Jun 10, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
At Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) we understand the importance of children developing learning readiness. If you understand what that means, then it becomes easier to understand your role as a parent to help them become ready for school learning. This is why it is important to know about child development. If a child enters school without being ready to learn, we have to know why. What is missing? What stage of development was missed or became disrupted to cause learning difficulties?
ILT practitioners are virtual detectives in their work with children. We look for clues to tell us what might underlie a child’s neurodevelopmental delays or other brain irregularities causing them problems.
Here are some of the stages that babies go through in a sequence[1]. If a child doesn’t develop in this normal sequence then learning might be more difficult than it should be. It isn’t complete, but should help alert you to what stages are particularly important for later learning.
By 6 months
A child should be able to roll over from back to front and front to back. This movement helps break down the imaginary midline, which exists vertically down the middle of the body. Only when this midline is broken down will the child be able to show coordinated activities.
Babies will be learning through the skin (touch and taste), the muscles and the eyes as they reach, grasp and transfer things from hand to hand. They touch everything and everything possible goes into the mouth because they learn a lot from taste and smell.
Language skills are being laid down by listening, cooing and squealing.
By 12 months
A child should have had plenty of pulling herself along the floor prior to many months of crawling in a coordinated way on hands and knees. This lays the basis for the two sides of the body to become integrated. Crawling also gives the eyes good focusing practice at reading distance. A child of a year old should be able to use his eyes in a coordinated way, to investigate everything with his hands and have learned to release objects. Ears should be giving more accurate messages so that language will have progressed to naming special things and a few other words.
By 18 months
The child should be walking quite well and throwing, kicking and chasing balls. Eyes should work well together. There should be a love of blocks, sand and water and a lot of self-talk.
By 2 years
She should be walking smoothly, running well and jumping. Slides and swings are enjoyed. Visual skills should have improved to the point where things inspected by the eyes are not always touched. Language usage includes short sentences.
By 3 years
He can climb stairs with alternating feet. Eyes follow objects without any accompanying head movement. The eyes are used more than the hands when solving simple puzzles. Language usage has improved to the point where he asks and answers simple questions.
By 4 years
The midline wall should be completely gone. This means that the specialized areas of each brain hemisphere can develop and the hemispheres are able to communicate rapidly, leading to later efficient brain use. Balls can be thrown at targets and he can catch balls. Fine motor has developed to the stage where she can cut and colour between the lines. Self talk continues!
By 5 years
Most children will show hand, eye, ear and foot dominance – which hopefully will be on the same side. This might take until the 7th or 8th year in some children but it is always important to allow the child to decide by herself. Language should show basic, adequate grammar.
By 7 or 8 years
It is important at this age that the child is fully integrated, meaning that both sides and the body and brain work together efficiently. This allows the specialized areas of each hemisphere to be accessed for optimal learning and performance.
The symptoms of inadequate integration are poor concentration, inability to do more than one thing at a time, confusion over left and right and reversals.
This is a rather sketchy list, but these and other milestones are important indicators of healthy brain development.
Many children showing learning difficulties did not crawl correctly or for long enough. Some did not crawl at all. This will have affected coordination, focusing of eyes and the exploration of the space in the world surrounding them. Other children with learning problems regularly display difficulties in one or more of these developmental sequences. Some don’t put things in their mouth during babyhood. This lack of tactile experience means that they don’t learn enough about their own bodies. This means they can’t make sense out of the space around them due to being uncertain of their own bodies’ shape, size and ability to move. This flows over to two-dimension things like placing drawings or writing on a piece of paper. Children may try to do maths with crooked columns, or put numbers and words too far over on one side of the paper. They get mixed up as to which number is in what column when writing figures for number work.
Many children who are not learning ready still move their heads with their eyes when reading. They also cannot cross the midline, meaning that they lose their place in written work because their eyes ‘jump’. The presence of a midline beyond the age of 4 years is a noticeable characteristic of children experiencing school problems.
Lack of good balance and a stable posture are also telling signs of a developmental delay. A child who is unstable will have a risk of strained handwriting.
