This episode reviews Dr. Damon Korb’s book, Raising an Organized Child. Dr. Korb not only explains organized thinking in an accessible way, but has suggestions for how to get there, from birth through high school. He describes how to implement five steps for organized thinking for infants, toddlers, preschoolers, school aged children, and teens. The five steps are

• Be consistent
• Introduce order
• Give everything a place
• Practice forward thinking
• Promote problem solving
This is a terrific book for SLPs and for parents!

— Useful Links —

Raising an Organized Child by Dr. Korb
Up From Slavery by George Washington Carver
Children and Youth Program
Follow the Narrative Road
Word Dancing
Time Timer App

Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission

Transcript

[00:00:00] I remember this dad telling me a story. Once he had a large family. And he talked about how they had to go on a trip suddenly. And so we just kind of told the kids to get their stuff together. And they left. And when they got to their destination, the youngest child only had a toothbrush and her pajamas, which I guess she left in.

That was all she had for the trip, a toothbrush in her pajamas. And he said the most interesting thing to me, he said I never packed for my children again. Meaning that, they had been doing too much for their children. And so therefore, when they had to leave in a hurry, the children weren’t self-reliant enough to get their stuff together. So from then on, he figured, okay, they’re going to be self-reliant. They’re going to learn how to practice forward-thinking about what they need to pack.

[00:01:00] Hello, and welcome to episode 54 of The Speech Umbrella. Today, I’ll be reviewing the book, Raising An Organized Child by Dr. Damon Korb. But first, I want to talk a little bit about Booker T Washington. Booker T Washington was born into slavery. He was freed by the civil war when he was a young child and he pursued an education relentlessly.

Eventually he became the head of the Tuskegee Institute. In his memoire, Up From Slavery, Washington observed that one of the worst effects of slavery was what it did to the family. Not just physical separation of the [00:02:00] family by members being sold, away from the family, but because the parents couldn’t establish routines in their families,

I just want to read a little bit of what Booker wrote.

He wrote, “My mother, of course, had little time in which to give attention to the training of her children during the day. She snatched a few moments for our care in the early morning before her work began, and at night after the day’s work was done.”

He also wrote, “I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together. On the plantation in Virginia and even later, meals were gotten by the children very much as dumb animals got theirs. It was a piece of bread here and a scrap of meat there. It was a cup of milk at one time and some potatoes at another.”

 When Washington was the head of Tuskegee Institute, the students had many routines they were expected to follow, beginning with the rising bell at 5:00 AM and ending with the bell to retire at 9:30 PM and a whole bunch of stuff in between.

He loved routines and he saw them [00:03:00] as an avenue to lifting his people. Today, he might get a bad rap as being overly controlling or overly paternalistic, but he was trying to fill a gap in organized thinking. So why am I even talking about Booker T Washington?

This is because when I read his book, Up From Slavery, those passages. I just read to you struck me so forcefully, so powerfully because of a conversation I had many years ago with an SLP who made home visits. She was making visits to this family with a preschool aged child, and she said that they didn’t have regular meals.

They didn’t sit down and eat together at the table, and the child just wandered into the kitchen and fed himself, like a dog. Those are her words, not mine. I could tell how much it distressed her to describe it that way.

But those words, bear a striking resemblance to what Washington wrote. And then during that same conversation, another SLP chimed in and said that her sister’s family was selling their dining room table, because they didn’t use it. They didn’t sit down together and eat as a family.

Getting back to Dr. Korb’s [00:04:00] book, he loves her teams as much as Washington, and he’s gotten neuroscience to back him up. So let’s dive into Raising An Organized Child.

[00:04:08] Raising An Organized Child

The end goal of parenting is to raise a happy, healthy, well adjusted adult, but how do we get there? It’s hard enough with children who don’t have differences in how their brain functions let alone with those who do. Now we have evidence from functional imaging studies. Those are studies that show how the blood in your brain flows.

