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Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing, And Treating Your Child's Learning Problems (2010)

by Jane M. Healy(Favorite Author)

3.88 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1439170207 (ISBN13: 9781439170205)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: Key quotes (just a sampling of what I highlighted):1. Back in the twelfth century, a poet and philosopher named Hildegard of Bingen came up with a metaphor that remains relevant today. At birth, each child comes equipped with a golden tent of creative potential all folded up inside. It is the task of the individual, throughout life, to unfold that tent—and to the adults in each child’s life to assist that process. Nine centuries later, I seriously wonder, how well are we doing?4 months ago 2. Quick Take: What This Book Is About 1. Learning differences, which are the cause of many school and personal problems, are variations in the way the brain processes information. They include academic, personal (as in attention or motivation problems), and social skills. 2. These... more patterns are caused both by genes (“nature”) and the environment (“nurture”). Both can be influenced by a child’s experiences before and after birth. Just because something is genetic, or inherited, does not mean that it is either inevitable or unchangeable. Nor does it mean that when problems arise, medications are the only solution.4 months ago 3. Medications may be helpful in some cases, but probably should not be the first or only approach used. Many proven therapies are available, and many of them start right in your own home or classroom. 4. Emotional development, which is one important aspect of learning, is tightly intertwined in the brain with academic and social learning. Stress is a significant and often underestimated contributor to children’s learning problems, and love is a powerful remedy. 5. Every child—and every child’s problem—is part of a much larger system of home, school, community, and culture. It is short-sighted simply to label and treat the child without examining how the larger system may be contributing to the problem. 6. Today’s lifestyle habits can cause problems and make existing ones worse. Fortunately, many of these negative outcomes can be prevented or reversed. 7. Learning “disabilities” and special talents often come in the same package. It is important to nurture the abilities at the same time we help with the difficulties. 8. “Late bloomers” are easily misidentified as “learning disabled.” Often the children with more leisurely developmental timetables turn out to be the smartest of all. Parents and schools that push4 months ago 4. too hard cause problems. 9. In our efforts to make kids “smarter,” we must not forget that brain development is closely tied to the development of the body. Neglecting play and perceptual and motor skill development may endanger foundations for other types of learning. 10. The human brain is wonderfully “plastic” and can be altered by experience. The more we understand about the way it works, the better we can help each child unfold his or her own tent of potential talents. 11. There may be positive reasons for certain types of learning differences. Unique thinkers could have important future roles. 12. Never give up. The brain retains its ability to change throughout a lifetime.4 months ago 5. Yet progress sometimes goes too far. Now we need to be concerned about categorizing too many youngsters who fall outside rigid expectations as “disordered” and in need of “fixing” rather than as “different” and in need of patient, effective teaching within an understanding and flexible system.4 months ago 6. The more inflexible the system, the more kids will find themselves with a label.4 months ago 7. The term learning disabilities usually refers to specific problems with school subjects such as reading, writing, spelling, or math. These problems have nothing to do with overall intellectual capability. Many learning disabled individuals are very smart or even gifted.4 months ago 8. Learning problems are fundamentally about a mismatch between the child and the learning environment.4 months ago 9. A Glitch in Learning.4 months ago 10. Medications may help, but they may also mask critical and treatable issues—either organic or environmental—that should be attended to sooner rather than later.4 months ago 11. Most organic learning disorders show up early in life. 2. Certain warning signs should prompt further evaluation. 3. A misfit between child and school can cause problems or exacerbate existing ones. 4. Diagnosis is useful only if it leads to effective treatment. 5. Overlabeling wastes time, money, and children’s potential. 6. “Differential diagnosis” is a useful starting point.4 months ago 12. a “learning problem” to be any innate or acquired characteristic that consistently interferes with one or more aspects of learning. In its purest form, a learning disorder involves some variation in the wiring of the brain—often, but not always, inherited—that makes it harder than “normal” for an individual to master one or more of the following:4 months ago 13. traditional academic learning such as language, reading, spelling, writing, math (these are termed learning disabilities) • social skills, such as understanding and relating to others • language development • perceptual-motor and sensory skills, such as balance, athletic ability, eye-tracking, using markers and pencils, copying geometric figures, keyboarding, coping with sudden sensory changes such as unexpected touch or flickering visual stimuli • executive or personal skills, such as paying attention appropriately, managing one’s behavior, organization, planning ahead, motivation4 months ago 14. Most true learning disorders are neurodevelopmental in origin, meaning that they involve the brain and nervous system and that they “came with the package”—i.e., that whatever is causing the problem is an intrinsic part of the child’s nature4 months ago 15. Inform yourself. You do not need to be a helpless consumer of other people’s judgment or advice about your child.4 