It’s human to crave connections. If there’s a silver bullet that comes closest to protecting kids, it’s the art of making meaningful connections with adults in their lives. This provides children with a sense of closeness and belonging ,which in return, contributes positively to their physical, social, psychological, and emotional health. Effective communication is the key ingredient to forming deep connections and parents, teachers and mentors need insights and tools to know ways to communicate that helps create a safe space for children to express themselves.

On this episode, neuropsychologist and coauthor of the books “What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home” and “the Self-Driven Child”, William Stixrud, Ph.D. returns to discuss the parenting language of a consultant and ways in which kids benefit when their parents serve as a non-anxious presence in their lives. Family dynamics and effective modeling by parents can lead to cultivating strong Executive Function enabling questioning the validity of one’s decisions, rethinking positions or points of view, and changing one’s own mind with ease, persistence, and courage.

About William R. Stixrud, Ph.D.
William R. Stixrud, Ph.D., is a clinical neuropsychologist and founder of The Stixrud Group, as well as a faculty member at Children’s National Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine.  He is also the co-author, with Ned Johnson, of the national best-selling book, The Self-Driven Child, which is published in 18 countries and 17 languages and has sold more than a half-million copies in China alone.  He and Mr. Johnson have also co-authored a critically-acclaimed second book, What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home.

Dr. Stixrud’s work has been featured in media outlets such as NPR, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Time Magazine, Scientific American, Business Week, Barron's, New York Magazine, and Vogue.  He is a long-time practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, and he plays in the rock band Close Enough. 

Books:

• The Self-Driven Child 
• What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home 

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

Reading comprehension is unequivocally the foundation of all other learning, not just during the formal years of education, but in creating socially engaged communities and an inclusive world. The ‘Active View of Reading’ framework suggests that complex executive function skills such as goal setting, planning, organizing, and sequencing information critically supports goal completion, mental flexibility, and learning how to learn underneath the reading and writing processes. New findings suggest that despite having age-appropriate word reading, poor reading comprehension might be explained by executive function challenges in children, which is disrupting their learning success.

On this episode,  author, director of READLab,  and Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, Dr. Kelly Cartwright, Ph.D., discusses how executive function infuses and supports human reading processes and how educators must consider remediating Executive Function as a means to promote literacy outcomes in K-12 education. Fortunately for us all, executive function skills can be explicitly taught and doing so will accentuate academic success for all learners.

About Kelly B. Cartwright, Ph.D.
Kelly B. Cartwright, PhD is Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, where she directs the Reading, Executive function, And Development Lab (READLab), and is a Research Scholar for the Center for Education Research and Policy. She is the recipient of numerous educational awards, including the 2023 State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. Her research, supported by grants from the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, explores neurocognitive and affective factors that underlie reading processes and difficulties across the lifespan. Her groundbreaking book, Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators, now in second edition, is the first comprehensive text at this intersection. Kelly has served on the Board of Directors of the Literacy Research Association and as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She regularly works with K-12 teachers throughout the US to understand and improve reading for struggling students, and these experiences inform her research. Kelly can be followed on Twitter at @KellyBCartwrig1

Books:

• Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators (2nd Edition)
• Word Callers: Small-Group and One-to-One Interventions for Children who "Read" but Don't Comprehend

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

Modern living means living with uncertainty. We are surrounded by progress, yet the things we are unsure of keeps growing, needing us to skillfully cope; hence, making hard decisions without all the answers requires skill and courage. On the other hand, the world measures certainty as the mark of expertise and celebrates those who exude the attitude of invincibility through a firm disposition of ”be fast, be right, and be without a doubt.” So, how do we widen our personal cognitive horizons and become more open and curious in spite of internal and external unpredictability?

On this episode, award-winning author, journalist and thought leader with a global reach, Maggie Jackson, returns to the Full PreFrontal Podcast with Sucheta Kamath to discuss her latest book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Together, they explore the definition of uncertainty, the ties between executive function and the wisdom of uncertainty and finally, ways in which people can build a healthy relationship with the state of ‘not-knowing’. In times of flux, it’s strong Executive Function skills that enable everyone to question the validity of their decision, rethink their position or point of view, and change their own mind with ease, persistence, and courage.

About Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author, journalist and thought leader with a global reach. Her new book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, explores why we should seek not-knowing in times of flux. Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain has been named a Best Book of 2023 by Library Journal and The Next Big Idea Club. Library Journal calls the book "remarkable and persuasive." Maggie’s acclaimed book Distracted sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. A former columnist for the Boston Globe, Maggie has written for The New York Times and many other publications worldwide. Her writings have been translated into multiple languages and widely covered by the global press. She lives in New York and Rhode Island.

Websites:

• www.maggie-jackson.com

Books:

• Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure (Nov. 7, 2023)
• Distracted: Reclaiming Our Focus in a World of Lost Attention (2nd Ed, 2018)

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

The start of the New Year always rings in new possibilities. However, setting and achieving goals for yourself and by yourself is harder than it seems. There are a multitude of obstacles including questions like knowing which tasks and ambitions to prioritize, where exactly to start, and how best to carry on when facing roadblocks and distractions. One truth remains though, we are likely to follow through with goals and pursuits that we are highly motivated about.

On this episode, behavioral scientist, Chicago Booth professor, and leading expert on motivation, Dr. Ayelet Fishbach, Ph.D., discusses ways to think about and apply motivation to our lives and what people need to know about leveraging social support to stay motivated in our goal pursuit. Motivation is defined as a psychological force that enables action and a key to mastering Executive Function is to close the gap between one’s intentions and one’s actions.

About Ayelet Fishbach
Ayelet Fishbach, PhD, is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network. She is an expert on motivation and decision making. Dr. Fishbach’s groundbreaking research on human motivation has won the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award.

Websites:

• https://www.ayeletfishbach.com/
• https://tinyurl.com/MotSci

Books:

• Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

How would you feel if during your trip to Agra, India, someone offers to sell you the Taj Mahal (one of the greatest wonders of the world)? In its absurd glory you might question the offer as you read this, but not everyone did. One of the greatest con artists from India, Natwarlal aka Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava, not only sold the Taj Mahal to unsuspecting foreign tourists, but also made out selling a few other historical monuments ~ and not just once, but multiple times. No one likes to be conned, fooled or taken advantage of. However, everyone has fallen prey to someone else’s deceit at least once because we are wired for trust-bias and scammers use our own cognitive beliefs, habits, and assumptions against us.

On this episode, research neuroscientists, co-authors and collaborators Dr. Christopher Chabris and Dr. Daniel Simons discuss their most recent book, “Nobody’s Fool: Why we get taken and what we can do about it” and explain what classic and current research in cognitive psychology and the social sciences says about our vulnerabilities to fall prey to deception and fraud. Focus, critical thinking, discernment and questioning ourselves with criticality are some of the effective ways of managing our truth bias and activating our executive function to protect our future-selves.

About Dr. Christopher Chabris
Christopher Chabris is a Professor at Geisinger, a Pennsylvania healthcare system, where he co-directs the Behavioral Insights Team. He previously taught at Union College and Harvard University, and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Chris received his Ph.D. in psychology and A.B. in computer science from Harvard. His research focuses on decision-making, attention, intelligence, and behavior genetics. His work has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, and Perception. Chris is also a chess master and co-author of the bestseller The Invisible Gorilla (published in 21 languages) and the forthcoming book on deception and fraud, Nobody’s Fool.

About Dr. Daniel Simons
Dr. Daniel Simons is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois where he heads the Visual Cognition Laboratory and has courtesy appointments in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising and the Gies College of Business. Dan received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research explores the limits of awareness and memory, the reasons why we often are unaware of those limits, and the implications of such limits for our personal and professional lives. For more information, visit dansimons.com.

Websites:

• http://www.chabris.com/
• dansimons.com

Books:

• The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us
• Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

200 episodes! The Full PreFrontal Podcast has reached a significant milestone, and what does that mean to us? We’re “in it for the long haul!” We find inspiration from Japanese artist, On Kawara, known for his work that illustrates the beauty, structure, and discipline in doing something over a long period of time with persistence and care. A milestone often not only marks the start of a new chapter, but also serves as a reward for past accomplishments, both big and small. 

Achievements are precious and timeless, and what better way to commemorate them than with precious guests. On today’s podcast, Sucheta celebrates this 200th episode with her two sons who flip the script by taking a look back at the podcast’s journey through time. 

