Birth to Six - The Most Important Developmental Years
By: Linda Kane, Certified Neurodevelopmentalist
The Neurodevelopmental Approach is like no other approach to human development. It is unique in its way of looking at the whole individual, not the separate pieces. Taking the individual pieces and understanding how they interrelate so you can look at the whole individual will greatly enhance what you do as you work with your child.
The outcome of any individual is based upon the opportunities presented them. If appropriate, specific opportunities are presented, there will be greater level of progress. When enhanced, specific stimulation is offered in the earliest years you can avoid the mistakes which have far reaching consequences.
For every hour you spend specifically stimulating your birth to six children, you will save at least eight hours later. Every hour yields eight hours when they are older!! What a great return. Little children love to learn. Babies have wonderful abilities to learn. They are like sponges continually absorbing information from their environment. These are great development years!
Improving a young child’s environment involves appropriate activities and specific stimulation. There is paramount difference between specific stimulation and random stimulation. Much of what is suggested and offered is random stimulation. Random stimulation will not produce change quickly or efficiently. Walk into most preschool or Sunday school rooms and you will see a good example of random stimulation. Information overload is everywhere: on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Little to nothing is effective input because too much information is being offered.
Stimulation needs to be given with proper frequency, intensity and duration. Frequency means providing enough opportunity and repetition inputting the activity in order for the stimulation to produce a change in the brain and become learned information. Intensity refers to the strength of the input of the stimulation. An activity is intense when it actively engages the child. Duration is the amount of time the stimulation is offered. Typically the shorter the time the stimulation is being offered, the higher the intensity that activity will maintain. Duration also refers to offering the stimulation consistently over the period of time needed to produce change.
Unfortunately, home educating children is a busy time and the question too often becomes what to do to keep the preschool child happy and occupied while teaching the older siblings. Too often education is thought as starting at the age of five or six; however education starts at birth. You have the opportunity to lead and guide your child from a very early age. By simply improving the environment of your child so that developmentally appropriate activities are available, your young child can learn and grow, avoiding errors that result in learning problems in later years. Your children will have a better foundation and greater opportunity for reaching their full God given potential.
We are magnificently created. We are created in the image of the Most High God. God is an orderly God. Thus, each part of His creation was created orderly.
Human development is a hierarchy of stages, meaning each stage is dependent upon the previous state. When stages of development are missed or not thoroughly completed, the foundation is weakened and there will be corresponding inefficiencies and problems. It does not matter if you are working with a typical newborn or a hurt child. There is a developmental flow that needs to be followed for the brain and the central nervous system to organize properly and work correctly.
When a baby is born, the child is basically one level above coma. They do not see very well or hear very well. They do not feel, smell, or taste properly. You can take a little newborn and pinch his little cheeks or squeeze his little legs and he will coo happily because the reality is he does not feel it. Their baby’s brain is not organized and thus is not in the position to do much with the information being received.
Once a baby starts getting stimulation, the process of organizing the central nervous system is underway. As an infant is lying on the floor thumping its hands and feet, it is sending information to the brain. This is the beginning of building the pathways between the brain and the body. This is where development starts and the baby begins its adventure toward learning and growing. A good goal of parents is to take their newborns that are one level above coma and guide them through the proper developmental channels without missing any levels and stages. When you miss stages or levels, you are going to have problems.
In order to properly guide children, there are some developmental pieces that are paramount to understand.
A child’s brain is much like a computer. It will not have good output without good input. It is much like the old computer adage, “garbage in, garbage out”. The brain at birth is similar to a computer that has nothing pre-programmed in it; you have to put everything in. Tactility, through touch, taste, smell, seeing, and hearing is the way you get information into the brain.
The first area of tactility to look at is perception of feeling at a deeper level. Any parent who has had a little one crash into a coffee table or bonk her head fairly hard and bounce right up without much notice, has experienced the outward evidence of a brain not getting the signals at the deep pressure level. Other indicators of this level not appropriately supplying information to the brain are when a child is too rough, such as the one you brace yourself for when she comes running to hug you or the one you are on guard with when she is around smaller children.
