chapter 17

Strategies for Learning Difference

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‘Every child has an enormous drive to
demonstrate competence’ (1)

Buckminster Fuller

In this chapter

On every seminar we teach there are worried parents who want to know how to help children who have a diagnosis of a learning difficulty. The questions range from how to teach a dyslexic child to spell, to how to help an autistic child integrate into school, to general questions such as how to use NLP with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

To address this vast subject completely will require another book. However, this chapter gives you some helpful ideas as to how you as a teacher or parent can help children with the proliferation of diagnoses now flooding the world of education. First, though, let’s back up and discover what exactly is being talked about when we attach these labels to children, or to adults for that matter.

Discussions and concerns in schools often revolve around ‘frustrating’ or ‘difficult’ students. These learners are often identified as being fidgety, untidy, excitable, loud, attention-seeking, lacking in concentration, under-achieving, disorganised, or lacking motivation. Parents are often worried that their child doesn’t seem to be doing as well as others and they are desperate to discover why this may be.

There seems to be an increasing desire to provide a label or diagnosis for children to explain away the behaviour, hence the list of syndromes and conditions seems to get longer and longer: Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Attention Deficit Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome, Emotional Behavioural Difficulty, to name just a few. The diagnostic process has advantages and disadvantages. Some children need the labels to afford them better learning support and they flourish, but others become limited by a label which can negatively affect their self-image and sense of identity. If you have struggled to learn something and, despite all your best efforts, you still can’t do it, then having an explanation can help. However, it is not helpful if you have a label attached to you and people start to believe that things will always be this way and you can’t learn new strategies.

In extreme cases, the label provides a smoke screen for lack of parenting skills or lack of creativity in teaching processes. It is also worth noting that in many countries, schools and colleges receive additional learning support to help manage the unruly child or perk up their performance statistics, which may provide some explanation for the explosion in diagnoses over the past few years.

Our approach differs from the norm in a number of key ways. Firstly, we prefer the term Learning Difference to Learning ‘Difficulty’ or ‘Disability’. We prefer this term because, in our view, the problem is not a learning difficulty but a teaching difficulty. Humans are neurologically diverse and to some extent everyone is ‘wired’ differently. People vary from whatever the ‘norm’ is in widely different degrees. Differences, including learning differences, are to be celebrated and some learners simply learn and process information in an alternative way.

The onus is on us as educators and parents to discover how a child processes information, what strategies may work better for them, and to teach creative ways to overcome the hurdles and challenges each learner faces. It is much more helpful to think in terms of learning difference, recognising that humans are neurologically diverse and can learn new strategies and new skills to become exquisite learners in their own way.

Departments of Education in many countries put significant resources into supporting learners with learning difficulties, which is admirable. The problem is that support is often given to provide adjustment for the learner, rather than teaching an effective strategy. For example, some students who have difficulty reading are provided with a member of staff to read for them. This seems absurd, which is why our approach differs significantly from ‘reasonable adjustment’. Our solution is to teach the student to read for themselves, rather than say if they can’t read let someone else do it for it for them. Reading is not regarded as a high order skill. There are many examples of children and young people with many challenges who have learned to read and develop other mastery skills. At one time it was thought that children with Down’s Syndrome could never read. This has fortunately been proved a myth and research shows that with the right interventions and strategies children with this genetic condition often access reading and move on to higher skills.(2) If a country can have a 98% literacy rate, it means many people with different brain wiring can achieve the foundation skill of reading for lifelong learning.(3)

There is a great deal of new research into neuro-diversity and the way brains are wired, which is very helpful to teachers in understanding and identifying how a student is failing to learn. There is conjecture as to why some people have brains that are wired differently, but it really isn’t important for our purposes here. There is also much research into the neuroplasticity of the brain demonstrating that humans can continue to learn in adulthood.(4) So even if a person didn’t get the help they required at school, it is never too late to start.

A further major difference in our approach, when using NLP to work with neurologically diverse learners, is to teach to symptom. This means that we identify what the learner can do and what the learner can’t do yet as a means of finding a way that enables them to learn in a new way. The focus is on capability, not incapacity. As with all good NLP interventions, we start by asking ourselves and the learner some helpful questions, such as:

We are often asked for guidance on how to work with children who have a learning difference such as Dyslexia, Dyspraxia or other ‘disability’ label. Our answer is, we will work with them in the same way as we would work with anyone else - applying the presuppositions and asking good questions to discover an effective strategy that works for the person.

