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What this is built on

The research behind Waypoint

Waypoint is not built by a parent, and not by a clinician. So we don’t ask you to trust who we are — we tell you what the design is based on and cite it, so you can check it yourself. Below is the plain-language version; we keep a full review of roughly 150 sources behind it.

What the activities draw on

The daily activities are organized around the way executive function is described in the published research: a small set of core skills (holding information in mind, resisting distraction, shifting between tasks) and the higher-order skills built on top (starting tasks, planning, organizing, finishing). The activity tags map to a widely used practitioner taxonomy.

Diamond (2013); Miyake et al. (2000); Dawson & Guare (2018).

How the summary is built

Each day you record what was attempted, how much support it took, and a simple focus rating. The support-needed scale — from “mostly solo” to “hands-on help” — is modeled on the item structure of an established parent-report instrument, where a parent describes the level of help a task required. The summary then reports these as patterns over time across natural home settings: the kind of collateral, day-to-day texture that a one-day testing session can’t capture.

Gioia et al. (2000), BRIEF.

What the suggested activities are based on

The daily activities are short, structured practice routines — not a training program. They borrow the shape of parent-led and organization-skills programs studied in school-age children: the morning and homework routines, checklists, and planners echo a homework-organization-and-planning skills program (HOPS), and the younger play-based games (stop/go, memory, rule-switch) echo parent-led, play-based practice and the broad-activity approach. We use them to give a child something concrete to practice and a parent something concrete to observe — not as a claim that the routine itself changes an underlying ability.

Langberg et al. (2012), HOPS; Halperin et al. (2013), parent-led play-based practice; Diamond & Lee (2011); Daley et al. (2014), behavioral parent training.

What the research does not support

We hold ourselves to what the evidence actually shows, which means being clear about the limits:

  • Short home practice can support a skill in the moment, but the research finds that broad, lasting carry-over is weak. So Waypoint does not claim to fix or remediate anything — it is a way to observe and document, not to change a score.
  • Commercial “brain-training” claims — that drilling a skill raises a child’s intelligence or grades — are not well supported in the research, and overstating them has drawn regulatory action against other companies. We make no such claim.
  • Waypoint is not an evaluation, and nothing here is a diagnosis. It does not measure your child against age norms or produce a result.
  • The summary is parent-reported observation, offered as context for the people who do evaluate. The judgment stays with your school team or evaluator.

Karbach & Unger (2014); Melby-Lervåg et al. (2016); Simons et al. (2016); Diamond & Lee (2011).

Why ages 7–12 first

The developmental research points to middle childhood as a window where executive-function differences are observable and parents can describe them reliably. The 3–6 band waits for a separate reason grounded in the same literature: with younger children, parent-as-observer reliability is lower and the developmental picture is more complex, so we do not market that band yet.

Best & Miller (2010); Davidson et al. (2006); Garon et al. (2008).

References

A working subset of the full review. Each line notes what it informs in the product.

  1. Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.Defines the three core executive functions (inhibition, working memory, cognitive flexibility) we use as the activity taxonomy.
  2. Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 49–100.Executive function is separable but correlated — supports logging sub-domains (starting tasks vs. working memory vs. planning) separately.
  3. Best, J. R., & Miller, P. H. (2010). A developmental perspective on executive function. Child Development, 81(6), 1641–1660.Maps the developmental trajectory ages 3–18; supports prioritizing the 7–12 band.
  4. Davidson, M. C., Amso, D., Anderson, L. C., & Diamond, A. (2006). Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years. Neuropsychologia, 44(11), 2037–2078.Maps the growth curve through the target age band.
  5. Dawson, P., & Guare, R. (2018). Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.The practitioner taxonomy our activity tags map to (initiation, planning, organization, time management, working memory, response inhibition, emotion regulation, sustained attention, persistence, metacognition, flexibility).
  6. Gioia, G. A., Isquith, P. K., Guy, S. C., & Kenworthy, L. (2000). Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF). Psychological Assessment Resources.An established parent-report instrument. Our 0–3 support-needed scale is informed by its item structure — a parent describing how much help a task took.
  7. Diamond, A., & Lee, K. (2011). Interventions shown to aid executive function development in children 4 to 12 years old. Science, 333(6045), 959–964.Diverse activities can support executive function in this age range — and the same review is why we DON'T overclaim (see the limits section).
  8. Karbach, J., & Unger, K. (2014). Executive control training from middle childhood to adolescence. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 390.Near transfer is common, far transfer is weak. This is the honest ceiling on what short home practice can do — and why we frame Waypoint as observation, not remediation.
  9. Garon, N., Bryson, S. E., & Smith, I. M. (2008). Executive function in preschoolers: A review using an integrative framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134(1), 31–60.Why the 3–6 band waits: parent-as-observer reliability is lower at younger ages and the developmental picture is more complex.
  10. Langberg, J. M., Epstein, J. N., Becker, S. P., Girio-Herrera, E., & Vaughn, A. J. (2012). Evaluation of the Homework, Organization, and Planning Skills (HOPS) intervention for middle school students with ADHD. School Psychology Review, 41(3), 342–364.The organization-and-planning routines (morning launch, planner, homework start) borrow this program's structure — the lit review calls HOPS the direct ancestor of these tasks.
  11. Halperin, J. M., Marks, D. J., Bedard, A. C. V., Chacko, A., Curchack, J. T., Yoon, C. A., & Healey, D. M. (2013). Training executive, attention, and motor skills: A proof-of-concept study in preschool children with ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 17(8), 711–721.Parent-led, play-based practice — the closest published analog to the younger-band games (stop/go, memory, rule-switch).
  12. Daley, D., van der Oord, S., Ferrin, M., Danckaerts, M., Doepfner, M., Cortese, S., et al. (2014). Behavioral interventions in ADHD: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials across multiple outcome domains. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 53(8), 835–847.Behavioral parent-skill approaches; calibrates honest framing — effects show up mainly in parent-rated outcomes.
  13. Melby-Lervåg, M., Redick, T. S., & Hulme, C. (2016). Working memory training does not improve performance on measures of intelligence or other measures of "far transfer": Evidence from a meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(4), 512–534.A definitive statement against far-transfer claims — central to why we do not claim the practice raises ability.
  14. Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. L. (2016). Do "brain-training" programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103–186.Expert-panel review — brain-training improvement claims are weakly supported; why we make none.
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Parent/self-reported observation data. Not a medical or psychological evaluation, not a diagnosis, and not an IEP or 504 plan. Use it as supporting documentation with your school team or a qualified evaluator. Crisis? Call or text 988.