Nadia Rabe - Certified ILT Practitioner

| Handwriting |

For Parents and Teachers
Do children still need to learn handwriting?
Written by Dr Shirley K***t

Even though adults seldom communicate by means of pens these days, it seems that there is good reason to continue teaching children how to write legibly.

Lucinda McKnight an Maria Nicholas discuss this in The Conversation. They remind us of how the world of writing is changing very quickly. From graduating from pen-and-paper to keyboards, we have speech-to-text software and future developments might see decoders that read brain activity so we don’t even have to use our hands to write at all. ‘Writing’ may be completely changed.

McKnight and Nicholas believe that there are still reasons why teaching cursive handwriting is necessary.

1. Fine motor skills
Handwriting develops critical fine motor skills and the coordination needed to control precise movements. These movements are required to conduct everyday home and work-related activities. It is also these motor skills that allow handwriting to become legible and fluent as we develop and (interesting thought) who knows that technology might change course and we are taken back to the past. There is a caution that using technology and AI might allow learners to cheat on tests so handwritten answers may be required.

2. It helps you remember
Handwriting has important cognitive benefits, including memory. Research suggests traditional pen-and-paper notes aid memory, due to the greater complexity of the handwriting process. In addition, reading and handwriting are closely linked. Learners become better readers through practicing writing.

3. It's good for well-being
Handwriting, and related activities such as drawing, are tactile, creative and reflective sources of pleasure and wellness for writers of all ages. Many people enjoy calligraphy and handwriting journals.

4. It's very accessible
Handwriting does not need electricity, devices, batteries, software, subscriptions, a fast internet connection, a keyboard, charging time or the many other things on which digital writing depends. It only needs pen and paper. It can be done anywhere and is particularly useful when it comes to writing a birthday card, filling in printed forms and so on.

5. It's about thinking
Most importantly, learning to write and learning to think are intimately connected. As we write, we form, develop and organise ideas. Thinking can’t be outsourced to technology.
In summary, while writing perfect cursive may become less important in the future, people of all ages will still need to be able to write legibly and fluently in their education and in their broader lives.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) strives to uncover the root causes of puzzling behaviours and learning difficulties in children. Visit the website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about this approach.

We list practitioners near you to help as well as the accredited courses we offer parents, teachers and other helping professionals to become more knowledgeable about brain development and what might go wrong.

Teachers earn 15 TCPD points for successful completion of the course as well as credits from ETDP-SETA for further studies in Special Needs Education. Parents are also credited with ETDP-SETA and so ILT can be a pathway to further academic study.

ILT 1 courses are available as attendance or by correspondence. Details are on the website but you are welcome to contact us at [email protected].

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Image above supplied by Freepik.

For Parents and Teachers
The brain is to blame. Or is it?
Written by Dr Shirley K***t

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.

Visit our website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about the ILT approach. If you would like to receive more articles like this one, remember to Share and Like our page.

We also offer training courses for parents, teachers and other helping professionals to better understand the underlying causes of children’s learning and behaviour difficulties. Details are on the website or contact us at [email protected].

Motor planning is the process of approaching novel motor tasks. This process comes naturally to some, but requires a lot of effort for many children. Motor planning challenges often appear as clumsiness or avoidance of new movement or play activities. Motor planning consists of 3 steps:

Today is World Mental Health Day. 1 in 4 people suffer from a mental health problem. Physical illness is very much visible but not mental illness and therefore, it requires more attention. It's okay not to be okay. Feelings are valid. You matter. Let's be gentle with one another 💚

Crawling is important! Why?

Crawling...

⭐ Helps babies - and big kids - strengthen their cores, shoulders, arms, wrists and hips. This in turn aids with building strength needed for gross and fine motor skills.

⭐ Encourages the development of the palmar arches important during colouring and writing.

⭐ Improves depth perception and visual maturation. As the eyes look up and down, and objects become closer or further away as the baby moves, the eye muscles are hard at work.

⭐ Encourages development of hand-eye coordination.

⭐ Builds connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain as the baby moves his limbs unanimously, which is important for midline crossing activities.

⭐ Enhances sensory development, especially when crawling on different textured surfaces. This helps baby to gain tactile experiences as well as proprioceptive input that teaches him/her about body awareness.

