If there’s anything that life in a pandemic has shown us, it’s how important it is (and how difficult it can be) to adapt to unexpected change. As every aspect of life turned upside down for parents and teachers, it quickly became apparent the areas where we all knew and didn’t know how to pivot and demonstrate flexibility. Among all the executive functioning skills we teach, when the going gets tough and unpredictable, flexibility is the one we rely on the most.
What is flexibility?
While there’s no set definition of flexibility in executive functioning, we generally consider flexibility to be the behavior of switching between tasks and demands in response to changes in the environment. In essence, it’s our ability to change our behavior to different contexts or stimuli in our world. Other terms researchers might use to describe flexibility include cognitive flexibility, shift, task switching, and mental flexibility.
Individuals who struggle with flexibility have difficulty discriminating between different environments or can’t shift focus between various tasks or relevant information. When we’re inflexible, we may get ‘stuck’ or keep trying the same response over and over even though it’s not working.
Examples of Flexibility
Here are some sample behaviors you might use to define flexibility:
- Categorizing objects in different ways (e.g., sorting a set of items first by color and then sorting the same things by shape or function).
- Transitioning between activities, including ending a preferred activity to begin a non-preferred activity.
- Perspective-taking (e.g., monitoring one’s own verbal and nonverbal behavior as others respond to it)
- Recognizing a problem or a “glitch” and adjusting behavior accordingly.
- Trying a new strategy after an initial approach failed.
- Accepting another’s idea or view as better than one’s own.
- Revising communication or rephrasing when a listener doesn’t understand.
- Adapt when plans change or when unexpected events occur.
Developing Flexibility Skills
We begin to learn flexibility and to develop flexible thinking early in childhood. Toddlers and young children complete simple puzzles, games, and play requiring shifting between one behavior and another. As young children learn to shift from activity to activity, they begin to manage transitions and unexpected changes without upset behaviors. Then, as adolescents grow and their social networks continue to expand, they encounter more and more situations where problems and unpredictable events occur. Adults are nearby, however, to support and teach children to adjust dynamically.
As our children grow into teenagers and young adults, we expect them to now manage unpredictable changes to routines, meet the changing demands school, work, and family, and take difficult situations in stride. Our children may need additional support at occasional points, but with well-developed executive functioning skills, they’re able to pivot and recover quickly when the unexpected happens.
Why is flexibility necessary?
There are some real-world benefits to developing flexibility. Coping with unexpected changes and adapting to new information are associated with a wide range of positive outcomes in children and adults, including:
- Better reading abilities
- Improved responding to adverse life events
- Higher ability to respond to stress in adulthood
- Improved creativity
Flexibility and coping with change help our teens and young adults avoid some of the common problem behaviors we frequently encounter when working with diverse learners. Improvements in flexibility can help avoid common pitfalls at home, school and work related to:
- Getting frustrated when little things happen
- Repeating the same mistake
- Difficulty adapting to changes in schedules
- Switching between activities or leaving activities
- Arguing the same point over and over
- Tantrums or meltdowns when rules or circumstances change.
Teaching Flexibility vs. Teaching the World to be Flexible
As we discuss teaching flexibility, tolerating unpredictability, and responding to change, we must also acknowledge a growing movement in the neurodiversity community pushing back against how and why we teach these skills.
Some adults and advocates for teens and adults with autism and related disorders argue that the methods used to teach tolerance or flexibility are harmful and create undue stress. Parents and educators are focused on children learning to respond like neurotypical children, which inherently applies that the behaviors an autistic or diverse learner might demonstrate in response to challenges or changes in the environment are ‘bad’ or ‘wrong.’ The growing movement also suggests that by teaching flexibility we’re introducing the idea that following along and compliance is the only ‘right answer,’ even at the expense of an individual’s own needs or wants.
Other autism advocates, including Temple Grandin, suggest that teaching flexibility and flexible thinking is critical to support independence and success for diverse learners. Teaching flexibility doesn’t mean that an individual has to conform necessarily, but it does help them better work alongside a variety of other learners. The world is not likely to become overly flexible and understanding overnight, so in the meantime, it’s important to best prepare our children as well as we can to encounter the world as it exists.
Ultimately, the answer likely rests somewhere in between. We need to continue to teach the world to be flexible and improve how we teach unique learners, but we also need to ensure that they have the tools to succeed.
How to Evaluate Flexibility
If you’ve read the above and decided your child or student might benefit from a boost in flexible thinking skills, consider these strategies to evaluate and assess the best options forward:
- Start with a skills assessment. There are many different executive functioning skills assessments available to families and educators. These simple assessments and checklists can be completed without prior training and focus heavily on your personal experience with your child. To start brainstorming the flexibility skills your child might need to build upon, download our flexibility questionnaire below and complete it with your child.
- Try a computer-based flexibility test. There are several apps and online websites that can evaluate and teach flexibility. Search your smartphone or tablet applications store for options, or check out a free trial from brain-training websites like Lumosity, Elevate, and Activate. While these programs may or may not improve your child’s current skill needs, they may provide information about underlying issues with flexibility worth addressing.
- Organize your child’s support network. You may not be alone in identifying areas to build your child’s executive functioning skills. If your child receives speech, OT, PT, or other IEP services, they may already have goals related to flexibility. Reach out to your child’s care team to coordinate to discuss ways to incorporate transitions, flexibility, and shifting gears into the other therapy schedules.
- Seek a new professional evaluation. If your child’s current care coordination team does not have an executive functioning expert on board, consider adding a professional trained in this area. Behavior analysts, psychologists, life skills coaches, and parenting coaches can help build flexibility.
Further Reading
- Are we too focused on eliminating behaviors? – Child Mind Institute
- Cognitive Flexibility – Science Direct Summary Topic
- Dajani, D. R., & Uddin, L. Q. (2015). Demystifying cognitive flexibility: Implications for clinical and developmental neuroscience. Trends in neurosciences, 38(9), 571–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2015.07.003
- Educating Different Kinds of Minds – Temple Grandin TEDxTalk
- Executive Function and Self Regulation – Harvard Center on the Developing Child
- How Teaching Executive Functioning Skills Can Reduce Challenging Behaviors – Life Skills Advocate