Introduction

Children who get labelled as hyperactive or inattentive

1. 1.      Highly Intelligent children need time tables from 2 to 6 pm also. School is “boring” they say. Teachers at school & parents at home have to provide some avenue of appreciation for their brilliance. They need a more inclusive curriculum. Children who are very gifted or highly creative can become distracted and disruptive at school if they are not sufficiently challenged. Seeing only the symptoms, not the causes, leads to their frustration increasing and their symptoms worsening. At home these children must be given a time table 2 pm to 8 pm to keep them gainfully occupied & deliver them from boredom & mischief
2. 2.       Children who have creative genius – provide avenues
3. 3.      Hurt children – family trouble, father or mother fracture
4. 4.      Language disabled children – language is picked up by personal interaction & hearing mother’s voice. When mother gives no time children will struggle with speech
5. 5.      Children – kinaesthetic, musical, visual (they were called right brain)
6. 6.      Digital overstimulated child needs retraining thru Empathic Learning Therapy & not drugs
7. 7.      Some children may react to specific chemical molecules in foods – colourings etc (Lead, mercury or Cadmium) . Some children react to sugar & chocolate, colas etc.
8. 8.      Other problems that distract children – dyslexia, dyspraxia, hearing or sight problems, SPD, Autism
9. 9.      Sleep disturbed child – which may be result of digital surplus
10. 10.  Other serious psychiatric conditions. Tourette’s syndrome and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), are also frequently mistaken for ADHD as, in an effort to suppress their tics or urges, sufferers can seem distracted or hyperactive, jiggling or squirming in their chairs, and are labelled with ADHD, with the result that the opportunity to treat their condition is missed. An ADHD diagnosis can even obscure such a potentially dangerous condition as schizophrenia.

 

Schools have earned concern. Here’s the scenario

1. Parents invest minimal time on child from birth to adolescence
2. Children are largely fed on digital stuff for lack of parental time. Digital culture opens lives to violence, sex, selfishness, isolation, lack of true friends, less play or recreation time
3. Some parents are working abroad – leaving children unsupervised
4. Even grandparents are busy
5. Loving Nanny has become a thing of the past. Children come from school to empty homes.
6. Children spent maximally only 6 hours at school.
7. School is expected to teach subjects that make children get grades at examinations – parents demand this
8. After school children are driven from class to class even from a very young age. There is no time for family interaction
9. Teachers’ vocation for majority happens by default – can’t get anything better. With very low pay one can’t expect much talent. Germany invests high salaries in teachers. We remember teachers who were institutions of the College

10. Male role models as teachers are lacking. Even boys schools have over 60%  female teachers

11. Parents drive children for performance rather than character

12. Sports at school also has become happy hunting grounds for certain kind of “politics”

13. Older students know that Professional or Corporate careers demand predatory “ethics”

14.  Political skulduggery teaches children villainy pays

15. And we are whipping up failure of schools. Able parents give themselves to corporate profit & other Professions. Teaching Profession is left to the less abled with low salaries.

Modern Fiasco

Here is the score – work to make ends to meet & not so needed endeavours deprive parental time from children. That’s fact. SO the digital nanny. In our ELC lecturers we try make a reconciliation.

1. Primary school teachers please develop skills to handle the digitally messed up child – though parents created the problem. Offer parents the solution – empathic learning therapy first & not drugs.
2. Also you need to know in 30 % the hyperactivity problem began in the foetal brain in the mom’s womb. Why ? Many suggestions. Inbox email for doc
3. Parents speak to your play school, day care, crèche – choose  a place that does not use digital gadgets & LED screen
4. Pre-school Principals, Day care centres – please consider it your healing role to develop pre- school premises with garden, swings, outdoor play – minimal or no LED screen & laptops – latter really ruin speech & language. Remember when children go home – they don’t get parental time – they get more cartoons.
5. Parents – please redeem your time from not mandatory activities after work – including Gym – build your muscles & fitness with your son on a bicycle
6. Doctors – drugs don’t improve learning on the long run.

