Behavioral Training of Early Executive Functioning Game #3: How Effective Therapy for Your Child with Autism or ADHD is a Matter of Behavioral Exercise

The final game I would like to review is basically Red Light Green Light on steroids. The rules are very similar. I learned this game from a martial arts teacher in Maine. He seemed to have more than a representative sample of kids with impulse control, hyperactivity, and difficulty paying attention. He turned his class in to an ADHD boot camp.

Game #3 (of 3): Karate Statues

1) The game starts with the child or children standing on one side of the room with the adult on the other. Touching the wall, the kids can start to approach the adult only when the adult is turned away and can’t see them. When the adult turns back and looks at the children as they approach, the children must stop moving entirely (like a statue). When the adult turns back around, they can start moving toward him/her again. If the adult sees the child move, the child needs to return to where they began and start over. The first child who touches the adult “wins”. In the one child version, the child earns a point for touching the adult and the adult wins a point if he/she catches a child moving when they look.

2) This game takes the inhibition skills learned in Red Light Green Light and puts them to use in response to a purely visual stimulus. Visual attending is more effortful and fatiguing than auditory attention. This is at least partly due to the fact that the child needs to maintain an eye gaze on the adult to detect the No Go condition. Unlike sound, which can be detected pretty much no matter what the child is doing (except talking), visual stimuli require that the eyes be fixed in the direction of the source of the cue. Also, Karate Statues requires that the child halt all motion (including the muscles of the mouth which would otherwise be required for talking). So overall, this game requires a much higher degree of control and focus to be successful.

3) This game can be made easier by allowing the child to take a fixed number of steps after the adult has turned towards the children. Some kids may need as many as three to be successful 70% of the time (the recommended win rate). It can also be made easier if the adult slows the speed at which they turn around so as to give the child more time to react.

4) The game can be made harder by:

a. Requiring that the game only starts when the adult says “go”. This means the child needs to inhibit the impulse to start moving at the beginning of the game when the adult turns around (on all other occasions the sight of the adult turning away is a Go signal). So the initial Go signal is both an adult turned away and the sound “go”.

b. The adult can make gestures that they are about to turn away (a fake) but then not. So the child would need to abstain from moving for a split second in order to ensure that the Go signal is legitimate every time they saw the adult begin to turn away.

c. I like to go up to the kids while they are frozen in place and offer a high five, point at an imaginary event happening just behind them, or tell them that they have something on their shirt. They have to resist the urge to respond to stimuli that they normally physically respond to.

5) Don’t forget the reward! Kids will give substantially more effort and progress faster if they are working for something. A little bit of reward can pay off big time in better progress and more willing participation.

This concludes a three-part series on using normal kids’ games to enhance your child’s executive function and give them more control over their behavior. These techniques have proven effective in some of the most rowdy and uninhibited youngsters. I hope your children will benefit from something you picked up in reading my blog.