Now let’s take a look at some of common labels, what they mean and how we can help using NLP:

Dyslexia
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of Dyslexia is, ‘A general term for disorders that involve difficulty in learning to read or interpret words, letters, and other symbols, but that do not affect general intelligence.’

The term is commonly associated with spelling and reading while other factors such as directional and sequencing confusion, organisational problems, poor memory and visual sensitivity are also commonly associated with Dyslexia.

The difficulties a person experiences generally become the focus of attention, while the strengths and uniqueness of the person are missed. People with a diagnosis of Dyslexia often have excellent communication skills and a caring, empathic disposition. Some have high visual spatial awareness, good understanding of the workings of machinery, computers, circuitry, etc. Some are innovative, good trouble-shooters, creative and lateral thinkers, communicators and mediators. People with Dyslexia can be a great asset to an organisation and many are extremely successful in business. These skills and resources can easily be harnessed to overcome the challenges faced by a learner

A person with a dyslexic brain may have advantages that the rest of humanity does not. Certainly, they can cope with a degree of chaos that most of us would find daunting. Stress is often a part of the life of a dyslexic person. Constantly struggling to do tasks that others ‘say’ are easy, can cause stress and so dyslexic people learn to live with a level of stress others don’t experience. It seems that they deal with moments of crisis much better than many of us. Winston Churchill (who many people believe had Dylsexia) was a supreme example of this. A further advantage is that a dyslexic may have no need to take notes and may be able to store their thoughts in wonderful vivid pictures in their head, creating a much fuller experience and great memory recall.

The key to helping someone who has wiring that works in a different way to the majority is to figure out a way to utilise the resources they have to solve the problem. If a person has auditory processing difficulties, they will have a great deal of difficulty in learning to read or spell by sounding out words. Most of us find this a challenge anyway, and it can be insurmountable for someone with this type of Dyslexia. On the other hand, they may well have fantastic visual spatial awareness, so the spelling strategy outlined in this book (Chapter 3) may be easy for them, especially if they link it to a really great feeling and a determination to succeed.

Often the difference between a poor speller and a dyslexic is stress. A poor speller may not be able to spell and doesn’t necessarily care that much. A dyslexic may stress over their ability and hold a strong belief that because they are dyslexic they cannot spell, and it becomes a huge obstacle to learning for them. It makes sense that anyone who keeps trying to do something but just can’t find a way to succeed could be stressed out. So it’s a good idea to deal with the stress up front and use strategies to relax and remove any tension that could get in the way of effective learning. Once a person relaxes and any limiting belief is doubted and removed, the spelling or reading becomes simply a matter of the right strategy. This works both ways. Success in the strategy can change a person’s beliefs about their identity.

Terry is a senior HR manager with a Dyslexia diagnosis and he was convinced that he couldn’t learn to spell because of his Dyslexia. Kate persuaded him to suspend his disbelief just for the sake of an experiment, convincing him that the outcome didn’t matter either way because we were just playing with strategies. Once he had learned to spell one word he realised that using a visual strategy was much easier for him. Whenever Terry wrote to Kate subsequently he signed himself ‘Terry Restaurant’ after learning to be confident in spelling this word after 40 years of using ‘café’ as an alternative!

Remember Louise, the lady we taught to spell in 15 minutes at a seminar (Chapter 3)? She had been labelled dyslexic many years before. The first word she chose to spell was ‘administered’. She was a nurse and had for years avoided writing ‘administered’ in patient notes, writing ‘given’ instead. When she learned to spell ‘administered’ quickly and easily, she said, ‘why haven’t I been able to figure this out for myself?’ This is a fairly typical response - she believed she was stupid for not being able to work it out. When we responded that it wasn’t her responsibility and it was just that no one had shown her how, a very big belief about herself also changed for the better.

Reading is often even more of a challenge than spelling for people diagnosed with Dyslexia. Light sensitivity can make the words dance on the page, reverse some letters and jumble others. Sometimes very simple solutions work well. For instance, tipping the reading material to a 45 degree angle (like the old school desks) helps reduce glare, as do coloured overlays. Certainly, black on white print is one of the most difficult to decipher, while blue on cream is much easier on the eye.(5)

Sometimes more creative solutions need to be developed. One lady reported that she felt as if she had two sets of eyes; one set inside her head and the other opposite her. One set was associated and the other was disassociated and she flicked between both sets of eyes, which made reading very hard. Using her NLP skills she brought both sets of eyes to the same side of the book so they were looking at the same angle. She could immediately read easily. She now runs courses teaching this simple technique and has a great deal of success with children using the simple instruction, ‘before you begin to read bring both sets of eyes around this side of the table’ .

