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Eide Neurolearning Clinic
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Fernette Eide M.D. and Brock Eide
M.D. M.A. Summer / Fall
2004, Issue 3 Greetings! Welcome to the third issue of our NeuroLearning Newsletter. Our goal in creating this quarterly forum is to provide a place where we can share our thoughts on issues affecting children with learning difficulties and differences, and where we can publish the insights and feedback these thoughts provoke in you. Our Mission:
To understand the minds of
children with learning differences and difficulties, and to use this
understanding to build creative, caring, and nurturing relationships between
them and the adults who care for them. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Understanding Their World PERFECTIONISMYou probably know a perfectionist. Chances are good you're one yourself. (People who comb the Internet looking for parenting and teaching advice usually are!) Many people have tried to define perfectionism, but we like to define it as follows: Perfectionism is that trait of character that keeps certain individuals striving for something more, something better. It leads them to discount the value of the past and present against the imagined worth of the future. Like a sword, perfectionism can cut both ways. It is, to borrow a phrase from Dickens, both the ‘best of traits’ and ‘worst of traits’. Rousseau in his Second Discourse listed perfectionism, along with free will, as one of only two uniquely human characteristics, and he seemed never quite able to decide whether we were better off with it than without it. As he pointed out, we don't see dogs becoming dissatisfied with the contemporary state of "dogginess" and wanting to develop the manners and morals of their masters. The droopy eyes of the Bassett Hound seem sad to us only because they reflect our own anxieties. In reality they are nothing more than a result of breeding. But on the flip side, because dogs are not dissatisfied with their nature, they never try to change or "perfect" themselves. Unlike human society, doggy culture does not change appreciably from generation to generation. A dog may learn a few tricks during its life, but it doesn't pass these on to its offspring. It is up to the master to transmit new tricks to new generations of dogs. Humans, of course, are radically different. One individual may create and transmit more change within the span of a single life than has been experienced within the entire history of most other animal species. Not surprisingly, those who experience the greatest growth and create the most change are those in whom the force of perfectionism is most strongly felt. Without the goad of perfectionism, even the most extraordinary gifts and talents would remain idle, and potentials remain unfulfilled. Consequently, perfectionism should be recognized as both necessary and potentially extremely valuable, so it can be utilized as an asset rather than shunned as a liability. This is not to say that perfectionism does not deserve its somewhat dubious reputation. The force that led Edison to tinker ceaselessly on his creations until he'd released an army of new inventions, or pianist Andre Watts to practice his concertos until he'd left blood on the keys can also, when not properly channeled and controlled, become the destructive dissatisfaction that caused Van Gogh to slice off his ear, or caused Leonardo da Vinci to say near the end of his life, “I have offended God and mankind because my work didn’t reach the quality it should have…” At its best, perfectionism can be an incomparable source of drive, persistence, and high standards. It can lead us to pursue excellence and to improve our skills. It can sustain us when we feel like giving up, and keep us working away at difficult problems when others less driven have abandoned them as insoluble. However, at its worst perfectionism can be isolating, paralyzing, even consuming. Perfectionism can cause children to feel worthless, unlovable, perpetually dissatisfied with their efforts and abilities, and can even lead them to consider suicide. It can make even our greatest successes appear flops, and can blind us to the value of our efforts, as Lincoln experienced when he declared, “The Gettysburg address was a flat failure.” So how should we handle this dual-edged sword? First, by recognizing that perfectionism is often an important aspect of giftedness, and that it needs to be recognized for the gift it is. Children should not be too easily satisfied with their efforts, but should be encouraged to set goals which take some struggle to achieve. Second, by recognizing the potential dangers of perfectionism. Perfectionistic children should be encouraged to learn about others who have struggled with the demands of perfectionism--both persons who have done well and those who have done poorly. In addition to reading biographies of individuals who have struggled with these issues, it is also helpful for adults to share their own stories or those of other family members with children struggling with these issues. Children should be taught to see perfectionism's long-term benefits and its unintended traps, so they can begin to recognize the signs of each in themselves. They should be taught to realize that they are not alone in their struggle with perfectionism. That essentially anyone who has ever accomplished anything of value in any field has had to contend with the potentially