Love Learning

Q: My child has trouble concentrating and sitting still. Which materials would you recommend?

A: Our stylized signt word cards (SnapWords™) are one very effective tool for teaching active children to read. The back of each card includes a body motion to deepen learning and give kinesthetic learners something to tie the meaning of a new word to. The visuals on the front of each card also make learning instant, enabling active learners to glance at the stylized word and pick up the meaning in a snap instead of having to sit through tedious drill and practice. One short look is sometimes all the attention an active learner may be able to give, so instantaneous learning is important!

Our stylized alphabet cards are designed in the same way to tie the shape and sound of each letter together, and include body motions for deeper learning connections.

The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns and the supplemental Sound Spelling Teaching Cards are also great for active children since the materials group all the sounds in the English language together by sound pattern so that a global learner (a category many active children fall into) is able to easily grasp the word patterns. The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns replaces ineffective memorization of words and phonics rules with kid-friendly patterns and visuals. Students are engaged in listening to sounds, finding patterns, and learning through cartoons and story bytes. The Illustrated Book of Sounds & Their Spelling Patterns demystifies reading by giving students the tools they need to decode unknown, difficult words with ease.

Poor Executive Function or ADHD? Can We Tell the Difference?

I think as we view any topic this weighty, it is helpful to achieve balance by looking at many factors at one time, factors that have a serious impact on the discussion. Many people question the frequency of diagnosis of ADHD – does the child really have problems in his brain functioning, or could it be that life experience has contributed to his inability to control himself and remain focused? It is not a coincidence that the rise in ADHD diagnoses coincides with the withering of old-fashioned free play, and with the explosion of electronic media as play and entertainment for children. There is also no mistaking the fact that the new hot topic in education, executive function, deals with the issues of self-regulation, self-control, self-discipline, and impulse control-- all skills that can be taught. From my point of view, several inter-related factors impact children and the way they develop. This is how I see the relationship between the various occurrences:

The Role of Free Play in Building Executive Function

Check out this article from NPR entitled “Creative Play Makes for Kids in Control.” The setting is an early childhood center in New Jersey. The basis for all that is done in the school has to do with teaching and reinforcing executive function skills in the enrolled children. The article cites the loss of free play as a major factor in the loss of executive functioning in children.

“For most of human history, children played by roaming near or far in packs large and small. Younger children were supervised by older children and engaged in freewheeling imaginative play. They were pirates and princesses, aristocrats and heroes.

“But, while all that play might have looked a lot like time spent doing nothing much at all, it actually helped build a critical cognitive skill called executive function. Executive function has a number of elements, such as working memory and cognitive flexibility. But perhaps the most important is self-regulation — the ability for kids to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline. Executive function — and its self-regulation element — is important. Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ.”

Two things stand out to me from this quote: one, that free play helps develops the critical skill called "executive function" and that the lack of it can have such devastating lifelong consequences.

The NPR article ends with this statement: “She [Adele Diamond, executive function researcher] and several other researchers argue that children's reduced self-regulation skills may be showing up in the numbers of kids diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

‘I think a lot of kids get diagnosed with ADHD now, not all but many just because they never learned how to exercise self-control, self-regulation, the executive functions early,’ she says.”

That pretty much sums up the connection between executive function and ADHD-like symptoms: children who never learned to self-regulate will exhibit traits that look very similar to those of ADHD and may be one cause in the increased number of ADHD diagnoses.

The Role of Electronic Media as Entertainment

Along with diminishing free play and executive function, a big factor to consider on the increasing diagnoses of ADHD is an increase in electronic media. I cannot emphasize enough the harm we are doing our children by letting them use so much electronic media for entertainment and also increasingly for school. The reason this habit is so costly is borne out in the stunted development of thousands upon thousands of children in our country today. At the very time in which their outdoor free play was limited, what took the place of this valuable developmental play time was electronic media which renders the child passive and prone to acting on impulse (after all that is how you win most computer games – you act quickly without stopping to consider). Images shifting so quickly train a brain to be ADD-like and inhibit growth of the all important executive function.

This topic weighs so heavily on my heart and just writing about it pains me. In my global mind’s eye I see a vast map of our United States, and the thousands upon thousands of children who are being reared in an environment that goes counter to the way they were designed to develop naturally. I see kids being medicated in order to bring their behaviors under control. I see them being labeled, failing, and yet their days continuing to be filled with more of what caused them harm in the beginning.

What does an environment look like that will result in healthy development?

