Its Raining Cats and Dogs!!

While working at an elementary school, I became aware of a first grader who suddenly became visibly upset, crying, and screaming about the blood, the bodies, and how terrible it all is. It did not take very long to realize that he was reacting to the story the teacher was reading to the class. In the story, the weather was described as "raining cats and dogs" and the childs' behavior became a classic example of a lack of executive functioning.

The 20 executive functioning skills listed below can each be evaluated and then specific goals can be implemented to fill in the gaps. In any given child, executive functioning across multiple skills is not usually even. There will  be some skills that are at very appropriate levels while others may be significantly delayed. The more we understand the areas of strengths and weaknesses, the better able we will be in remediating and strengthening those skills.

20 ToM SKILLS 

1. Affect-Based Behavior - If afraid of the water, you will not want to go into the water.
2. Affective Recognition - Understands the show of emotion and what it means (fear = danger).
3. Appearance Reality – Candy box filled with pencils – what will others think is in the box?
4. Certainty – Making a ‘guess’ is not as certain as knowing something.
5. Counterfactual Reasoning – Understands the hypothetical word ‘if’     If I have the money, I’ll buy a game.

6. Deception – Understands that people can lie to purposely misled others.
7. Empathy - Puts oneself in another’s shoes and understands how they feel.
8. False Beliefs – Looks for the object where you left it.- If moved without your knowledge.
9. Humor – Understands humor/jokes.
10. Intentionality – Understands on purpose or by accident.
11. Idiomatic Language – Understands the meaning of idioms.
12. Mental State Terms – Understands the words: know, think, remember, guess, bet/reckon, hope, wish, figure, men, forget, pretend, dream, trick, wonder, believe and understand (Shatz et al, 1983) and can generate representations and use not just idiomatically but to clarify.
13. Mental Physical Distinction – When thinking about an object you don’t actually smell, eat or share it.
14. Pretense – Pretends that one object is a different object.
15. Speech Acts – Promising / giving your word means one is supposed to do it.
16. Visual Perspective Taking – If looking at the same object from different locations, we see it differently.
17. Seeing Leads to Knowing -You have to see or hear about what is in a box to know what is in the box.
18. Sarcasm – Understands sarcastic voice, language, and nonverbal language.
19. Shared Attention – One is able to see and attend to things that others also see.
20. Second Order Thinking – People often have thoughts about other people’s thoughts.