disabling demands of perfectionism to set expectations that are both challenging and reasonable, and that allow them to maintain their physical and emotional health. Sometimes we need to remind children (and ourselves) that people are not just floating intellectual vapors--that we are compound beings, rational animals, with real bodies and emotions that have needs and demands and limitations of their own that may conflict with those of the intellect. Once we learn to better care for bodies and souls by seeking rest, relaxation, and true sustenance, we will find that we feel better and think better as well. And grownups need to be on the lookout for signs that perfectionism is taking an unhealthy toll on children. It won't always be obvious that perfectionism is behind a child's sadness or despair, so watch carefully for signs of excessive self-deprecation or unrealistic expectations. When one of our own children was having trouble in school that were aggravated by his perfectionistic tendencies, we let him read what other children had said about their school problems, some of which had been posted on a listserve, and others which were in Leta Hollingworth's Children with Above 180 I.Q. The sense of kinship he experienced with these others and the increasing self-recognition it provoked helped him experience a real breakthrough. By sharing in the laughter and the tears of these other children, he found himself relieved of a great burden. A number of good books are available which deal with the issue of perfectionism. For those interested in further reading, these are a few of the books we've found most helpful (click on the link to bring you to the title on Amazon): What's So Bad About Being Too Good? Stick Up for Yourself, Guiding the Gifted Child, and for parents, Raising Resilient Children and The Optimistic Child. Of course, for those perfectionistic parents out there we want you to remember that just because you don't read all of them that doesn't mean you're not living up to your potential.... (;-D) _______________________________________________________________________________________________ 2e LIKE ME: In this section of our newsletter we like to highlight the stories of heroes from history who were "twice-exceptional" (2e) as children--that is, both gifted and learning challenged. Our hero this month was by any accounting one of the most important and remarkable figures of the twentieth century, but as a boy in the nineteenth century he showed few signs of promise. See if he sounds like anyone you know: He was born into one of the most famous families in his country. His father was a top leader in government, and his mother was a renowned society beauty. Both of his parents found him difficult and to be honest more than a bit disappointing, so they spent little time with him. He was raised for the most part by his nanny, and as soon as he was old enough his parents sent him to live in a full-time boarding school. The adults at the school were no more impressed with him than his parents had been. He was constantly late for classes, and was forever losing his books, papers, and other important personal items. His school principal wrote to his parents that, "...he is so regular in his irregularity in every way that I don't know what to do." He was physically very active, inattentive, and distractible. As one biographer has written, "When not lost in thought he was in constant motion, jumping up and down, leaping from chair to chair, rushing about, and falling and hurting himself. He seemed to have no sense of personal safety. His love of martial poetry was obsessive. He had a speech defect, and one miserable cold after another....' He had tremendous difficulty with handwriting, and showed great resistance to working on subjects that he didn't like. As he wrote of himself in later years, "Where my reason, imagination, or interest were not engaged, I would not or could not learn.... My teachers saw me at once backward and precocious, reading books beyond my years and yet at the bottom of my [class]. They were offended. They had large resources of compulsion at their disposal, but I was stubborn. Through the influence of his father, this sickly stubborn boy was able to get a place in his country's top military academy. As an adolescent he began to make progress in his studies, and won prizes as well for his daring horsemanship. Following graduation he went to war where he became renowned for his bravery--and also for his recklessness. He was captured, made a daring escape, wrote about it for the press, and became a national hero. The boy who hated to write thus found himself a journalist, and he used the fame he acquired through his writing to enter politics. He rose within his party, then fell, switched parties, rose and fell again. Finally, after years in the political wilderness, in a time of great national crisis, he became the head of his country's government. There he guided his country through one of the most difficult passages in its thousand year history. The flighty, inattentive boy became the symbol of doggedness, determination, and persistence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, and his resolve inspired his nation and the rest of the free world. Later, when out of power, he turned his hand to writing history, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
At the turn of the millennium, this man was named by Time magazine
and many other sources as the greatest individual of the twentieth century.
