Balance is a term frequently used by health professionals working in a wide variety of fields. There is no single accepted definition of balance and some professionals use the term ‘postural control’ as a synonym. Others consider postural control as the act of maintaining, achieving or restoring a state of balance during any posture or activity.
Balance is the ability to maintain a controlled body position while performing a task, whether it is sitting at a table, walking along a balance beam or stepping up a flight of stairs. To function effectively, we need the ability to maintain controlled positions easily during both static (still) and dynamic (moving) activities.
Static balance is the ability to hold a stationary position with control (e.g. “Freeze” or “statue” games). Dynamic balance is the ability to remain balanced while engaged in movement (e.g. running or bike riding).
Apart from keeping our bodies stable in a desired position, balance enables us to know where our bodies are in the environment. To achieve this, it needs good function of 3 senses (vision, vestibular, proprioceptive), central (brain) integration, and an effective motor output. More specifically, our sense of balance is specifically regulated by a complex interaction between the following parts of the nervous system (collectively known as the sensory motor system):
The inner ears (also called the labyrinth) monitor the directions of motion, such as turning or forward-backward, side-to-side, and up-and-down motions.
The eyes observe where the body is in space (i.e., upside down, right side up, etc.) and also the directions of motion.
Skin pressure receptors such as those located in the feet and seat sense what part of the body is down and touching the ground.
Muscle and joint sensory receptors (proprioceptors) report what parts of the body are moving.
The central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) processes all the bits of information from the four other systems to make some coordinated sense out of it all.
As Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) practitioners, we are aware that many children have not acquired effortless balance. Further investigation often reveals inefficient functioning of one or more of the areas listed above.
Because our sensory motor system is hugely implicated in learning and behaviour, any area that remains underdeveloped may cause difficulties in learning and meeting classroom demands. This means that clumsiness or other signs of poor balance is a signal that the child may need some intervention to help or prevent school challenges.
This article is adapted from the book of psychologist Louis Cozolino, entitled The social neuroscience of education. It contains such valuable insights and advice that it seems worthwhile to share more widely. If you are interested in his book, it is available on Amazon.
The human brain isn’t designed for mass education. It has been shaped over millions of years in response to the demands of ever-changing human environments. Over time, brains grew in size and complexity; old structures were conserved and new structures emerged. As we evolved into social beings, our brains became incredibly sensitive to our social worlds.
This evolutionary history has resulted in us becoming a diverse collection of human beings with vastly differing abilities. A one-size-fits-all model of education is doomed to fail the majority of children. This poses a challenge for educators because a great deal of flexibility is needed in classrooms to accommodate a range of learners. Neuroscience is striving to understand how our brains actually work and use that knowledge to benefit classroom learning.
Here are nine scientific insights that parents and teachers might want to keep in mind.
The brain is a social organ.
Our brains require stimulation and connection to survive and thrive. A brain without connection to other brains and without sufficient challenge will shrink and eventually die—moreover, the modern human brain’s primary environment is our matrix of social relationships. As a result, close supportive relationships stimulate positive emotions, neuroplasticity, and learning.
That’s why it pays for teachers to create positive social experiences in the classroom. From a neurobiological perspective, the position of the teacher is very similar to that of the parent in building the child’s brain. Optimism, encouragement, and giving someone the benefit of the doubt have been shown to positively impact performance—and so does a caring and positive regard for students. Promoting social-emotional learning programs that decrease student conflict and create positive social climates in the classroom are invaluable to learning.
We have two brains.
The brain hemispheres have differentiated from one another and developed specialised functions and skills. In general, the left hemisphere has taken the lead on language processing, linear thinking, and pro-social functioning while the right hemisphere specializes in visual-spatial processing, strong emotions, and private experience. Most tasks, though, involve contributions from both hemispheres. So, it is important to understand how to engage both in the classroom context.
