I have been fine tuning one of the parent evening lectures
that I give to parents of children with gross and fine movement difficulties
and I thought that it would be good to share some of the ideas on the blog
page. My main passion about what I do is that I believe
that knowledge and understanding of a child’s difficulties is the first and
most important step towards helping them meet their difficulties with dignity,
self-assurance and belief in themselves. Not only is educating the parents and teachers
important, but also teaching the child about themselves and how they learn and
why they might find things trickier than others is key to maintaining their
sense of self esteem. Life for a child with difficulties is tough and I don’t
believe that we should pretend that those difficulties are not there.
So, what can be challenging for a child with a learning or
movement difficulty? Sitting in class, writing, eating, getting dressed,
playing in the playground are just a few things. Some children find one area
particularly tricky and others find all areas a challenge. Every child is
different and the environment that they are brought up in can affect what areas
they find most challenging or the easiest.
Whilst sitting at their desk or on the floor, some children
tend to: Have slumped posture, lean on others, lie down, wiggle, fall over or
hold their head in their hands. The reason for these reactions could be that
the child has a low resting state of the muscles and less resistance in their
connective tissue structures. This presents as “low tone” which means that the
muscles are less ready to contract and the surrounding connective tissue does
not provide enough resistance for the muscle to work against. As a result the
child may look floppy and loose. A child
with bendy joints often has this kind of “low tone” due to the lack of inherent
stiffness in their connective tissue. This affects how well they control their
muscles and as a result may often have decreased postural control (core
control), which makes it hard to maintain a standing or seated position for an
extended amount of time. It is most
difficult to maintain a posture when children are still. Some children need to keep
moving in order to use the moving muscles to provide their postural support and
stability, rather than their core or inner muscles. Movement also helps increase the level of brain
activity which send more messages to the floppy muscles to be stable. As you
can imagine all of this activity takes up a lot of energy, which is why sitting
still can be harder for many children than running a race.
Why is Writing Challenging?
In the same way that low muscle tone and postural control
affects sitting, so does it affect writing, as we all need to sit upright, maintain
our posture or even just stay seated in our desk in order to write. Similarly,
if a child leans on their arms or cheek to provide their support, it creates a
very tricky position to write from. If you don’t have a stable and controlled
base of support, it is very difficult to hold your pencil effectively. It
reminds me of a concept my science teacher taught me about fulcrums and levers.
If you don’t have a secure fulcrum, your lever will collapse. (Imagine your
shoulder blade muscles as your fulcrum and your arm and fingers as the levers).
Finally, children with learning difficulties often rely too much on their
vision and less on their sensations and ability to integrate their senses. Therefore
they can focus more on the pencil than on the writing. Or, they cannot rely on
the feel of the pencil in their hand and therefore can hold too tightly or too
softly. This is exaggerated by the lack of shoulder control so they often press
down too hard on the page or conversely, too softly. Once again, we have a
scenario of a lot of energy being used up in order to perform a simple task,
with most of the child’s attention being taken up with the background of
writing rather than the writing itself. As a result, the child can become
exhausted, bored, fidgety, deflated or frustrated with writing and all of these
emotions can play out in a number of ways in the classroom.
The continued challenges that children with difficulties
have with daily activities like dressing & eating and academic performance
can impact on a child’s self-esteem. They can become withdrawn and shy or act
out abrasively or aggressively around their peers. It is common for a child
with a learning or academic difficulty to experience difficulties with physical
activities as well (such as hopping, skipping, coordination, ball games,
running) and as a result they do not include themselves in playground
activities. This can further exacerbate the social difficulties these children
have. They can become frustrated and upset with themselves or even embarrassed
and the resulting social issues have the most impact on a child’s feelings of
who they are and what they are worth.
I will write my next blog about instilling a sense of self
efficacy in these children-parents, coaches, therapists and teachers: we all
have a role to play!
