Stop! Are you putting the cart before the horse?

You have a child in your classroom. He seems to be bright: speaks well, has good general knowledge, can be quite cheeky and shows a keen sense of humour. His school performance, however, is below average. He struggles with schoolwork and in spite of his obvious intelligence, is unable to read, write, do maths or spell at required grade level. You refer him to the Learning Support Teacher and she begins to give him individual instruction in weak areas. After a while, she reports that he is not responding well and he continues to fall behind. This is a case of putting the cart before the horse. Trying to solve learning problems with academic work seldom succeeds. What is needed is an understanding of what may be underlying the academic difficulties.

Obviously there could be many reasons for his school underperformance but one that may be interesting to discuss here is a bilateral vestibular problem.

The vestibular system is located in the inner ear and those of you that follow posts put out by Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) will have read about this tiny system before. It may be very small but it is strongly implicated in our ability to cope with just about everything we have to do in the world! Certainly ILT practitioners will tell you that the majority of learners referred for help show signs of irregular vestibular function.

There are two types of vestibular problems that influence learning and behaviour. As a result of vestibular irregularities, the brain either over- or underreacts to vestibular input. This can be compared to a TV that is not properly adjusted. The vestibular acts as the tuning control and should adjust the incoming signal so that the picture and sound are clear and neither too bright or dull, too loud or soft. When the brain’s powers of functioning are not balanced as a result of efficient vestibular activities, the information sent to the brain from the various sensory organs cannot be easily interpreted. If not correctly interpreted, responses to such information are usually inappropriate. Think of yourself trying to view a programme that is not properly tuned to the signal but instead leaves the screen with a confusing mess of zigzag lines with a shrill, ear-shattering soundtrack.

The symptoms of a bilateral vestibular problem are difficult to pinpoint. Learners with this problem are often considered by their families as completely normal until they go to school. Then the puzzling signs appear and they fail to keep up with their learning peers. Often their problems are diagnosed as dyslexia or alexia. Others may offer the opinion that the problem is of an emotional nature.

Signs that may point to the actual underlying problems include:

Faulty eye movements resulting in difficulties following a moving object or to move attention from one thing to another
Poor posture; the child has difficulty keeping her head upright while sitting or will tire easily when playing
Difficulty learning to ride a two-wheeled bicycle
Are not good at sports and lack the self-confidence to take part
Although they show normal coordination, they may be clumsy
He seeks out movement – enjoying merry-go-rounds, spinning or rolling endlessly
The two sides of her body are not well integrated – she has trouble coordinating the right and left hands with each other, showing poor bilateral coordination
Is easily confused by direction, especially if not given much time to think; confuses right with left side
She becomes confused when trying to clap, walk or beat a drum to a rhythm
May show midline problems
An underactive vestibular system interferes with specialization of movements. This results in the child developing individual skills with each individual hand and brain hemisphere instead of using one hand for fine motor movements, like writing and using equipment. She will, for example, try to use her right hand for tasks on the right side of the body and her left hand for tasks on the left side. This may result in her seeming to be ambidextrous but she is not skillful with both hands as is a truly ambidextrous individual.
When lying on her stomach with her arms stretched out forwards, she is unable to lift her trunk, head, arms and legs and hold them for 30 seconds.
She tends to reverse letters, for example, ‘d’ and ‘b’ and also tends to read words in the incorrect order.
She cannot handle stress well and becomes easily frustrated.

The bottom line is to try and gather clues that can help you identify what may be underlying a child’s learning challenges. Teachers often are the first to refer parents for help. Parents become frustrated and disheartened when they find themselves following through with advice but then seeing little improvement.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) offers teachers training courses to equip them with the knowledge to recognise the real reason for learning problems. This doesn’t mean that teachers have to become practitioners but it does mean that they are in a position to refer to the helping professional best able to offer effective help.

Visit our website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about our approach and to find practitioners around the country to help. The website also outlines the attendance and distance (correspondence) course we offer teachers. If you need more information, 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.