January 11, 2012

Since there is a direct link between healthy eating and strong cognitive abilities, why not use your New Year’s Resolution to jump start providing healthy snacks for your students. Peanut butter and crackers, almonds, peanuts, and string cheese are quick and easy snacks for kids with a great source of protein .   The article below gives more information.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/29/brain-food-nutrients-sharp-vitamins_n_1173876.html

 

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November 14, 2011

Remember that the brain is part of the body.  Things that exercise your body can also help sharpen your brain.  Physical exercise enhances the brain's ability to create more brain cells.  Activities such as physical exercise, meditation, and musical training can all improve brain function, often yielding improvements in attention, working memory, emotional balance, and other abilities.  Yoga and Brain Gym are great programs to use with children to help both body and brain.  
 

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November 9, 2011

Impact of Retained Reflexes on Attention and Learning

We continue our series on the causes of attention deficit beyond a biochemical reason.  We have already discussed Auditory Processing Disorder and Retained Reflexes.  Today, we talk about Sensory Processing Disorder.

Sensory Processing is the brain's ability to integrate, process, and respond to certain information received from the body's sensory systems.  The brain takes all of this information and helps the body make sense of its surroundings and to react to them appropriately. 

A child with good sensory integration filters the unimportant stimuli without having to think about it.  She can sit at her desk without thinking about her posture.  She can pay attention to the teacher and filter out the noise of the air conditioner and the noise of the children in the hallway.  She can ignore the itch of her wool sweater.

A child with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) has trouble processing and interpreting sensory messages.  Some children will feel bombarded with all of the sensory information.  This child might be bothered by the label in his tee-shirt or the seam in his socks.   He might be bothered by the approach of his classmate or the stickiness of the play dough.  He will pay a lot of attention to avoid these ordinary sensations.  He might fidget and squirm.  Meanwhile, he is unable to pay much attention to the teacher's words. 

For others, the stimuli are dulled.  These children need extra stimulation to "get going."  They need to move around much more than their peers.  These are the kids who love to spin and swing.  They will pay a lot of attention to satisfy their need for movement, and not much to instructions or to where they left their shoes.

Most children with SPD will often show elements of both extemes: being overloaded at times and seeking stimulation at others.  It's easy to see how the symptoms - distractiblity, the need for intense activity, problems with social interactions - could seem like ADHD.

The problem is that many professionals have never even heard of SPD.  As a special education teacher, I had never heard of SPD until my son was diagnosed with it.  If the cause of the attention problems is due to SPD, drug therapy will not help, but a good sensory diet may be a major component in treating the problem.  An overloaded child needs less stimulation; whereas, an under-responsive child needs more stimulation. 

Reflex integration, auditory and visual processing, and sensory processing are just pieces of a puzzle that need to be put together for a child to be successful in everyday situations.  Instead of medicating for ADD or ADHD symptoms, really finding the cause of the problem would be the more permanent solution to any challenge that is affecting a child's education.

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November 7, 2011

Trying to determine if a book is the right level for your child?  Teach your child how to use the "Five-Finger Rule" to guide the difficulty level of their book choice.  Have your child read about 100 words in a book and raise one finger for every word they can't read.  If they raise more than five fingers, the book is probably too hard. 

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October 31, 2011

Are you wondering what to do with all your kid's Halloween candy?  Have your children sort by candy type or color on the wrapper.  Have them group candy in groups of 5's or 10's and count by 5 or 10 as high as they can count.  Using candy is a fun and exciting way to practice simple math skills such as skip counting, adding, and grouping.  

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October 12, 2011

We have been talking about the symptoms that can manifest in someone with attention challenges.  The vast majority of students who come to our learning center have some challenges with attention, but only a small minority are truly ADHD.  Successful, easy learning depends upon a solid foundation of underlying skills.  If a child has problems with any of the underlying learning skills, his attention system will also be stressed.  While attention may become a problem in school or with homework, it may not actually be the real problem.  To make sure that we are actually treating what is causing the attention difficulties, we generally evaluate five areas that can cause attention difficulties separate from, or in addition to, a biochemical reason. 

One of the areas we evaluate is Reflex Integration.  Primitive reflexes are present in infants, but should become integrated within three years.  If these reflexes don't "disappear", they will continue to fire and cause interference that inhibits efficient development and easy learning. 

Here are some examples:

Abby has difficulty copying notes.  She holds her pencil with a tight grip and has sloppy handwriting.  Writing for any length of time takes enormous effort, so she avoids it.  She would rather talk than have to write down her ideas.  Her parents constantly remind her to focus when she is working.  Abby has a retained Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex.  Each time she turns her head, her arm wants to follow.  Now obviously when she turns her head, her arm doesn't straighten out, but that is because the brain is having to send a signal to stop this reflex from occurring.  This takes away her ability to focus on what she is doing.  Students with this retained reflex often have poor handwriting, difficulty keeping their place when reading, and an inability to express themselves in a written form. 

Tommy wiggles constantly in his chair.  It keeps him from getting his work done and is very distracting to the students sitting near him.  His teachers and parents are constantly reminding him to "sit still and pay attention."  But, Tommy can't sit still in his chair because he has a retained Spinal Galant Reflex.  This reflex causes him to wiggle in his chair when he doesn't mean to.  When he tries hard to sit still, it takes all of his attention, so he can't really think about what the teacher is saying or what he's supposed to be doing on his assignments. 

These are just two examples of how reflexes impact attention and learning.  There is a high correlation between developmental delay and poorly integrated reflexes:

Dysfunction	Related Reflex	Percent with poorly integrated reflex
Poor Memory	ATNR	78%
Weak logic and reasoning and abstract thinking	STNR	57%
ADD, ADHD	STNR, ATNR, Spinal Galant	58%
Bed wetting                Poor bladder control	Spinal Galant	72%

Problems paying attention in class can be a sign to parents that their child is struggling in school.  This should not be ignored.  Parents and teachers need to be aware that whenever an area of underlying processing or learning skills is inefficient, extra energy will be needed to perform.  This stresses the person's attention.  It is important to look very carefully to determine if the attention challenges seen in class are the cause of the learning problem or the symptom. 

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October 10, 2011