How can the brain control the body if it does not feel the body or it is not feeling it appropriately? Many have said that a high tolerance for pain is a good thing. The thought is when you do not feel pain you do not get hurt or you can easily get through a dental visit and, therefore, that is good. However, everyone needs to feel at the deep pressure level. Otherwise a child could have a raging ear infection and no one would even know it. You want your child to appropriately feel pain; you don’t want him to touch something very hot and get hurt because of not feeling it.
There are some simple activities you can do with your child to build the pathways for proper neurological function. Remember, you will not get good output without good input. Tactility receptors affect every area of a child’s life. They affect gross motor, fine motor, language, vision and hearing. It is imperative to input the correct signals. With just a little bit of time, several times per day, you will have significant impact on your child’s development. You can even normalize their tactility receptors.
To improve the deep tactility receptors, you can do an activity called Deep Pressure. Children who bed wet, are too rough, have too high a pain tolerance, or are uncoordinated would greatly benefit from this activity. You apply pressure up to the point of response, by ou squeezing and holding, starting at the fingertips and working up to the shoulders, and then from the toes to the hips. For very young children you would do this four times per day for three minutes each time. With older children the recommendation is two times per day for five minutes each time. This will do amazing things for your children. When the brain can feel the body better, it can utilize the body better. All for such little effort!
To improve the surface tactility receptors, you can do an activity called Tactile Glove Stimulation. Children who over react to little cuts, are excessively ticklish, bothered by tags in clothing, only wear certain types of clothing, etc. will greatly benefit from this activity. Using the scratchy bath gloves you find in the cosmetic department of stores, rub the surface of the skin very lightly. As with deep pressure, rub from the outer extremities of the four limbs towards the torso of the body. Do this a couple of times per day for two to three minutes each time. Whether a child does not feel on the surface as they should or they are overly sensitive does not matter. The same activity, over a period of time, will normalize the surface touch.
To improve the tactility receptors of the face and head you can do an activity called Trigeminal Stimulation. This is for the children who can not stand haircuts, hair combing, or things touching their head or face. This is also for those who end up with food all over their face and do not even realize it. For infants you will use your fingertips with light, wispy strokes to stimulate the face, neck and head. You may also use light patting with the fingertips. For older children you will do deeper stimulation as well as the light stimulation. Achieve the deeper stimulation by using firmer strokes. Do this activity two to four times per day for two minutes each time. The trigeminal nerve is the largest nerve of the body that carries the sensory information to the brain from the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. This nerve is extremely important. By stimulating it with enough frequency, intensity, and duration over a period of time, you can normalize the tactility reception of this nerve.
Challenged children often do not appropriately respond to temperature. Temperature issues can be seen with food temperature, bath temperature, or environmental temperatures. To improve temperature receptors you should stimulate the child’s four limbs with varying temperatures. Use warm to hot and cool to cold stimulation. You can use wet washcloths, warm/cool packs, etc. Do the temperature activity a couple of times per day for a couple of minutes each time.
There are certain tactile receptors which involve the sense of the smell (olfactory) and taste (gustatory). In order to build the pathways for the olfactory channel, get several jars into which you have put some good odors. You can use essential oils, food extracts, herbs, spices or other non-toxic items. Simply open the jar, put it under your child’s nostrils and tell them what the smell is. Rotate through the jars randomly. For tastes you will be introducing sweet, salty, and sour to the brain. You will need honey or Stevia, salt, and lemon juice. Put a little sweet on the tip of the tongue, followed by a few granules of salt on the tip, followed by some lemon juice on both sides of the tongue. You will cycle through these three tastes for one minute a couple of times per day. These activities tremendously help the picky eater.
Mouth stimulation is an activity which will help those who are picky eaters, droolers, and those who are overly or underly sensitive to stimulation inside their mouth. For a very young child you will use a Nuk brush or a wash cloth. For older children you can use an electric toothbrush or a Toothette. Start the stimulation by gently rubbing your implement on the outside of your child’s mouth. Stimulate their lips and move in to the mouth. Stimulate every where inside your child’s mouth your implement can reach, including inside the cheeks, the palate, the gums, and the tongue. Push the tongue around as much as you can. Get the top and sides of the tongue. You will do this 2-4 times per day for one minute each time.