months ago 16. his mother admitted that her son had been difficult even since infancy. While his twin sister slept, ate, played, and learned mostly in the expected ways, Jared cascaded unpredictably through each day, leaving behind a trail of frazzled adults. “This sounds terrible,” confided Pam, his mother, “but my son reminds me of those cartoons of ‘Pigpen’ in Charlie Brown. Except it’s not only dirt around him, it’s this major cloud of disruption. We just love him so much, but we never have known what to expect. When he was little he’d throw a fit about the smallest things—like a label in a shirt that ‘hurt his neck’ or some food he didn’t like. We do our best to set limits, but he is just an exhausting child.3 months ago 17. Warning Signs: Risk Factors for Learning3 months ago 18. Many if not most learning disorders come with overlapping diagnoses, and it is often difficult to affix one accurate label or a single treatment to the child’s difficulties. For example, reading and attention disorders often overlap. The best evaluations come with a descriptive analysis of your child’s relative strengths and weaknesses. They avoid one-size-fits-all3 months ago 19. structure a program for behavior self-management. The purpose of such programs is to support the child as he learns to take better control of his own actions and reactions. This type of cognitive behavioral therapy is an important adjunct to treatment for attention problems whether or not medications are used. It may even improve brain3 months ago 20. A huge percentage of diagnosed learning problems involve some aspect of language learning, because language skills are needed for most3 months ago 21. Language Skills: A Foundation of3 months ago 22. Students who lack good listening skills often appear to be inattentive, which may be mistaken for an attention3 months ago 23. Linking language to “mind movies” to improve memory and understanding • “Seeing” the story or the math problem (“Sue had ten apples in a basket. Seven fell out. How many does she have now?”). Children who can’t create their own mental pictures are likely to add 7 + 10 because they can’t imaginatively represent what happened. • Picturing the action in a history text, or visualizing the steps in a science experiment are effective methods of understanding and remembering content in high school subjects, which are often taught through either textbooks or lectures with no pictures3 months ago 24. Language Development: Red3 months ago 25. According to neurologist Martha Denckla, who was instrumental in first describing “executive function disorder,” there are at least two conditions that can mimic the symptoms of this disorder and create what she terms “pseudo-ADHD” and “pseudo-dysexecutive” conditions. They are (1) a language-based learning disability, such as expressive language disorder or dyslexia, and (2) “a kind of overload/exhaustion phenomenon,” which she attributes to “performance anxiety” that reduces the child’s ability to tolerate stress. Such anxiety is exacerbated, she finds, by increases in “high-stakes testing and overzealous homework assignments.3 months ago 26. When analyzing what is going wrong with a child’s learning, it is a mistake to look for a problem only within the child. There may also be a problem at some level of the system or environment in which the youngster is expected to3 months ago 27. analyze exactly what is going wrong. This process, called differential diagnosis, means becoming a careful observer and asking the right questions to uncover the real roots of the3 months ago 28. Many children who have eased through primary grades suddenly confront a wall when they hit fourth grade. Schools should—but don’t always—teach students these more complicated processes of learning and guide them through each step in, say, how to organize their assignments or follow specific timetables in preparing a long-term project. Very often parents end up having to pick up the3 months ago 29. “Calvin can’t pay attention.” By now you may be able to come up with the first questions we should ask: “What is it, specifically, that Calvin, an eighth-grader, can’t pay attention to? Can he pay attention to anything?3 months ago 30. There is a fine line, however, between accepting (or even celebrating) a child’s uniqueness and ignoring a significant and treatable problem. On the other hand, I have known families who became so overinvolved with the problem and a “sickness” model of learning that they lost sight of their whole child. Maintaining perspective while slogging one’s way through this emotional and technical swamp is not an easy3 months ago 31. Although attention deficit disorder is an accepted term, many experts are now sure that the problem is not a deficit of attention at all, but rather a difficulty deploying it3 months ago 32. Expose your child to rhyming words. Inability to think of rhyming words at ages four or five is a sign of phonological problems that predict reading difficulties. The ability to match and blend rhyming sounds comes partially from children’s experience with rhyming words. Yet teachers tell us that today’s kids are unfamiliar with poetry, nursery rhymes, or rhyming word play—inexpensive, fun, and a proven means of building reading readiness. The rhythm of poetry may also help reading3 months ago 33. It is estimated that 10 to 20 percent of children are naturally gifted readers who will learn to read and comprehend if they are given adequate exposure to books. Another 20 percent are at high risk for a disability unless they receive specialized, targeted instruction by well-trained teachers. The remaining 60 percent or so are not at special risk, but may develop reading problems unless they receive an adequate language environment at home and good instruction at3 months ago 34. One specific human talent that is notably deficient in autistic syndrome disorders (ASD) is called theory of mind or intersubjectivity. It involves being able (a) to understand that other people have minds and feelings, and (b) to be able to empathize or relate to the other person’s point of3 months ago 35. Touching, feeling, and manipulating