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| LEARNING SUCCESS |
| AND THE ROLE OF |
| NEURODEVELOPMENTAL |
| OPTOMETRY |
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| by Merrill D. Bowan, O.D. |
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"I don't know how to teach this kid!" |
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The complaint echoed long after the voice was gone. His teacher was almost at wit's end in her frustration. The child was confused, seemed inattentive, struggled with classwork except in one-on-one teaching situations, and either did not do his work or did not hand in completed work. (Over the years, the teacher had found other children with similar problems, or students who had struggles with reading, math, spelling and to top it all off, some whose handwriting was nearly illegible.) |
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We have found that students in class are of two general types: |
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1) Easy to teach -- "No problem!", or, |
2) Hard to teach -- "What do I do?" |
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Children arriving for their first day of school are presumed to have certain abilities: social, emotional and perceptual. Their maturity -- or competency --in each of these areas is a major contribution to their later success. |
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Much emphasis is placed on the first two, social and emotional -- but perceptual skills have taken a large back seat -- almost shelved, in fact -- since the `70's. Did the `80's and 90's find some scientific bridge over perceptual concerns? The answer is "No". |
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PERCEPTION vs. NEW TEACHING METHODS |
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The eighties found new, exciting and interesting teaching strategies in math and reading that seemed to leap-frog over the need for perceptual learning skills. Two of those strategies which have had much impact are "renaming" in math (not to mention the willy-nilly acceptance of calculators in classrooms where visualization skills should be nurtured), and "whole language", which almost entirely ignores reading skills development (if not totally ignoring them). |
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Children must be perceptually competent if they are to be successful. Easy-to-teach children generally have adequate learning skills -- are competent -- in visual, auditory, and motor skills, the three areas needed for math, reading and writing abilities. Hard-to-teach children generally have deficiencies in one or more of those skills areas. Or, they may have trouble integrating those skills -- matching visual "stuff" to auditory "stuff" (as in decoding the written word: reading), or matching visual "stuff" to motor "stuff" (as in encoding spoken words: writing). |
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Teaching, tutoring, or remedial programs that overlook the need for perceptual abilities will not have the success of programs that do. A child who has a platform of adequate learning skills to build upon will benefit greatly from tutoring or other academic rebuilding. But if a child is only adequate in visual skills, they will have a significantly greater amount of difficulty learning the phonic aspects of reading and in doing word problems. If the child has only auditorally ability in place, he or she will generally have trouble with math, writing, and sight words -- making errors in tracking, scanning, and word and math reversals. Motor skills that are not up to his or her grade level will affect all areas of classroom performance for the student. |
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RETRAINING -- AN ANSWER |
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Can learning skills be regained or built up? The answer is a resounding "Yes". Of course -- can you learn to ride a bike at any age? Develop piano or speaking skills? Yes, you can. Learning skills are the same. |
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Teaching a hard-to-teach child is never a really simple task, but the usual academic strategies are doomed to failure if the child is not adequate in visual processing and thus is not perceptually competent. |
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Neurodevelopmental optometrists -- previously and alternately called "behavioral optometrists" -- are the driving force behind the fight to help underachieving and learning-confused children to build visual competency, auditory competency and motoric competency. A fully aware neurodevelopmental optometrist also will work with auditory competency, since the mind must break the language code. To this, the child must analyze not only the pictures his mind sees and draws, but he must match them with the sounds he has analyzed in the word he has heard. If he or she cannot accurately identify the sounds, there is little way to write the word correctly. The skill is quickly taught and learned; most remediation takes only six months, give or take three months. |
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HELP FROM NEURODEVELOPMENTAL OPTOMETRISTS |
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The neurodevelopmental optometrist will also carefully evaluate the student's ability to use his/her visual system easily for the length of time a lesson is being taught and studied. (School eye "tests" are often only momentary sight screenings, which do little to reveal the child's ability to use his/her vision across a sustained period of time.) |
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Children who learn in a hit-and-run fashion frequently have barriers in their binocular -- two-eyed -- visual function. They frequently cannot sustain visual function for any length of time, and because of this, easily get labeled as having attentional deficits. It is essential that an elementary school child be able to read for up to an hour without undue tiring. Only a visual analysis can reveal whether the child is capable of this level of visual performance. |
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WHO BEST BENEFITS FROM OUR PROGRAM? |
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Tens of thousands of children have been helped over the past thirty years by neuro-developmental optometrists, often only after parents have spent a great deal of money on medical programs or well-intentioned tutoring that overlooks a child's learning competencies or assumes that a child will somehow automatically outgrow the lack of skills or mature without structured help. Grateful parents have referred many children of friends for this effective, valid, drugless and painless therapeutic approach. |
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Will neurodevelopmental techniques help everybody? The answer is no. The complexity of learning disabilities is reflected in the plural term that is used: disabilities, not the singular disability. Only a careful evaluation will detect all the competencies and deficiencies. Social and emotional problems -- especially performance anxiety -- are two other major contributing factors to classroom problems. But perceptual problems and binocular vision functioning problems need to be ruled out before the way is clear to act on the others. (For more, general information on this, ask for and read "Perception and Learning Disabilities", by this author.) |
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Learning should be a pleasurable challenge for all children. |
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The strategies and methods described in this paper help to make that a more realistic goal for the majority of hard-to-teach children. |
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[Research at the University of Pittsburgh by Jerome Rosner, a behavioral optometrist, from 1966-1975, has demonstrated that not only can the skills be taught, but that they transfer into the classroom. The Perceptual Skills Curriculum (Walker Books, NY) was published and is still in print: it is powerful enough to actually build perceptual skills that are not naturally developed until later ages (Visual Analysis Training with Preschool Children, Learning Research and Development Center, U. of Pittsburgh, 1974/16).] |
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| Can we help you or a child you know? The answer is "Yes". |
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| Merrill D. Bowan, O.D. |
| Neurodevelopmental Optometrist |
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