To be proactive is to anticipate, prepare, and intervene based on a long-term vision and perspective. When anticipating the future, you react accordingly before it actually happens.

To be reactive is to respond to a situation, rather than creating or controlling it.

How does this relate to what we do with our children? What we do in the short term affects the long term; and that myopic/short-sighted intervention can have a negative impact on outcomes.

One contributing cause is lack of a vision, lack of hope, and a willingness to accept a short-term possible solution. Another underlying issue is that most teachers and therapists are not involved for the long term and are not aware of the long-term results or consequences of their interventions. The third contributing factor is a lack of awareness and knowledge of the whole child. When looking only at pieces, one cannot perceive, acknowledge, utilize, or evaluate the impact on the gestalt of the individual.

Armed with decades of experience working with tens of thousands of “Whole Children”, it is relatively easy for us at NACD to look at your children and to be proactive. Being proactive requires looking at a child’s strengths and talents. In addition we must look at weaknesses and issues, determine what pieces we need to put together or issues we need to resolve, in what order, and in what priority to produce a good ultimate outcome. One of the benefits of working with “Whole Children,” working with the full spectrum of children, and working with individuals (often for decades) is that we have the benefit of experience and perspective.

Working with “Whole Children”

I have spoken at length about the importance of working with “Whole Children.” Working with “Whole Children” simply means we are working with all aspects of the child from their health, sleep, sensory function, social function, behavior, speech, language, fine and gross motor function, cognition, and academic development to their attitude, self image, etc. I don’t know if it is possible to be truly proactive without working with the whole child. Most children have disconnected individuals addressing various aspects of their lives, coming and going; and the more issues a child has, generally the more people there are working reactively, not proactively, with them. Working “reactively” means they are reacting to what is perceived as an immediate issue or need, without an historic or long range, long-term vision.

In discussing all of the people who can be involved with your child, you are tempted to associate them all somehow, to call them a team or an army, suggesting that they are somehow a cohesive unit working together. The reality is that they are individuals working with pieces, more often than not in virtual isolation. Such individuals are often working reactively, not proactively. They are working with their one piece generally in virtual isolation and establishing their piece as their priority and generally from a perspective that they are only going to be involved for a relatively short period of time. Working with children for only a few months, or even years, does not permit one to gain a long-term perspective and to understand the implications of what is in reality short-term, reactive intervention.

Proactive Intervention

To help clarify what it means to be proactive, it is best to look at the antonyms or words that are essentially the opposite of proactive. Those words include such things as myopic or short-sighted or improvident. Another way to look at this is to say we are being reactive as opposed to proactive.

Reactive Intervention

If we are being reactive, we are reacting to problems; if we are being proactive we are looking forward, into the future, so as to prepare for the future. As parents with limited experience, it’s often difficult to be proactive. It’s difficult to be proactive if you have not had the experience and knowledge to know the degree to which what is happening today, or not happening today, is going to influence tomorrow, next week, next year, and the future. Sadly, many therapists and educators do not work with individuals over long periods, as in decades, to understand what issues can be created by working perhaps hard, but not working from a long-term, proactive perspective.

Some common examples of being reactive rather than proactive would include things like teaching young children with Down syndrome to sign. (link to Signing contra-indicated for DS) The perception is that Johnny isn’t talking and is frustrated, so let’s give him a means of communication that he can use soon–signing. Looking at the short-term results, which may be the child being able to communicate a few basic needs and being perhaps less frustrated, reinforces the use of signing. But if looked at long-term and proactively, we discover that we have had a negative impact on the child’s ultimate ability to communicate verbally, and even more significantly, have had a negative impact on the development of the child’s auditory processing, with resulting adverse affects on the child’s cognition and global maturity. Reactive intervention is not the best intervention.

