Using “Just Dance” to increase Executive Functioning Awareness
In the previous post I talked about helping increase executive functioning awareness by using a technique called “Therapeutic Failure”. Essentially, this is where you letting a child fail in a safe environment. I know it sounds negative to just let someone fail, so I wanted to share an activity I did with my social group involving this.
In our group we played “Just Dance”. Some people were familiar with the game and some people weren’t. While we were dancing there was a visual that showed you what the dance moves were supposed to look like. Because we were just doing the game over youtube I had to pause it everyone once in a while and ask them if their bodies looked like the ones in the video. Then we talked about if their performance was equal to the person in the video (meaning they did all of the moves correctly), if their performance wasn’t as good yet (YET being the key word!) or if their performance was above average.
I had a variety of responses:
- Some individuals had average performance and noticed that they had average performance
- Some individuals had less than average performance and were able to acknowledge that it was less than average (although their demeanor indicated they felt ashamed)(The individual may be between the first two levels of awareness, but shame and fear of rejection are getting in the way of them asking for help).
- Some individuals had less than average performance and were not able to acknowledge it (The individual is still at the first level of executive functioning awareness and does not yet know that they actually need help).
- Some individuals had a below average performance, were able to recognize it and were able to identify strategies that help their performance (This is Anticipatory Awareness. This is when we can expect an individual to independently request help).