We have evidence from those studies that show how the blood in your brain flows when you do a certain task. And they show us many of the differences that we see in children with autism originate in the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe was heavily involved with executive function. So, what does executive function do for us? It commands self-control, sequential, and spatial organization, shifting between thoughts and thinking about more than one thing at a time. That’s using your working memory. As SLPs. We see a lot of clients with disorganized thinking. It can be a real predicament working with them as clinicians, and [00:05:00] it’s also really nice to have a resource for parents who are looking for some guidance.

Sometimes therapy with these children is really challenging because we’re pushing them to do something which there aren’t accustomed to doing and it can bring out challenging behaviors in our clients. Dr. Korb has a lot of great ideas for both parents, and I think for clinicians, too.

 He provides real practical, everyday answers that really resonate with me. And this podcast I think is for SLPs and for parents.

 Dr. Korb is a practicing developmental and behavioral pediatrician. Say that five times fast. He’s the founder of The Center For Developing Minds and the father of five children, so he knows what he’s talking about from an everyday real life standpoint.

I love this book because it’s practical and applicable for all parents from birth to early adulthood. It’s got something for everyone. I wish I had had this book when our children were young.

Doctor Korb says again and again, that organized children do not just appear, they are raised. And then he tells us how to do it.

Let me [00:06:00] explain a little bit how the book is structured before we go through it. It’s structured by ages and the five things you can do to build independence, ease frustration, and promote confidence.

The ages are infant, toddler, preschooler, school-age, by which he means elementary / middle school, and then teenager. And the five steps that he talks about in each age category are be consistent, introduce order, give everything a place, practice forward thinking, (that’s planning, estimating creativity), and promote problem solving.

I’m going to share just a few of my favorite ideas. There’s far too many of them to go into all of them, but remember, he talks about go by stage, not by age because not all children develop the same. So adjust your expectations accordingly and go by the stage they are in. He gives lots of great examples for you to understand what stage your child is in.

So for example, I see many preschoolers who are in the toddler stage and sequential processing. I [00:07:00] see many children with autism spectrum disorder who are in the infant or toddler stage, even with cause and effect, even when they’re older than that. You’ve got to start where they’re at.

One other thing Dr. Korb writes about that I really love. He talks about how your role as a parent changes, from being a coach in elementary school, a manager during middle school and a consultant during high school.

Let’s start going over the five steps.

[00:07:24] Be Consistent

Be consistent. This starts in infancy. When you meet the needs of your child consistently and establish routines for sleeping and eating, you’re teaching them cause and effect. You’re training their bio rhythms and internal clocks with these regular routines.

You can overcome or mitigate the effects of neglect, trauma and abuse, but it does take time. And I’ve seen that in my own clinic, when I have had children who’ve gone through that trauma. They struggle with some of this organized thinking.

With toddlers, you can teach a child how to wait. I love this. You can hold up a finger [00:08:00] to signal you’ll respond shortly when they want to interrupt you. And then respond within 15 seconds. Or you can teach your child to place their hand on your arm and wait quietly. And you can wait a few seconds and then respond. So I think this is awesome, because we have so many children who can’t wait. Then the world just falls apart, if they have to wait.

Here’s another idea I absolutely love about consistency. I wish I’d had this when my children were young. When it makes sense to stray from the set rule, you explain why. For example, if you have to wait in a restaurant for a long time and you’re going to give your child your phone so they can play a game on it, when you usually don’t allow that, you explain it. You can have my phone because we have to wait so long for our table. But this is an exception. Or suppose they’re staying up later than usual because you have company over. “You can stay up late because we have friends visiting, but this is a special circumstance.”

This is still viable because kids remember, they never forget when you stray from the rule. “But you let me do that last time, but we did this, but [00:09:00] we did that.” Explain why you’re straying from the role and that it’s not going to happen very often.

Video games. Okay. I know there’s this huge. It was huge when our children were younger. Doctor Korb says if they can’t unplug when it’s time, they’re not mature enough to use an electronic device unsupervised. Now, this is a little bit tricky and my husband brought this up because the way video games are designed on purpose is for children to never disengage. So they don’t want to stop at a certain time because they haven’t got to a certain level and they’ll lose all their work. Or if they’re playing with friends in this online group and they go before they’ve met their goal, and they let their friends down. I mean, this is really tricky. So I think you’re just going to have to get with your child and decide what the rules are, what the expectations are, and then be consistent.

