Service · Elementary (Grades 1-4)

Basics of EF for Elementary Students

— Early executive-function coaching for elementary students. Self-regulation, focus, and follow-through — built playfully, before bad habits set in.

Best fit
  • Elementary students grades 1-4
  • Younger kids showing early signs of EF struggles
  • Families wanting to build the foundation before middle school
Essay 01

What Basics of EF is

Basics of EF is one-on-one coaching for elementary students, roughly grades 1 through 4, who are already showing the early signs: the backpack that swallows papers, the homework that takes two hours of tears for twenty minutes of work, the kid who can't get started or can't stop. Executive functioning skills are the everyday skills we all use to manage learning and life, and this is where they get built, before middle school asks for all of them at once.

Sessions are short and playful on purpose. Task initiation, working memory, impulse control, and planning get introduced through games and activities, not lectures, because a seven-year-old doesn't learn organization from a talk about organization. Some older students who need the foundations fit here too.

Essay 02

A typical week

A set day and time each week, 30 or 50 minutes on video depending on the package and the child. The coach opens with something fun that happens to exercise the skill of the week, then brings it to something real: this week's spelling list, the project due Friday, the routine for packing the bag. Awareness comes first (what does "planning" even mean when you're eight), then practice, then using it in real life.

After each session you get an update from the coach, so you know what they worked on and how to back it up at home without it turning into another fight.

Essay 03

What changes

The conflict around schoolwork is what eases first. When a child has a way to start, a way to keep track, and a grown-up who isn't their parent noticing the small wins, homework stops being the family's nightly battle. The child starts to see their own progress, which is the point: confidence at this age comes from feeling capable, not from being told you are.

And the skills travel. The routine built around a spelling list is the same routine that handles a science project in sixth grade.

Essay 04

How to start

Book a free call, or register directly. Every student starts with an intake appointment with Dr. Russell or an intake specialist (about 90 minutes, $525, parents only), and the match with the right coach follows within 24 hours. Coaching is $990 for ten 30-minute sessions or $1,650 for twelve 50-minute sessions, plus a $100 annual registration and technology fee. Details are on the fee schedule.

What's included

What you actually get.

  • Weekly 30 or 50-minute video sessions
  • Skills introduced through games + activities
  • Parent updates after each session
  • 10 × 30-minute sessions / $990
  • 12 × 50-minute sessions / $1,650
  • Annual Registration/Technology Fee: $100
Common questions

Things parents ask.

— next step —

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