What makes me saddest is that we have strayed so far away from what a child needs for good development that most of the time we don’t even know what a good environment looks like. It is this reason that motivated us to deviate from our regular line of teaching and learning resources to publish the new series, Eli’s Books. We know that it is critical to be able to show using pictures what healthy child development looks like. I believe that this early preparation is fundamental to success not only in school but in life. Eli’s Books portray what it looks like when a child performs actions that grow his brain and instill executive functioning skills, and also how he learns to have good relationships with others.

ADHD vs. Pseudo-ADD and How to Spot the Difference

The number of children diagnosed with ADHD has risen sharply in the past decade. The trend these days is to label, label, label and yet I will be quick to say two things. One is that I understand perfectly how comforting it is to be able to put a name to “what ails her.” However, I will also say that the habit of labeling kids has run amok and is now out of control. Some children that now carry the label of ADHD are the kids who announce to the substitute teacher (as they race wildly about the classroom) “I have ADD and I can’t sit still!” [Which translated is: I have an excuse handed down to me by my parents and my doctor which gives me permission to be out of control!]

Jeffrey Freed, M.A.T., in his book Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World states, “I believe the majority of children who are now labeled ADD actually have what Hallowell and Ratey [authors of Driven to Distraction and Answers to Distraction] term pseudo-ADD. They weren’t born this way; we made them the way they are. These children are a product of our fast-paced, visual, over-stimulating culture. Drs. Hallowell and Ratey address the pseudo-ADD phenomenon in their book Answers to Distraction.

‘ADD is like life these days. I [Hallowell] don’t want to sound too high-flown in my claims, but I do believe that this medical syndrome meshes with the gears of current American culture. The fast pace of everyday life, the search for the sound bite, the love of fast food and instant gratification, the proliferation of fax machines, cellular telephones, computer networks, bulletin boards, and E-mail systems, our appetite for violence and action and adventure, our rush to get to the bottom line, our widespread impatience, the boom in gambling, our love of extremes and danger – all these very American traits are also very ADD-like.’ (p 27)"

So it seems that the environment in which these children have been raised has encouraged the development of these ADD-like symptoms.

Because I am not an expert on ADD, I will quote Jeffrey Freed again – an expert who has worked with children diagnosed with ADD for years. Here is what to look at in determining whether or not your child truly has ADD:

• The degree of severity: is the child’s behavior so extreme that it consistently gets in the way of his ability to do well in school, complete tasks, and form normal bonds with family and peers? [I believe a key word in this question is "consistently"]

• Whether the behavior is pronounced both inside and outside the classroom: This is a key point. If you’re taken aback when your child’s teacher suggests he be evaluated for ADD, it could be that ADD-like behavior is only observable in the classroom. Your child may be acting out because of boredom and faulty teaching, not because of an underlying disorder. [The key question here is if the behavior is consistent no matter where the child is.]

Given the fact that our kids are growing up in a very ADD-like culture, it might be worth looking hard at the two points made by Freed before jumping the gun on getting any child evaluated for ADD. Remember, a truly ADD child will go at two speeds: hyperactive or collapse.  I would have a few questions in mind when observing a specific child:

1.    Is he ALWAYS hyperimpulsive, hypersensitive, hypervisual, hyperactive, and hyperdistractible? Or are there situations in which he can focus intensely on an activity?

2.    If there are situations in which she is able to sustain focus on what is she doing? Does it happen to be a game or toy that she especially likes to play with?

3.    Is the behavior the same no matter who he is with or what he is doing? In other words, does he have the same activity level and distractibility whether he’s playing a game or doing homework? Is he worse at some times, and if so, where is he when things get worse?

4.    Is it possible that her actions stem from frustration or stress? Is she responding negatively to criticism by acting out?

5.    Is he in a situation in which he feels destined to fail?

If you do discover that there are times in which the child is able to sustain focus, it is possible that it is not truly ADD at play, but something else. If that is the case and you suspect the child needs some help with behavior issues, the good news is that there are things you can do to help your child work through this pseudo-ADD. It will take some time and creativity, but you can make a big difference in your child's life and behavior. Read a past blog post for some ideas for activities to get your kids off the couch and outside learning this summer. 

Tips for Teaching the Right-Brained Child

In a previous blog post, Follow the Fingers, I shared about three students I worked with, each of whom had real problems with maintaining focus. Each of them had different issues: flickering attention, wandering attention, and attentional gymnastics where the child seemingly could not sit still. Here I want to share a few more ideas to try as you teach a child who has trouble staying focused.