Not bad for a boy who was believed so unpromising by his parents and
teachers. Can you guess who he was? He was Winston Churchill, Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom, hero of World War II, and a
twice-exceptional child. RESEARCH CORNER: DEMOGRAPHICS OF ASPERGER SYNDROME - 100 SUBJECTS In perhaps the largest study to date examining the background and associated clinical factors present in boys diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, Cederlund and Gillberg have reported finding a high rate of Verbal IQ > Performance IQ, but no other evidence that R hemispheric dysfunction is important in the etiology of this syndrome. Some of their essential findings included the following:
Our Comments: This study from Cederlund and Gillberg confirms our belief that there remains a great need for a more detailed analysis of children diagnosed with 'Asperger Syndrome'. This study also confirms our observation that children diagnosed with Asperger's are not in reality a uniform group suffering solely from an apparently inherited disorder, but are actually a hetereogeneous clinical population of children who show many different clinical and epidemiological features. The high incidence of pregnancy complications and neurologic test abnormalities (EEG, brainstem responses) are consistent with our observation that many of these children who qualify for the Asperger's diagnosis based on often used diagnostic criteria seem to suffer from very different patterns of auditory, visual, language, and sensorimotor impairment. The upshot is, it is important to screen children (and adults) who qualify for the Asperger's diagnosis for signs of neurological and sensory processing impairments. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Clinical Corner: HELP FOR THE SPELLING CHALENGED...ER, CHALLENGED Spelling problems are both common and persistent, and they can be very embarrassing for afflicted students. Many children with severe spelling problems have accompanying reading problems (dyslexia). However, this is not always the case. For example, the author of this article (Brock), although a fairly adequate (though slow) reader, is a speller of singular disrepute who endured years of forehanded knuckle slaps and backhanded compliments from teachers at all stages of his education. The following, from a professor of English Literature in graduate school, is typical of the comments my work inspired: "It's a pity that your spelling is inadequate to bear the weight of your ideas." Ouch. The real pity is that no one ever told me about the many strategies available to help people like me with spelling difficulties learn to master hard-to-remember words. Despite the invention of spellchecks, spelling is still an essential skill for kids in school--maybe more so now than ever, given the increasing use of handwritten exams for grade promotion and college entrance. Even on tests where spelling per se is not supposed to be graded, the "frequent appearance of deformed and mutated words" (as another of my jolly pedagogue/humorists once said) can hardly fail to lead a non-spelling challenged evaluator to view the ideas presented in a more harshly critical light. The answer to helping children with spelling difficulties is to get them to use other forms of memory than the two systems that are most often used for spelling. Before we discuss the alternative memory systems, we should first discuss the two systems more commonly used. First, there is the visual word form memory system that stores a memory of a word as a simple visual image of the letter sequence. This system is impaired in about 70% of children with dyslexia, and in many non-dyslexic children with visual motion control problems. Often, this system will work well enough in children with spelling problems that they can identify the correctly spelled word form when presented with a list of several alternatives (e.g. seperate versus separate versus sepurate versus sepperut), but not well enough for them to spontaneously generate the appropriate form when they are writing. The second major spelling system is the "sounding out" system that stores word memories on the basis of their sounds. Children with problems isolated to the visual system (like those we discussed above) use this sounding out system exclusively for their spelling. As a result, they will spell words purely on the basis of the way they sound. As a result, it is usually easy to understand what they are trying to convey when they are writing, even if they spell many words incorrectly. Examples of such spelling mistakes can be seen in this nursery rhyme, "Seeng u sawng uf sicks pents, uh pawkit ful uv rie." Children with combined problems in both the visual and the sound spelling systems (about 50-60% of children with dyslexia) often make far more dramatic errors in their spelling, and as a result, may have difficulty communicating their ideas. On the same poem, such a child might write, "Sin o soggo sig pins, o pogit fow ori." Although problems in the sounding out system usually cause more severe spelling problems than those in the visual system, the approach to dealing with the spelling problems caused by each is very similar. As we mentioned, this approach is based on using other forms of memory to compensate for the defective visual