[00:09:51] The Big Picture

Using the big picture. We talk about why does this rule apply? So, for example, sleep children need eight and a [00:10:00] half to 11 hours of sleep in order to be healthy. Kids can ask again and again and again, to stay up to stay up later, but don’t engage as a parent. Just refer to the big picture. Hey, this is the sleep you need to be healthy. And the story.

I love how this removes the negotiation and argument that is so easy to fall into as a parent. You don’t want to go there, but you fall into it. Just refer to the big picture.

Dr. Korb also recommends using the big picture with teenagers, because parents don’t have to constantly explain themselves. I love that. And if you have teenagers, you’re probably going to love that too.

[00:10:34] Introduce Order

The next step, introduce order. Children who have trouble getting ready on time, have trouble with sequencing often. They keep missing steps in the procedure. I remember there was a third grade teacher at the school our children went to who was very strict, but she was very loved by the parents.

She had a list that she gave the children, they were supposed to post in their home. This was a list that they needed to do to get ready in [00:11:00] the morning. And she expected the kids to follow it. And the parents are pretty much just kind of stepped back and let them do it. So that teacher was teaching children, how to manage themselves, how to begin to manage themselves, how to get things in order on their own. And parents teach order by being ordered themselves by modeling it every day. You can also teach order with language. Like first, second, next, breakfast, lunch, dinner, bedtime. You can see how all this plays into having those routines set up. So being consistent and introduce order, they really work with each other.

Jokes have order stories, have order. Using language to really enrich your life through stories and conversation and jokes teaches kids order.

[00:11:46] Give Everything a Place

The third step, give everything a place.

Dr. Korb brings up something I had never thought about before. I love this. So visual spatial processing is really important to kids learning how to read later on and you can start teaching [00:12:00] visual spatial processing, the organization that goes with it, just by how you store things in the home.

So you can have toys in different rooms. You could have toys that stay in the same place, but the child moves from room to room. So example, you have a book basket by the chair where you read books, you have a basket of balls in the bedroom. You have the outdoor toys stored by the back door. I mean, who knew that you could begin working on visual spatial organization this way? I love it. As the kids get older, you could be more specific when you talk about the places that things are stored. Not just in the kitchen, but in the utensil drawer. And you can talk about where things are stored. And kids will always know where to find their stuff. That would be great as an adult. To always know where to find your stuff.

Here’s another little tidbit that the infant developing brain benefits from high contrast colors. So all these nurseries in these pretty pastel colors, they’re not as [00:13:00] good for the kid as giving them high contrast colors in the nursery. So just remember that.

Dr. Korb also mentioned don’t mix up, Everything Has A Place, with obsessive cleanliness. We’ve got to have a balance there. Children need to get dirty and they need to explore the sensory world.

Here’s one more part of visual spatial processing I had never thought of. Ball play is spatial processing. It’s actually calculus in action. If you had to use math to describe how a child watches a ball coming towards them and positions themselves to catch it, you would actually have to use calculus.

But most five-year-olds can do that. Most five-year-olds can catch a rather large ball and they’re using calculus. Dr. Korb says, if you’re not the sporty kind of parent, just remember you want your child to have practice this kind of visual spatial processing before they drive a car.

Music also helps with it. Reading helps with it. You can do lots of kinds of sports to help with this visual-spatial processing, but watching the ball fly [00:14:00] through the air and learning how to catch it is really, really beneficial.

[00:14:05] Forward Thinking

Let’s move on to practicing forward thinking. You can talk with your child about how you’re going to build a plan for the day. So if you’re going to the beach, you might say, “Hey, we’re going to the beach today. What should we bring?”

I never thought about this. Like when we were going on a picnic or an outing with our kids, I was just like, throw the stuff in the bag, make sure everything’s in the car. Let’s go. I was just kind of stressed and busy about getting everything ready. And I never thought to plan with my children about what should we take in building this plan together? And if they miss something, suggesting it.

