Patterns and Perceptions: Is Your Child?s Behavior Being Misunderstood?
Patterns and Perceptions: Is Your Child?s Behavior Being Misunderstood?
April 2, 2001
By Dr. Christine Johnson
?Mom, you?ll never believe what Emily?s teacher suggested today when I picked Emily up from school.?
My daughter was correct in her assumption. I would never have guessed what was to follow. ?She said, ?I think you should have Emily tested for attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).? Mom, she actually thinks Emily is hyperactive.?
As I listened to the concern rise in my daughter?s voice, I felt my own equanimity being challenged. Whatever was this teacher thinking? Emily was four at the time and notably a child interested in exploring how things work in this world. At the age of two she had taken our100-year-old spinning wheel apart and carefully laid its components on our living room floor. She loved to get her hands on things. But ADD/ADHD? That required a clinical diagnosis and, more correctly, a clear reasoning for such a drastic measure on the part of the teacher who made such a suggestion.
As a professor of and researcher on children as learners, I was appalled and deeply concerned about what was happening between this little four-year-old and her teacher. I heard the alarm in my daughter?s voice and I wondered how this could be happening. What was the teacher?s concern? What had led her to make such a drastic statement? What had she observed that caused her to raise this issue?
Since infancy this little girl had exhibited clear patterns of behavior. She liked having a schedule. She sought order and took comfort when there was a plan for the day?s activities. For her a plan made was a plan kept. Yet she was not a robo-child mindlessly going through a routine. She was an energetic child who loved and craved daily opportunities to be outdoors playing in a park, swinging from the monkey bars or climbing on the jungle gym. Now, suddenly, she was being cast as a child with an attention problem who ?wouldn?t sit on her chair at her desk. She always wants to kneel with one knee on the chair in a standing position.? She ?can?t keep her hands quiet. She always needs to be picking up things and examining them.? The teacher?s observations of Emily?s behavior were accurate in their description, but sorely misguided in their interpretation.
Emily is a child who learns by using her patterns of sequence, precision and technical reasoning. In nursery school, it was her patterns of sequence and technical that were the most obvious since at four years of age she wasn?t engaging in the formal use of words in terms of reading or writing. While the teacher acknowledged that Emily did follow the rules of the classroom and paid close attention to directions, it was Emily?s need to explore and interact with the world around her that was a problem for the teacher.
As I heard the teacher?s diagnosis of Emily?s behaviors I had to caution myself not to become too critical. As a professor who does research on learning, and who spent almost 10 years developing an instrument to capture the use of a child?s learning processes, you would think that I would have recognized Emily?s learning patterns early on. But I, too, had become irritated with Emily?s ?always having to have her hands on things,? until one morning Emily helped me understand.
It was the day before Emily?s fifth birthday. I was frosting cupcakes for her to take to school. Suddenly I found myself saying, ?Emily, no. You can?t help me frost these. No, Emily, you can?t play with the butter. You?ll get frosting all over your clothes. Emily, please put the colored sugars down.? Finally I spied her with her hands in the silverware drawer, just rattling the spoons and fiddling with the utensil tray. The drawer was just barely open, but she had slid her hands into it. I said with exasperation, ?For crying out loud, Emily, get your hands out of that drawer. Who wants to eat off those after you have had your hands all over them?? Emily quietly disappeared into the living room. I found her there sitting on the edge of the couch.
Regretting my sharp comment, I put my arm around her and asked, ?Emily what was going through your mind when you decided to put your hands in that drawer? ? Emily slowly raised her head and in her most sincere voice simply stated, ?Grandma, I just needed to put my hands on something.?
For Emily, learning begins with having directions and then learning with the use of real tools. Here is the child who will spend hours working with Legos and Playmobil toys or on the trail of an elusive spider or a rock that needs to be found! Yet in the classroom, this same learner may be misperceived as inattentive, off task or unengaged. Her learning processes may be misperceived and misunderstood.
My family is not by far the only family to experience such a disconcerting experience as this. Today across our nation the classroom teacher?s description of a child who has trouble focusing or fails to pay attention is followed by a referral to the child study team. If this is happening to you, what should you do?
