Executive Functioning and the Adolescent Brain

Executive functioning is one of the most important yet often misunderstood areas of adolescent brain development. These skills shape how teens plan, organize, remember, prioritize, and follow through on tasks. When executive functioning develops unevenly, it can show up as missed assignments, self-sabotage, conflict at home, or difficulty with accountability. For many parents, teachers, and clinicians, the challenge lies in knowing whether a teen’s struggles come from lack of motivation or simply from a brain that is still building the skills it needs to succeed.

In this episode of the Turning Winds Podcast, host Kevin Zundl speaks with clinical expert Jared Sartell about how executive functioning unfolds during adolescence and why this stage of life requires both patience and intentional support. Jared explains the 15 executive functioning skills that every adult relies on, including working memory, impulse control, initiation, and organization. Learn why these skills do not fully mature until the mid-twenties and why middle school is often the point where academic and behavioral challenges become more visible. Parents may suddenly feel their child “should” be able to handle responsibilities, when in reality the brain is not yet fully equipped to manage them.

The conversation explores how treatment programs like Turning Winds can step in at this critical stage. By assessing executive function deficits, providing direct coaching, and creating structured opportunities for growth, clinicians can help teens develop healthy compensations and strategies that reduce risky behavior and improve academic performance. Jared shares examples of how executive functioning deficits can affect everything from turning in homework to managing emotions, and why targeted interventions make such a difference in treatment.

You will also hear personal reflections on the challenges of parenting through this developmental stage. Kevin and Jared talk about the role of grace, the importance of calibrating expectations to a teen’s actual age and developmental capacity, and the risks of shame when accountability is enforced without understanding. They highlight how a team-based clinical approach at Turning Winds allows staff to balance high expectations with realistic developmental benchmarks, preventing frustration while promoting resilience.

Parents, educators, and professionals will gain practical insights into questions such as:

• Why do some teens appear capable one day and unmotivated the next?
• How do hormones, social identity, and cognitive maturity interact with executive functioning?
• What strategies can parents use to maintain accountability without sliding into conflict?
• How can treatment programs provide concentrated, daily support that accelerates growth in executive functioning skills?

Executive functioning is not just about academics but about life. Teens who develop these skills are more capable of making safe choices, building healthy relationships, and preparing for adulthood. Treatment settings like Turning Winds give adolescents the chance to strengthen these capacities in a structured environment where clinical and academic support work hand in hand.

If you are a parent of a teenager who is struggling with motivation, accountability, or behavioral issues, understanding executive functioning may be the key to unlocking their potential. By learning how the adolescent brain develops and how treatment providers can help, you can begin to see new possibilities for your child’s growth and success.

To learn more about Turning Winds, visit turningwinds.com or call 800-845-1380.

Transcript

 This is what it sounds like when you know that the development of teen executive functioning skills changes everything, but as they develop their executive functioning skills, that other behavior gets reduced. It's pretty fascinating how that can work. Welcome to the Turning Winds Podcast. My name is Kevin Zundl.

Turning Winds provides a full continuum of care for teens who would benefit from key clinical and academic support at the most pivotal time in their lives. Today I speak with clinical expert Jared Sartell on insights into executive functioning of the developing teen brain. I've spoken about my personal story and one of my sons, uh, a little bit, and I'd like to start with academics, but.

Not just grades, but everything that sometimes goes along with it. But there's sometimes where he's truly aspirational, he really wants to do well, and then other times it doesn't matter, or you've done the assignment, why don't you just hand it in? And is there a self-sabotage element to it or is there something else that's distracting him?

What? Yeah, that's a super good question. Without really knowing your son, it would be hard to answer that. What I can say is that several things that you hit on come back to the skills and executive functioning. There's a set of 15 executive functioning skills that we need to have in order to operate as an adult and a semi healthy, semi functioning way.

What we also know is that they can be fairly abstract in nature and people don't really start developing them until early adolescents to mid adolescents. And so when, um, there's a common refrain that we're not fully developed until our mid twenties, essentially what that is saying is that you're still developing the cognitive capacity for using the executive functions.

By mid 25, most people, most of the places are, they have more or less developed executive functioning source. And so probably with your son, it's a mixture of hormones, a mixture of just social identity stuff, and it's a mixture of executive functioning deficits, areas where he just has not naturally developed.