I remember this dad telling me a story. Once he had a large family. And he talked about how they had to go on a trip suddenly. And so we just kind of told the kids to get their stuff together. And they left. And when they got to their destination, the youngest child only had a toothbrush and her pajamas, which I guess she left in.

That was all she had for the trip, a [00:15:00] toothbrush in her pajamas. And he said the most interesting thing to me, he said I never packed for my children again. Meaning that, they had been doing too much for their children. And so therefore, when they had to leave in a hurry, the children weren’t self-reliant enough to get their stuff together. So from then on, he figured, okay, they’re going to be self-reliant. They’re going to learn how to practice forward-thinking about what they need to pack.

I just want to read a little bit that Dr. Korb wrote about anticipating, which is part of forward-thinking.

“The number one reason why parents bring their children with oppositional behavior to my office is because their children have difficulty tolerating unmet expectations.

“In other words, when they do not get their way, it stresses them out. This means, for instance, they get upset when their friends want to play something, they do not want to play. When they are refused a new toy, edit toys store. When their big sister gets to open the hotel door or when they cannot have more dessert.

“More often than not, these children share the trait of being unskilled forward thinkers. And thus, they are surprised by seemingly obvious [00:16:00] results. They never anticipate, for example, that when playing the game, they may lose, until all of a sudden they are losing and the feeling overwhelms them.”

Does that sound familiar? It certainly sounds familiar to me as an SLP. I see a lot of children like that. One of the things they need to do is practice forward thinking.

For teenagers, this is a great idea. If teenagers want increased freedom, they can show they are ready for it by demonstrating that they make good choices in what he calls the four H’s: health, hygiene, homework, and household chores. Dr. Korb said. I never hear parents express concern about screen time, when their kids are mastering the four H’s.

I thought. I think this is brilliant. Referring back to when we talked about the video games and the problems with how video games are designed and kids never want to disengage. If your teenager is excelling in these four areas, maybe you’ve removed that problem.

[00:16:54] Promoting Problem Solving

Moving on to Dr. Korb’s last step, promoting problem solving. Here’s an idea that hadn’t really [00:17:00] occurred to me, but when he talks about boredom with twice exceptional children. So, the child who is gifted, but also struggles with some learning, oftentimes the excuse will be given “Well, they’re just bored in class because the teacher isn’t providing enough stimulation for them”. Well, Dr. Korb says the root cause is more often disorganization, because these kids don’t know how to access a dropdown menu of what to think about when they’re not actively given an assignment to do.

He says he sees many talented students who aren’t bored in class because they know what to think about. They know how to think about something that interests them, and they are creative thinkers.

I just think that’s so interesting. I really love this idea because I have heard this, I’ve heard it with my own children. The idea that you don’t have to supply something for them to do all the time when they’re bored is maybe something that we’ve gotten away from. Kids who aren’t able to access this drop down menu to fill that space of boredom are going to default to electronic devices more often. Which [00:18:00] just feeds them the entertainment and we really need to teach them how to figure out what to do when they’re bored and to be creative.

 Dr. Korb writes a little bit about scripting, which kids on the autism spectrum do. They repeat lines that they’ve heard in movies when they’re playing. And that’s not really creative play and he suggest to give them more universal toys. So perhaps they really love Thomas the Tank Engine and as they play with a Thomas, the Tank Engine Toys, they’re just using the phrases that they’ve heard in the shows and they’re not branching out from that. So he suggests giving them generic cars and dolls, things like that. Personally in therapy, when I’ve had this issue with kids, I’ve done a play plan with them, where we decide how our little play is going to end, if we’re doing a little scenario. And if we do it their way, one time, which might look very much like the TV show that they’ve seen. I say, okay, now we’re going to do it again. And now we’re going to do it my way. And we make a different, and they can’t [00:19:00] say certain things because “Nope, nope, you said that last time. We’re doing a different.”

And I used this really effectively with one child who always had to introduce violence into any play plan we had. And I just thought we got to get away from this. He was really focused on the violence part of it. And I was like, well, we did it that way last time. Now we’re doing it my way. And sometimes we even do in a third time in which we both came up with a new way to do the play plan to get away from that scripting and be more creative thinkers.

