A Review/Summary of “Different Learners” by Jane M. Healy, Part 2

[author][author_info]This is the first half of a review of “Different Learners: Identifying, Preventing, & Treating Your Child’s Learning Problems” (2010) by Jane M. Healy. Our guest blogger is Melissa Shipman, Executive Director of PACE and a teacher of children with special needs for over 10 years. Melissa lives in Georgia, USA with her husband and two young girls.[/author_info] [/author]

In Part Two, “Your Unique Child,” Healy examines the latest brain research, which offers a surprising wealth of information that we can share with parents. Here are a few quotes that made me think about many of the TCKs I’ve known:

“Panic or acute embarrassment can sabotage memory and thinking.”

“Intense stress can be a major disruptor of healthy brain development.”

She also reminds us how difficult it can be to raise children with healthy brains: “We give a lot of lip service these days to boosting academic achievement, but too often our culture acts directly against these necessary “habits of mind.” (connections for language, problem solving, memory, attention, logical thinking, etc.) She sympathizes, as should we, with the plight of parents of struggling learners, who are “trying to make sense of conflicting information and claims by therapists hawking “cures” based on inconclusive brain research.”

Healy emphasizes building better brain connectivity, something she calls a major key to learning.  One of her strongest pieces of advice is that play is a great way to strengthen what researchers call “neural intersections” in our brain. Play strengthens connectivity in our brains (for children and adults!), and Healy writes that true intelligence comes from connectivity rather than isolated information.

The brain, she writes, is especially plastic from birth to our mid-20s, but this doesn’t mean that parents and educators should try to cram in as much information and skills as possible. Instead, she writes, “There are many good reasons to be extremely cautious about trying to interfere with a child’s natural developments time-table.  I have worked with children with “learning disabilities” that may have been caused by too much early pressure to learn the wrong things.”

The author discusses the effects of media on brain development at length. Watching on-screen violence is particularly damaging, as it reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex (“implicated in just about every possible learning disorder”) and induces stress hormones that impair academic learning and emotional health. Healy also writes that “if language synapses are crowded out by too much TV and video gaming, reading and writing problems may follow.”

Part 3 of Different Learners is called “Childhood in the 21^st Century: Pathway to Problems or Gateway to Success?” Dr. Healy discusses the effects of stress on a child’s brain and learning, introducing the concept (to me) of cognitive reserve. Cognitive reserve relates to extra brain connections, thinking power, and mental resilience, and serves as a “sturdy buffer against damage, stress, and even brain disease [that] is accumulated through a lifetime of healthy brain activity fostered by wholesome lifestyle choices and nurturing environments.”

Chronic stress leads to a disruption of logical thinking, memory and attention, motivation, and self-esteem. When something happens to a child to cause them to be fearful, Healy states that “every repetition of an experience increases the probability that the same cells will again fire in the same pattern.” This means that children will have difficulty forgetting something that was at one time threatening, and that “trying to talk a child out of a school phobia is probably futile, since this part of the brain does not understand logic.”

The author went into detail about the concept of “developmentally appropriate,” and identified several problems that may come about when parents and/or educators pushing a child through their development.

• Pushing a child may actually create or accelerate learning disabilities.
• Plugging learning into unprepared and immature brains will fail and possibly lead to “botched neural connections.”
• The stress of being pushed may lead to motivation problems and avoiding challenges.
• Parents are the experts on their children, and “if you’re worried that it’s “too much,” it probably is.”
• Learning issues should never devolve into power struggles.

So what now? Here are Healy’s recommendations for what she calls “Brain Cleaning 101,” and are practices we can safely recommend to the parents we serve.

1. Disrupt the “disruptors” in our everyday environment that come in the form of environmental toxins.
2. Feed the learning brain, as “diet may be a critical factor in the expression of genes related to learning problems.”
3. Provide more cognitive reserve for children. She writes that middle schoolers are at high risk for chronic sleep deprivation because they need more sleep than parents realize (about 9 hours). Some professionals are referring children to a sleep clinic before going on to address ADHD concerns.
4. Manage the media with which a child interacts, particularly online gaming for children who have social issues. Her recommendation is to interact with children as they watch or play, and to “lend your child your adult brain” as you do so.
5. Teach self-regulation, the key to success. How do you do this?

• Emphasize hard work and persistence rather than intelligence
• Focus more on the value of learning than the grades
• If children are on medication, encourage belief that medication helps them manage their attention
• Be a “social skills” coach
• Enforce the need for basic good manners and kindness
• Help children set realistic goals for continued improvement

A final point that jumped out to me relates to therapies I’ve seen more and more among our TCK schools and parents on the field. Dr. Healy writes, ““Less research support has been assembled for this possibility [vision therapy for “visual dyslexia”].  Also controversial are claims that visual or motor training programs or devices will directly improve academic performance.  Such programs are not currently accepted as evidence-based, although there are anecdotal reports of good results.” Later in the book, she makes this recommendation: “The brain is incredibly complex!  We still have so much to learn that you should be skeptical of “guaranteed” remedies or treatments.”

“Raising children today has become a battle to preserve healthy common sense in an out-of-control world.”

What is the best information or idea discussed here that you will share with the parents you serve? 

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