The good news
It is heartwarming to know that all of these areas can be attended to and corrected. Immature symptoms can be a guide for an informed professional as to what gaps need filling through a careful movement programme. It is especially worth noting that when the earlier sequences are taken care of, higher level functioning often spontaneously improves and might never need attention.
The key is to know whether there are signs of irregular development in your child and find help to intervene as soon as possible. Having an area of immaturity doesn’t mean that the child has some mental disorder. For this reason, ILT avoids labelling a child. Instead, we try to understand the root cause of an observed difficulty. Rather than diagnosing a ‘condition’, we give the brain a second chance by helping to develop areas that are needed to support a child’s learning and expected behaviour.
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[1] Barbara Pheloung Help your class to learn. Manly: Australia.
Apr 1, 2026 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Just like we don’t all grow in height at the same rate, we have different rates of neurodevelopment. This means that the brain develops over time and reaches certain levels of development at different stages of childhood. That doesn’t mean that a child who is a little behind in development will be doomed for life.
Mild delays in development are usually the result of an immature nervous system (which consists of the brain, spinal column and all the nerves carrying messages from and to parts of the body). Here are some signs that can help you identify whether or not your child is a slower developer. Remember that all children may show one or more of these signs. Slow developers will usually show several.
- A history of ‘late bloomers’ in the family
- A premature birth
- Physical or emotional problems in the early months (including a stressful pregnancy)
- Chronic diseases such as asthma, upper respiratory diseases (e.g. ear infections, tonsillitis), viruses and so on.
- Difficulty with social skills: taking turns, sharing, communicating with peers. A child who seems to prefer younger children may be showing a need for more time to catch up
- Difficulties with coordination: skipping, hopping, catching a ball, climbing stairs, cutting, colouring-in.
- Overflow movements shown when a child moves body parts that don’t need to be engaged during a particular movement, e.g. arms flapping when he climbs stairs, tongue moving during colouring-in, feet moving while engaging in a task. This is fairly common in pre-schoolers but shouldn’t be obvious in older children
- Delayed language development
- Difficulty paying attention, easily distracted, struggles to sit still
- Seems overly impulsive for age
- Thoughts are unrealistic, e.g. avoids a situation by believing it will go away if ignored. Typical of slightly older children who avoid homework!
- Birthday is later in the year than most classmates. Boys especially may lack readiness if they are six months or more younger than the majority in their class.
If you are concerned that your child is struggling to adapt easily to school because of suspected neurodevelopmental delays, it is important for you to check this out with an ILT practitioner.
[1] With thanks to Jane Healy, author of ‘Your child’s growing mind’.
Dec 10, 2025 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Early, or prenatal, reflexive movements are involuntary movements that occur in the womb, such as:
- Kicking
- Stretching
- Sucking
- Grasping
They’re not controlled by conscious thought but are triggered by the developing nervous system.
How Do These Movements Influence Brain Development?
Reflexive movements aren’t just random flutters — they’re crucial for wiring the brain. Here’s how:
- Stimulating Neural Pathways
- Every movement sends signals through the spinal cord and brainstem, activating neurons.
- This repeated signalling helps strengthen synaptic connections, which are the links between neurons.
- Promoting Synaptic growth
- Movement encourages the formation of new synapses — the junctions where neurons communicate. Eventually this results in the neural network that makes the brain functional.
- The more varied the movement, the more complex the neural network becomes.
- Supporting Brain Maturation
- Reflexive movements are signs that the central nervous system is maturing.
- Pediatricians often assess reflexes to evaluate neurological health in newborns.
Why It Matters
Without these early movements, the brain wouldn’t receive the stimulation it needs to grow, connect, and specialize. It’s a beautiful feedback loop: movement drives brain development, and brain development refines movement.
Cognitive Development: Movement as mental blueprint
Reflexive movements in the womb help build the brain’s capacity for thinking and learning.
How it works:
- Sensorimotor Integration: These movements activate sensory systems (touch, proprioception, vestibular), which feed data into the brain. This helps the brain learn to process input and generate output, a key skill for cognition.
- Neural Mapping: Repetitive movements help the brain map the body — a process called body schema. This is essential for spatial awareness, attention, and even language development later on.