 

Focus Follows Fingers 

The biggest lesson I learned when working with children who lacked focus was that if I could engage the child’s hands in their learning, their focus would go wherever their fingers went. Of course this habit also applies to children who are kinesthetic or tactile learners. Visual-spatial learners also benefit from being able to manipulate objects as they learn.

Create a Visually Pleasing Environment for Learning

Children who are ADD and right-brained learners need to be enticed to learn what you believe they should. If their learning environment is sterile, drab, or uninviting, getting them to want to learn will be much more difficult. If you are teaching your child at home, it will be totally worth the effort to enlist your child in creating this environment. If you cannot paint the room, hang colorful images on the wall that appeal to your child.

Make Every Lesson as Relevant as Possible to the Child 

Rather than teaching math facts using pencil and paper and sterile problems, find out what your child really likes and relate math to that. For example, teach him how to use money as you shop for groceries, or as he saves up for something he really wants. Set her up with a check register and as you teach her to use it, she will be learning to count money, to add and subtract, etc. Give him a real wallet with real coins to use. If you are studying measurement, study it as you build something that is interesting to the child. If she loves playing with construction sets, study the concepts of perimeter or area as she’s building a house.

Teach as Many Subjects as Possible at One Time

For instance, choose a topic from science, and relate all other subjects to that one theme. If volcanoes are your topic for science, add geography by finding volcanoes on the world map, read books and articles about them, go back in history to study Pompeii, bring math into the mix by creating word problems relating to volcanoes. Let your child have the chance to become totally immersed in the subject. He will do better if he’s had the chance to spend time focusing on one theme.

Incorporate Chances to Move into the Lesson

Any time you can structure learning so that your child is NOT seated at her desk, the better for her concentration. Instead of using pencil and paper all the time, affix a small whiteboard to the wall, door, or tabletop and let the child use dry erase markers to work out problems. If you plan for movement, it is going to be easier to channel the child’s energy. If you are practicing spelling, for instance, use the white board on the wall and try calling out a word. Say, “house.” Your child will write her word on the white board. Have her do a toe touch, and then jump back up to do the next word. Or she could do a body movement that the word reminds her of. For house, maybe it would be tenting her fingertips over her head as if making a roof on a house.

Set Goals for Learning and Mark Progress

Many right-brained children love to see not only where they are going, but they like to mark their progress along the way to reaching the goal. It would be great to decide on specific tasks for each day and write these on colorful cards with a cute picture drawn to illustrate the topic. Break tasks down as detailed as possible. You can attach magnets to the back and display the cards in the order you will accomplish them, or you could put them all into a little basket and let your child select a card that will tell him what his next task is. Each task he accomplishes will get him closer and closer to the goal. The goal should be something he really likes to do.

Use Lamplight to Improve Focus

I know from personal experience that if I am having trouble settling down to start a “desk task,” it helps tremendously to have a lamp on my desk that shines light directly on the spot I should be focusing. If I am already having trouble focusing, then if the overhead light is on, every object in the room demands equal visual attention and it becomes very easy to go off on mental or tactile rabbit trails. This being true, most days find my office light off, but my desk lamp shining away valiantly, pointing my attention to the next task. Try this method with your child if she has trouble settling down to do a task at her desk.

Remove Clutter from the Work Area 

I wrote in another blog (Confessions of a Visual Learner) what clutter on my work space does to me. Every little scrap of paper, every object, screams equally for attention. So while I love a visually pleasing room to work in, the space also needs to be conducive to focus. So, in your child's immediate work area, have only the items needed for that task. What will help tremendously is to have places for everything that tends to accumulate on the desk. Part of getting down to work will be putting all extraneous clutter away: pencils in the pencil jar, other books in the to-do basket, etc.

Consider Playing Mozart

I read a long time ago that playing Mozart helps organize one's thoughts for work. A decade ago I was working on three manuscripts. Each time I sat down to write another chapter, the blank paper screamed at me in its whiteness, and its blankness mirrored my own mind. Even a little black dot on the page would have been preferable to seeing nothing on the page. The more time that ticked by without my being able to come up with something to start with, the surer I became that I would have nothing whatsoever to say on the topic. One day I decided to try the Mozart music theory. I actually tried this many times I had writing tasks to do, and while I never was aware of when the words actually started to flow, flow they did. You might consider playing Mozart while your child works.

Take Time to Visualize Every Day

For the right-brained learner, the ability to visualize is not only a gift, it is critical to success in learning. Visualization needs to be practiced and your child needs to understand how valuable this ability will be to him. Words and symbols are not going to be his strong suit, so capitalize on what he does so well already. For example, if you are learning a new word, let the child study the written word for a bit, and then have him close his eyes and see it in his imagination. Give him time to form that mental picture and when he has it in place, ask him what he sees. Have him spell it as he sees the word in his head.