If your child skipped the crawling milestone, crawled with an atypical pattern, or didn't crawl unanimously on all fours, he/she can't get all the above mentioned benefits. ILT can help! Book an evaluation for your child with Nadia Rabe - Certified ILT Practitioner to find out what caused your child to have problems with crawling.

What do you need to know about midline crossing?

⭐ Important for establishing connections between the right and left hemispheres of the brain
⭐ Needed for activities like stringing beads / reading / writing / playing sports
⭐ Preschool/school-aged children need midline crossing in order to read, write, colour and play sports

If your child has difficulties with crossing the midline, it means that the two hemispheres of the brain are not effectively communicating, and you may see your child having trouble with higher functions & skills, like reading / maths difficulties, trouble with organising and socialising, poor coordination.

Integrated Learning Therapy can help! Make an appointment with Nadia Rabe - Certified ILT Practitioner to have your child evaluated. Covid regulations are in place to ensure everyone's safety 🌻

OUR SENSES

We are all very familiar with the 5 senses - touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing.

But did you know that we have other senses as well, particularly two very crucial senses: Vestibular and Proprioception. These 2 senses play a very important role in a child's success at school.

Read more down below 👇

For Parents and Teachers
Our 5 senses? Think again!
Written by Dr Shirley K***t

Schools have it all wrong. Year after year, teachers inform learners about the five senses and we are all very familiar with the role that touch, smell, taste, sight and hearing play in our lives. Yet they omit other senses, in particular two that are crucial for living and learning. These two are ignored perhaps because they are invisible to us, but nevertheless need our attention. We could argue that these might be the most important to children’s school success.

1. Vestibular
The vestibular sense is housed in the inner ear and common knowledge is that it enables us to maintain balance. However, vestibular activities are responsible for much more. It is one of the building blocks of brain development and later learning. Here are some of its functions which are linked to school success (extracted from the website Griffinot.com):

Alertness and focus
The vestibular system helps with alertness and we know that learning firstly requires good attention and focus. Without good attention, it is very difficult to stay on task or to listen to your teacher. If you can’t stay focused on a task, it will take a lot longer to get the work done.

Balance and postural control
Balance and postural control (easily maintaining bodily positions) are essential for all motor skills. Sitting at a desk requires good postural control. So does sitting on the carpet. Without it, you will likely start leaning on your peers or fidgeting. Using a pencil or a computer also require good postural control. Playtime and sports are also much more difficult without good balance and postural control.

Children who are more sensitive to movement may avoid activities and reduce their opportunities for learning. Those who seek out extra input often are too quick and have poor control over their movements. They often get in trouble for constantly being on the go. Those with slower responses often have poor coordination and tire more easily as they need to use more effort to sustain positions than their peers.

Spatial awareness
Spatial awareness is knowing where your body is in relation to everything else in your environment. It’s important to ensure you don’t bump into others and can easily move around. Knowing how things are positioned in space is also important for subjects like maths and essential for times tables. It plays a role in making sure you get your letters and numbers facing the right way and on the line. Visual processing is also important for these things, but the vestibular system helps to lays the foundation.

Eye movements
Good control over eye movements is also essential for most learning tasks. When reading, you need to be able to scan from left to right, then move your eyes back to the left without skipping lines. When looking at the teacher, you have to be able to look at the teacher then the board then your work, ideally with smooth transitions between each. To catch a ball you need to be able to track it and keep focused on it to allow your hands to be ready to catch. If you’re running you also need the image to stay steady rather than bounce up and down.

Overall our vestibular sense is really essential for learning! This is why the more opportunities a child is given for vestibular activities throughout the school day or during home schooling, the more readily available they will be to receive cognitive information.

2. Proprioception
The proprioceptive sense is our subconscious awareness of our body. A child who has difficulty with the proprioceptive sense may be the one who is clumsy, who sleeps restlessly, who plays too roughly because she is unaware of where her body is in space or how to moderate her movements.

Not knowing where your position is in space makes it difficult to understand abstract concepts such as before and after, above and below, up and down. This impacts on mathematics, time concepts and spelling, amongst others.