Good teachers intuitively grasp this in their students, and they will seek to balance the expression of emotion and cognition, encouraging overly rational students to be aware of and explore their feelings while helping anxious students develop the cognitive capabilities of their left hemispheres to regulate their emotions.
Storytelling can help here, as stories can serve as powerful organizing tools for neural network integration. A story that is well told, containing conflicts and resolutions and thoughts flavoured with emotions, will shape brains and connect people.
Early learning is powerful.
Much of our most important emotional and interpersonal learning occurs during our first few years of life, when our more primitive neural networks are in control. Early experiences shape structures in ways that have a lifelong impact on three of our most vital areas of learning: attachment, emotional regulation, and self-esteem. These three spheres of learning establish our abilities to connect with others, cope with stress, and feel that we have value.
Every time children behave in a way they (or we) don’t understand, parents and teachers have the opportunity to engage in an exploration of their inner world. Encouraging learners to write about their experiences in diaries and journals can help, as it lets youngsters become the masters of their experience and reducing anxiety and stress. Research has shown that writing about your experiences can increase well-being and help with emotional regulation, which may have been impaired through early traumatic experiences.
Conscious awareness and unconscious processing occur at different speeds, often simultaneously.
Conscious awareness and explicit memory are but a small fraction of the vast amount of neural processing that occurs each millisecond.
Think of how many things you do without having to think about them: breathing, walking, balancing, even constructing the syntax of a sentence, is handled automatically. The brain is able to process incoming information, analyse it based on a lifetime of experience, and present it to us in half a second. The brain then creates the illusion that what we are experiencing is happening right now and that we are making decisions based on our conscious thought processes.
Because of this, it is especially important to teach students to question their assumptions and the possible influences of past experiences and unconscious biases on their feelings and beliefs.
This is especially true when thinking about prejudice. Because fear conditioning does not require conscious awareness, the brain’s knee-jerk reaction to individuals of other races is unrelated to our conscious attitudes. Open discussion and increased interracial exposure can work against prejudice being turned into conscious beliefs and negative behaviours.
The mind, brain, and body are interwoven.
Physical activity exerts a stimulating influence on the entire brain that keeps it functioning at an optimal level. Exercise has been shown to stimulate the birth of new neurons and to pump more oxygen through the brain, stimulating capillary growth and frontal-lobe plasticity.
Proper nutrition and adequate sleep are also essential to learning. Although the brain is only a fraction of our body’s weight, it consumes approximately 20 percent of our energy, which makes good nutrition a critical component of learning. Sleep boosts cognitive performance and augments learning while sleep deprivation limits our ability to sustain vigilance and attention. Sleep deprivation has also been shown to impair flexible thinking and decision-making.
The brain has a short attention span and needs repetition and multiple-channel processing for deeper learning to occur.
Curiosity, the urge to explore and the impulse to seek novelty, plays an important role in survival. We are rewarded for curiosity by the production of feel-good chemicals in the brain, which are stimulated in the face of something new. Because our brains evolved to remain vigilant to a constantly changing environment, we learn better in brief intervals.
This is likely one reason why variation in materials, breaks, and even intermittent naps facilitate learning. It is probably important for teachers to re-establish attention in their students every five to 10 minutes and continue to shift the focus of attention to new topics.
Learning also involves the strengthening of connections between neurons. “What fires together wires together,” say neuroscientists, which is why repetition supports learning while the absence of repetition and exposure results in its decay. Teachers would do well to make sure they repeat important points in their lessons to deepen learning.
Fear and stress impair learning.
Evolution has shaped our brains to err on the side of caution and to trigger fear whenever it might be remotely useful. Fear makes us less intelligent because amygdala activation—which occurs as part of the fear response—interferes with prefrontal functioning. Fear also shuts down exploration, makes our thinking more rigid, and drives “neophobia,” the fear of anything new.
Stressful situations trigger the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which interferes with neural growth. Prolonged stress impairs our ability to learn and maintain physical health.
