No Child Left Behind

Originally the term learning disability was used to describe school children who were not achieving up to their grade level and who exhibit disruptive behavior. Most often this is not due to a lack of innate intelligence, rather the problem can be traced to the lack of proper integration or balance in the brain function itself and in its coordination with physical body functions.

Actually all of us, children and adults alike, have some degree of learning disabilities/behaviors.

Signs of poor neurological organization include:

? Reversals in reading and letter writing

? Unusual reading or writing postures

? Understanding instructions as opposite to what was intended

? Difficulty in doing cross motor activities

? Hyperactivity, lack of attention span, etc

I have presented many show and tell sessions in schools to demonstrate to the teachers how the children?s learning problems can be corrected.

How many times have I heard kids saying, ?I don?t feel good when I read. Many times I have heard adults say, ?I hate reading, I keep falling asleep. All this too can be easily corrected.

Your solution is here!!

We have a left-brain and a right-brain. Both sides of the brain have to work together. What happens with children with learning difficulties is that both sides of the brain are not communicating with each other and also with the muscles.

We have to get all our brain control circuits working together. This is like getting all the cylinders in an auto engine firing in the proper order, so the engine will run smoothly and powerfully.

The upper part of our brain is divided into two halves right down the middle like a walnut. A bridge called the corpus callosum connects the two halves.

Like a drawbridge, if the bridge is stuck open, cars are not able to cross. We can close the bridge but if we don?t lock it, it may open again.

Like a drawbridge, the two halves of our brain cannot communicate with each other when the bridge connecting the two halves are stuck open. We have to close it and lock it.

Reading may be very difficult for some children. When we read we start on the left side of the page, which activates the right brain. We have to cross the mid-line. So we start out by turning off the right brain when we start to read. By the time we get to the right side of the page we turn off the left-brain.

We talked about the bridge called the corpus callosum that connects the two halves. The energy connecting the two halves has been interrupted.

To do our best school work and to best control our movements in sports and other physical activities, we have to close this draw-bridge and let the right and left sides of our brain communicate with each other.

The left side of our brain controls all the muscles on our right side of our body, where we do language and math tasks. We do our logical thinking here and figure things out by bits and pieces.

The right side of the brain controls all the muscles on our left side of our body. This is where we see the pictures and hear music. We have our imagination and intuition here, and can see the entire picture and understand ideas.

So we want to get all parts of our brain communicating and working together for improving performance and building self-esteem.

ADHD

What we have discovered is that muscles that are not working together and communicating with the brain could be one of the major factors in dealing with ADHD.

The body is a great compensator.

The body is so busy compensating for muscles not working together and communicating with the brain that students have to keep moving to get into a comfortable position to sit in. There seems to he a tug of war with the muscles.

Another factor is neck stress. Through our research, when students look up at the teacher or look down at their desk or look around the room other muscles may go weak.

The muscles are so busy playing tug-of-war with each other that children are not able to sit still. At this point a child may be labeled ADHD.

Neck stress is a problem in athletics, like basketball etc.

The bottom line is to correct the muscle imbalances to communicate with the brain with simple exercises.

Testimomial

Dear Dr. Elizabeth

Thank you for sharing your Children?s Self-Help Techniques with me at the massage convention for my 12 year old son who was having trouble with school since the beginning.

We had his yearly RSP testing and evaluation. The teachers were as shocked as we were to see that he scored 5 years ahead of last years scale in math and reading. He finally made his own grade level.

His attitude is great (most of the time). He is also losing weight and much more interested and active in other projects then he was before. (Has to do with self-esteem right!)

Thank you Julie

Visit http://www.Lovinglife.org for tips and tools for stress management and pain management. Visit my blog at http://www.lovinglifehealth.org Elizabeth Barhydt is a Muscle-Brain Therapist.