While it may not be noticeable to us adults as observers, these children may be working really hard just to keep their bodies in their seats during lessons. If they are working that hard to keep their bodies in the right position, it may be really hard for them to concentrate on what is exactly being taught. We can help these children out by allowing movement breaks prior to learning experiences so they are as ready as they can be to receive and process information.

The good news is that we can help a child restore better functioning of these senses. In the next post, I’ll be listing signs that a child’s vestibular and proprioceptive senses are in need of help.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) seeks causes of learning and behaviour challenges. Visit our website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about this approach. We list practitioners who can help and also the accredited courses we offer to teachers, parents and other helping practitioners. These allow you to better understand the development and functioning of the brain, what can go wrong, and how you can help.

As long as the Covid lockdown continues, we are offering our ILT 1 correspondence course at a 25% discount. Details are on the website but further enquiries can be made at [email protected].

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Happy August everyone! Have a great month 🌸

EXERCISE AND THE BRAIN

For Parents and Teachers
Exactly how does exercise affect the brain?
Written by Dr Shirley K***t

In his book ‘Spark’, Psychiatrist John Ratey, MD, explains how children’s brains benefit from exercise.

Firstly, exercise sparks the production in the brain of the most remarkable protein called Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF). This protein has been dubbed ‘fertiliser for the brain’, or ‘miracle-gro’ because it makes it possible for the brain to produce new cells and take in new information. It literally causes the brain to grow more connections. It also helps the brain increase the uptake of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. These are important for forming and keeping long-term memories and for the growth and development of brain tissue.

Exercise also helps to enhance cognitive flexibility, which allows us to shift our thinking and to produce a steady flow of creative thoughts and answers. It has a positive effect on the brain’s hippocampus, which is involved in memory making and is important for learning. Importantly, the more complex the movements during exercise, the more complex the brain connections. This means that activities that challenge brain and body simultaneously (for example, ballet, skateboarding, martial arts), have a greater positive impact. The technical movements in these sports activate an area of the brain that controls balance, timing, sequencing, evaluating consequences, switching, error corrections, fine motor adjustments, intense focus and concentration.

Studies have proved that there is a big overlap between attention, consciousness and movement. The attention circuits are regulated by neurotransmitters, which are generated and balanced by BDNF, which is sparked by exercise. Movement and attention share overlapping neural pathways and that is why activities that activate the brain and body work well for children who struggle to concentrate and focus. They have to pay attention while learning new movements, which activates and coaches both systems simultaneously.

There is definitely huge benefit in children learning to control their bodies through activities involving highly organised movements. Random, aimless running around might help blood circulation and send oxygen to the brain but the most benefit for learning involves coordinated movement.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) searches for the underlying causes for learning and behaviour difficulties. Visit our website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about this approach. We list practitioners near you to help and also offer accredited courses for parents and teachers to help to better understand the development and functioning of the brain.

As the Covid lockdown continues, we continue to offer our ILT 1 correspondence course at a 25% discount. Details are on the website but enquiries may also be made to [email protected].

Remember to Like and Share this post to receive more.

THE LEARNING BRAIN

For parents and teachers
Fascinating facts about the learning brain
Written by Dr Shirley K***t

This article is adapted from the book of psychologist Louis Cozolino, entitled The social neuroscience of education. It contains such valuable insights and advice that it seems worthwhile to share more widely. If you are interested in his book, it is available on Amazon.

The human brain isn’t designed for mass education. It has been shaped over millions of years in response to the demands of ever-changing human environments. Over time, brains grew in size and complexity; old structures were conserved and new structures emerged. As we evolved into social beings, our brains became incredibly sensitive to our social worlds.

This evolutionary history has resulted in us becoming a diverse collection of human beings with vastly differing abilities. A one-size-fits-all model of education is doomed to fail the majority of children. This poses a challenge for educators because a great deal of flexibility is needed in classrooms to accommodate a range of learners. Neuroscience is striving to understand how our brains actually work and use that knowledge to benefit classroom learning.

Here are nine scientific insights that parents and teachers might want to keep in mind.