We analyse others but not ourselves: the primacy of projection.
Our brains have evolved to pay attention to the behaviours and emotions of other people. Not only is this processing complex, but it is lightning fast, shaping our experience of others milliseconds before we even become consciously aware of their presence. We automatically generate a theory of what is on their mind—our ideas about what they know, what their motivations may be, and what they might do next. As a result, we are as quick to think we know others as we are slow to become aware of our own motives and faults.
Taking our thoughts about others and trying them on for size has the potential to teach us about ourselves and increase our empathic abilities. Simple exercises that guide learners to examine what and how what they think and feel about others may be true for themselves can open a window of self-awareness, empathy, and insight. Ask children to examine the lives of historical figures and characters from books and movies to help them gain a third-eye perspective on their own strengths, motivations, and flaws.
Learning is enhanced by emphasising the big picture—and then allowing students to discover the details for themselves.
When problems are represented at higher levels of abstraction, learning can be integrated into larger schemas that enhance memory, learning, and cognitive flexibility. Starting with major concepts and repeatedly returning to them during a lesson enhances understanding and memory, a phenomenon that increases when students create their own categories and strategies of organising information. Chunking material into meaningful segments makes it easier to remember, and improves test performance while increasing prefrontal activity during encoding.
When it comes to discovering the details, bear in mind that our brains evolved to learn is through trial-and-error exploration. This is true of learning and adapting to both our social and physical environments. Therefore, using what we learn to attempt to solve real-world problems and adjusting our behaviours or ideas based on the results augments the retention of skills and information. We are born to explore, and teachers who make use of that will probably find more success in the classroom.
So many parents are being told that their children have concentration problems, can’t focus or show limited attention span. Along with these descriptors, they hear that their child daydreams, fails to complete tasks, loses things, fidgets excessively and so on.
Seeking medical help usually results in a prescription for a stimulant drug, such as Ritalin, Concerta and Strattera. We do know that behaviour can be changed using certain drugs. On Ritalin, for example, children are better able to pay attention, stay on task and sit still but the results are temporary; only with repeated dosages and sustained-release tablets will the benefits last all day. Increasing the dosage over time brings risk of potential side effects even if these don’t show immediately and prolonged use should be discouraged because of uncertainty about long-term effects. In addition, the drugs don’t address the basic problem. They may make children easier to manage but don’t make them smarter or happier. Children don’t learn any better when on medication – in fact, their work may show a lack of thought and originality. They help the children get through the day in a mechanistic way but don’t make them better prepared for tomorrow. Unfortunately, the drugs are often used alone, with no on-going programme to help the child in other ways. In short, they may be the quickest and easiest ‘solution’ for children with attention problems but they aren’t the best.
The reason is that drugs don’t affect the underlying problems. Behavioural problems and inattentiveness are symptoms of other problems and the answer isn’t to be found in medication. Let’s have a look at some case studies:
Little Anna was the smallest child in class and came across as being quiet, withdrawn and easily distracted. She stares at other children and plays nervously with her crayons and books. When evaluated for neurodevelopmental delays, she showed that her stress levels were very high. She had some early developing irregularities that interfered with her brain’s ability to cope with the sights and sounds in the world. She was simply overwhelmed by what she perceived as ‘threats’ from her environment. Once these were addressed, her stress levels dropped and she became more responsive.
John never sits still. His constant activity often makes him a nuisance in class and at home. Under investigation, ILT found that due to hitches during his birth and early development, he had mixed dominance, and had failed to develop left-right preference because he hadn’t integrated the two sides of his body. He also hadn’t developed the foundational systems needed for efficient motor functioning and stable posture. As these were addressed, he became better able to keep his body still and use it in developmentally healthy movement activities that he could not master before. This led to his behaviour becoming less annoying, increased ability to make friends and improvements in classroom learning.
