Every parent looks forward to the day their child can read fluently. Society leads us to believe that this is the pinnacle of a child’s early academic career. We’ve been told it indicates children will be more successful in their overall long-term education. However, research has found the opposite to be true. Read on to learn how early reading is correlated with success in elementary school, but doesn’t seem to lead directly to college enrollment or success.

While research on executive functioning has been taking place since the early 1970s, it has recently become a common buzzword in the worlds of education and speech-language pathology. This may be due to new research showing that a child’s future success depends less on their ability to memorize math facts and decode words, and more on having strong executive functioning and social-emotional skills. So what is executive functioning, and why is it so important for learning?

Loose parts play has been a part of a Parish education since the school opened in 1983. Learn how we're expanding upon this type of play in our early childhood program today.

Math and reading seem to be the two areas of academics that society focuses on the most. They also happen to be two areas in which children who have language disorders and executive functioning difficulties frequently struggle. It’s easy to see how a difficulty understanding language can impact a child’s ability to read – reading requires the ability to comprehend written language. However, determining how difficulties with language can impact a child’s mathematical ability is much less obvious.