Play Visualization Games

Something your active child will really enjoy doing, which will also help her in school is to play visualization games. Start small and build as you see your child is able to do more. Say, “Close your eyes and make pictures in your head of what I say.” Next say, “You are going to stand up, walk to the window and look out. Next you will walk to the door and close it, finally you will touch your toes and then sit in your chair.” When your child has visualized doing this, ask her to do what she saw in her head. This game will greatly improve your child’s listening and following directions skills, while giving her a lot of practice in visualization.

Let Him Draw Pictures for Solving Problems 

Many right-brained children have trouble with math because of how it is typically taught: in little steps with memorization, frequently timed, and children are often told they need to show their work. Try instead explaining the problem and then letting your child draw pictures for himself to solve the problem. Some problems he may be able to solve in his head without being able to verbalize how he arrived at the answer. The last time I took a math class, I was pretty stressed. I had done horribly in math in elementary school, and taking a graduate level math class as an adult many years removed from college days really freaked me out. I would literally experience rapid heartbeat and shortness of breath. I resorted to drawing little pictures that showed me the question and helped me work out the answer. I did this drawing very furtively because I was sure someone my age should NOT have to draw little pictures in order to solve problems. Even today, if I have to add or subtract relatively short numbers, I don’t instantly pull the answer out of my head, I SEE the problem as a visual which would take many words to explain to someone else. When this type of problem solving fails is when there is pressure to hurry and I cannot take my needed seconds to visualize.

Minimize the Use of TV and Other Technologies

Yes, I know; in our day the use of technology is exploding. Technology is creeping into every facet of our lives. The problem with immersing a right-brained learner in technology is that you are only strengthening the right hemisphere and weakening the left. For success in school, your child will need to begin to strengthen the left brain functions more and more, and any technology that does her speaking for her, does her thinking for her, turns life into pictures for her is going to only exacerbate the problems she is already facing with school. Get her outside as much as possible to experience life that way. Involve her in real tasks in the house, making her feel she is a vital part of your little community.

Study Your Child

Set time aside to observe your child intently, taking notes on what you see during times he is engrossed in something and displaying remarkable focus. Write down everything you observe about what he’s doing, and when you have done this a few times, study your notes to learn what those scenarios had in common. Doing this will reveal your child’s learning strengths. The more we as parents learn about our child’s learning strengths, the more successfully we can teach them, and the more we can draw focus away from learning weaknesses and thus build our child’s confidence. A confident, successful child will want to accomplish more!

 

Dreamers, Discoverers, and Dynamos: How to Help the Child Who Is Bright, Bored, and Having Problems in School

By Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D.

"Millions of children--one in five--have what psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino, Ph.D., calls the Edison trait: dazzling intelligence, an active imagination, a free-spirited approach to life, and the ability to
drive everyone around them crazy. Named after Thomas Edison--who flunked out of school only to harness his talents and give the world some of its finest inventions--the Edison trait is on the rise in our younger generation.

The heart of the issue is that they think divergently--they overflow with many ideas--while schools, organized activities, and routines of daily living reward convergent thinking, which focuses on one idea at a time. Drawing on examples from more than two decades of private practice, Dr. Palladino helps us cope with this challenging aspect of our child's intellect and personality, explaining in clear terms

• The three Edison-trait personality types: dreamers, discoverers, and dynamos

• The eight steps to understanding, reaching, and teaching your Edison-trait child

• The connection between the Edison trait and ADHD"

Read more or buy now

The Collision Between Left-Brained Teachers and Right-Brained Students

I found this in my inbox this morning:

My son struggles with reading. We’ve been working on C-V-C words for the past two years. He frequently mixes up vowel sounds, mixes up d and b, says words like ‘on’ as ‘no’, ‘was’ as ‘saw’, if an s is added to the end of the word he doesn’t recognize it, and many times he guesses what a word is.

The question this parent asked was if the child should be tested to determine his disability. At the risk of oversimplifying, I would reply that the child is probably a visual/tactile learner who is way over on the far right of the learning scale, while likely the parent is pretty far to the left in terms of her own learning style. In between the two is a big wide space. The real question comes down to this: How does one bridge the gap between the learning style of the teacher and the learning style of the child?