All of these activities are simple to implement and can easily be interspersed into everyday life. If a child is having hyper sensitivities, you may need to work up to the full time and extent of an activity. Most of the time a parent's inclination is to not do what is bothersome to a child. However, the opposite is what needs to be done. The need to stimulate the hypersensitive areas is even of greater importance in order to normalize them.
A newborn child has random movement. They flail around with no pattern or organization at all. Movement begins the process of brain organization. Babies start with random movement, which changes into homologous movement (either the arms or the legs moving simultaneously), which changes into homolateral movement (either the left arm and leg or the right arm and leg moving simultaneously) and finally organizes into cross pattern movement (the right arm moving simultaneously with the left leg or the left arm moving simultaneously with the right leg). The only thing that will organize the lower levels of the brain is cross pattern movement systematically done. The best way to get cross pattern motion in a synchronized fashion is by crawling on the belly and creeping on the hands of knees. A myriad of learning problems, difficulties, and disabilities will surface later in life if the child is not given enough opportunities to be on the floor crawling and creeping as a baby and pre-toddler. The invention of walkers, Johnny jumps, swings, playpens and bouncy chairs have wrecked havoc on development. All of these contraptions keep children off the floor. The floor is the most crucial place for a young child to be. Remember, movement begins the process of brain organization. A young child should be on his tummy unhindered by blankets, excessive clothing, and other obstacles that hinder movement. With the recommendation that children no longer sleep on their stomach, it is even more critical that you give your child lots and lots of tummy time during the day.
Babies are born with many primitive reflexes. These reflexes help the fetus live in utero, come through the birthing process, and transition them to life outside the womb. All the stages of development for movement have a part in inhibiting the reflexes no longer necessary and transitioning the others into a higher function reflex. Every stage is important and should not be missed. The appropriate stages of development are random movement, crawling (army style on their tummy), creeping (on their hands and knees), and finally walking.
Please note that sitting is not a developmental stage. Children sitting on their bottoms will not learn. Sitting is a dead end. Putting a child into an unsupported sit, before he has the ability to do so own his own, can have some detrimental effects. The spinal cord is not strong enough to support the body's weight. Unsupported sitting can thus bow the back and cause scoliosis problems.
If you have an older child who did not have enough opportunity to crawl and creep, it is not too late; it is never too late! You can input the stimulation, thus organizing the brain, at any age. Simply have the child cross pattern crawl and cross pattern creep a few times per day for several minutes. Crawling and creeping may sound silly, but it is of huge significance and critically important to do so. It is the primary activity that will organize the lower levels of the brain. If the lower levels of the brain are not organized, how can the higher cortical levels of the brain organize? If the foundation is weak, everything else will be weak.
Walking is never encouraged. If fact, it should be discouraged if done too early. Neurodevelopmentalists believe if a child is left to go through the natural processes of development without interference, he should walk around 12-14 months of age. When a child is pulling himself up onto furniture before he has had plenty of opportunity for cross patterned crawling and creeping, it is recommended to put him back on the ground. Do not allow him to be upright too soon.
Auditory development is very important. We have switched from being an auditory society to being a visual society and so auditory function has slipped in almost all children and it is the number one significant problem with attention deficit and distractible children. Auditory processing is also very important. Play classical music in the house to provide the opportunity to hear full frequency range of sound. Little ones benefit greatly by hearing Gregorian chants. Gregorian chants are exactly the rhythm of a natural heartbeat. Listening to them helps normalize the heart beat and breathing patterns. Let your child listen to them while they fall asleep.
If your child is sensitive to sounds, make a tape of those sounds for her to hear. Sounds such as a vacuum cleaner, the blender, a hairdryer and the lawnmower are often culprit sounds that bother children. Making a tape of these offending sounds and letting her listen to it will help to desensitize her to those sounds.
Sequential processing is critical to development. Therefore, you want to build their auditory sequential processing. If you start when your child is young, you can help him develop superior processing skills. Superior processing skills will put your child in the position to learn easily. With a little one, start by teaching him to touch his nose, his hair, his tummy or clap his hands, blow a kiss, wave bye bye, etc.