1. The brain is a social organ.
Our brains require stimulation and connection to survive and thrive. A brain without connection to other brains and without sufficient challenge will shrink and eventually die—moreover, the modern human brain’s primary environment is our matrix of social relationships. As a result, close supportive relationships stimulate positive emotions, neuroplasticity, and learning.
That’s why it pays for teachers to create positive social experiences in the classroom. From a neurobiological perspective, the position of the teacher is very similar to that of the parent in building the child’s brain. Optimism, encouragement, and giving someone the benefit of the doubt have been shown to positively impact performance—and so does a caring and positive regard for students. Promoting social-emotional learning programs that decrease student conflict and create positive social climates in the classroom are invaluable to learning.

2. We have two brains.
The brain hemispheres have differentiated from one another and developed specialised functions and skills. In general, the left hemisphere has taken the lead on language processing, linear thinking, and pro-social functioning while the right hemisphere specializes in visual-spatial processing, strong emotions, and private experience. Most tasks, though, involve contributions from both hemispheres. So, it is important to understand how to engage both in the classroom context.

Good teachers intuitively grasp this in their students, and they will seek to balance the expression of emotion and cognition, encouraging overly rational students to be aware of and explore their feelings while helping anxious students develop the cognitive capabilities of their left hemispheres to regulate their emotions.

Storytelling can help here, as stories can serve as powerful organizing tools for neural network integration. A story that is well told, containing conflicts and resolutions and thoughts flavoured with emotions, will shape brains and connect people.

3. Early learning is powerful.
Much of our most important emotional and interpersonal learning occurs during our first few years of life, when our more primitive neural networks are in control. Early experiences shape structures in ways that have a lifelong impact on three of our most vital areas of learning: attachment, emotional regulation, and self-esteem. These three spheres of learning establish our abilities to connect with others, cope with stress, and feel that we have value.

Every time children behave in a way they (or we) don’t understand, parents and teachers have the opportunity to engage in an exploration of their inner world. Encouraging learners to write about their experiences in diaries and journals can help, as it lets youngsters become the masters of their experience and reducing anxiety and stress. Research has shown that writing about your experiences can increase well-being and help with emotional regulation, which may have been impaired through early traumatic experiences.

4. Conscious awareness and unconscious processing occur at different speeds, often simultaneously.
Conscious awareness and explicit memory are but a small fraction of the vast amount of neural processing that occurs each millisecond.

Think of how many things you do without having to think about them: breathing, walking, balancing, even constructing the syntax of a sentence, is handled automatically. The brain is able to process incoming information, analyse it based on a lifetime of experience, and present it to us in half a second. The brain then creates the illusion that what we are experiencing is happening right now and that we are making decisions based on our conscious thought processes.

Because of this, it is especially important to teach students to question their assumptions and the possible influences of past experiences and unconscious biases on their feelings and beliefs.
This is especially true when thinking about prejudice. Because fear conditioning does not require conscious awareness, the brain’s knee-jerk reaction to individuals of other races is unrelated to our conscious attitudes. Open discussion and increased in*******al exposure can work against prejudice being turned into conscious beliefs and negative behaviours.

5. The mind, brain, and body are interwoven.
Physical activity exerts a stimulating influence on the entire brain that keeps it functioning at an optimal level. Exercise has been shown to stimulate the birth of new neurons and to pump more oxygen through the brain, stimulating capillary growth and frontal-lobe plasticity.

Proper nutrition and adequate sleep are also essential to learning. Although the brain is only a fraction of our body’s weight, it consumes approximately 20 percent of our energy, which makes good nutrition a critical component of learning. Sleep boosts cognitive performance and augments learning while sleep deprivation limits our ability to sustain vigilance and attention. Sleep deprivation has also been shown to impair flexible thinking and decision-making.

6. The brain has a short attention span and needs repetition and multiple-channel processing for deeper learning to occur.
Curiosity, the urge to explore and the impulse to seek novelty, plays an important role in survival. We are rewarded for curiosity by the production of feel-good chemicals in the brain, which are stimulated in the face of something new. Because our brains evolved to remain vigilant to a constantly changing environment, we learn better in brief intervals.
This is likely one reason why variation in materials, breaks, and even intermittent naps facilitate learning. It is probably important for teachers to re-establish attention in their students every five to 10 minutes and continue to shift the focus of attention to new topics.

Learning also involves the strengthening of connections between neurons. “What fires together wires together,” say neuroscientists, which is why repetition supports learning while the absence of repetition and exposure results in its decay. Teachers would do well to make sure they repeat important points in their lessons to deepen learning.