To summarise, if the problem is to do with an inability to learn something then ask:

Dyspraxia
The Oxford English Dictionary defines Dyspraxia as a ‘developmental disorder causing difficulty in activities requiring coordination and movement’ . It was known as the ‘Clumsy Child Syndrome’ at one time. There are many overlaps within these learning differences and Dyspraxia is often associated with Dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder. Essentially, children with this label don’t seem to be totally ‘in’ their bodies. They don’t understand what to do and how to do it and a dyspraxic child may be seen running with feet splayed and hands flapping, shoelaces undone and buttons out of sequence. They may have difficulty tracking text and be sensitive to light, sound and texture. They are typically persistent and determined, empathic and caring, and have good auditory skills.

There is depressingly little practical help available to these children other than ‘reasonable adjustment’. That term means making allowances instead of providing strategies that help them to get on with their lives and build on their numerous strengths.

Joe had a lot of difficulty co-ordinating his body and staying balanced. He described it like this, ‘when I put my foot down I don’t really know where it will stop’ . He had problems knowing where his body ended. Fortunately, he was a very persistent little boy and we designed a set of movements combined with strong visualisations to help him to know where the ground was and how to correct his balance when his foot hit the ground.

There is some evidence that promoting gross motor movements helps to develop fine motor movements such as writing, which is helpful for dyspraxic brains. Physical activities such as Brain Gym, which promotes a series of exercises claimed to improve academic performance, also seem valuable. Danny had a very bad accident which caused a significant damage to his brain. He was an amazing character who had overcome enormous difficulties before he came to us. He had learned to walk and talk again and was functioning very well. However, his writing was very cramped and listed to one side of the page. By using a series of BIG movements, in the form of shapes which crossed the midline of his body and practising infinity loops, Danny started to even out his writing. The infinity loop or ‘lazy 8’ (a figure of eight on its side) incorporates all the shapes and movements needed to write, so the exercises trained Danny’s brain to make the ‘write ’ movements in the right proportions to make his writing clearer.

A ttention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
A worrying development over the past few years is the increased diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), especially in the USA. In 2011, 11% of children had a diagnosis of one of these conditions in the USA and there appear to be higher clusters in some US states. The number of children diagnosed increased from 9% in 2009 to 11% in 2011 and as the number of diagnoses grew, increasing numbers of children and young people were prescribed Methylphenidate – a central nervous system stimulant prescribed under various trade names including Ritalin.( 6) On the other hand, in France the percentage of ADHD diagnosis remains at less than 5%. It would seem that French doctors prefer to view ADHD within a social rather than medical context.

Pamela Druckerman, a Paris-based journalist who wrote ‘Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting’, observes that French parents love their children just as much as American parents. They give them piano lessons, take them to sports practice, and encourage them to make the most of their talents. But French parents have a different philosophy of discipline. Consistently enforced limits, in the French view, make children feel safe and secure. Clear limits, they believe, actually make a child feel happier and safer. Finally, French parents believe that hearing the word “no” rescues children from the “tyranny of their own desires.”(7)

The definition of ADD and ADHD in the Oxford English Dictionary is, ‘any of a range of behavioural disorders occurring primarily in children, including such symptoms as poor concentration, hyperactivity and learning difficulties’ . We are concerned that these ‘conditions’ have become a dumping ground for any child who has difficulty being in charge of their own mind.

This is not the place to discuss the medical profession’s clinical decisions, but there is evidence that whilst bad parenting doesn’t cause ADHD, good parenting can mitigate the excesses of ADHD behaviour.(8)
The routine that our Grandmother would recognise of regular bedtimes, plenty of fresh air and exercise, three meals a day, limited snacks and limited access to TV and new technology, especially at night, works well for lots of children. We are not advocating that this is the only strategy for a child with ADHD, but it would seem sensible to explore all alternative routes before administering a very powerful drug to a child.

Of course, all of these measures are frameworks to help with ADHD and ADD. However, NLP is the study of subjective experience , so our approach is to understand what is happening with a child on the inside. Typically, children with ADHD don’t appear to listen to instructions, or respond instantly and sometimes fidget inappropriately in class.