objects is probably the best way to internalize these abstract3 months ago 36. Mathematics learning is highly dependent on teaching; if a child has missed out on appropriate instruction, she may not truly have dyscalculia. Math disability overlaps with reading disability, executive function disorders, including ADHD, and is one symptom of nonverbal learning disability3 months ago 37. NVLD was first described by Byron Rourke as a “right-hemisphere” disorder, meaning that, unlike dyslexia, it is not centered in the primary language areas of the brain3 months ago 38. major symptoms include difficulties with math concepts, social skills, perceptual-motor development (e.g., delayed ability to copy geometric figures or alphabet letters) and a tendency to focus on details instead of extracting meaning from a situation.3 months ago 39. “SELI kids have trouble with understanding three things: spaces, faces, and places,”3 months ago 40. No scientific or medical tests are approved to diagnose attention deficit disorder, and thus far no specific genetic or neurological cause has been agreed on.3 months ago 41. Executive function disorder is a more general term, which incorporates problems in planning, organization, study skills, self-control, and self-monitoring/self-checking skills. It obviously overlaps with or is a feature of many other types of learning problems and is a useful diagnosis only if specific recommendations for treatment are part of the package.3 months ago 42. Dr. Posner is developing training programs that help children learn to manage their attention;3 months ago 43. The three-dimensional architecture of the brain can be viewed and described from several different perspectives, which relate to learning differences. For example, side-to-side differences between the right and left hemispheres are important in determining a child’s best methods of1 month ago 44. the frontal lobe; it includes the prefrontal cortex. These areas are key control centers for learning and behavior and have been implicated in attention and “executive”1 month ago 45. academic achievement depend on “connectivity”—how well developing brain circuits have strengthened through being used. Certain types of cells, called white matter, are especially important for1 month ago 46. quality of connectivity holds the key to many learning disorders as well as to creative accomplishment. Parents and teachers can help children achieve strong1 month ago ...Step 5: Teach Self-Regulation, The Key to Success18 234. Its ingredients are • a strong belief in one’s own abilities and potential • self-control • positive relationships with others • motivation and persistence18 235. Self-regulation is an “executive” skill that depends on a widespread system of brain connections dominated by anterior (frontal) brain areas.18 236. executive skills are very susceptible to environmental influence. Frontal lobes are very plastic up until eight years but continue to mature throughout the teens. Here are some of the factors that impede their development:18 237. stress overload from unsafe or disorganized environments, which block the brain’s ability to utilize higher cognitive and control centers18 238. media that pull the child’s attention and control out of her own brain and hand it over to whatever is on the screen18 239. intrusive sensory environments (e.g., noise, visual stimuli, too many toys and excitement, pushy adults)18 240. adults who are unable or unwilling to spend the time to model and teach self-control, attention, thoughtful behavior, forward planning, delay of gratification, persistence18 241. schools that focus on the back of the brain (memorizing information, academic acceleration, scores) at the expense of the front (how to learn, reflect on ideas, and develop positive strategies when confronted by a problem)18 242. overmanagement that reduces a child’s personal sense of control18 243. surprises and upsets are part of any normal life, but chronically hectic, unpredictable, or even dangerous lifestyles make it very difficult for youngsters to mobilize both self-control and academic learning abilities.18 244. even low-level stress, particularly if it is outside the child’s control, has a profound negative impact on learning and general well-being.18 245. Instead of “Write the rhyming words in neat rows, like this” (adult’s brain does the organizing), try “Show me how you could arrange your words on the paper to make it look neat” (child is invited to develop an organizational strategy).18 246. attribution theory helps explain a great deal of life success as well as academic achievement.18 247. Emphasize hard work and persistence (“You really tried, and look how you improved”) rather than intelligence (“You’re so smart!”).18 248. Focus more on the value of learning than on grades. “What did you learn that was interesting/important/useful?” gets better results in the long term than “What did you get?”18 249. children take medication for attention problems, encourage belief that the medication helps them manage their attention rather than that the medication does it for them.18 250. Be a “social skills coach.” Try to help children with social skills18 251. Help children set realistic goals for continued improvement (“This week I will master five words from the spelling list; when I can do five, I’ll go for six”).18 252. Kathy Hopkins, director of the National Institute for Learning Development, calls this “helping the child frame, focus, and filter” experience.14 She confirms that many of today’s children badly need to be taught how as well as what to learn18
review 2: This book caught my eyes on the library shelf because my research focus was on learning styles and learner differences when I was in academia. I want to know what has been updated since I left grad school, especially with children - I have never heard so many cases of learning disabilities in the old days.My two kids are doing very well in school, but knowing what could be wrong will help me to catch any alarming signs before it becomes a real problem. Preventing is always easier than repairing. less

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