7. Fear and stress impair learning.
Evolution has shaped our brains to err on the side of caution and to trigger fear whenever it might be remotely useful. Fear makes us less intelligent because amygdala activation—which occurs as part of the fear response—interferes with prefrontal functioning. Fear also shuts down exploration, makes our thinking more rigid, and drives “neophobia,” the fear of anything new.

Stressful situations trigger the release of the stress hormone cortisol, which interferes with neural growth. Prolonged stress impairs our ability to learn and maintain physical health.

8. We analyse others but not ourselves: the primacy of projection.
Our brains have evolved to pay attention to the behaviours and emotions of other people. Not only is this processing complex, but it is lightning fast, shaping our experience of others milliseconds before we even become consciously aware of their presence. We automatically generate a theory of what is on their mind—our ideas about what they know, what their motivations may be, and what they might do next. As a result, we are as quick to think we know others as we are slow to become aware of our own motives and faults.

Taking our thoughts about others and trying them on for size has the potential to teach us about ourselves and increase our empathic abilities. Simple exercises that guide learners to examine what and how what they think and feel about others may be true for themselves can open a window of self-awareness, empathy, and insight. Ask children to examine the lives of historical figures and characters from books and movies to help them gain a third-eye perspective on their own strengths, motivations, and flaws.

9. Learning is enhanced by emphasising the big picture—and then allowing students to discover the details for themselves.
When problems are represented at higher levels of abstraction, learning can be integrated into larger schemas that enhance memory, learning, and cognitive flexibility. Starting with major concepts and repeatedly returning to them during a lesson enhances understanding and memory, a phenomenon that increases when students create their own categories and strategies of organising information. Chunking material into meaningful segments makes it easier to remember, and improves test performance while increasing prefrontal activity during encoding.

When it comes to discovering the details, bear in mind that our brains evolved to learn is through trial-and-error exploration. This is true of learning and adapting to both our social and physical environments. Therefore, using what we learn to attempt to solve real-world problems and adjusting our behaviours or ideas based on the results augments the retention of skills and information. We are born to explore, and teachers who make use of that will probably find more success in the classroom.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) is always on the lookout for valuable insights to help understand how learning happens and what might impair a child’s ability to learn. If you would like to know more about our approach and on-line training courses, visit the website www.ilt.co.za. We list practitioners ready to help unravel the causes of a child’s learning difficulties as well as the accredited courses we offer parents and teachers.

We continue to offer our ILT 1 course over correspondence at a 25% discount during the Covid lockdown. Details are on the website but you are welcome to contact us at [email protected].

If you would like to receive more articles like this, remember to Share and Like our ILT page.

HOW TO UNDERSTAND THE SIGNS OF AUDITORY PROCESSING ISSUES

Here's a cheat sheet to help you know and understand the signs of auditory processing deficiencies and if your child is avoiding or seeking this type of input.

https://lemonlimeadventures.com/auditory-system-sensory-processing-explained/

For parents and teachers
Brain development during the ages of 2-7: a crucial time
Written by Dr Shirley K***t

This week’s article was published in Edutopia recently and is worth sharing. It was written by Rishi Sriram and titled Why ages 2-7 matter so much for brain development.

When Albert Einstein was a child, few people—if any—anticipated the remarkable contributions he would make to science. His language development was delayed, worrying his parents to the point of consulting a doctor. His sister once confessed that Einstein “had such difficulty with language that those around him feared he would never learn.” How did this child go from potential developmental delays to becoming, well, Einstein?

Part of the answer to that question is symbolized in two gifts that Einstein received from each of his parents when he was 5 years old. When Einstein was in bed all day from an illness, his father gave him a compass. For Einstein, it was a mysterious device that sparked his curiosity in science. Soon after, Einstein’s mother, who was a talented pianist, gave Einstein a violin. These two gifts challenged Einstein’s brain in distinctive ways at just the right time.

Children’s brains develop in spurts called critical periods. The first occurs around age 2, with a second one occurring during adolescence. At the start of these periods, the number of connections (synapses) between brain cells (neurons) doubles. Two-year-olds have twice as many synapses as adults. Because these connections between brain cells are where learning occurs, twice as many synapses enable the brain to learn faster than at any other time of life. Therefore, children’s experiences in this phase have lasting effects on their development.