Michael, aged 13, was asked, ‘what are you thinking about when the teacher is talking?’ He replied that he was thinking about football, then rollerblading, then about a film he had seen. Observing him and asking him ‘how’ he thought about these things, it was clear that he made lots of pictures which flitted from one to another rapidly. By picking one picture and changing the submodalities so this image was big and bright and still, he learned to focus his attention on just one thought for longer and calm his thinking.

Children with ADHD often need strategies to manage their impulsivity. It isn’t that other children don’t want to get up and run around the classroom, it’s just that the child with ADHD does it! Simple suggestions such as providing a timescale for sitting and listening, say 2 minutes, and then guidance as to what will happen next, ‘then you can go and bring the yellow file from my desk’, provides a child with a short timeline so they can defer the impulse to act, knowing they are going to do something else in 2 minutes. Children with symptoms of ADHD have wonderfully creative minds that they just can’t control. Teaching the NLP processes of managing the submodalities of their thoughts unleashes their creative talents and potential to be successful and happy adults.

Autism
Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome are typically included in the term Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

The dictionary definition is, ‘a mental condition present from early childhood, characterised by great difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and in using language and abstract concepts’ .

The range of behaviours associated with Autism means that teaching to symptom becomes even more important. Many people with Autism function perfectly well, whereas others face many challenges and require constant care. Many children with profound Autism will repetitively bang their heads against a wall. The usual response to this is to pad the walls, which stops damage but doesn’t do anything for the behaviour. We observed carers working with children on the Autistic Spectrum pacing and mirroring repetitive behaviours. This mirroring behaviour allowed the children to begin to establish rapport and connect with the carers.

If the carer mirrored the behaviour in a different way, such as tapping their hand at the same speed and tempo as the child was banging, the child would begin to respond to the adult. This seems to make sense; the child is doing something to achieve something and when the adult participates in this s/he is beginning to enter the world of the child and building a level of rapport that the child does not normally experience. From this point of connection, carers can begin to lead the child into better ways of achieving what they want.

Children on the Autistic Spectrum or identified with Asperger’s Syndrome are often uncomfortable with change and new situations. Finding ways for a child to repeat an experience until it becomes comfortable can help a great deal. One very enlightened headteacher worked with the teacher and parents of a little boy with Autism, to create a miniature classroom at home, including a miniature whiteboard, desks and chairs. At the end of the school day, the little boy could go home and repeat the day by acting it out over and over. As he repeated the day he became familiar with his experiences and so he could relax and feel comfortable. In this way, as he integrated his experience from one day, he found that he could face each new day without fear and be confident that he was ready for a new experience.

Sometimes the problem is not with learning something new, but with inappropriate behaviour. In this case, we ask what is the person trying to achieve with this behaviour? It may be comfort or attention or escape. The next step is to find a way for the person to achieve this in a more fruitful way. Richard was asked to see a little boy with Autism. The boy spent a great deal of time in a cupboard under the stairs. His parents desperately tried to coax him out of his hideaway. Richard did the opposite. He made the cupboard the most comforting and cosy place with cushions and favourite toys. Then he sat down with the parents and chatted.

After a little while the door of the cupboard opened and a little later a giggle came from inside. The boy’s mother said it had been years since her son had giggled. It was a question of finding a way for the little boy to achieve what he was after, and when he had achieved this he was able to move forward because now his strategy for finding comfort and safety worked.

Although we have used the usual labels for learning disabilities in this chapter, it is our opinion that learning difference is very individual and the only way to ensure success is to truly listen and observe the child and the family interactions. Here is a case study documented by Kay Cooke, a member of the NLP Education Team, which researches NLP in teaching and learning. It illustrates just how applying the principles and processes outlined here can swiftly and easily change the behaviour of a child. Kay writes:

James was 8-years-old, newly diagnosed with ADHD and was running amok. His mother ran after him. He led the pace. Parents and teachers imposed their rules. The little boy refused to be harnessed.

Mum ‘told’ him that playing on the laptop would be fun for him while we talked. He point blank refused, mum pleaded with him and the teacher rolled her eyes.

