a child.

Jessica: And what about if your child constantly chooses the easier way out, let’s say that they’re just going for the easier puzzle, they almost avoid anything hard because they want to be so good at what they do. There is a type of child or a development moment that happens where children really just want to prove that they’re really good at something, and they’re good at everything. How do we challenge children? I mean, at Lovevery we really work on this, try to make it joyful and really give incremental challenges so that it feels natural. What do we do as parents to give our children opportunities to keep trying something new and try something that might be hard? 

Talia: One of the things I do with my kids, is I use that term “challenge”. I use that term challenge. And one of my kids, my older son, he’s similar, he’s like that what you’re describing. He feels really good when he’s good at something, but if he does something new, and of course he’s not going to be that great at a novel skill or a novel activity, he feels that. He notices he’s not as good and he wants to go back to the thing that he’s awesome at, because that feels better to him. So I will use the term challenge and the idea of challenging yourself, meaning you’re awesome at all of these things. Let’s really go for something that’s going to be a little harder, but let’s go for it within a sense of enthusiasm not a, oh my God, that’s so daunting. That’s too much. It’s intimidating to me. Let’s reduce the intimidation and go for a personal best.

Let’s have a challenge that’s an internal challenge, a challenge with ourselves, to see if we can do something that’s a little harder. And sometimes it helps when I talk to my son about doing something that’s maybe… He’s finishing up third grade this month, but something that might be a fourth grader skill or a fifth grader skill. And there is something inspiring to him. There’s something about wanting to be a bigger kid that’s appealing to him. And so sometimes when I couch it or frame it in that way, I see more motivation, more curiosity, more willingness and openness to give it a try.

Jessica: Great, well, thank you. It’s just been wonderful having you here with us today, Talia. Thank you so much for your time.

Talia: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Here are my takeaways from the conversation:

1. Our brains develop back to front over our lifespan, and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive function, isn’t fully developed until age 30. So adjust your expectations accordingly! Play is a great place to start building these skills.
2. Coach your child through losing a game, rather than avoiding your child’s unhappiness at all costs. Explaining that every game has a loser, can help develop appropriate expectations. Talia starts games with her child by explaining: “I can’t tell you who’s going to win. I can’t predict the future. We don’t know how this is going to go.”
3. If your child’s frustration is mounting (particularly if siblings are involved) encourage them to take a pause and to recognize the signals in their body: “I can see you’re getting frustrated. And I can tell because I see you’re moving all your pieces around…” Then validate their feelings and encourage them to put their feelings to words: “Tell me about what’s making you feel frustrated about this game.” If children don’t have the language to express what they’re feeling, they will often resort to behaviors, some of them unwelcome. 
4. The Lovevery wooden emotion dolls can help with emotional coaching. Ask your child where they feel the frustration in their body and point it out on the figure.
5. With children who prefer tasks and games that are easy for them, Talia likes to introduce the word “challenge”. “You’re so good at this game, why not go for something that’s going to be a little harder and see how you do? Challenges can be fun!”

Learn more on our Lovevery blog.