This first critical period of brain development begins around age 2 and concludes around age 7. It provides a prime opportunity to lay the foundation for a holistic education for children. Four ways to maximize this critical period include encouraging a love of learning, focusing on breadth instead of depth, paying attention to emotional intelligence, and not treating young children’s education as merely a precursor to “real” learning.

ENCOURAGE A LOVE OF LEARNING
Young children need to enjoy the process of learning instead of focusing on performance. Educators and parents can emphasize the joys of trying new activities and learning something novel. We need to help children understand that mistakes are a welcome, normal part of learning.

This period is also the time to establish a growth mindset - the belief that talents and abilities are developed through effort instead of being innately fixed. Educators should avoid labelling children or making universal statements about their ability. Even compliments such as “You’re so smart” are counterproductive. Instead, emphasize persistence and create safe spaces for learning. Children will learn to love learning if we show enthusiasm over the process rather than fixating on results.

FOCUS ON BREADTH, NOT DEPTH
One way to avoid focusing on results during this phase of development is to emphasize the breadth of skill development over depth. Exposing children to a wide variety of activities lays a foundation for developing skills in a range of fields. This is the time to engage children in music, reading, sports, math, art, science, and languages.

In his book Range, David Epstein argues that breadth of experience is often overlooked and underappreciated. Focusing on excellence in a single activity may be appropriate at some point in life. But the people who thrive in our rapidly changing world are those who first learn how to draw from multiple fields and think creatively and abstractly. In other words, our society needs well-rounded individuals.

Well-roundedness is especially important for children from ages 2 to 7. Their developing brains are ready to soak in a wide range of skill sets. This “sampling period,” as Epstein calls it, is integral. This is the window during which to develop children’s range. There is plenty of time for them to specialize later.

DON’T OVERLOOK EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Yes, we want children to read well and learn the fundamentals of math. But we should not disregard emotional intelligence. The advantages of learning during this first critical period of brain development should extend to interpersonal skills such as kindness, empathy, and teamwork.

Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson explain the importance of developing children’s empathy in their book The Whole-Brain Child. Empathy begins with acknowledging one’s feelings. Therefore, they suggest helping children in this age group to first label their emotions (“I feel sad”) and then tell the story about what made them feel that way (“I feel sad because I wanted ice cream and you said no”). Once children practice labeling emotions, educators can start asking questions that encourage them to consider others’ feelings.
One way to encourage care for others is to include children in what adults do for others. Even allowing young children to help with chores can make them more helpful and considerate people.

DON’T TREAT YOUNG CHILDREN’S EDUCATION AS MERELY A PRECURSOR TO “REAL” LEARNING
Children’s brains can uniquely absorb information during this critical phase. If intelligence is defined as the ability to learn, children between the ages of 2 and 7 may be the most intelligent humans on the planet.

Research suggests that some skills cannot be learned nearly as well after this first critical period of brain development. For example, research shows that children in this age range are best suited to learn the patterns of language development, enabling them to master a second language to the same level as a native language. However, once children reach age 8, their language learning proficiency decreases, and second languages are not spoken as well as native ones. The same age effect is found when learning musical abilities such as perfect pitch.
It is noteworthy that Einstein’s parents did not enroll him in physics lessons—the field that would lead him to a Nobel Prize. Instead, Einstein’s father included him in his work as an engineer. His mother signed him up for violin lessons because she wanted him to love and appreciate music. Both activities worked to develop his young mind holistically. It is tempting to think of early childhood education as a precursor to “real” education. But these may be the years that matter most.

Integrated Learning Therapy (ILT) strives to understand the underlying causes of a child’s difficulties in school and at home. We also strive to help all children achieve their true potential. Visit our website www.ilt.co.za to learn more about this approach. We also offer accredited courses for parents and teachers who wish to empower themselves with insight to how a child’s brain develops, what can go wrong and what can be done to help. Practitioners are listed to help individual families.

Please note that we are still in Lockdown, so ILT continues to offer their ILT 1 correspondence course at a whopping 25% discount. Learn in the comfort of your own home and enjoy the journey!

You are welcome to contact us at [email protected] for more details.