A child who can do one command, can process one piece of information. Processing one piece of information is the equivalent of a properly developed one year old. Processing two pieces of information (“touch your nose and your hair”) is the processing ability equivalent to a two year old. The “terrible twos” are defined because if you can only process two pieces of information, you are processing “I want” or “Don’t want” and that is it. The fastest way out of the “terrible twos” is to help the child process three pieces of information. Then she can process, “I want” and also remember the consequence that may follow.
Language is directly tied into auditory sequential processing. A child processing one piece may be able to say “Mama” or “Dada” because those are high interest, frequently inputted words. In order to learn lots of words, though, the child needs to be sequentially processing two or more pieces of information. Children who are a little bit older can repeat colors or numbers. Say “red, green, blue” and have the child say “red, green, blue”. The goal is to find her present level of processing and gently push her to the next level. Just because she is two does not mean she has to settle for only doing two’s. You can accelerate her processing. A child with accelerated processing will learn much more quickly and easily.
A child with good auditory processing skills will follow directions much better. Often when we find a child has not followed directions, it is not a matter of disobedience; it is a matter of not retaining the request given. Giving a child the direction, “Go upstairs and get your coat so we can leave” has the potential to cause problems, if your child can only process two pieces of information. He will process “Go upstairs”. And that is it. When he gets upstairs he has no clue what he is supposed to do, so obviously, he must be there to play! Or if the child only processes three pieces of information, he may process “go upstairs and shoes”. So, he goes upstairs and starts throwing his shoes in the air and catching them. What looks like disobedience can really be lack of processing auditory information in a sequential manner.
When working with little ones you want to make sure you also stimulate them visually. This entails working on visual ability as well as visual processing. Putting Christmas chaser and flashing lights around the crib will give them a very visually stimulating environment. You can also get pictures for her to look at; just hold it up and tell her what it is. You want to show her objects to expand her receptive language and knowledge of the world around them. For older children you can show picture units of zoo animals, butterflies, insects, food, etc. You are not looking for output; you are simply inputting information. She will learn the information and her visual processing will be improved at the same time.
It is so important to remember input, input, input, input, input. Worksheets and answering questions are all output activities or testing. Teaching is inputting information. You may have your child learn by looking at books. If today you are going to teach him what an elephant is, open up a book and you say, “Oh, look Billy, there’s an elephant.” Then you turn to the next page and exclaim, “There’s an elephant, too.” Continue through the book, exclaiming each time you see an elephant and by the last page, he will be pointing to the elephant even before you do. He is very excited; he has learned what an elephant is. However, if you do not look at the elephant book again for a few days or a week, it is likely Billie will not remember what an elephant is. Young children need input with high frequency and consistency until it is firmly retained.
It is so much easier to do specific stimulation than random. You want to get your children excited about learning when they’re younger. Most children love to learn when they are young. What turns children off to learning is when they have to sit in a desk and they are being dragged through lesson plans. Keep it fun; keep it exciting, input things of high interest to your child. Once they are turned on to learning, not only do they become life long learners, but they also are able to learn those things that may not be of high interest. The more you put in the more that will come out. The brain’s capacity to store information is amazing. You can not put too much in. Little children love to learn. Babies have wonderful abilities to learn. They are like sponges continually absorbing information from their environment. For every hour you spend specifically stimulating your birth to six-year-old child, you will save at least eight hours later. Every hour yields eight hours when they are older!! What a great return. These are great development years!
The most important thing that can be said when you are working with your six years and younger child is to not influence handedness. This is critically important. Everyone is born with a genetic predisposition to be left or right handed. A child who has properly gone through the hierarchy of development will have their dominant side (the side of their handedness) surface somewhere between the age of five and seven. Crayons pencils, and scissors are being allowed in children’s hands much too early. If your little one wants to color have them do it for only brief periods of time and never encourage which hand they use. There are no developmental benefits which come from learning to cut with scissors. Cutting is a skill that is learned. It is not developmental. Do not have children to cut with scissors prior to their dominant side surfacing. It is critical to keep children from forming lasting habits with an incorrect hand.
Giving children specific opportunities for their Central Nervous System to develop at a young age will greatly enhance their learning abilities at older ages. It is worth the time and effort to offer these opportunities to them. By putting your child into position to learn from a young age, she/he will very likely become a life long learner.