 

 

Further Reading

Most child minders will find it hard to give executive discipline to children the way parent will. Children do what they like. They underwire executive top down regulation & get on to bottom up regulation where they respond to immediate whims just like the way they do when on cartoon & digital surplus.  When given commands children do mathematical steps towards achieving & develop their logical mathematical brain tract. When they do their own think – they don’t have planned management at that early age. Add digital surplus to that you get a jittery distracted child whom they medical profession is prone to label as ADHD & prescribe drugs. (There is a small % to be identified as ADHD & directed to Empathic Learning Therapy rather than to drugs. Inbox me for full medical treatise)

My Three books available at Vijitha Yapa, Sarasavi, Lake House, MD Gunasena & Brookside Ideal gift for parents with children from ) to 16 years.

Children Our Heritage – describes the predators out there risking children’s lives with emphasis on digital safety. Layman’s guide to averting ADHD.

Mom, Dad, Me – Our Crash Course on Mistake Management – is a hilarious approach to creative management of mistake

 

Brain Wiring – Appeal to Corporate

A child’s brain wired its dominant tracts in time past, largely in his/her relational circle with the influence of what parents & home did. So it was quite possible a doctor’s child wired up being able to take up Dad’s path. Now children from 0 to 12 years have varied digital & other influences quite alien to home. Home influence could be minimal. It is therefore important to have clear understanding & assessment of a child’s dominant brain tracts by 14 years in order to choose his curriculum & career. Happily advances in thought science makes this possible. This would prevent accountant fathers insisting kinaesthetically wired daughters doing accountancy or entrepreneur fathers insisting musically wired sons joining them in business. Furthermore after 12 years digital life largely decides morality for youth. In this we must be the shepherds tot eh corporate & professions. There is  a great mission field where corporate is willing to incorporate this in their CSR & HR programs for employee well being.

 

Prof Manfeld Spitzer

In 2012, Professor Spitzer published  Digitale Demenz: Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen (Digital Demetia: What We and Our Children are Doing to our Minds).  Spitzer’s conclusions are stark: Digitalizing classrooms can have a negative effect on learning, especially in young children, undermining the neuroplastic capacity of their brains. And, in contrast, there are no independent studies “that unequivocally establish that computers and screens in the classroom make learning more effective.” Over time, leaning is stunted, and reliance on digital devices results in dependency. “In reality”, concludes Professor Spitzer, “using digital media in kindergarten or primary school is actually a way of getting children addicted.”  And additionally, the multi-tasking that comes with smart phones, tablets and computers inhibits concentration and impedes the development of the right side of the brain.

References:

Spitzer, Manfred. The Mind Within the Net, MIT Press, 1999 (Softcover 2000).

Spitzer, Manfred. Digitale Demenz, Droemer, 2012 (Spanish Edition, Demencia Digital, Ediciones B, 2013)

http://www.worldcrunch.com/tech-science/does-the-internet-make-you-dumb-top-german-neuroscientist-says-yes-and-forever/digital-dementia-manfred-spitzer-neuropsychiatry/c4s9550/#.Ut3HnfTnaIU

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/10138403/Surge-in-digital-dementia.html

http://www.uniklinik-ulm.de/struktur/kliniken/psychiatrie-und-psychotherapie/klinik-fuer-psychiatrie-und-psychotherapie-iii-ulm/home/personen/prof-dr-dr-manfred-spitzer.html

Smart Phones

According to Cleveland Clinic Children’s child psychiatrist Dr. Joe Austerman, a child should be educated on the dangers of smartphone use while also being taught how to work through such issues so they know the appropriate rules of interaction. Children under 10 should not have a smartphone, Austerman said. In addition, he or she should be mature enough to understand the dangers of cyberbullying and predators, along with the responsibility