“Cerebrodiversity!”

Today I attended a seminar sponsored by ‘The Parents League’ at the Philosophy Day School on East 79th Street.  Despite the rainy weather and slow trains, the speaker was worth every penny—(yes, I had to pay $20 because my membership from last spring expired this fall….).

But this investment was worth my time.  Jane M. Healy, Ph D, presented information from her book, Different Learners:  Identifying, Preventing, and Treating Children’s Learning Problems.  While Dr. Healy is all of 4’2″, this petite woman packs a punch with anecdotal insights from her years as an administrator and learning specialist in a private school located on the East side of Cleveland.

I loved her immediately and laughed loudly (in a rather quiet audience) as Dr. Healy confirmed so many of my own visions and theories about education.  The foundation of her book is built around the idea of “cerebrodiversity,” a term which means “no two brains are alike” and “no one has a perfect brain.”  (Should we tell ‘The College Board’?)

Since you didn’t get to attend the seminar and I want to save your time, here are some highlights that might be interesting:

* Dr. Healy has “grave concerns” about children being “raised by screens.”  (The entire morning had an eerie quality reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s warnings in Fahrenheit 451.)  Did you know that 60% of the most popular apps on the iPhone are geared for toddlers?  Hmmmmm.

* Dr. Healy reports a “brain crisis” in this country, as “a child born today in the U.S. has [more than] a 30% chance of being diagnosed with some type of learning problem.”

* Dyslexia is a brain DIFFERENCE, not a disease!  We’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating:  a study documented that, of highly successful entrepreneurs, 50% were diagnosed with dyslexia at one time in their lives—and they attribute this ‘condition’ as a source of their strength for seeing new possibilities…and creating great wealth!

* The dance of nature and nurture has created new knowledge:  we now understand that the brain changes as a result of experiences, called “neuroplasticity.”  What does this mean, exactly?  That we CAN improve IQ, that the brain never stays the same, and that human potential is unlimited!  Not only that, but “epigenetics” is now establishing that we can change the genome as a result of new experiences.  Legacy is not destiny.

* Think Dr. Suess was a waste of time with rhyme?  THINK AGAIN.  Studies Dr. Healy highlighted provide documentation that rhyming games help develop reading comprehension later in childhood.

* Please wait on medication, parents…Dr. Healy says that hidden stress factors are causing the incorrect identification of ADD, ADHD, and other learning labels.  One of the major reasons for misdirected diagnosis is sleep deprivation and poor nutrition.  Even environmental factors can play a huge role in your child’s performance:  Dr. Healy shared the story of a teen whose math scores suddenly plummeted…and administrators at her school discovered that, because buses were idling outside her class at the end of the day, diesel fumes were actually interfering with this young woman’s ability to process new information, thus polluting her brain’s ability to think!

* Be careful to label your child with slow processing—this problem is “domain specific,” meaning that solving a physics equation might be a challenge for your child but he or she may be super-quick to observe signs and signals in the environment, for example.  In addition, “working memory” is relative to specific topics—as a case in point, one of my former clients could not recall even basic facts from the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, but she knew every fashion designer and each celebrity’s name (with correct spelling!) including a rather lengthy list of their recent credentials!

* Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this morning’s lecture was that Dr. Healy echoed an identical idea that I learned through my training at Yale University for Emotional Literacy:  the #1 skill essential for lifelong success is to teach our children SELF-REGULATION.

Would you like support with any facet of this information?  I’d love to connect with you about your child’s unique brain!  Please contact me to discuss how to celebrate the gifts of your “different learner”!