You may want to learn more about your child?s interactive learning patterns. They are a combination of sequence, precision, technical reasoning and confluence. The sequential part of the combination focuses on planning, neatness, order and directions; the precise focuses on details, questions, data and research; the technical portion wants tools, problem solving, hands-on learning and relevance; and the confluent portion prefers unique approaches to doing things even though they may be risky or lead to failure. Now each learner uses some of these to a high degree, some as needed and may even avoid others. It is this combination that makes your child a unique learner!
Once you have these descriptors, use them to observe your child in a number of different learning settings. You may do this formally or informally. Below are a series of questions you may use to guide you as you observe your learner:
-- Does your child like to follow a schedule? Does he arrange his toys using a very specific order?
-- Does your child ask question after question, fixate on details, correct you when you misspeak?
-- Does your child like to work alone figuring out how something works? Is your child a person of few words? Is your child frustrated when required to write his/her thoughts on paper?
-- Does your child try one new thing after another? Is your child a risk-taker, a bit of a daredevil?
Then make an appointment with your child?s teacher and share what you have observed. You may suggest the teacher visit the letmelearn.org website where there are many more examples of how teachers and students have worked together to understand their different learning processes.
Most importantly, don?t give up on your child. Encourage your child to use his/her learning processes well. Celebrate his/her differences, and provide opportunities to use these processes in a variety of ways outside of school. For example, a school nurse who works with students who have been identified as having difficulty in the classroom identified how their learning processes worked and then organized an after-school activity in which the students went to the workshop and made wooden containers for the Red Cross as part of a community service project. Here the students who were struggling with words and writing excelled in providing a very essential service to others. You and your child can experience that same feeling of success: no more misperceived patterns; now celebrated learners contributing to the school?s overall presence in the community.
Christine Johnston is the director of the Center for the Advancement of Learning at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. She is the author of Unlocking the Will to Learn and Let Me Learn, published by Corwin Press.
(NOTE: This has been submitted simultaneously to several publications. Dr. Johnston is able to customize an article should you so desire.)
?Mom, you?ll never believe what Emily?s teacher suggested today when I picked Emily up from school.?
My daughter was correct in her assumption. I would never have guessed what was to follow. ?She said, ?I think you should have Emily tested for attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).? Mom, she actually thinks Emily is hyperactive.?
As I listened to the concern rise in my daughter?s voice, I felt my own equanimity being challenged. Whatever was this teacher thinking? Emily was four at the time and notably a child interested in exploring how things work in this world. At the age of two she had taken our100-year-old spinning wheel apart and carefully laid its components on our living room floor. She loved to get her hands on things. But ADD/ADHD? That required a clinical diagnosis and, more correctly, a clear reasoning for such a drastic measure on the part of the teacher who made such a suggestion.
As a professor of and researcher on children as learners, I was appalled and deeply concerned about what was happening between this little four-year-old and her teacher. I heard the alarm in my daughter?s voice and I wondered how this could be happening. What was the teacher?s concern? What had led her to make such a drastic statement? What had she observed that caused her to raise this issue?
Since infancy this little girl had exhibited clear patterns of behavior. She liked having a schedule. She sought order and took comfort when there was a plan for the day?s activities. For her a plan made was a plan kept. Yet she was not a robo-child mindlessly going through a routine. She was an energetic child who loved and craved daily opportunities to be outdoors playing in a park, swinging from the monkey bars or climbing on the jungle gym. Now, suddenly, she was being cast as a child with an attention problem who ?wouldn?t sit on her chair at her desk. She always wants to kneel with one knee on the chair in a standing position.? She ?can?t keep her hands quiet. She always needs to be picking up things and examining them.? The teacher?s observations of Emily?s behavior were accurate in their description, but sorely misguided in their interpretation.
