Last year the CDC removed a milestone from childhood development – which quite honestly makes me want to scream. Crawling is a very key step in brain development. You want your child to crawl. This milestone is critical in developing the brain functions necessary for fluent reading, writing, focus, and emotional regulation. Below are just…
Crawling is a critical step in an infant’s brain development. Skipping crawling or not crawling for long enough can impact various cognitive processes. This can range from being unable to sit up straight, not holding a pencil correctly, hyperactivity and fidgeting and even dyslexia and learning disabilities. Education professors, O’Dell and Cook at the University…
The Myth of Practice-Makes-Perfect When Sheila came to see me, seeking reading therapy for her son, Kyle, she was skeptical when she learned that reading therapy was not the traditional tutoring she had imagined. It’s normal for parents to think their child just needs more one-on-one practice. For many of us ‘practice-makes-perfect’ is the only…
“I had no idea.” There’s always that one thing you can’t believe you didn’t know. I know being the highly in-tune, CEO mom you are that you already know your child’s brain absolutely needs: Oxygen Water Quality Food Sleep … but do you know what ultimately DEVELOPS your child’s brain? What builds the connections? Sensory-motor…
Have you noticed that when we make progress or an advancement with a discovery, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and that’s all we hear about? Everyone seems to forget about the other pieces of the puzzle and thinks this ‘new advancement’ or ‘discovery’ is the answer to all of our problems. Our culture loves a…
The ability to learn well, focus, concentrate and even have a positive mood is connected to posture more than you might realise. When you consider that when you are interested in something, you tend to lean in and sit up straighter, this doesn’t seem as far-fetched. The Landau reflex is known to help the body…
When Brian and Kim met me about their son Josh they had very different opinions about why Josh was struggling in school. Brian thought his son was just lazy. The teachers did too. Mom knew Josh was trying his best and that he didn’t want to be what Josh called ‘the dumb kid’. But all…
“He barely crawled.” “She was an early walker.” “He didn’t crawl.” “Her crawl was more of a shuffle.” I hear this all the time when it comes to kids with learning and behaviour difficulties. It’s the reason why retained primitive reflexes can wreak so much havoc on a child’s ability to read, learn, write and…
You know what drives me bananas about how we address reading struggles? We have kids read more to try and fix it. We think that the problem and cause of reading struggles are related to reading itself. I am here to tell you – they are not. Reading struggles don’t even start with things like…
Claire used to struggle with helping her son, Kolby. She felt so hopeless and stuck and was always so worried about how much further Kolby would fall behind in school. It felt like every year Kolby was struggling more. Sure he would make gains in some ways, but Kolby couldn’t sit still to save his…