So each of us. Naturally develop executive functioning skills just falling out ago, and it tends to start happening in early adolescence. But we all have some that we're naturally really good at without having to pay attention to. And there are others that we maybe are not naturally good at that we we have to pay attention to.

What happens is when we're little kids, the adult around us, just understand that we're gonna be bad at executive function. This is all self subconscious processing, and so we make up for our kids' lack, like there's grace there, like they're allowed to make the mistakes, that kind of stuff. And, but what happens in our society specifically is when you get into middle school or the middle of middle school, all of the sudden the expectations change for our kids.

We have this inherent belief that they should be able to do the thing. And the thing is, whatever the executive functioning that would be involved in that process, so they should be able to turn their homework in when they've done, that's one of the executive functions, what's called initiating activity, or they know how to do this math.

They should be able to do this homework, or they should be able to do this, or they should be able to do that. And so as we're raising our kids, we teach them these skills to live in society. There's a lot of room for them to not develop them and us not realize it because we just give them grace. And so in middle school that grace goes away.

And so the kids all of the sudden happiest demands on skills that they may or may not have been taught overtly. And their brains, even if they've been taught may or may not be able to actually do it yet. But we as adults just have decided, alright, at this stage they should be able to do this. That's not necessarily wrong, but it's, and so my guess is like with your son or those kids that you know that do bad things or do things that are wrong and they know it, very likely, they're executive function deficits.

Someone do. So as adults, we either naturally develop or get better at enough of them to be able to survive, or we find healthy compensations. And so there's an executive function called working memory. That's the ability to. Recognize that something is important enough for you to need to be able to remember it and retrieve it in the short term, and the ability to then retrieve in the short term.

My working memory is trash and it's probably always gonna be, probably always was. And I have worked to develop my working memory, but I think I've hit like the. And so I carry the smartphone on me, and I'm not a tech guy, and I'm not really a phone guy either. But if you see me playing on my phone, there's a really high likelihood that I'm emailing myself a reminder to do something because my working memory, like I'll be driving and thinking, oh, I need to do this thing.

And if I don't do it immediately, there's a really good chance I'm gonna forget to do it. And so I have found a healthy workaround, a healthy compensation for an area that I'm not gonna get any strong. So with these executive functions, with our kids, we don't necessarily know what their deficits are.

Their true deficits are until adolescents, and they keep failing to meet the expectations that we have for them. And it's important to realize, oh, maybe they're failing to do it because their brain hasn't developed the capacity, and so then they need more focused guidance and coaching on developing these certain skills that will allow them to perform.

The way that the world is going expected. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's something as you're as as, as you're talking, I try to remind myself of certain things that if he's looking older and older, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's quite there yet, just because he's broader and taller and Yeah. All of that.

And maybe using language that is older person kind of language. Exactly. So the grace that I think that we give them when they're younger, it's, they're five years old. Of course they can't. That's right. Right. That's right. I it, it quickly can escalate into anger and conflict because you're now expecting them to act like a 30-year-old when they are 14.

Yeah, and it could be compounded if they do have a diagnosis or an identified disorder, it presented itself physically. You might give them additional grace, certain cases, and this because you're treating them as a peer, as a, as opposed someone that really actively parrot, which is why I think it's sometimes important to be more respe receptive of the idea of treatment.

Because these are things that are EAs more easily maintained and observed and worked through because it's done on a daily basis. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's a concentrated form and the treatment providers can see it in, it's a concentrated form. And so if I were a, a therapist in an outpatient, which I've done before, you'd have to have a year's worth of weekly sessions and cut through their presentation to see some of this stuff perhaps.

Whereas in a place like Turning Winds, it's huge and it's being seen and the deficits are present and being addressed, and then we can put it together, okay, this kid struggles with these Eastern executive functions, and we can help them develop those executive functions or develop healthy compensations for those.

Even more difficult about it, Kevin, for adolescence, is we can apply. Accidentally again, we can apply the same standards for a 13-year-old that we do a 15-year-old. Now there's, there are fundamental differences between the 13-year-old brain and the 15-year-old brain, or what's more a 15-year-old and a 17 year.

