I am in the process of organizing Moving Well’s on line presence. Part of this includes moving some material from my older sister site here. If this post looks familiar to some of you it is because it is a page I wrote for my old website about 18 months ago.
My interest in working with special needs children was originally inspired by hearing about and then having the privilege to work with one special little boy who sadly is no longer with us. Thank you OKM.
All children with special needs regardless of diagnosis have challenges in one or more of these areas: movement, behavior, and learning/cognition.
Can you imagine what part of us plays a dominant role in all of these? It is the brain. Metaphorically it can be said that the brain is our Chief Executive Officer. By improving how a special needs child’s brain works, significant improvements are likely in any of those areas where difficulties are present.
The next obvious question is if and how we can improve a brain. Neuroscientist Norman Doidge wrote a best selling book called the Brain that Changes Itself. In it he explains and illustrates with examples the principle of neuroplasticity. Briefly this means that any brain actually changes in response to the input it receives.
There are particular conditions, which when present promote neuroplasticity. Anat Baniel outlines these as the Nine Essentials.
Some of these are:
. Movement with attention
. Slowing down
. Variation
. Flexible goals
Neurotypical children from infancy do a wide variety of random movement. Periodically this movement results in some desirable outcome such as rolling over or sitting up. The outcome reinforces the movement pattern and development proceeds. A child with special needs typically does not do this as effectively so some critical brain connections are not made.
Many traditional therapies try to simulate, to the extent possible, age appropriate behavior, something that can be frustrating and painful for a child not developmentally ready. Anat likes to say, “If they could, they would.”
Because we all learn our experience, which might not be what we are “supposed” to be learning, a child drilled in or forced into doing things prematurely learn that those activities are too hard or too painful or some other negative association that actually discourages the learning process.
Practitioners of Feldenkrais and the Anat Baniel Method for Children, with the Essentials as background, use appropriate touch, movement and language to fill in developmental gaps associated with a child’s condition. They begin with the child where she is developmentally regardless of age. Then they provide optimal conditions for the child’s brain to work things out. This can apply to anything from learning to walk, to talk or to interact with others in more socially acceptable ways. Maybe even kick a ball or ride a bike.