We intervened and told him about a really cool game for big lads on the laptop, but didn’t think he would be interested – of course he was. Whilst playfully chatting, we elicited a state of curiosity in James (what would it feel, look, sound like?), then frustration (at not being old enough to play), and then finally, when James’ full attention was in one place, we rewarded him with the game, holding his attention further with questions that engaged ‘his’ interest in the game.

James was engrossed until we noticed (calibrated) subtle non-verbal ‘alert/alarm’ signals. It was evident that these were minimal cues coinciding with his teacher detailing all the ‘problems ’ this child had. We clarified with James that he didn’t like to hear what was ‘wrong’ with him and suggested that the teacher instead explained (re-framed) what she would like James to be doing instead
(Well-Formed Outcomes).

Techniques we used during the meeting also included

When a teacher focuses on the ‘difficulty in dealing with the situation’, he/she becomes ineffective because the situation has become all about him or her. On the other hand, when a teacher makes the situation all about the individual learning requirements of a learner, s/he becomes both effective and helpful to the learner.

One grandparent said to us, ‘they tell me my grandson has ADHD and poor memory processing, yet he can spell and pronounce every name of every football player (including complicated foreign names) in the Champion’s League. How come?’

It is not about finding out ‘why’, but following the clues and asking HOW does he memorise these names? What is his strategy for this, compared with his spelling list in class? What do the submodalities of his experiences reveal? Which states bring him the fastest results? Once we figure out ‘how’ a learner does something well, we get to the heart of their learning needs.

The way a person processes information and their associated behaviours are useful in some context, even if they are not useful in the context at the moment. For example, it may be unhelpful for a person with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder to wash their hands 100 times a day, but if the OCD is focused in the right direction then it becomes an asset. If you are a musician and your obsession is to practise for 7 hours a day you will become a very good musician. There are many examples of extremely successful people who channel their OCD into productive areas. Often the first thing we do with people with OCD is get them to make long lists of all the things they must do each day. On the list are activities such as recalling 5 relaxing situations, 4 happy memories, smiling 7 times before leaving the house. We utilise their OCD to promote their wellbeing and happiness.

We work with many parents and teachers who seem to prefer to bring in the experts rather than develop their own skills to help their child. One important message to parents and teachers is you are the experts in this child . By all means get advice, learn new ways of working with your child, but remember that ultimately it is in you they trust.

One family we met had two children with almost all the learning difficulty diagnoses between them. They had extra Maths and English tutors, specialist behaviourists, movement and balance classes as well as the usual extra-curricula activities. Dad had taken an NLP Practitioner course and decided to include this in their ‘therapy’ too. After only 30 minutes observing the children in the house with their parents it become very clear that:

summary

The stories of the children and adults in this chapter demonstrate that the same processes we have explained in this book so far apply equally to all learners . The range of neurological diversity means each and every one of us has the capacity to understand and enter the reality of another person, however different they may at first appear to be, and can learn from the experience. When we look and listen and teach to the symptoms, great advances in learning can be made with all learners.

references

1. Buckminster Fuller, Presentation to U.S. Congressional Subcommittee on World Game 1969

2. Buckley SJ, Bird G. 1993 Teaching children with Down Syndrome to read. Down Syndrome Research and Practice.

3. UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) (statistical office of UNESCO and is the primary UN depository for cross-nationally comparable statistics on education, science and technology, culture, and communication covering more than 200 countries and territories.)

4. Rakic, P. (January 2002). “Neurogenesis in adult primate neocortex: an evaluation of the

evidence”. Nature Reviews Neuroscience

5. British Dyslexia Association http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk

6. The MTA Cooperative Group: A 14-Month randomized clinical trial of treatment strategies for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) . Arch Gen Psychiatry 1999; 56: 1073-1086.

7. Druckerman, Pamela, 2012, Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting, Penguin. Published in the U.K. as: French Children Don’t Throw Food, Doubleday.

8. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, http://www.cdc.gov

activities

Activity 1
Using your creativity and curiosity, find a person in your circle of family or friends who is particularly neurologically diverse from you; someone who can do something that you can’t or has ways of thinking that are very different from you. Elicit their strategy for doing something inside their head that you couldn’t do and try on their strategy and way of thinking. Admire the differences. What have you learned?

Activity 2
Ask this person if there is something that they would like to do better. Elicit their current strategy and compare it with your strategy. How might you go about teaching this person in a way that matches their learning needs?

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This eBook is licensed to Dominic Luzi, dluzi@managementalchemy.com on 10/18/2018