or sound memory systems. There are a variety of other memory forms available, including: non-word visual memory for pictures, colors or patterns; visual word memory centers that remember the word spelled backwards (mirror image); motor memory centers that remember the motor patterns the fingers or arms go through to spell a word; oral motor memory centers that remember the patterns the mouth and vocal muscles go through to say or spell a word; musical memory centers that can remember word spellings set to songs; narrative or story memory centers that remember word spellings that have been set to a story; and personal or episodic memory centers that help remember word spellings that have been set to a personally meaningful, interesting, funny, or even disgusting story. A number of books are available that outline a variety of different spelling strategies. One book we like that presents a variety of strategies is called Unicorns are Real. If you click on the link, it will take you Amazon.com where you can find out more information about the book. It was written by a woman who couldn't read until she was 12 years old, but who then went on to get 2 Masters Degrees and is a teacher of teachers in Special Education. Another resource we're beginning to develop are Visual Spelling Cards which incorporate a variety of the different memory forms listed above to help make the spellings of words more memorable. We'll describe our first set of these cards in our next section. _______________________________________________________________________________________________
FIRST SET OF
VISUAL SPELLING CARDS NOW AVAILABLE We've recently developed our first set of Visual Spelling Cards to help children who have trouble remembering the spelling differences between homonyms, or words that sound the same although they are spelled differently. These cards employ the memory principles we've been talking about. As an example of this approach take a look at the word pair shown below which is taken from our card set: here and here. Note how a "sound dependent" reader would be unable to distinguish between these words. But note also how the use of color helps to link the 2 "e's" in "here", and the word "ear" in "hear". Note in addition how the pictures link the spellings to the meanings of the words to help make the spellings more memorable. All of these features can help children with good "picture" or visual non-word memories remember these spellings as visual images. As has been shown in research from Oxford University, children who repeatedly practice spelling difficult words using strategies like these can produce significant gains in spelling and word recognition abilities. We are moving our
cards into Flash software programs, if you would like to
purchase a deck, please contact us by email. Thanks! QUESTION: Can anything be done about a child's memory problems? Great question! This is something we're asked all the time, and with good reason. We feel strongly that the issue of memory is all too often neglected when formulating a child's educational plan. A child's strengths or weaknesses in the different aspects of memory is one of the most important determinants of a child's learning preference or style. Our approach (which we call neurolearning) is to advocate a shift in educational strategies to neurologically-based learning, which takes into account and builds on an individual child's brain-based strengths and weaknesses. Memory is not a single all-or-none entity, and problems in memory formation can be caused both by problems in information intake (due to sensory processing problems in the auditory, visual, or somatosensory systems), and in information storage or retrieval. The main routes for information intake (i.e. learning) are auditory, visual, and sensory-motor; but the information taken in by each of these pathways is of many different types and is processed and stored at many different locations throughout the brain. For example, in the area of visual processing, word and letter form memories are stored and processed in different places than memories for colors, abstract shapes, visual movement, and many other visual factors. And in auditory domains, some children can have great auditory memory abilities in a completely quiet room, but will have horrible auditory memories with even slight levels of background noise. These and many other factors play a major role in determining how an individual child will be able to learn and remember in different environments. For example, does a child learn best by visual imagery or example? Does he prefer read text or listening? Does he need to move around or doodle in order to learn, or does she learn best when sitting completely still? Understanding what a child does both well and poorly--especially in the areas of information intake and storage--is a major focus of our practice, and probably helps us more than anything else make specific recommendations for individual children on curricula or teaching style. So the short answer for your question is: Yes! However, matching individual children with appropriate interventions is a complicated business. In upcoming newsletters, we will discuss specific strategies to help children with auditory and visual memory problems.
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