One of the more glaring areas where we often see disastrous effects of reactive intervention is in the area of mobility and walking. We sometimes have children come to us who never developed the neurodevelopmental or the structural foundation that can ultimately produce a child who is a functional walker. Being proactive, we know that we have to follow a typical sequence of development, which among other things, requires the neurological, tactile, proprioceptive, and structure pieces of the child going through the necessary developmental stages before working on standing and walking. Children in walkers who had been “helped” to stand before they had the strength and structure to do it themselves, or do it properly, and then “assisted” to walk using various apparatuses to hold them up so they could move their legs, usually end up not being able to walk independently. Often they have created structural issues that even numerous surgical interventions cannot properly address. Children you see walking with walkers or braces and crutches almost always end up in wheelchairs. Yes, the goal is walking; but can we achieve it by circumventing the foundational pieces?

An example of a reactive approach in education is encouraging children to write before they neuro-developmentally are ready. Sixty or seventy years ago, it was not uncommon to make left-handed children in kindergarten and first grade, at five or six years of age, write with their right hands. This practice was stopped because interfering with the natural development of handedness resulted in a plethora of neurological and even emotional problems. Today this isn’t happening; but today we have preschool education, which is even creating more problems by making children write before they developmentally have even firmly established a dominant hand. A child may be leaning toward the right hand, for example, at three or four, and if encouraged to write with the right hand, establish a skill set for writing with the right hand. Ultimately such a child may turn out to be left-handed. Because the skill set for this specific function was established, the child will tend to continue to write with the right hand and is generally encouraged to continue to write with the right hand, resulting in all of the issues that were created 60 years ago, including poor handwriting.

The Reality of Education

The reality of education in general is that the very structure and organization of school as we generally know it almost defines reactive intervention. Education is generally perceived from the short-term perspective of needing to get specific curriculum material into a child’s brain, whether or not the material is targeted to the specific child’s present knowledge base, to their level of processing and understanding, let alone their interests. The net result of reactive education is very often poor outcomes, children often learning to dislike or “hate” school, which becomes synonymous with hating learning; and often because of the abnormal environment of narrow competition, leaving the system with a damaged self-image and lacking a perspective of who they are and what they can be. Proactively it’s not difficult to understand that at the foundation of education we should have the goal of teaching the child to love learning and to make them feel that they are smart and can learn. Is anyone shocked to hear that children do well learning things they love and struggle with what they hate? If the goal of education is to produce adults who are actually educated, who become not just lifelong readers, but life long learners with the confidence to pursue their hopes and dreams, then the system needs to be re-evaluated and made proactive not reactive.

Educational & Therapeutic Perceptions

There are numerous examples in educational and therapeutic intervention that demonstrate the negative aspects of reactive intervention. The problem is ubiquitous, and it doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Proactive intervention implores us to look at the child from a long-term perspective and with a vision and a plan to produce better outcomes. If existing outcomes are perceived as actual reflections of an individual’s potential, there is no motivation for change.

Perception of potential is a reflection of one’s experience. I recall a colleague correcting me many decades ago when I referred to someone as having twenty years of experience. He told me that the reality was that they had a year of experience twenty times, not twenty years of experience. I have been extremely disappointed to see how incredibly slow change in traditional education and therapeutic intervention has been. But doing the same reactive things year after year and producing the same limited results has not stoked change, but has reinforced the perspective of limited potential, and has encouraged many educators and therapists to keep doing the same things, producing the same inevitable outcomes.

Proactive intervention is stimulated by a need to do things better and to improve outcomes, all of which is perpetuated by a vision of what can be and what should be.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 5, 2019 ©NACD

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A study out of Simon Frazer University indicates that cognitive-motor function begins to decline at the age of 24.

In this study the researchers analyzed the data derived from 3,305 players, ranging in age from 16 to 44, of a complex computer game called Starcraft 2. According to Joe Thompson, the lead investigator of the study, “After around 24 years of age, players show slowing in a measure of cognitive speed that is known to be important for performance.”

The decline in cognitive performance in the 20s, as demonstrated in the Simon Frazer University study, is similar to the results of NACD’s Simply Smarter Project that evaluated the short-term and working memories of 7125 individuals, ranging in age from 4 to 84. Read more about the project results here. As demonstrated by NACD’s data, both short-term and working memory develop into our 20s and then begin to decline in our middle to late 20s.

