Areas of Expertise
Executive Functioning
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Whether your child is in middle school, high school or college, I am here to support their executive functioning needs. As a school and licensed educational psychologist, I have extensive training and experience in implementing best practice assessment strategies of executive functioning skills in children and adolescents, and knowledge of research-based executive coaching strategies and interventions. I have an easy to use system developed that has been described by parents, high schoolers, and special educators as effective based on data collected. Reach out for more information.
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What are executive functions?
The executive functions are a collection of processes that are responsible for guiding, directing, and managing cognitive, emotional, and behavioral functions, particularly during active, novel problem solving. They are the command center of your child’s brain. The term executive function represents an umbrella construct that includes a collection of interrelated functions that are responsible for purposeful, goal-directed, problem-solving behavior. Executive functions are typically described as a set of related capacities for intentional problem solving that include anticipation, judgment, goal selection, planning, monitoring, self-awareness, decision making, and use of feedback. It is important to note that executive functions are not exclusive to cognitive control; regulatory control of emotional response and behavioral action also falls under the umbrella of the executive functions.
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Self-Regulation
It all starts at self-regulatory control. The ability to, and the demands to, manage oneself are growing exponentially throughout puberty and adolescence, and middle and high school. This happens differently for each child. Some obtain these skills what seems like overnight, others slowly overtime, some have a “big summer of growth” at some point in high school, and for others, it can sometimes feel like they are not developing the skills at all (especially for those in their lives daily :)) or much slower than their peers. In addition to this big stage of human
development, there are a variety of day-to-day factors that can impact the ability to call upon AND apply such skills.
Therapy
Clinical Experience
Prior to graduate school, I held jobs as a “lead teacher” where I implemented a social skills curriculum for children and adolescents on the autism spectrum at Camp New Connections at McLean Hospital. Upon undergraduate graduation, I was employed as a school counselor at McLean Hospital at a day program for children and adolescents ages 6-22 who carried diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and a variety of comorbid mental health disorders.
My graduate school program included extensive coursework in teaching and applying various therapeutic techniques to children and adolescents, including cognitive behavioral therapy and solution-focused therapy. I have attended several trainings, provided school-based individual and group counseling services, provided school-based crisis intervention services, and psycho-education about various mental health disorders to students and their families since obtaining my school psychology license.
My Approach
It all starts with establishing a relationship and rapport with kids. Ask your child why their favorite class is their favorite class. More times than not, the answer will be because they like the teacher (relationship), or because they have friends in that class (relationships). I believe in working together, teaming up, and empowering your child by including them as much as possible in the process of service delivery, especially at the onset when developing goals.
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Rivers Educational Services came to light due to years of working in public schools with wonderful resources, but the continued challenge of meeting the various needs of students beyond academic skills, and growing concerns with mental health amongst our youth.
All approaches, goals, research-based therapeutic and executive functioning techniques, and recommendations are data-driven derived from our in-take evaluation which varies based on each student's needs.