 Hey, here’s a little bit the Dr. Korb writes about problem solving and school-aged children who lack problem solving skills. He says, “They can be very right and wrong on issues. They are often rule followers and become frustrated by uncertainty or one other stray from their expected paths.

“They demonstrate limited insight into the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of others. Socially, this may result in conflicts or peer avoidance. Academically, there may be misinterpretations about teacher expectations. “

So clearly, it’s really important to you teach your children how [00:20:00] to be problem solvers. A great way to teach problem solving is through conversation. He especially mentions conversation at the dinner table and how he actually has his children provide summaries of their day. And summaries are so, so valuable. Now, as speech therapists, we know that it can be kind of hard to get someone to a summary. So the children I work with will either give me a very short explanation of something, or, they don’t know how to summarize and they go on and on and on telling me the whole plot of the Star Wars movie or whatever. And so to teach them to organize their thoughts enough, to just summarize the main points, that’s a hugely valuable skill and parents can practice this. They can practice this at home at the dinner table.

 I did a podcast just a few weeks ago, called Word Dancing, which is also about conversation and how to build children’s language through conversation. That’s episode 49 on The Speech Umbrella.

There’s a real connection between organized [00:21:00] language and organized thinking. Dr. Korb wrote, “How we use our words is a window to what organizational skills.” That’s a quote I love. I might put it on my wall, but I’ve got a story that demonstrates this.

I’m working with a sixth grader who doesn’t have organized language. We were working on how to use conjunctions and I asked him to tell me about something unexpected that happened so we could use the words, “although”, or, “but”, because that’s when you use those words. And he talked about how he wondered why his teacher hadn’t returned his paper. That was unexpected. He had done an assignment. He hadn’t got a back. And then I started working through how to say this. He said, “Oh, wait a minute. I didn’t turn that paper in. That’s why I didn’t get it back.” . Having him actually go through their process of organizing his language so he could describe this event, made him realize his lack of organization that he didn’t even turn it in.

So again, that is a window into his organizational skills, how he uses his words.[00:22:00]

[00:22:01] Practical Application

That’s a real quick run-through of Raising An Organized Child and the five steps Dr. Korb describes. Let’s talk a little about how we might apply this as SLPs.

At the very end of the book, Dr. Korb suggests using mini routines for those children who really struggle, children who might be on the autism spectrum disorder. How you can create picture schedules for them, and really, really break down the steps of routines that they need to follow. And that is hugely helpful.

When we talked about language and the order of things, how everything has a place, and how our language helps organize thinking first, second, next. In my podcast episode 46, Follow The Narrative Road, I talk about how I use sequencing of the events that happen actually in therapy, to get children ready to tell narratives and I have found that extremely helpful.

For those children who really struggle with not wanting to leave when the session is over and having a, sort of a meltdown because they’re having fun. [00:23:00] I use an app called Time Timer. It visually shows the time disappearing. You’ve got this red block on the clock and it gets smaller and smaller and skinnier until it’s gone. That really helps the kids who have trouble with leaving the session when it’s done.

Sometimes I use a really basic picture schedule just to show “If… Then…” If you can get kids, especially those kids on the autism spectrum who struggle with wanting to do what needs to be done. If you can get them understand “If… Then…” concept, you’ve made huge progress. So, what I’ll do is I’ll have pictures of the activities we need to do and a little reinforcement at the end that they get to play for just like maybe two minutes. I present it this way. If you do this, and this, then we get to do this at the end. So they get to practice some forward thinking. And that’s been really huge for one of my clients. It took him several months to get there. We had a lot of meltdowns. And I just had to be consistent with him, but when he was able to understand the “If… Then…”, oh boy, [00:24:00] sessions got so much better. If he looks like he’s going to have a meltdown, I just whip out that picture schedule. I like, “Remember, if you do this, then you get to do this.” And he’s like, “Oh yeah. Okay. I can do that.”