There are profound fundamental differences between a 15-year-old brain and a 17-year-old. So we, it's very common for us to have a kid that is 14 years old, but six foot tall and in your brain. You're not recognizing I'm talking to a child right now 'cause he's six inches taller than I'm, and it happens all of the time.

And that's also why we do it, why we use the team format at turning wins. Because if I'm miscalibrated, because of something like that, somebody else is probably accurately calibrated. So as a team, we can talk about it and recognize, okay, so this kid's six foot tall and he uses these sorts of languages, but he's actually only 14.

And we have to remember that our interventions need to be based on that. And in some cases we have a kid that is six foot tall, 14 that developmentally is like, whoa. And so there can be all sorts of quagmires for these kids because they have these different levels of expectations that may have nothing to do with their actual capability.

Knowing all that to be true, how do we teach accountability and how do we foster growth? Because I think too often we fall into shame and that, and what are we really doing when we demean them as a result of the fact that their brains aren't developed with expectations that are unrealistic. Yeah. I'm grateful that you brought that up.

The shame comes from our belief that they should be able to do something that that's an problem, and that attack comes from the belief that you should be able to do something. Like we have this belief that they ought to have a different set of skills that they have. I'll give you an example. I have a son that's nine years old, and I love him dearly most of the time, but a couple months ago.

I found myself hating him a little bit. He has interest that I have no interest in whatsoever. He wants to spend his time in ways that I think are just a waste, and without realizing it, I was being pretty judgmental of my son and I was in a sideways movie like I doing and saying things that were not mean on the face of it, but demonstrated a lack of regard.

And I was concerned about the nature of my relationship with my son and how do I get, have a better relationship with my son, and had to come to the reckoning that it's totally a me problem. I was being judgemental, and then that was coming out towards him. And so what I decided, I'm gonna meet him where he is at, and I'm gonna sit down and watch Minecraft, YouTube videos with him just to be with my son.

Completely and utterly changed the nature of our relationship because I recognize this is a me problem. I'm calibrated improperly to my son and made a change. We don't actually remove accountability from them, but we apply it in a way that's better calibrated to their adults. And so we have to really know ourselves well as parents.

We have to really know our kids well. Like my expectations of my 9-year-old son were not calibrated very well to a 9-year-old kid. They were calibrated more towards my 17-year-old daughter. It was a completely different human being, but that doesn't mean like there are still expectations for him. He doesn't just get to do what he wants on YouTube.

He doesn't just get, he still has accountability for those things that are, that he's responsible for, but they're calibrated to a nine year. So when we're parents of a teenager, we have to know them well. We have to have a good, healthy relationship with them on an intimate level to be able to, to tap into our own intuition about our kids.

We have to have expectations for them, and they need to be high expectations for them, and they need to be accountable to those, but they have to be within reason as well. You can't reasonably ask a 14-year-old kid to do the same sorts of abstract thinking that you would ask an 18-year-old kid. The problem is we lump 'em all together with adults as well.

Our funeral systems are full of people that struggle with the executive functioning, and it came out sideways and we punished 'em. Now, they may or may not have deserved whatever consequence they've received because of their actions, but I guarantee you that executive functioning. If you can't hold down a job because you can't get somewhere on time, you're more likely to, to engage in other behaviors to to get your needs met.

Or if you like to engage in risky behavior, 'cause it's fun and you can't stop yourself, which is the inhibition of impulses, executive function, then you're more likely to do dangerous things and have negative consequences. And so what we do at Turning Winds. As we teach them overtly about the executive functions, I tend to have the kids do some self-assessments and then prioritize which ones they're, they probably need to get better at.

And then we have workbooks and exercises that we have them to. And so that's what we do in our clinical practice as the attorney is regarding the executive functions. And it's funny how we'll see a kid that. Struggles with addiction and struggles with all of these things over on the side that look like they're the main focus, but as they develop their executive functioning skills, that other behavior gets reduced.

It's pretty fascinating how that can work. If you can be a capable person in your world, you're less likely to make really poor choices. If this gives you hope that the right people in the right setting can make the difference for your team, I highly encourage you to listen to the many other episodes here and consider hitting the like and subscribe button to make sure you don't miss out.

And try taking the second to pick up the phone and giving Turning Winds a call to share your situation at 800 845 1380. There's also a wealth of resources available to you at turningwinds.com