Kunal Kamath is a graduate of Columbia University and an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company who lives and breathes executive function principles. In his spare time, Kunal loves the performing arts, crossword puzzles, and cultivating an indoor jungle of houseplants in his Brooklyn apartment. Rahil Kamath is also a graduate of Columbia University and is working toward his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University—he is a firm believer of the deep connection between executive function and psychological well-being. Rahil loves reading novels, is an avid soccer fan, and, much like his mom, enjoys nerding out on all things psychology.

Sucheta would like to invite all listeners and followers of the podcast to join in on the celebrations as she continues to explore the mysteries of Executive Function while translating the art and science of self-regulated transformation for personal growth.

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

During the 2007 season of America’s Next Top Model, contestant Heather Kuzmich introduced American viewers to her diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and the  challenges that go along with it. Having to live in a house with twelve strangers while navigating the social politics of housemates who were also her competitors proved to be quite a bit of challenge for Kuzmich and yet she won viewers’ hearts and ended up in the top five. While this success story offers inspiration and hope to many; for those with ASD diagnosis, the struggle is real and they need help and support from not just experts, but from communities as well.

On this episode, practicing clinical psychologist and co-author of two books “Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else” and “Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing”, Dr. Donna Henderson returns to discuss effective ways to manage the ASD condition as it poses many challenges including black-and-white thinking, rigid rule-following, obsessiveness, and perfectionism that can take a toll on one's quality of life.

About Donna Henderson, Psy.D.
Dr. Donna Henderson has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years. She is passionate about identifying and supporting autistic individuals, particularly those who camouflage, and she is co-author (with Drs. Sarah Wayland and Jamell White) of two books: Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else and Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing. Dr. Henderson’s professional home is The Stixrud Group in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she provides neuropsychological evaluations for children, adolescents, and adults who would like to understand themselves better. She is a sought-after lecturer on the less obvious presentations of autism, autistic girls and women, PDA, and on parenting children with complex profiles. She also enjoys providing neurodiversity-affirmative training and consultation for other healthcare professionals.

Website:

• http://drdonnahenderson.com/

Book:

• Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else. 
• Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing.

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

If a boy has an odd affect, you might think he’s autistic. But if a girl has an odd affect, you’ll think she’s a drama queen!…How does autism present itself? And what if it presents in a way you might not expect? The ordeal of connecting, communicating, and belonging to a neurotypical world while being neurodiverse is the same as navigating the right-handed world while being left-handed ~ it can cause angst and challenge. 

On this podcast, practicing clinical psychologist and co-author of two books “Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else” and “Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing”, Dr. Donna Henderson discusses effective ways of identifying and supporting autistic individuals, particularly those with subtle presentation who experience life-long effects which are much more than subtle.

About Donna Henderson, Psy.D.
Dr. Donna Henderson has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years. She is passionate about identifying and supporting autistic individuals, particularly those who camouflage, and she is co-author (with Drs. Sarah Wayland and Jamell White) of two books: Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else and Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing. Dr. Henderson’s professional home is The Stixrud Group in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she provides neuropsychological evaluations for children, adolescents, and adults who would like to understand themselves better. She is a sought-after lecturer on the less obvious presentations of autism, autistic girls and women, PDA, and on parenting children with complex profiles. She also enjoys providing neurodiversity-affirmative training and consultation for other healthcare professionals.

Website:

• http://drdonnahenderson.com/

Book:

• Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else. 
• Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing.

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

The process of educating children and growing as an educator in return requires everyone to acknowledge the bidirectionality that is inherent to teaching and learning. The context and culture that invests in both the academic growth of a child and also in the process that honors the input from its learning community brings itself into a new realm of possibilities. By carefully creating time and space to hear the voices of student stakeholders, educators discover meaningful ways to act upon them with clarity and care.

On this episode, author, K-16 educator & administrator, motivational speaker, leadership expert and development coach, Dr. Mary Hemphill, discusses the framework of the One-Minute Meeting and the importance of an informative needs assessment that maximizes interactions with students to uncover their transformational potential. In an effort to build self-reliant children, we need to build relationships with children so that they approach their own challenges and roadblocks with courage and trust; and as their brains grow, so does their Executive Function skills.

About Dr. Mary Hemphill
Dr. Mary Hemphill is a Leadership Expert & Development Coach, K-16 Educator & Administrator, Author, & Motivational Speaker. With over 17 years of professional experience as a teacher, administrator, state director, & university professor, Mary understands the importance of fusing education, empowerment, & leadership together as she works with learning & working communities & speaks to audiences across the country. She holds a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies, & has led, coached, & impacted close to 40,000 educational and corporate leaders around the world on transformational & innovative strategy, self-empowerment, & leadership development. Mary is the proud CEO & Founder of The Limitless Lady LLC ™, an organization that helps people ignite the leader in themselves so they can better serve their community, company, and personal career through coaching, consulting, workshops, and keynotes aimed at corporate and educational leaders and organizations.