- Executive Function Seeds: Coordinated reflexes lay the groundwork for goal-directed behavior. For example, the rooting reflex (turning toward touch) is a precursor to intentional searching and problem-solving.
Emotional Development
Even before birth, babies begin to experience and respond to emotional cues — and reflexive movements are part of that emotional scaffolding.
Key connections:
- Regulation & Soothing: Reflexes like sucking and grasping are self-soothing mechanisms. They help infants regulate stress and begin to form emotional resilience.
- Attachment Readiness: Movements like turning toward a voice or grasping a finger prepare the baby for bonding behaviours after birth. These reflexes help babies recognize caregivers and respond to comfort.
- Environmental Sensitivity: Studies show that babies in the womb respond to music, voices, and even maternal stress levels. Reflexive kicks or movements may increase when the mother is anxious, suggesting a shared emotional state.
To summarise: Reflexes as building blocks of the brain:
Very briefly, the primitive or prenatal reflexes:
- Stimulate neural growth
- Train the brain to respond to the world
- Prepare the infant for social and emotional interaction
This is why Integrated Learning Therapy considers healthy reflex development as crucial for neurodevelopment. They do help ensure that children develop the ability to learn efficiently once they enter school.
Next week’s post will continue to explore more about these reflexes.
Image supplied by Freepik.
Dec 3, 2025 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
Most pre-school children amaze us with their ability. Little Hanlie, at aged two, can name all the animals in her favourite picture book. Hansie names most of the cars on the road before his third birthday and many four year olds are fascinated by dinosaurs and know their long, difficult names.
Then they begin school and the wheels come off. This can be devastating, especially if they have been encouraged to start school early because of their demonstrated intelligence. It is so important for families to know that even if their child has learned to read at a very early age, they may not be ready to learn. Things may go well in the first year or so but slowly progress falls behind. Very often parents come along (wisely) for a neurodevelopment evaluation and tell us that the child will be repeating Grade R because of emotional immaturity. This is not entirely accurate. Failing to cope with school has far more to do with brain maturity – what we call a state of learning readiness at school-going age.
Brain age vs chronological age
The trouble is that children are sent to school at an age determined by their birthday rather than by their stage of brain development. We are not robots, programmed to behave predictably. We are human beings who have a very personal timetable of development. Our brains are not ready to learn at a prescribed date but are subject to growth spurts that determine its level of functioning. Strategies for teaching reading, for example, will be different for children who have not yet fully developed the connections between the two brain hemispheres. Children may seem to be learning to read well but after Grade 3, begin to fail because they have relied on the look and see methods which is basically aimed at the right brain hemisphere. This is too limiting and they may have to be taught all over again.
Teachers are very well aware that boys are slower in brain development than girls. We also know that there are more boys who experience learning and school-related behavior problems (e.g. hyperactivity) than girls. The theory goes that, since boys’ brains develop more slowly, their brains remain longer in the very early brain stages, making them more vulnerable to viral damage or any slight accidents.
A maturity lag can cause all kinds of problems. If, for example, a child’s visual system is not fully developed, he might not be able to clearly differentiate letters. This means that he may learn the word ‘d-o-g’ by recognizing the shape of the whole word, reinforced by having the word accompanied by many pictures. But using pictures to remember individual words won’t help him when he has to do more advanced reading. They don’t help him use letters to read other words. These are ‘splinter skills’ that children develop that work well for a while but not in the higher grades.
And in the higher grades, few realise that the child is having problems because he was never ready to read in the first place.
It’s important to know a child’s stage of brain development
It is so important to consider an assessment of brain development before deciding on school entry. Far more important than school readiness is the knowledge that the child’s brain is ready to learn.
For neurodevelopmental reasons, it is disturbing to consider the consequences for certain children following the government’s suggestion that no child will be held back in Grade R. Sometimes it is necessary to do so. To counter this, give careful thought to arranging to have your child assessed before school entry. By assessment, we mean NOT school readiness, but learning readiness – which is not the same thing.
Image supplied by Freepik.
Oct 29, 2025 | I'm a Parent, I'm a Teacher, ILT Blog
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.