 I use penny strips all the time. A penny strip is just a visual way to mark what needs to be done. So I’ll use five pennies that have Velcro on them on a strip or sometimes 10. I need a child to do something with some consistency, because if you practice something once it’s really not enough. But suppose they are only able to practice it once without having the meltdown. What you do is you use the penny strip and you have it prefilled with four of the pennies. The first time you just practice whatever it is you’re practicing once and you put the penny on and you’re like, “Oh look, you did it!” Now, my penny strip is on a container with Mini M and M’s, so they get the Mini M and M when the strip is filled. But the next time we do it. I only preload it with three pennies. And therefore they have to practice it twice and we just go on until they [00:25:00] can do whatever I need them to do five times. And they get the little Mini M and M and then if I need them to practice at 10 times, we can do it again. We just build up their ability to be consistent with practicing and not having a meltdown because they have to do something more than once, heaven forbid.

I had never done online therapy until the pandemic hit. And then I had to get used to doing Zoom calls. Some kids handle it really well and some kids don’t handle it so well. And so what Dr. Korb said about a child being able to handle a video game, and prove that they can manage electronic device on their own kind of applies to online therapy.

 I had some kids who could handle it some kids who couldn’t, and this is really for the parents, as much as the child to say to the parent, you know, last time he did not attend well, he is not ready to be in online therapy on his own. You need to be there with him. And this was a real struggle I had.

I stipulated with any parent when I begin online therapy that they would need to be there throughout the session. And that just didn’t happen. [00:26:00] Like oh, I’ll be right back. They leave. They don’t come back. And then your child either functions well, or they don’t function well. I had a child just request last week that he wanted to do online therapy again. So it was an exeption, but as a mother requested, we do as zoom session. And we did, and it was kind of a disaster. She didn’t stick around. He muted the mic. And then he typed in the chat. I want you to read my lips. And I was like, no, no, no, this. This is not okay.

My response to him was not as good as it could have been because I was like, no, I don’t normally do zoom. You know, it’s better when you’re in here, but I could have said to him, “Last time we did online therapy. You did not show that you were ready for it. You muted me. You can’t handle it yet.” And that would have been a real wake up moment, I think for him to realize, oh, instead of me just kind of putting him off and say, no, no, you need to come in here because this is how I do therapy. Well, that is how I do therapy. And that is true. Normally I don’t do online therapy ever since that [00:27:00] interlude, when we all did it for a while. But that would have been a better response to help him realize that he needs to be accountable for his actions.

[00:27:09] Children and Youth Program

In my search for ways to help children, I came across a really great program. It’s called The Children And Youth Program and it’s created by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It has kids develop personally, by making goals in four areas of spiritual, social, physical, intellectual. And the way it’s done is through having them discover something they’re good at or something they want to become good at. Plan something around that to improve themselves. Act on it and then go back and reflect how they did. And they do it with their family, with their parents. It’s a really great forward planning, forward thinking kind of activity. It doesn’t need to be done any certain denominational way. Of course, there are suggestions on the website about how to apply it, if you do belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it’s not necessary and you could leave out the spiritual [00:28:00] part of it, if you wanted to, and just address the other areas, social, physical, intellectual, but it’s so great. It’s one of the most developmentally appropriate programs I’ve seen for helping children plan and act, and then reflect on what they have done. I will link that in the show notes.

[00:28:16] Wrap Up

Well, that’s it. I hope you pick up a copy of Raising An Organized Child. I recommend it to a lot of parents, and one mom told me, “I love this book.” She has a toddler, now preschooler, who was giving her some challenging behaviors. For her, it was the book that answered a lot of her questions. So as a therapist, as a parent, it’s a great resource.

I didn’t even talk about chores, which Dr. Korb talks about, because on my next podcast, I’ll be interviewing Nathan and Melanie Young, who have created a whole program to get your kids to do chores in a falls right in line with what Dr. Korb writes about.

Next time you have a chance to interact with the child,[00:29:00] think about these five steps and see if they work. The five steps are. Be consistent. Introduce order. Give everything to place, practice forward thinking and promote problem solving. These things are really simple, but they lead to solving complex issues and problems. So remember, when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself. Thanks for listening.