A child who just cannot “get” phonics as normally taught, who confuses symbols (b and d for instance, no and on, saw and was) needs visual cues to help her. She would also likely benefit from having a motion attached to each new concept. If a teacher is very left brained, it might be difficult at first to come up with visuals and with motions to help her child learn. In addition, if she is asked to abandon traditional methods of teaching in order to accommodate her child’s learning abilities, the discomfort will grow exponentially because one thing left brainers need is structure, the right steps to follow, and procedures in place. They are typically not comfortable with “winging it” or with throwing out the system in order to make up new steps to follow.

Yet this scenario is repeated thousands of times in our classrooms. Many people who gravitate into teaching do so because they love the system of “school”: the routine, the structure, the lessons laid out, the procedures, the mastery of “how we teach” various subjects.

The problem is that more and more of our children are moving farther to the right on the left-brain right-brain continuum. Jeffrey Freed in his book Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World says, “Because most teachers are left-brained, and because they tend to teach the way they learn, it stands to reason that they will reward left-brained, linear intelligence. Evidence of this abounds in current literature on children with ADD and other learning disabilities. Thom Hartmann [in his book Beyond ADD] correctly notes that lectures and reading assignments –left-brained teaching methods – are still the norm, even though our children are being conditioned from birth to learn through visual means. The result, Hartmann says, is that our teachers are speaking English but may as well be speaking Greek. 'Until our children are again taught to be good auditory processors (not likely to happen in any home that has a TV), or our educational institutions begin to offer far more visual and stimulating forms of education (not likely to happen in these days of budget crises), there will continue to be an epidemic of children who seemingly just can’t learn. And they are often diagnosed as having ADD.”’ (p. 81)

Sometimes I feel a bit like a tiny David standing in the field, trying to take on a gynormous Goliath. The problem is already immense and the only thing that is going to help is if we abandon “the way it has always been done” in favor of materials that are designed specifically for the rapidly growing number of visual learners. The challenge lies in the fact that the more left-brained the teacher is, the less these specially-designed materials will make sense to them. I can hear someone saying right now, “Johnny shouldn’t need the crutch of visuals; he should be able to learn to read the right way!” The problem is that many Johnnys and Janes out there are not learning and won’t learn until we better understand what they need.

Moving More to Center with Visual Learners

So much of what I’ve been reading lately has to do with visual learners and identifying which children actually fall into that category. Wow, the list is growing like Pinocchio’s nose!

• Most children from ages 4 to 7 learn best through images since they're at the stage in which the right hemisphere (gestalt brain) is rapidly developing as a normal neurological function. You can’t fight nature! Children will develop as they were designed to do.

• Many children were created to be strongly visual in their learning style. If you read the experts, this percentage is pretty high.

• Children who have been identified as dyslexic are visual learners.

• Children who are autistic learn well through images.

• Children who have been classified as ADD or ADHD are also visual learners.

• Children who have spent a great portion of their time immersed in media such as television, video games, computer games all develop a strong visual sense. Even if their neurological wiring would have been predominantly left brained, their experiences in life create a strong right brain and make them visual learners.

I’ve written a lot about how traditional teaching methods are perfectly suited to left brained learners, and how right-brained children seem to be in the minority. Short of doing a massive overhaul of our educational system (don’t hold your breath on that one!) what can we do?

The Plastic Brain

I've also talked a lot about how plastic the brain is and how much we can shape our children through experiences we provide them. If you are working with children who are strongly visual because of the way they have spent their time and what they have been exposed to, don’t despair! Start providing other types of experiences in small bytes to these pseudo visual learners so that you can begin to move them closer to center. The answer is not to suddenly immerse them in a left-brained classroom, but while you are using visuals to teach them, also begin to nudge them towards a more balanced approach to learning.

How?

Begin to encourage a lot of outside play. Wow, when I was typing that sentence, an image flashed into my mind of a little couch potato being pushed out the door with the injunction to “go play and have fun.” There the poor tyke stands, blinking in the bright sunlight, no clue at all how to play. Don’t think this could be true? I’ve seen it happen. Some children spend so much time inside, in passive mode responding to media, that when placed in a situation that requires them to invent an activity, they have no idea what to do. So go outside with the child, already. Have a little activity planned to break him into playing outside.

Ideas for activities both inside and out that develop strong connections between hemispheres:

1.    Scavenger Hunt. Make a collection of natural items that catch the child’s attention. Explore them on the spot. Do they have a particular texture? A distinctive smell? What about color? Then when you have a nice little collection, engage the left brain by asking the child to describe briefly each item she picked up. Talk about what some items have in common and how they differ from each other. The tactile exploration of nature is wonderful for creating neural pathways and the more often it is repeated, the better for the child!