Fortunately Bob Doman and NACD’s work over the past 45 years has demonstrated that the development of short-term and working memory can be accelerated, and with specific targeted developmental intervention, retained and even advanced past the point at which it would typically decline. Neuroplasticity has shown that you can continue to improve your brain function at any age.

Even if you use it, you lose it, unless you use very targeted intervention!

More Resources

NACD’s Simply Smarter Program – Work on your processing, cognition and working memory skills!

Get Started with NACD – How to get started with the NACD Program

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The National Association for Child Development is always looking for the best knowledge to further our understanding of developmental disorders and their remediation. Therefore, we are fascinated by the prospects of neuroscience research, but are fully aware of the current limitations. One major area of neuroscience research that has generated a lot of hyped buzz over the last couple decades is brain imaging [1]. Therefore, it is important to understand exactly what brain imaging can and cannot tell us.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical technique used to identify structural issues like enlarged ventricles, cysts, tumors, calcium deposits, and an absent or thin corpus callosum. MRI works great as a medical technique administered to individual patients. The problem is when neuroscientists try to make sweeping general conclusions based off MRI data. For example, one study found that the amygdala, an area in the brain, was larger in children with anxiety disorder [2], and then another study found the exact opposite [3]. Another brain imaging technique, known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), measures changes in blood flow which is associated with brain activity [4]. In the early 1990s, fMRI began to dominate brain mapping research. However, the brain activity for one person’s mental state does not necessarily correspond to another person’s brain activity for the exact same mental state in question. In other words, the brain functions differently for everyone, regardless of whether an individual has a developmental disorder or not.

Therefore, in regards to further understanding developmental disorders and their remediation, there is very little brain imaging (MRI or fMRI) can actually tell us. In fact, this is exactly why brain imaging is not allowed for diagnosing any psychiatric disorders [5], and one of the main reasons brain imaging is not suitable for use as evidence in a court case [6]. The only thing brain imaging can tell us is how brain activity might change overtime for a given individual, which can provide some interesting empirical evidence. For example, as we reported earlier, individuals who engaged in working memory training, such as the sequential processing training of Simply Smarter, showed physical brain activity changes, while there was very little to no brain activity changes for the individuals that did not engage in working memory training [7].

Sources:

1. Marcus, G. (2012). Neuroscience fiction. The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/what-neuroscience-really- teaches-us-and-what-it-doesnt.html
2. De Bellis, M.D., et al. (2000). A pilot study of amygdala volumes in pediatric generalized anxiety disorder. Psychiatry, 48, 51-57.
3. Milham, M.P., et al. (2005). Selective reduction in amygdala volume in pediatric anxiety disorders: a voxel-based morphometry investigation. Psychiatry, 57, 961-966.
4. Huettel, S. A.; Song, A. W.; McCarthy, G. (2009), Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (2 ed.), Massachusetts: Sinauer, ISBN 978-0-87893-286-3
5. Siegel, R.S., & Dickstein, D.P. (2011). Anxiety in adolescents: Update on its diagnosis and treatment for primary care providers. Adolescent Health, Medicine and Therapeutics, 3, 5.
6. (2011). Brain waves 4: Neuroscience and the law. The Royal Society, Retrieved from http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/brain-waves/responsibility-law/
7. Schneiders, J.A., et al. (2013). The impact of auditory working memory training on the fronto-parietal working memory network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 173.

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Last summer, a group of researchers
 published a study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in which they
used fMRI technology to show
auditory working memory training
 (such as the auditory sequential processing activities in Simply Smarter) resulted in physical changes 
to the brain. In addition to showing
 auditory working memory can be
 trained, this research was able to demonstrate such training is more
than just learning a skill, but literally 
transforms the brain and the mind. These findings are consistent with Bob 
Doman and NACD’s 40+ years of experience in the development of tools for building processing and working memory. The researchers also found that physically altering the brain did not take very much time—only eight training sessions in 2 weeks!

