When does my child need help? | Integrated Learning Therapy

All children, and adults, go through periods of difficulties. Children’s development occurs in stages and sometimes they may show unusual behaviour that may simply be a sign that they are ‘going through’ a growth stage. So when do you sit up, take notice and realise that your child may be in need of help?

Obviously families have periods of crises and stress, so if this is the cause of a child’s learning difficulties, you’ll probably be able to put two and two together and determine how best to help. But how do you know when the trouble is probably school-based?

Perhaps this list may be useful. Your child may be having trouble in school that needs your immediate attention if you notice any one or more of the following:

Your usually cooperative child begins to be disobedient at school
Your usually social child becomes aggressive and even hurts other children
Your child shows a reluctance and even refusal to go to school
Your child has tummy aches or headaches on most school mornings
Your child becomes quieter, seems sad and disinterested in schoolwork
Your child is said to be restless and unable to sit quietly at school
Your child is reported to be doing less well than expected in schoolwork
Your child gets poor marks for tests in spite of having learned the work at home
Your child has difficulty learning new skills or simply remembering things

The first step will obviously be a meeting with the teacher. Be sure to discuss what happens on the playground as well as what is observed in the classroom. Sometimes interactions in the peer group or even bullying might be a problem. Find out what the teacher has done to help the child in the classroom, but if the problem persists, you might have to look further for help.

One source of help is from Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) practitioners. We follow an holistic approach, looking carefully for underlying causes of learning difficulties and puzzling behaviours. Often the problem is based in the child’s neurodevelopment, meaning that his or her brain is underdeveloped and needs ‘catch-up’ time to mature in all areas. Sometimes the problem can be caused by environmental offenders (think nutrition, allergies and the like) that need to be addressed.

ILT doesn’t believe in ‘one size fits all’ or that there is an easy, quick way to help a child overcome learning difficulties. We do, however, know that our careful, thorough assessment and dedicated work with children result in changing their attitude of “I can’t” into “I can”. Our reward is their renewed pleasure in school

To learn more about our approach, visit our website at www.ilt.co.za. You’ll also find a list of practitioners near you to help as well as courses you can take to further your understanding of how children’s brains develop and what might go wrong. As a result, you’ll be in a better position to help. After all, parents are the first source of help for all children!

Remember to Like and Share our Facebook page to receive more articles.

← Previous Next →

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.