Adolescents with learning problems: Are they too old to help?

Some teachers believe that older children or learners in High School who struggle with academics and the demands of school are too old for therapeutic interventions. They stop looking for signs that could indicate the underlying cause of the problem and instead revert to other ways of helping. Ways of organising their daily routine, courses in study skills and other remedial aids are offered instead. But is this the best way of helping? If the cause of the learning difficulties was not correctly identified and addressed during Primary School years, why is the older learner denied help or even further help once he reaches higher grades?

Older learners and even adults carry with them unresolved neurodevelopmental issues that can make life more difficult for them. As an example, I remember clearly how, during one training session, a mature adult was found to have a retained primary reflex. Anyone who has studied Integrated Learning Therapy will be aware that we teach how the reflexes play a significant role in the development and subsequent functioning of the brain. This is the reason why we include reflex testing in our assessment of learners – no matter how old. The adult in question showed a strongly present ATNR (Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex) – which means that movement of her head initiated overflow movement of her arms. On hearing this, she exclaimed that it explained why she had such trouble driving her car. She was forced to look straight ahead at the road because if she turned her head to look sideways, her arms would involuntarily turn the steering wheel in the same direction. A dangerous thing to do when driving! A few months of daily repetition of an activity helped her to resolve this problem.

The fact is that we’re never too old to restore more efficient functioning of the brain. For hundreds of years this idea was inconceivable because mainstream medicine and associated fields of study believed that brain anatomy was fixed after a certain age. It was commonly believed that after childhood, the brain only changed when it began to age and decline in functioning. If brain cells failed to develop properly in the first place, or were destroyed due to illness or injury, they could not be replaced. Today we know differently. We all accept that after severe brain trauma, such as a stroke, the patient has a chance of recovering part or even full functioning. This is because the brain finds a new way to function if part is damaged; often it builds new neural pathways around the site of injury.

So the brain is capable of changing – and it can do so across the lifespan. This is due to what is called ‘neuroplasticity’. Neuro stands for ‘neuron’, the nerve cells making up the brain and nervous system, and plastic for ‘changeable, modifiable, malleable.’ Even eighty-year olds can use neuroplasticity to sharpen their memories and regain earlier mental abilities.

With this knowledge, it is clear that we might be neglecting our older students if we fail to consider what might be interfering with their brain’s ability to cope with schoolwork. By evaluating the way their brains developed, assessing vital brain systems that support learning and considering all other factors that could have negatively affected brain structure and function (and perhaps still are), learners of all ages can be helped.

For more information about Integrated Learning Therapy and our neurodevelopmental approach, visit our website www.ilt.co.za. We offer training courses to parents, teachers and helping professionals and details of those are on the website. In addition, you can contact us at info@ilt.co.za.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.