We first outline several breakthroughs in how neuroscientists understand children's brain development. These breakthroughs highlight the role that a group of cognitive processes called executive function (EF) play in children's opportunities for learning. What exactly is EF? It encompasses the flexible control of attention, the ability to hold information through working memory, and the ability to maintain inhibitory control. Early in the article we offer a behavioral example and empirical evidence to illustrate what attention control, working memory, and inhibitory control look like and how they work together to support children's early learning. We also consider new findings in neuroscience demonstrating that just as higher-order cognitive processes (including mindsets) can help students modulate anxiety when they face challenging academic tasks, these same processes can be undermined when anxiety and challenge become too great. Science has recently given us elegant evidence of how these cognitive and emotional domains of children's brain function are wired together in both top-down and bottom-up fashion. We carefully describe how children's regulation of higher-order thinking is related to the regulation of emotion using these top-down and bottom-up models; briefly review research on early brain development, how changes in brain function and related competencies are measured, and how both EF and emotion regulation contribute to children's academic performance; and examine factors that support or constrain children's development of those regulatory competencies, allowing some children to navigate cognitively demanding and emotionally challenging tasks more easily than others. In the remainder of the article, we discuss educational interventions that target EF and integrated interventions that target both emotional and cognitive regulation. We review the efficacy of these approaches, which range from individually administered treatments for clinical levels of EF difficulty to school interventions that can take place in classrooms. We wrap up with implications for policy and prevention in the context of starting early. (author abstract)