2.    Dribbling. Using a soccer ball, play outside, kicking the ball first with the left then the right foot. If you do it together, each of you with his own ball, you could make it more fun. The cross-lateral movement strengthens connections between left and right hemispheres of the brain and helps children when it is time to do school tasks that require both regions of the brain.

3.    Silly Stories. Collect images you cut from magazines, newspapers, travel brochures, or find in clip art…any image that catches your eye. You can even find pictures of common items such as a fork, a belt and a button, etc. Glue these pictures on cards of the same size. When you have collected a nice stack of photo cards, shuffle them. With the cards face down, have the child select three cards at random. Then have her lay the cards on the table and look at them. Ask her to invent a silly sentence that includes all three of these words. For example, the child might draw the following cards and create the sentence "I ate my carrot with a fork in a wagon."

 

At first it might be hard for her, so you could play too, modeling for her your thoughts as you invent a silly sentence. I’ve done this with children as young as preschool and I would have them tell me something about all three items while I wrote what they said. OH MY GOODNESS! We had the most amazing stories emerge. This activity helps children begin to tie visuals with words. Start very small. A phrase is great. Over time if you keep on doing this activity, the child will become more and more fluent with her words and will likely begin to embellish until she has a little paragraph. If you make yours silly, the exercise will be fun. And fun is good!

4.    Play Simon Says to help the child listen, think, and control the motion of his body. To activate the connections between multiple regions of the brain, go outside and PLAY. Do activities that require hopping, balancing, tipping, spinning, etc. Simon can tell the child anything he wants to after all! “Hop on your right foot three times” or “Spread your arms out like wings and stand on your left foot.”

5.    Red Light, Green Light is another great game to help a child learn to listen and control his movements. For the green light which signifies GO, just hold up a simple green paddle or other object. The child will be able to run forward until the moment in which you hold up the red paddle. This game is great for children who have been classified as ADD because it will activate their frontal lobe…the center for forethought and body control. This is especially true if the child gets points or a token of some kind for each time they are able to stop or go when they receive that signal.

6.    Charades is a great game to combine verbal, visual and body movement. For young children, you can have pictures of objects or animals on cards. If you're playing with multiple children, deal everyone a card and then when it is the child’s turn, have her stand up and strike a pose or act out what is on her card. Ask the others to guess what she is and say why they think she is what they guessed. Encourage conversation between the players in which they verbalize their thoughts.

 

Once you begin these activities with your child, you will think of many more. Make conversation. Ask questions that encourage your child to think through possible outcomes. Experiment outside. For instance, if you have a wagon and you pull it down a gentle hill, will it go faster or slower if you load it full of rocks? Have your child guess the outcome before trying it out, giving reasons for his choice. Then try the experiment, and talk about why the experiment turned out as it did. Choose two objects of differing weights and shapes and have your child predict which will go further when tossed. Have him throw the objects as hard as he can and see which one went further. The wonderful outcome of activities such as these is that each time you do them, whether or not you see any change at the time, communication is being established between different regions in the brain which over time will help your child simply blossom!

 

Do We Have an ADD Society?

…And If So, What Does That Mean for Our Kids?

We know that children’s brains are plastic and rapidly developing from birth, shaped by the experiences they have. We also know that our experiences dictate not only which neural pathways are formed and strengthened by frequent use, but also which ones end up being pruned because of disuse. The first ten years of a child’s life provides a window of opportunity for brain development that is unmatched in an older person. It is critical for us as parents to pay very close attention to the experiences we provide our developing children so that we can ensure they grow and develop to their greatest potential.

We know about brain development in theory, but I am not sure the extent to which we understand the implications of our modern society on the brain development of our youngest generation. “We need to lay the foundations for learning in early childhood by stimulating children’s brains with a variety of activities that exercise the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic parts of the brain. This isn’t to say we should be enrolling babies in preschool prep courses, but rather that we should read to our children, talk in ‘parentese’ to them, and sing nursery rhymes.” (Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World p. 36). Outdoor play, experiences that allow full visual range, activities that let the brain and body learn how to move in space, balancing, the chat that accompanies free play, conversations with adults about things that matter, participation with adults in chores, contributions (however minor) to the family – all these are activities and experiences that lead to a well developed brain.

But What Are Our Kids Doing?

Listen to what the experts say...

Think about what the majority of the children in our society are doing on any given day.