Emily is a child who learns by using her patterns of sequence, precision and technical reasoning. In nursery school, it was her patterns of sequence and technical that were the most obvious since at four years of age she wasn?t engaging in the formal use of words in terms of reading or writing. While the teacher acknowledged that Emily did follow the rules of the classroom and paid close attention to directions, it was Emily?s need to explore and interact with the world around her that was a problem for the teacher.
As I heard the teacher?s diagnosis of Emily?s behaviors I had to caution myself not to become too critical. As a professor who does research on learning, and who spent almost 10 years developing an instrument to capture the use of a child?s learning processes, you would think that I would have recognized Emily?s learning patterns early on. But I, too, had become irritated with Emily?s ?always having to have her hands on things,? until one morning Emily helped me understand.
It was the day before Emily?s fifth birthday. I was frosting cupcakes for her to take to school. Suddenly I found myself saying, ?Emily, no. You can?t help me frost these. No, Emily, you can?t play with the butter. You?ll get frosting all over your clothes. Emily, please put the colored sugars down.? Finally I spied her with her hands in the silverware drawer, just rattling the spoons and fiddling with the utensil tray. The drawer was just barely open, but she had slid her hands into it. I said with exasperation, ?For crying out loud, Emily, get your hands out of that drawer. Who wants to eat off those after you have had your hands all over them?? Emily quietly disappeared into the living room. I found her there sitting on the edge of the couch.
Regretting my sharp comment, I put my arm around her and asked, ?Emily what was going through your mind when you decided to put your hands in that drawer? ? Emily slowly raised her head and in her most sincere voice simply stated, ?Grandma, I just needed to put my hands on something.?
For Emily, learning begins with having directions and then learning with the use of real tools. Here is the child who will spend hours working with Legos and Playmobil toys or on the trail of an elusive spider or a rock that needs to be found! Yet in the classroom, this same learner may be misperceived as inattentive, off task or unengaged. Her learning processes may be misperceived and misunderstood.
My family is not by far the only family to experience such a disconcerting experience as this. Today across our nation the classroom teacher?s description of a child who has trouble focusing or fails to pay attention is followed by a referral to the child study team. If this is happening to you, what should you do?
You may want to learn more about your child?s interactive learning patterns. They are a combination of sequence, precision, technical reasoning and confluence. The sequential part of the combination focuses on planning, neatness, order and directions; the precise focuses on details, questions, data and research; the technical portion wants tools, problem solving, hands-on learning and relevance; and the confluent portion prefers unique approaches to doing things even though they may be risky or lead to failure. Now each learner uses some of these to a high degree, some as needed and may even avoid others. It is this combination that makes your child a unique learner!
Once you have these descriptors, use them to observe your child in a number of different learning settings. You may do this formally or informally. Below are a series of questions you may use to guide you as you observe your learner:
-- Does your child like to follow a schedule? Does he arrange his toys using a very specific order?
-- Does your child ask question after question, fixate on details, correct you when you misspeak?
-- Does your child like to work alone figuring out how something works? Is your child a person of few words? Is your child frustrated when required to write his/her thoughts on paper?
-- Does your child try one new thing after another? Is your child a risk-taker, a bit of a daredevil?
Then make an appointment with your child?s teacher and share what you have observed. You may suggest the teacher visit the letmelearn.org website where there are many more examples of how teachers and students have worked together to understand their different learning processes.
Most importantly, don?t give up on your child. Encourage your child to use his/her learning processes well. Celebrate his/her differences, and provide opportunities to use these processes in a variety of ways outside of school. For example, a school nurse who works with students who have been identified as having difficulty in the classroom identified how their learning processes worked and then organized an after-school activity in which the students went to the workshop and made wooden containers for the Red Cross as part of a community service project. Here the students who were struggling with words and writing excelled in providing a very essential service to others. You and your child can experience that same feeling of success: no more misperceived patterns; now celebrated learners contributing to the school?s overall presence in the community.
Christine Johnston is the director of the Center for the Advancement of Learning at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. She is the author of Unlocking the Will to Learn and Let Me Learn, published by Corwin Press.
(NOTE: This has been submitted simultaneously to several publications. Dr. Johnston is able to customize an article should you so desire.)