They Are What You Feed Them: How Food Can Improve Your Child’s Behaviour, Mood and Learning. Dr Richardson Alex

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СКАЧАТЬ desire to misbehave or otherwise cause offence. Sadly, though, it does not explain why your child has these difficulties.

       Your child now knows it’s not his fault . This is worth emphasizing to him, if he’s capable of understanding at this level. Most children dislike any label that makes them feel different—but try to help your child to see that this is not a disease, and is something he can overcome with the right strategies and help.

       You now know it’s not your fault, either. Anything past is past—and you’ve now opened up opportunities to find out what works best for other children like yours.

       A formal diagnosis can often allow you to access specialist help and resources. Medical or other therapies may be available if needed; your child’s school may be able to get funding for him to have extra help, or you may be able to get other assistance you may need with his care or education.

      You don’t have to just accept a label—let alone things that may be offered along with it. This is not to say that you should ever just dismiss out of hand medications or other treatments that your child’s doctor or other professionals may offer, but do always discuss with them any concerns you may have, and get a second opinion (or referrals to other specialists) if necessary.

      I’m not going to dwell for long on issues concerning the diagnosis of different kinds of behaviour and learning difficulties. These are beyond the scope of this book, and good information is available elsewhere.¹ What’s more, the information I’ll be giving you applies to pretty much all children, although I’ll point out wherever I can the issues that may affect some kinds of children more than others.

      It’s worth emphasizing that the ‘symptoms’ or features that define ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia or autism are almost all ‘dimensional’. That is, they are not categorical things that children do or don’t have. They occur to differing degrees, and most of them simply form part of normal, individual variations in children’s behaviour, learning and mood. There are no ‘hard’ objective tests and no ‘biological markers’ for any of these conditions.

      The patterns of behaviour or learning that define ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia or autism are not ‘diseases’ or ‘disorders’ in any conventional medical sense.

      This may help to explain why these kinds of conditions now seem to affect, to some degree, around 20 per cent of school-age children in the UK.² In most cases these children’s difficulties don’t even attract a formal diagnosis; and in many cases they go unrecognized by both parents and teachers. For reasons we don’t yet know, more boys than girls are affected—though there’s growing concern that many girls with these kinds of difficulties are underachieving and suffering in silence, simply because they don’t behave the same way that boys with these difficulties do, so the problem goes unrecognized.³

      So what should you look for? I’ll give a brief overview of each of these conditions here, and the Resources chapter will tell you where you can get more information if you need this.

      Dyslexia

      If your child is dyslexic, this can only be formally diagnosed after he’s spent many years struggling (and failing) to learn to read and write to the level expected for his age and general ability. Dyslexia involves more than just difficulties with written language, though. Early clues may include an unusual curiosity and an ‘intuitive’ kind of intelligence, with a tendency to think ‘holistically’, ‘laterally’ or ‘divergently’ rather than in a linear, sequential way. Dyslexic children are often particularly good at solving complex problems by seeing the bigger picture and using their creativity and logic to find original solutions. By contrast, despite their best efforts they experience failure and frustration in some tasks that other children find (literally) as simple as ABC.

      A classic dyslexic area of weakness is ‘working memory’, especially for verbal, sequential information. Things can seem to go ‘in one ear and out the other’—particularly sequences of information with no intrinsic meaning, like telephone numbers, security numbers or the sequence of letters in the alphabet. (If your child is dyslexic, you’ll need to make sure that any important information of this kind is heavily ‘over-learned’, and/or that there are good back-up and reinforcing strategies.) Learning any verbal sequence—like the days of the week, or the months of the year—can be problematic, particularly more complex ones like reciting multiplication tables by rote. (This doesn’t necessarily mean that the mathematics isn’t understood – just that other ways of determining this will need to be found.) There may be persistent difficulties in telling left from right, and in learning to tell the time from a clock face. Difficulties with phonology (the sounds in words) are often regarded as a core feature of dyslexia, but this argument can be rather circular: We learn many of our advanced ‘phonological skills’ through learning to read—so any poor readers, including adults who are illiterate for social or cultural reasons, tend to find these tasks difficult.

      When it comes to strengths, many dyslexic individuals show unusual talent in business, the visual arts and/or the sciences. A number of top financiers and outstanding business ‘visionaries’ are dyslexic⁴—and other professions with an over-representation of dyslexic adults include the arts, architecture, engineering, physical sciences and information technology. People with this profile are far less well suited to repetitive clerical or administrative jobs, but—provided they can avoid being judged too harshly on their spelling and punctuation—there’s no reason why dyslexic individuals can’t succeed in any occupation they may choose. One in 20 children is severely affected by dyslexia, and a further one in 20 has mild to moderate difficulties of the same kind—although the frequency in boys is slightly higher.

      Common Indicators of Dyslexia

       Difficulties in reading and spelling that are relatively specific, and which interfere with academic achievement or daily living skills⁵

       Directional confusion (such as difficulty telling left from right)

       Poor working memory (especially for information that carries no obvious meaning in itself—like telephone numbers, or anything learned ‘by rote’)

       Particular difficulties in segmenting words into their individual sounds, or building up words from their component sounds, when writing or speaking

       May have early delays or difficulties learning spoken language

       Difficulties with ordering and sequencing information

       ‘Intuitive’, holistic style of problem-solving, using lateral or divergent thinking rather than following a linear, step-by-step strategy

      Dyspraxia

      Dyspraxia (or Developmental Coordination Disorder) is just as common as dyslexia, and again boys are more susceptible than girls. Praxis means ‘doing’, and the most obvious difficulties are usually in motor coordination, affecting either fine motor skills (like holding a pen), or gross (big) movements like running or throwing. Muscle tone may be poor, resulting in ‘floppy’ movement, or joints may be unusually flexible and ‘bendy’, leading to other kinds of postural and movement difficulties. As in dyslexia, left-right confusions are common—with particular difficulties coordinating actions СКАЧАТЬ