“If you want the short course on why children think differently today, sit down with your child and spend a few minutes watching Sesame Street or MTV. See how you respond to the dizzyingly rapid-fire images on …commercials. Watch how your child sits, transfixed, processing an almost impossible amount of visual information. If that weren’t enough, technology has brought us even more ADD-like options for TV viewing: picture-within-a-picture and split-frame features, and the omnipresent remote control. ..'Remote control switch in hand, we switch from station to station taking in dozens of programs at once, catching a line here, an image there, getting the gist of the show in a millisecond, getting bored with it in a full second, blipping on to the next show, the next bit of stimulation, the next quick pick.’ This visual chaos can’t help but change the way we think.” (Right-Brained...pp. 38-9, quoting Drs. Hallowell and Ratey in Driven to Distraction.)

Psychiatrist Matthew Dumont says, “I would like to suggest that the constant shifting of visual frames in television shows is related to the hyperkinetic syndrome…There are incessant changes of camera and focus, so that the viewer’s reference point shifts every few seconds. This technique literally programs a short attention span.” (p. 39)

Movie critic Michael Medved “warns that the attenuated attention spans that TV viewing produces are even more harmful than the content of television programs today.” (p. 39)

Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb: “The combination of sound bites and striking visual effects shapes the young mind, incapacitating it for the longer, slower, less febrile tempo of the book.” (p. 39)

“Our children are exposed to an overwhelming array of cable channels, computer programs, video games, and web sites. It’s no wonder they think differently.” (p. 40)

Educational Trends

It has concerned me for several years to see the direction the educational world is heading – towards more and more technology to teach children. I remained behind in this mad rush towards applications and technology as teacher because I already believed that children did not get enough personal interaction and conversation – and certainly not enough interaction with books. While I understand that technology is here to stay and the trend towards technology as teacher is not going to lessen in the coming years, I remain squarely in the camp of old-fashioned upbringing for our kids. I believe in providing rich experiences for children where they can interact in natural settings, converse, and learn to interact well with others. I believe in the well-rounded child: brain, body, and spirit.

As Parents, We Have a Choice

Jeffrey Freed puts it so well: “We may think we’re stimulating our children to be geniuses, but in fact we’re overstimulating them to exhibit characteristics of ADD while robbing them of their childhoods....When we allow our children to be bombarded continually with media, technology, and other image frenzied activities, how ironic it is then that we should “criticize them for not being able to focus intently on a single activity in school!” (p. 46-7)

There is so much available for us to read as we educate ourselves on the best ways to bring up children who are healthy in mind and body. Isn't it amazing how much impact we can have on our children? What is required of us is the courage to make sure it happens for them.

A Must Read for Parents with Children Labeled as ADD or ADHD

Parents, if you suspect your child has ADD or ADHD, or if he’s already been diagnosed, a must read is the book Right-Brained Children in a Left-Brained World by Jeffrey Freed, M.A.T., and Laurie Parsons. Just drop into your local bookstore and at least read the preface and intro. See if you can find your child described in those pages and see the wonderful hope extended to you if you do find your child described.

What caught my attention immediately was this statement:

“Freed related that all children who are labeled as ADD are right-brained and have a visual learning style. Instead of focusing on the deficits of these kids, which our schools and doctors are all too quick to do, Freed emphasizes their many strengths. These children are creative, can do difficult math problems in their heads, and are excellent speed readers. They tend to do poorly in school because educators tend to be left-brained: detail-oriented, auditory processors who view visual learners as 'flawed.' Freed says that what these children need isn’t a prescription for pills but a prescription for a different teaching method. For the first time I was hearing something about this mysterious thing called ADD that made sense.” (p. 13). Laurie Parsons speaking.

And:

“Through more than a decade of working one-on-one, first with gifted and then with ADD children, I’ve had the framework to make a startling discovery: Most gifted and virtually all children with ADD share the same learning style. Simply put, they are all highly visual, nonsequential processors who learn by remembering the way things look and by taking words and turning them into mental pictures....

While our schools have been harping on the deficits of children with ADD, I’ve had the pleasure of unearthing their many gifts." (p. 17) Jeffrey Freed speaking.

So why do they do so poorly in school?

"Our educational system hammers at visual learners’ weaknesses rather than utilizing their greatest strength: an uncanny visual memory. The cost of such rigidity is incalculable, and the lost potential is astronomical.” (p. 18)

So go get the book already, and read it.

Follow the Fingers: Tips for Teaching Children with Short Attention Spans

A small study of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder last year found that walks outdoors appeared to improve scores on tests of attention and concentration. Notably, children who took walks in natural settings did better than those who walked in urban areas, according to the report, published online in August in The Journal of Attention Disorders. The researchers found that a dose of nature worked as well as a dose of medication to improve concentration, or even better.