Kevin is a daydreamer. He often stares out a window or at the television screen. He is slow to complete his work. He is clumsy and often drops things. He has allergies and is often ill with sinusitis and colds. An ILT evaluation showed that his body didn’t work automatically. He was using his mind to run his body so the brain’s higher levels, supposed to be used in learning and daily coping, were not available for cognitive functioning. It would have been so easy for Kevin to slip through the cracks without achieving his potential. A programme to help underdeveloped brain areas brought about noticeable improvements in his schoolwork and physical coordination.
Little Sam was asked to leave his nursery school because his ‘violent’ behaviour and tantrums became too much to manage. A full neurodevelopmental evaluation by ILT showed no irregularities in development or sensory-motor system functioning. What was suspected was a sensitivity to food colourants and preservatives. On a trial basis following this suspicion, Sam’s family excluded any foods containing these additives and Sam almost immediately became calmer, eventually returning to his school as a happy, friendly little boy.
So drugs aren’t the answer to behavioural problems or inattentiveness. Instead, these children need a comprehensive evaluation followed by an individualized programme that corrects identified areas of irregular functioning.
Interestingly, an ILT associate ran a programme with a group of over 50 children, all diagnosed with ADHD[1]. They were given daily certain sensory-motor stimulation and other movement activities designed to recreate the movement patterns that function to develop the brain in the early years. About half these children were on Ritalin when they started the programme. All were taken off Ritalin from three to six months later with no need to be put back on Ritalin or other behaviour-modifying medication. For all children, the results showed the elimination of behaviour problems, better school results and dramatically improved coordination. Social skills improved significantly as well but most importantly, the children were clearly happier.
Correcting behavioural and learning problems isn’t easy. Effective intervention needs a holistic approach that reaches to the problems in the background and provides a supportive, encouraging environment. For this reason, ILT is practiced in the family – no weekly visits to a therapist but ‘quality time’ spent in movements in which one or both parents can be involved. The rewards are immeasurable. There is nothing better than watching a child who begins to feel good from the inside out!
[1][1][1] Shirley Randolph, Tree of Learning Centre, Boise, Idaho
Many teachers and parents look for ways of including valuable developmental skills into games with young children. Mary Mountstephen shared this blog giving some information about Marlene Rattigan’s useful book. Entitled Kidz-fiz-biz:Scarf Magic, the book contains a DVD and 2 children’s scarves. You can access it at www.kidsfizbiz.com.
In this blog we’d like to introduce you to some fun activities that you can do with your child at home or with small groups of friends. Scarves have enormous educational potential to stimulate language development, mathematical concepts and vocabulary and physical skills such as coordination, body control and body awareness. Some children need a little extra support to develop these skills, and Scarf Magic is an ideal way to do this in an enjoyable and active way,
You need enough scarves for children to be able to make a choice, and allow them free play initially, joining in yourself. There are many sources of scarves and friends may be happy to hand over unwanted gifts. The scarves should be:
60 cm square for the children 60 cm or 1 metre square for the adults
As with all activities, set the ground rules first of where the children are allowed to move, and set boundaries around what they can and can’t do to play safely and that the scarves must be treated with respect and folded away neatly at the end of each session.
Spend some time initially exploring how to make the scarves move: Throw them in the air, slither them around on the floor, scrunch them up and watch them unfold. Throwing and Catching
Scrunch the scarf into a little ball with both hands and throw the scarf high in the air, catching it with both hands. This can be done sitting, standing, and even moving around to music. You can also vary the speed and type of music to change the mood.
When this has been mastered, you can progress to throwing with one hand and catching with the other. It is a good idea to keep alternating the throwing and catching hands as this improves coordination and eye-hand control. Making Shapes and Maths Activities You can use the scarves to explore mathematical language:
Fold the scarf into a rectangle and a triangle and count the number of corners and sides
Can you make the scarf into a smaller square by folding it up?
Are there any shapes they can find on the scarf? Balancing and Crawling Activities There are many different ways to be creative with moving that can also help develop language, coordination and perseverance. Some children may balance really well on one leg, but not the other, so encourage them to find different ways to experiment with this.