Back to Teaching and Educating
The Neurodevelopmental Approach is like no other approach to human development. It is unique in its way of looking at the whole individual, not the separate pieces. Taking the individual pieces and understanding how they interrelate so you can look at the whole individual will greatly enhance what you do as you work with your child.
The outcome of any individual is based upon the opportunities presented them. If appropriate, specific opportunities are presented, there will be greater level of progress. When enhanced, specific stimulation is offered in the earliest years you can avoid the mistakes which have far reaching consequences.
For every hour you spend specifically stimulating your birth to six children, you will save at least eight hours later. Every hour yields eight hours when they are older!! What a great return. Little children love to learn. Babies have wonderful abilities to learn. They are like sponges continually absorbing information from their environment. These are great development years!
Improving a young child’s environment involves appropriate activities and specific stimulation. There is paramount difference between specific stimulation and random stimulation. Much of what is suggested and offered is random stimulation. Random stimulation will not produce change quickly or efficiently. Walk into most preschool or Sunday school rooms and you will see a good example of random stimulation. Information overload is everywhere: on the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Little to nothing is effective input because too much information is being offered.
Stimulation needs to be given with proper frequency, intensity and duration. Frequency means providing enough opportunity and repetition inputting the activity in order for the stimulation to produce a change in the brain and become learned information. Intensity refers to the strength of the input of the stimulation. An activity is intense when it actively engages the child. Duration is the amount of time the stimulation is offered. Typically the shorter the time the stimulation is being offered, the higher the intensity that activity will maintain. Duration also refers to offering the stimulation consistently over the period of time needed to produce change.
Unfortunately, home educating children is a busy time and the question too often becomes what to do to keep the preschool child happy and occupied while teaching the older siblings. Too often education is thought as starting at the age of five or six; however education starts at birth. You have the opportunity to lead and guide your child from a very early age. By simply improving the environment of your child so that developmentally appropriate activities are available, your young child can learn and grow, avoiding errors that result in learning problems in later years. Your children will have a better foundation and greater opportunity for reaching their full God given potential.
We are magnificently created. We are created in the image of the Most High God. God is an orderly God. Thus, each part of His creation was created orderly.
Human development is a hierarchy of stages, meaning each stage is dependent upon the previous state. When stages of development are missed or not thoroughly completed, the foundation is weakened and there will be corresponding inefficiencies and problems. It does not matter if you are working with a typical newborn or a hurt child. There is a developmental flow that needs to be followed for the brain and the central nervous system to organize properly and work correctly.
When a baby is born, the child is basically one level above coma. They do not see very well or hear very well. They do not feel, smell, or taste properly. You can take a little newborn and pinch his little cheeks or squeeze his little legs and he will coo happily because the reality is he does not feel it. Their baby’s brain is not organized and thus is not in the position to do much with the information being received.
Once a baby starts getting stimulation, the process of organizing the central nervous system is underway. As an infant is lying on the floor thumping its hands and feet, it is sending information to the brain. This is the beginning of building the pathways between the brain and the body. This is where development starts and the baby begins its adventure toward learning and growing. A good goal of parents is to take their newborns that are one level above coma and guide them through the proper developmental channels without missing any levels and stages. When you miss stages or levels, you are going to have problems.
In order to properly guide children, there are some developmental pieces that are paramount to understand.
A child’s brain is much like a computer. It will not have good output without good input. It is much like the old computer adage, “garbage in, garbage out”. The brain at birth is similar to a computer that has nothing pre-programmed in it; you have to put everything in. Tactility, through touch, taste, smell, seeing, and hearing is the way you get information into the brain.
The first area of tactility to look at is perception of feeling at a deeper level. Any parent who has had a little one crash into a coffee table or bonk her head fairly hard and bounce right up without much notice, has experienced the outward evidence of a brain not getting the signals at the deep pressure level. Other indicators of this level not appropriately supplying information to the brain are when a child is too rough, such as the one you brace yourself for when she comes running to hug you or the one you are on guard with when she is around smaller children.
