Ethan* is obviously very bright. At 11 years old, he has an exceptional vocabulary, great sense of humor, and he expresses himself very well. He even tests well above grade level in reading and math. (The reason I list this fact separately is that we work with MANY very bright kids who don’t test at or above grade level.) Ethan’s mom – I’ll call her Jennifer – recently brought him in for a consultation mainly because she had some concerns regarding his attention/focus.
From the information Jennifer sent in prior to the consultation, we suspected a Visual/Motor Processing problem (in addition to his attention issues). Ethan’s written output did not match his intellect. However, Jennifer reported that she didn’t notice any symptoms of stress in this area, beyond the fact that he didn’t like to write.
Jennifer also indicated that although Ethan tested at an 8th grade reading level, he never read recreationally. Generally, this indicates a difficulty with Visual Processing. A bright kid should be a kid who gets lost in books. But if visual processing is not smooth, reading is more work than it should be. The child will often balk at reading, tire easily, and/or choose books well below his reading level. If anything, he reaches for a graphic novel because there is much more white space on the page.
At the beginning of a consultation, we do a series of informal tests, looking at the visual and visual/motor processing specifically. For example, we have a child track a pencil that we move in a straight line from left to right across his field of vision. I noticed a small “jiggle” in Ethan’s eyes as the pencil crossed the midline of his body. (Aha! Ethan was very interested in all of this. He wanted every step explained – just another indication of how bright he is.) Then I had him track an object he held in his hand as I moved it in the shape of an “eight” on its side. Again, that jiggle at the midline. After the third time around the eight, Ethan said, “Yep – that’s where I see two of them (referring to the object in his hand). And that’s where it disappears! When I was little, I used to move my hand over to the place where it disappeared. Then I’d sneak up on my mom and grab her, because I thought my hand was invisible.” I glanced to see if Jennifer was aware of this. What? Ethan had never mentioned it before.
When I asked Ethan to print the alphabet for me, he paused on the letter j, debating which direction to go with the “tail”. He wrote the letter correctly and said, “Hmm…I think that’s right.” When he came to z, he reversed it, looked at it for a while, then said, “Yah – I guess I’ll go with that.” Although the rest of the letters he wrote appeared correct, he printed most of them from bottom to top – a type of vertical reversal. There is a natural flow with writing that takes place within six months after a child has learned to write. In the English language, that flow is from left to right, and from top to bottom. If a child reverses letters (horizontally or vertically), it is similar to rowing a boat against the flow of a river. It obviously takes a lot more energy than rowing with the flow of the river. Often parents will say that they don’t think reversals are really a problem for their child because “he only makes them once in a while”. But that tells us that every time the child comes to one of those problem letters, his brain is expending energy on a debate – “this way or that way, this way or that way”. Ethan helped us out by verbalizing the debate. This made it clear that the process of writing had not become automatic for him; he had not developed a solid midline.
Thankfully, there are simple, in-home physical exercises that can be done with a child (15-20 minutes a day) to make both Visual and Visual/Motor Processing automatic. Once the stress is gone from these processes, the child actually begins to read and write for fun. This happened for one of my own sons. After about six months of the exercises, we were in Wal-Mart and he said, “Hey Mom! Will you buy me one of those journals? I’ve got stuff in my head that I need to write down.” I seriously looked around to see if there was another mom and son in the area. Before the exercises, you would have thought I was torturing him when I tried to get him to write some of the stuff in his head down on paper.
I believe these issues are often missed or ignored, because these bright – often gifted – kids may be doing reasonably well in school. Unfortunately, they find academic tasks frustrating and often do what they can to avoid anything involving pen and paper. Often, the paradox is that because they are so bright, they look around and see how reading and writing are easy for their peers and come to the conclusion that they must not be very smart.
We at CONNECT Education would love to partner with you to figure out not only what is going on with your child that makes reading and writing a drag for them, but also exactly what to do about it!
*not his real name, although he might enjoy the spotlight… He’s a lot of fun!