Mary is the author of The One-Minute Meeting: Creating Student Stakeholders in Schools, which teaches readers how to leverage a unique instructional practice called the One-Minute Meeting to authentically glean information from students. Developed to inspire school and district leaders to fully engage with and empower their students, The One-Minute Meeting is an exceptional resource for college & university courses in school leadership and administration. This text is also a valuable resource for in-service educators and administrators at K-12 institutions.

Website:

• https://www.bealimitlessleader.com/

Book:

• The One-Minute Meeting: Creating Student Stakeholders in Schools

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

Culture in general plays an important role in human development and particularly childhood is shaped by culture. Not so long ago raising children was considered rather noisy, dirty, tedious and anything but pleasant. However, those living in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies that make up about 12% of the world’s population have perpetuated over-protective child-rearing practices and principals while ignoring the cultural wisdom of the rest of the world. With this rise in parental hyper-vigilance in creating independent children, there is a growing trend that parents are turning everything in the child's life into a learning/teaching opportunity, which is a likely source of learned helplessness and a predictable path to a failure to launch.

On this episode, anthropologist, researcher, and author and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Utah State University, David Lancy, discusses the loss of autonomy and freedom in WEIRD societies and the relationship between how we raise children and the eventual likelihood of a failure to launch and the insecurity, anxiety, and breakdown in executive function. 

About David F Lancy
David Lancy has done extensive cross-cultural fieldwork with children as the focus. His most important work, just published in a third edition, is The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. That scholarly book was paired by a popular version in 2017, entitled Raising Children: Surprising Insights From Other Cultures. In total, Lancy has authored nine books and edited three. A new work on pedagogy in culture is in progress. Publishers have included Academic Press, Cambridge, Longman, Praeger and Oxford. He has also authored over eighty articles and book chapters.

Website:

• https://www.davidlancy.org/

Books:

• The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattels, Changelings
• Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.

Culture encourages girls and women to exhibit both traditional “feminine” qualities, such as being empathic, good with relationships, nice, obedient, good mothers, and home-organizers, as well as traditional “masculine” qualities, such as being assertive, competitive, academically driven, and career-focused. However, when girls display disruptive, hyperactive, impulsive, or disorganized behavior, they are at risk of harsher social judgment compared to their male counterparts because they violate the feminine societal norms. For starters, ADHD and resulting Executive Dysfunction in girls and women can turn their lives upside down and in an attempt to avoid social sanctions, many of them spend excessive amounts of energy trying to hide their challenges, which in turn go unnoticed and hence untreated. 

On this episode, psychotherapist, consultant and author, Sari Solden, discusses why girls and women with ADHD get diagnosed much later than a typical child with ADHD and how best to help alleviate their personal shame and struggles with the unrelenting societal pressure of needing to “prove it to the world” that they are worthy to be given opportunities. An essential component of improving Executive Function skills is building self-knowledge and constructing a personal narrative of a wholesome self that recognizes the common humanity in all of our experiences. Instead of framing self-work or self-change as “fixing something that is broken”, the best therapeutic way to empower girls and women with ADHD is to help them invest in their own future-self.

About Sari Solden, MS
Sari Solden, M.S, is a psychotherapist who has counseled adults with ADHD for over 30 years. She is the author of the books, Women with Attention Deficit Disorder, Journeys Through ADDulthood, and co-author of A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD. Her areas of specialization include women's issues, inattentive ADHD, and the emotional consequences and healing process for adults who grew up with undiagnosed ADHD. She is a prominent keynote speaker on these subjects nationally and internationally. Ms. Solden currently consults with neurodiverse women mental health and helping professionals, as well as trains therapists in how to help women with ADHD. She serves on the professional advisory board of ADDA and was the recipient of their award for outstanding service by a helping professional.

You can contact Sari at [email protected]

Website:

• https://www.sarisolden.com
• https://www.adhdradicalguide.com

Books:

• Women with Attention Deficit Disorder
• Journeys Though ADDulthood
• A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD

About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.

Support the Show.