How can the brain control the body if it does not feel the body or it is not feeling it appropriately? Many have said that a high tolerance for pain is a good thing. The thought is when you do not feel pain you do not get hurt or you can easily get through a dental visit and, therefore, that is good. However, everyone needs to feel at the deep pressure level. Otherwise a child could have a raging ear infection and no one would even know it. You want your child to appropriately feel pain; you don’t want him to touch something very hot and get hurt because of not feeling it.
There are some simple activities you can do with your child to build the pathways for proper neurological function. Remember, you will not get good output without good input. Tactility receptors affect every area of a child’s life. They affect gross motor, fine motor, language, vision and hearing. It is imperative to input the correct signals. With just a little bit of time, several times per day, you will have significant impact on your child’s development. You can even normalize their tactility receptors.
To improve the deep tactility receptors, you can do an activity called Deep Pressure. Children who bed wet, are too rough, have too high a pain tolerance, or are uncoordinated would greatly benefit from this activity. You apply pressure up to the point of response, by ou squeezing and holding, starting at the fingertips and working up to the shoulders, and then from the toes to the hips. For very young children you would do this four times per day for three minutes each time. With older children the recommendation is two times per day for five minutes each time. This will do amazing things for your children. When the brain can feel the body better, it can utilize the body better. All for such little effort!
To improve the surface tactility receptors, you can do an activity called Tactile Glove Stimulation. Children who over react to little cuts, are excessively ticklish, bothered by tags in clothing, only wear certain types of clothing, etc. will greatly benefit from this activity. Using the scratchy bath gloves you find in the cosmetic department of stores, rub the surface of the skin very lightly. As with deep pressure, rub from the outer extremities of the four limbs towards the torso of the body. Do this a couple of times per day for two to three minutes each time. Whether a child does not feel on the surface as they should or they are overly sensitive does not matter. The same activity, over a period of time, will normalize the surface touch.
To improve the tactility receptors of the face and head you can do an activity called Trigeminal Stimulation. This is for the children who can not stand haircuts, hair combing, or things touching their head or face. This is also for those who end up with food all over their face and do not even realize it. For infants you will use your fingertips with light, wispy strokes to stimulate the face, neck and head. You may also use light patting with the fingertips. For older children you will do deeper stimulation as well as the light stimulation. Achieve the deeper stimulation by using firmer strokes. Do this activity two to four times per day for two minutes each time. The trigeminal nerve is the largest nerve of the body that carries the sensory information to the brain from the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. This nerve is extremely important. By stimulating it with enough frequency, intensity, and duration over a period of time, you can normalize the tactility reception of this nerve.
Challenged children often do not appropriately respond to temperature. Temperature issues can be seen with food temperature, bath temperature, or environmental temperatures. To improve temperature receptors you should stimulate the child’s four limbs with varying temperatures. Use warm to hot and cool to cold stimulation. You can use wet washcloths, warm/cool packs, etc. Do the temperature activity a couple of times per day for a couple of minutes each time.
There are certain tactile receptors which involve the sense of the smell (olfactory) and taste (gustatory). In order to build the pathways for the olfactory channel, get several jars into which you have put some good odors. You can use essential oils, food extracts, herbs, spices or other non-toxic items. Simply open the jar, put it under your child’s nostrils and tell them what the smell is. Rotate through the jars randomly. For tastes you will be introducing sweet, salty, and sour to the brain. You will need honey or Stevia, salt, and lemon juice. Put a little sweet on the tip of the tongue, followed by a few granules of salt on the tip, followed by some lemon juice on both sides of the tongue. You will cycle through these three tastes for one minute a couple of times per day. These activities tremendously help the picky eater.
Mouth stimulation is an activity which will help those who are picky eaters, droolers, and those who are overly or underly sensitive to stimulation inside their mouth. For a very young child you will use a Nuk brush or a wash cloth. For older children you can use an electric toothbrush or a Toothette. Start the stimulation by gently rubbing your implement on the outside of your child’s mouth. Stimulate their lips and move in to the mouth. Stimulate every where inside your child’s mouth your implement can reach, including inside the cheeks, the palate, the gums, and the tongue. Push the tongue around as much as you can. Get the top and sides of the tongue. You will do this 2-4 times per day for one minute each time.