Over the course of two weeks, a group of normal, healthy college students had a total of only eight training sessions that consisted of performing auditory working memory activities. Previously, they had taken part in an fMRI pretest alongside a matched control group; and at the end of the two-week training, they took part in an fMRI posttest that was conducted in the same manner as the pretest. The tests measured brain activation of all the participants as they performed auditory and visual working memory tasks and control tasks. When the fMRI posttest data was compared to pretest data, measured changes in the brain were observed in certain brain sections of the “fronto-parietal working memory network” for the treatment group but not the control group. These physical changes were also accompanied by an improvement in the performance of auditory memory tasks.

Other findings concluded that auditory training by itself did not significantly enhance visual functioning and vice versa, which is again consistent with NACD’s methodology of addressing both auditory and visual sequential processing.

Please explore the NACD Foundation initiative the Simply Smarter Project, as well as NACD’s Cognition Coach app and Simply Smarter.

Source:

Schneiders, J.A., et al. (2012). The impact of auditory working memory training on the fronto-parietal working memory network. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 173. doi: 0.3389/fnhum.2012.00173

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T. asks: My three-year-old son loves to watch the same videos over and over again. This is driving my husband and me crazy! But our son throws a fit if we don’t put on the video he wants, so we almost always give in. Is it okay for him to watch the same video a hundred times?

Dear T., Anything you can’t do without is called an addiction. Addictions are not good at any age, let alone at three years old. Although TV can be a great educational tool and a good source of entertainment, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Children at your son’s age are prone to getting stuck on things, and at the top of the list are particular videos or specific characters (such as the dreaded “Barney”). But if your son is watching the same video repeatedly, he is not learning anything new. He is developing a habit fed by having memorized the video and anticipating what is coming next. Every time an anticipated event occurs, the brain reacts by producing a flood of powerful “feel-good” chemicals known as endorphins. Because the video remains the same every time he sees it, your son is able to count on the pattern of anticipated events and the endorphin rushes that follow.  The cycle repeats over and over, creating a chemical addiction in your child’s brain. His physiological system actually begins to crave seeing the video in order to get the guaranteed rush of endorphins again. That is why he throws a tantrum when he cannot have the “fix” of his cherished video. If this sounds a little scary, it is. The brain can produce chemicals as powerfully addictive as cocaine and other illicit drugs.  Therefore, the best thing to do with videos your child is obsessed with is to have him go with you and give them away. After the initial fit, he should stop demanding them within a couple of days.

When it comes to television and videos, a general guideline for a three-year-old would be to provide as much variety as possible, continually exposing the child to new input. Limit total TV and video time to two hours per day. And make sure at least one of those two hours is spent viewing educational TV and videos.

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M. Asks: My two teens want to stay up half the night and hate getting up in the morning for school. Do you have any suggestions?

Dear M., Many teens are wired such that they need a lot of sleep and prefer to get it from 3:00 a.m. until noon. Some schools are finally acknowledging this and are starting school earlier for the elementary school children, who tend to get up early, and later for the teens. However, most schools still follow a traditional early-morning schedule for teens. So, let me start by saying there are no really great solutions, but there are some basic guidelines that can help.

First, establish a specific time your teens must get up, and maintain it throughout the year as much as you reasonably can.

Second, avoid having entertainment sources in their rooms. TV’s, computers, and video games are all going to add to the problem. Keeping these sleep-avoiding instruments out of their rooms can help teens get to sleep earlier. As much as you can, make their room a place where they read, do homework that does not require a computer, and sleep. Entertainment should be something that happens someplace else in the house. Third, create the proper atmosphere. Environmental sounds are available on CD that include everything from the sounds of ocean waves to the pleasant rhythms of a light rain shower, and many CDs designed for relaxation incorporate classical music selections in which the beats per minute correlate with sleep patterns. Fourth, make getting up their responsibility, not yours. You should not be pulling them out of bed to keep them from being late for school. Make sure they have a loud alarm clock, and then lay down significant consequences for being late for school. Wish them luck, and stick to your guns.

Reprinted from the Journal of The NACD Foundation (formerly The National Academy for Child Development)

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 20 No. 2, 2007 ©NACD

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