Crawl around the room with the scarf tucked into the back of clothing, to make a tail. Play follow the leader. Stop on a signal and lift up one arm or one leg
Stand opposite a partner and hold one scarf between them, then try to balance in different ways
These are just a few ways to use scarves that can take your children on a ‘voyage of discovery’. The possibilities are endless and children often come up with their own ideas that can be added to your bank of ideas.
Eating fish is known to have many health benefits. In this age of Covid-19 with the accompanying life stressors, it seems that children and adults may need to include more fish in their diets.
New research (published Monday, April 19 2021 in the journal Molecular Psychiatry) reveals that a high daily dose of omega-3 was shown to suppress damage and boost protection at a cellular level during and after a stressful event. This means that these valuable oils can help the body resist the damaging effects of stress. Participants in the study were found to produce less of the stress hormone cortisol and lower levels of a pro-inflammatory protein during a stressful event (which was giving them a 20-minute speech and maths subtraction task).
The benefit to adults was clear and supports the existing studies that omega-3 oils can help with depression and accelerated aging brought on by repeated stress. It can also be concluded that children can benefit equally, especially if they are exposed to stressful situations – as many of them are in current and on-going circumstances. Those who find learning difficult or who struggle with behavioural issues are particularly vulnerable to stress.
The research used high doses of an omega-3 supplement. There are good omega-3 supplements available on the market but many of the best products are expensive. As parents, we would be wise to introduce fish to our children at an early age and then make sure that our families eat a variety of oil-rich fish at least a few times a week. Cold water, fatty fish are the best, and we are lucky in that we have a few varieties at hand, including hake, snoek and sardines.
But do beware of how you cook the fish. Coating them in a thick batter and frying portions in unhealthy oils is not the best option. Try to leave the skin on (the oils tend to be close to the skin) and explore the options of baking, steaming and grilling. Fish cakes might be enjoyed too. There are many suggestions online of how to encourage children to eat fish so those might help you overcome resistance by any family members, no matter their age.
Sleep problems, including unusual snoring, have been associated with behaviour and learning. The latest research involving a large number of children has uncovered evidence that behavioural problems in children who habitually snore (three or more nights a week) may be associated with changes in the structure of their brain’s frontal lobe, leading possibly to problems such as inattention or hyperactivity. The findings have been released by the National Institutes of Health in the USA.
This study is the largest of its kind and confirms the results of previous work, which indicated a link between regular snoring and behavioural problems. Those children who most frequently snored generally showed worse behaviour.
The findings further showed that snoring is linked to multiple regions of the brain’s frontal lobe, an area involved in cognitive functions such as problem solving, impulse control, and social interactions. The statistical analysis also suggested that the brain differences seen in children who snore may contribute to behavioural problems, but additional work on how snoring, brain structure, and behavioural problems change over time is needed to confirm a causal link.
Frequency of snoring is seen as a form of Obstructive Sleep-Disordered Breathing (oSDB). Children who are screened for snoring may be referred for help. This may include assessment and treatment for conditions that contribute to oSDB, such as obesity, or evaluation for surgical removal of the adenoids and tonsils.
The ABCD Study, the largest of its kind in the United States, is tracking nearly 12,000 youth as they grow into young adults. Investigators regularly measure participants’ brain structure and activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, and collect psychological, environmental, and cognitive information, as well as biological samples. The goal of the study is to define standards for normal brain and cognitive development and to identify factors that can enhance or disrupt a young person’s life trajectory.
“We know the brain has the ability to repair itself, especially in children, so timely recognition and treatment of obstructive sleep disordered breathing may attenuate these brain changes. More research is needed to validate such mechanisms for these relationships which may also lead to further treatment approaches,” said study co-author Linda Chang, MD, MS, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine who is a co-principal investigator on the ABCD study.