(Taken from a NY Times article by Tara Parker-Pope)

I was very happy to read about this study.  I think the topic cannot be emphasized enough. At some point, however, you have to bring the child back into a formal classroom, and there will still be difficulties around focus.

Flickering Attention

I remember one fifth grader I was working with in my office who I will call Ralph. His classroom teacher had requested that we meet so we could try and design some strategies that would help him in his reading. Ralph was sitting across the table from me and was reading while I made notes of what was going on. I immediately noted that he read about half of the words incorrectly. If I’d been looking down at my sheet where I was recording words missed, I would have missed a powerful clue as to what was going on. What I noted was that each time the Ralph misread a word, his eyes flickered as though there was a short in his “attentional circuit.” It reminded me of a light bulb that is loose in its socket so that the lights flicker on and then off again.

When I drew Ralph’s attention to words he’d missed, he could read them. It did take a couple of verbal cues to get him to focus on the word I was pointing to, but the important thing we learned was that it was not an inability to accurately read words Ralph was struggling with; it was an inability to maintain a steady focus long enough to read a handful of words in sequence. Of course Ralph’s inability to read accurately also prevented him from comprehending the passage, and for a fifth grader who needed to use his reading in other subjects, this was a serious problem indeed.

Wandering Attention

Mallory was the sweetest kindergartner. During a lesson, she sat quietly absorbing what she heard. The moment came, however, when the group was to start working on a task. Mallory would begin, but then she spent the rest of the time watching what the other children were doing. Any movement, however small, drew her eye and captured her entire focus making it impossible for Mallory to complete her own tasks.

Attentional Gymnastics

I tutored a second grader we will call Frank. Frank took my breath away and left me dizzy because his body simply could NOT remain seated on a chair. I knew better than to try and make him keep seated, but it meant that I had to squat down to talk to him as he was hanging upside-down from the table. He would stay there for only a few moments, then he was on the floor, then he was sitting backwards or sideways in his chair. It was nearly impossible for ME to maintain a train of thought much less tutor Frank.

Gain an Ally

One thing I found was that if I could teach the child how to help himself or herself, they became their own best helpers. It was empowering for each child to learn exactly where the difficulty lay. For Ralph, Mallory and Frank, the over arching problem was attention, but the specific problems were different. My experience has been that once the child and I discussed what was going on and we strategized ways he or she could help themselves, confidence rose and so did performance.

Strategies

Mallory and I brainstormed some ideas (remember, she’s in kindergarten) and she immediately began to put them into practice. Once she understood that the movements or activities of others sapped her own focus, she became a master at helping herself. Here are some things we came up with:

When Mallory had a sheet of math problems to solve, she learned to use her left pointer finger to direct her attention to the very problem she was to focus on. Her left pointer finger remained in place until the problem was solved. Then it moved immediately to the next problem in the row.

We covered all but the first row with a blank paper so that the presence of many other problems did not distract.

Mallory decided that she would not look up from her paper until she had reached the end of the row. When she did the last problem on the row, she would move the paper down to expose the second row, she would glance around the room to see what was going on, then she would once again point to the problem at hand.

After we spoke about how distracting her fellow kindergartners were to her, Mallory decided that when she had work to focus on, she would move a little desk around so that she could work without being able to see what others were doing.

Ralph, the fifth grader, learned that if he would track with his finger, and keep his finger by each word until he had read it, it helped his focus.

Frank couldn’t stay in one place long enough to collaborate on focus strategies, but here’s what I did:

Play Hand Magnets: When learning sight words (in order to prevent the need for me to crawl under the desk with him), I grabbed two sets of sight word cards. One set was my stylized version, while the other set were the same words handwritten with a magic marker on 3x5” cards. I spread the words out on the floor randomly (which Frank loved!) and said we were going to play a game. Frank was to pick up any stylized card he wanted, read the word out loud, and then find the match. He would pick up the second card in his other hand so that both hands were engaged in the task. When he’d made a pair, he owned those cards. The goal was to see if he could eventually own all the cards. It was magical to watch Ralph. He stayed at the task until he’d proudly read and matched all his words. Then like a flash, Frank perched on the window sill.

Focus Follows Fingers

I think the biggest lesson I learned when working with children who lacked focus and attention was that if I could engage the child’s fingers or hands in their learning, their focus would go wherever their fingers went. Follow the Fingers became my motto!