Can it be that there's something wrong with my child's brain? No.

So your child isn’t coping at school. She’s been diagnosed with ADHD or some other disorder and medications are prescribed to help her brain cope better with the demands of school and home. This often brings relief to families and the children themselves. Most of the medications currently used to help concentration, task completion, impulsivity, aggressive outbursts and more are designed to improve the symptoms children show. They do this by affecting the chemistry of the brain – usually increasing the amount of neurotransmitter activity in critical brain areas. Essentially, they speed up the whole brain as well as the heart and entire body. But why are we focusing so much on the brain? Are we not perhaps missing something?

Integrated Learning Therapy believes that addressing the problems associated with ADHD and many other disorders takes careful unravelling of the symptoms. It is seldom that we find a single underlying cause of learning and behaviour problems. In most cases, there is a collection of underlying neurodevelopmental and medically-related problems.

For example, ADHD symptoms can be caused by many underlying factors. Firstly, there may be risk factors which predispose a child to showing the symptoms of ADHD. These include genetic factors, environmental toxins, early illness or stressors and lack of quality experiences and opportunities for healthy development within the family. These all weaken a child’s basic physical and neurodevelopmental foundation needed for optimal development and health.

Secondly, arising perhaps from the risk factors may be triggers such as food allergies, unhealthy digestive systems and autoimmune conditions. Thirdly, these triggers in turn lead to biochemical effects, such as an imbalance in neurotransmitter production. Irregular functioning of dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine leads to the impulsivity, inattention and hyperactivity that are the cornerstones of an ADHD diagnosis.

Rather than randomly labelling a problem on the basis of observed symptoms and then suggesting an equally random treatment for these, ILT practitioners act as detectives. This means we systematically gather information about developmental history, health and physical status to use as clues to suggest what might be causing the problem. Brain structure and function can be improved by movement and lifestyle changes but more might be needed. We might suggest the help of specialists in the medical field to confirm suspicions or to conduct laboratory tests. This may take time, but the results are worthwhile. Seeing children’s symptoms and quality of life improve without the risks associated with drugs is highly satisfying.

So don’t only blame the brain. Look further to uncover the root cause of your child’s struggles.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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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.