All of these activities are simple to implement and can easily be interspersed into everyday life. If a child is having hyper sensitivities, you may need to work up to the full time and extent of an activity. Most of the time a parent's inclination is to not do what is bothersome to a child. However, the opposite is what needs to be done. The need to stimulate the hypersensitive areas is even of greater importance in order to normalize them.
A newborn child has random movement. They flail around with no pattern or organization at all. Movement begins the process of brain organization. Babies start with random movement, which changes into homologous movement (either the arms or the legs moving simultaneously), which changes into homolateral movement (either the left arm and leg or the right arm and leg moving simultaneously) and finally organizes into cross pattern movement (the right arm moving simultaneously with the left leg or the left arm moving simultaneously with the right leg). The only thing that will organize the lower levels of the brain is cross pattern movement systematically done. The best way to get cross pattern motion in a synchronized fashion is by crawling on the belly and creeping on the hands of knees. A myriad of learning problems, difficulties, and disabilities will surface later in life if the child is not given enough opportunities to be on the floor crawling and creeping as a baby and pre-toddler. The invention of walkers, Johnny jumps, swings, playpens and bouncy chairs have wrecked havoc on development. All of these contraptions keep children off the floor. The floor is the most crucial place for a young child to be. Remember, movement begins the process of brain organization. A young child should be on his tummy unhindered by blankets, excessive clothing, and other obstacles that hinder movement. With the recommendation that children no longer sleep on their stomach, it is even more critical that you give your child lots and lots of tummy time during the day.
Babies are born with many primitive reflexes. These reflexes help the fetus live in utero, come through the birthing process, and transition them to life outside the womb. All the stages of development for movement have a part in inhibiting the reflexes no longer necessary and transitioning the others into a higher function reflex. Every stage is important and should not be missed. The appropriate stages of development are random movement, crawling (army style on their tummy), creeping (on their hands and knees), and finally walking.
Please note that sitting is not a developmental stage. Children sitting on their bottoms will not learn. Sitting is a dead end. Putting a child into an unsupported sit, before he has the ability to do so own his own, can have some detrimental effects. The spinal cord is not strong enough to support the body's weight. Unsupported sitting can thus bow the back and cause scoliosis problems.
If you have an older child who did not have enough opportunity to crawl and creep, it is not too late; it is never too late! You can input the stimulation, thus organizing the brain, at any age. Simply have the child cross pattern crawl and cross pattern creep a few times per day for several minutes. Crawling and creeping may sound silly, but it is of huge significance and critically important to do so. It is the primary activity that will organize the lower levels of the brain. If the lower levels of the brain are not organized, how can the higher cortical levels of the brain organize? If the foundation is weak, everything else will be weak.
Walking is never encouraged. If fact, it should be discouraged if done too early. Neurodevelopmentalists believe if a child is left to go through the natural processes of development without interference, he should walk around 12-14 months of age. When a child is pulling himself up onto furniture before he has had plenty of opportunity for cross patterned crawling and creeping, it is recommended to put him back on the ground. Do not allow him to be upright too soon.
Auditory development is very important. We have switched from being an auditory society to being a visual society and so auditory function has slipped in almost all children and it is the number one significant problem with attention deficit and distractible children. Auditory processing is also very important. Play classical music in the house to provide the opportunity to hear full frequency range of sound. Little ones benefit greatly by hearing Gregorian chants. Gregorian chants are exactly the rhythm of a natural heartbeat. Listening to them helps normalize the heart beat and breathing patterns. Let your child listen to them while they fall asleep.
If your child is sensitive to sounds, make a tape of those sounds for her to hear. Sounds such as a vacuum cleaner, the blender, a hairdryer and the lawnmower are often culprit sounds that bother children. Making a tape of these offending sounds and letting her listen to it will help to desensitize her to those sounds.
Sequential processing is critical to development. Therefore, you want to build their auditory sequential processing. If you start when your child is young, you can help him develop superior processing skills. Superior processing skills will put your child in the position to learn easily. With a little one, start by teaching him to touch his nose, his hair, his tummy or clap his hands, blow a kiss, wave bye bye, etc.
