Whole Child Learning and Wellness - Members Area

Member's Area - Educational Pages

When considering a whole child approach to learning, it is important to not only look at the academic deficits, but underlying factors as well. These include problems with sensory and motor systems such as balance, coordination, and poor fine- motor skills; problems with cognition, such as visual and auditory processing as well as memory; and physical problems connected to poor nutrition or food intolerances.

The purpose of this website is to learn about the role each of these four areas play in the proper development of children and their learning. It is meant to help parents and teachers be proactive in helping to identify strengths and weaknesses in their children so they can help strengthen them from the inside out.

These are not quick fixes, but slow processes to help heal and re-structure the body and brain to promote optimal learning. Every child responds differently, and what we learn from one child can help us help another more efficiently. Knowledge is power, and knowing what might be contributing factors can clue us in knowing which professionals will be key in the process of helping our children improve.

Learning is not one size fits all

The desire to learn is innate, and learning is fun for a child if it comes easy. However, there is an increasing number of students in our classrooms that find learning hard and down right exhausting. They sit in the classroom for 6 hours and need to put a lot of effort just to get by. They are easily tired and simply cannot keep up. These children may melt into the classroom to go unnoticed, or they might be highly disruptive to the teacher and others around them. The older they get, the more they realize that they are different from other students. Some may put in 500% of the effort of their classmates just to stay afloat and others will simply give up. Often times they are assessed, but do not qualify for special services. Parents may know that something is just not right with their child, but no one else seems to acknowledge it or know what to do. These parents tend to be desperate as they see their child falling deeper and deeper into the cracks.

The brain grows from the inside out and from the back to the front. When the brain stem, responsible for automatic functions such as breathing and eye movements, is working properly, it allows the parts of the brain responsible for learning free to do its job. However, if the brain stem did not fully develop and thus did not make the appropriate connections to the other parts of the brain, such as the pre-frontal cortex and language centers in the temporal lobe, then the outer layers responsible for learning need to compensate for the brain stem and will not be sufficiently accessible for thinking and learning.

There are a myriad of reasons that the brain may not be functioning as it should. Examples are complications at birth, reactions to vaccination, food sensitivities, poor nutrition, not enough practice crawling appropriately before walking, emotional or physical trauma, or simply a bad experience. However, neuroresearchers for decades now, understand that the brain can re-wire itself and change its structure with the right input, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. The books The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge and The Woman Who Changed Her Brain by Barbara Arrrowsmith-Young are excellent resources to understand how this is possible.

The Learning Ladder

As we can see in the visual to the right, learning develops in steps or phases, and academic knowledge is the culmination at the top. Successful learning in school is dependent upon strongly developed underlying processes. Although each of the processes, or rungs, are not learned in isolation, they do build on one another and weaknesses in the lower part of the ladder effect all the rungs above. Therefore, when trying to address issues in the higher levels, it is important to look more closely at the steps below to determine where more hidden weaknesses lie. Addressing these areas will support the development of the upper rungs, sometimes without ever directly doing interventions in those areas. This means that there should not simply be one approach when helping your child. The school's typical response, especially in this day and age of high stakes testing, is to remediate by providing more instructional opportunities.

This means that there should not simply be one approach when helping your child. The school's typical response, especially in this day and age of high stakes testing, is to remediate by providing more instructional opportunities. This method works best when the deficit is that the child has missed educational opportunities for reasons such as a move, undiagnosed hearing loss that is now being corrected with hearing aides, or illness that may have kept the child out of school for an extended period of time. Sometimes the child has matured since the time of when initial learning took place and is now more developmentally ready to receive it.

Experienced teachers can attest that children who struggle usually have other identifiable characteristics, such as not being able to jump rope, having poor balance and coordination, no being able to sit still, constantly falling or crashing into walls, and having poor fine motor skills in writing and/or speech. Their learning struggles are deeper than needing more instruction. If this is the case, the intervention needs to go beyond simply providing more academic support.

So, what is going on?

source: http://spinewave.co.nz/inflammation-of-the-gut-brain-axis/

Everything starts in the brain. When the brain is not wired up correctly it becomes functionally disconnected and different parts cannot communicate efficiently and may grow or connect at different rates, such as the brainstem and pre-frontal cortex, as well as the left and right hemispheres. All disorders on the attentional-behavioral continuum seem to involve immaturities in the thalamus, basal ganglia, and cerebellum and weak connections to higher thinking parts of the brain.

What causes the poor connections in the brain? There can be many causes, but pretty much you can thank inflammation of the brain. And you can trace brain inflammation to inflammation in the gut. What causes chronic inflammation? An overreactive immune system, heavy metals, food sensitivities, viruses, exposure to electro-magnetic frequencies (such as cell phones and wifi), etc. These children are poor detoxifiers already and now they are having to interact with our very toxic world and are unable to get rid of all the toxins they encounter. This is why vaccines are so problematic. Not only do they contain aluminum and other metals and toxins, but they are designed to be given to a healthy individual, one that can eliminate toxins easily on his own. They tend to be what breaks the camels back.

When the two hemispheres get out of balance

The left and right hemispheres have different jobs and, in a healthy individual, work together to complete tasks such as reading and mathematics. However, if one hemisphere is developing at a different rate than the other, the communication between the two may be jeopardized. See the image on the right to see some of the responsibilities of the different hemispheres.

The left initiates thoughts and movements. It is goal oriented and likes plans. The right is our brake and inhibits movements and thoughts. So, when the right side is active, it stops something initiated by the left. If the right is weak and cannot appropriately activate, the left runs havoc and repetitive thoughts and movements take hold. A classic example is incessant talking of an older child.

Conscious thoughts and actions take place in the frontal lobe. Any time you ask a child to do something and cannot, it is a frontal lobe problem. If a child is unable to initiate, it is a left frontal lobe issue and if the child is unable to inhibit, it is a problem with the right.

Below, we see what issues may arise when there are blockages in either hemisphere. Simply put, behavioral disorders arise from a weakness of the right hemisphere and over dominance of the left, and academic disorders arise from a weakness of the left hemisphere and over-dominance of the right. Most children in remedial programs, such as reading or math support, are left-weak and strong-right.

Right weak, left strong

Balanced

Left weak, right strong

What can be Done?

In order to help our children succeed, we need to essentially burn the candle from both ends. We need to first attack the chronic inflammation of the body and at the same time, help the brain to develop from the bottom-up. This is the approach at Whole Child Learning Solutions. Therapies, such as cognitive training, speech therapy, neuro-feedback therapies are all great, however, if being implemented on a child who experiences chronic brain inflammation, the results will either be minimal, or they might not be long-lasting.

Whether you are a teacher or parent, this website will give you the tools you need to support your struggling child or student. Select the parent and teacher support tab and the sub tabs for a plethora of resources to get started on your own. Need more advice or support...