A child who can do one command, can process one piece of information. Processing one piece of information is the equivalent of a properly developed one year old. Processing two pieces of information (“touch your nose and your hair”) is the processing ability equivalent to a two year old. The “terrible twos” are defined because if you can only process two pieces of information, you are processing “I want” or “Don’t want” and that is it. The fastest way out of the “terrible twos” is to help the child process three pieces of information. Then she can process, “I want” and also remember the consequence that may follow.
Language is directly tied into auditory sequential processing. A child processing one piece may be able to say “Mama” or “Dada” because those are high interest, frequently inputted words. In order to learn lots of words, though, the child needs to be sequentially processing two or more pieces of information. Children who are a little bit older can repeat colors or numbers. Say “red, green, blue” and have the child say “red, green, blue”. The goal is to find her present level of processing and gently push her to the next level. Just because she is two does not mean she has to settle for only doing two’s. You can accelerate her processing. A child with accelerated processing will learn much more quickly and easily.
A child with good auditory processing skills will follow directions much better. Often when we find a child has not followed directions, it is not a matter of disobedience; it is a matter of not retaining the request given. Giving a child the direction, “Go upstairs and get your coat so we can leave” has the potential to cause problems, if your child can only process two pieces of information. He will process “Go upstairs”. And that is it. When he gets upstairs he has no clue what he is supposed to do, so obviously, he must be there to play! Or if the child only processes three pieces of information, he may process “go upstairs and shoes”. So, he goes upstairs and starts throwing his shoes in the air and catching them. What looks like disobedience can really be lack of processing auditory information in a sequential manner.
When working with little ones you want to make sure you also stimulate them visually. This entails working on visual ability as well as visual processing. Putting Christmas chaser and flashing lights around the crib will give them a very visually stimulating environment. You can also get pictures for her to look at; just hold it up and tell her what it is. You want to show her objects to expand her receptive language and knowledge of the world around them. For older children you can show picture units of zoo animals, butterflies, insects, food, etc. You are not looking for output; you are simply inputting information. She will learn the information and her visual processing will be improved at the same time.
It is so important to remember input, input, input, input, input. Worksheets and answering questions are all output activities or testing. Teaching is inputting information. You may have your child learn by looking at books. If today you are going to teach him what an elephant is, open up a book and you say, “Oh, look Billy, there’s an elephant.” Then you turn to the next page and exclaim, “There’s an elephant, too.” Continue through the book, exclaiming each time you see an elephant and by the last page, he will be pointing to the elephant even before you do. He is very excited; he has learned what an elephant is. However, if you do not look at the elephant book again for a few days or a week, it is likely Billie will not remember what an elephant is. Young children need input with high frequency and consistency until it is firmly retained.
It is so much easier to do specific stimulation than random. You want to get your children excited about learning when they’re younger. Most children love to learn when they are young. What turns children off to learning is when they have to sit in a desk and they are being dragged through lesson plans. Keep it fun; keep it exciting, input things of high interest to your child. Once they are turned on to learning, not only do they become life long learners, but they also are able to learn those things that may not be of high interest. The more you put in the more that will come out. The brain’s capacity to store information is amazing. You can not put too much in. Little children love to learn. Babies have wonderful abilities to learn. They are like sponges continually absorbing information from their environment. For every hour you spend specifically stimulating your birth to six-year-old child, you will save at least eight hours later. Every hour yields eight hours when they are older!! What a great return. These are great development years!
The most important thing that can be said when you are working with your six years and younger child is to not influence handedness. This is critically important. Everyone is born with a genetic predisposition to be left or right handed. A child who has properly gone through the hierarchy of development will have their dominant side (the side of their handedness) surface somewhere between the age of five and seven. Crayons pencils, and scissors are being allowed in children’s hands much too early. If your little one wants to color have them do it for only brief periods of time and never encourage which hand they use. There are no developmental benefits which come from learning to cut with scissors. Cutting is a skill that is learned. It is not developmental. Do not have children to cut with scissors prior to their dominant side surfacing. It is critical to keep children from forming lasting habits with an incorrect hand.
Giving children specific opportunities for their Central Nervous System to develop at a young age will greatly enhance their learning abilities at older ages. It is worth the time and effort to offer these opportunities to them. By putting your child into position to learn from a young age, she/he will very likely become a life long learner.
Back to Teaching and Educating
