by Bob Doman

Who would have thought that one of the potentially most harmful “tools” available to our children was something as educational and entertaining as YouTube? For many children and young adults with developmental issues, it is.

Our work at the National Association for Child Development involves working with the whole child and all aspects of their development. From sleep and diet, to reading and cognition, to social function and behavior, to how they spend their day and how they entertain themselves. Our job is essentially to see where all the pieces are, how they are fitting together or not, and how to work with the family and the child to maximize the child’s function and potential.

We work internationally with the full range of children. From those with severe brain injuries, to those on the autism spectrum, to genetic issues such as Down syndrome, to learning and attention problems, as well as “typical” and talented children. Working with this broad range of children provides us with an opportunity to gain many insights, not the least of which are what tools can be used to our benefit or that can become harmful. For many children, particularly, but not exclusively those with developmental issues, YouTube can have a negative to devastating effect on their global function, wellbeing, and development.

When the iPad first came out, I heralded it, and still do, as both a tremendous developmental and educational tool and source of entertainment. For many children with developmental issues, we finally had an instrument that served as an entire portable toy box and toolbox, an instrument that taught them everything from cause and effect and how to isolate and use their index finger, to how to speak (NACD Apraxia apps) and to think (NACD Cognition Coach apps), therapeutic videos, and an almost endless list of educational and entertaining content and access to a world’s worth of information.

For many parents of our lower functioning children, having something that their child could engage with all by themselves was a godsend. Not many children are going to sit by themselves and entertain themselves putting rings on a post. With the tens of thousands of apps for young children, it was a fairly easy task to find apps that the child enjoyed and to follow a progression of apps that push and follow the child’s development. For an educator and a developmentalist, the iPad and subsequent tablets are certainly some of the greatest inventions ever.

One of the amazing effects of the iPad was how quickly children learned how to use it, and not only use it, but navigate and control it. I have been amazed to watch children with severe handicaps and typical kids as young as two and three navigate and find everything they want on their device, often better than their parents. This facility of children to navigate has, however, created some unintended issues.

For many children one of the favorite and most preferred functions of the iPad is to use it as a vehicle to watch YouTube videos. How some children who can’t even read are able to navigate and find specific videos is rather amazing, but many do it and they do it well.

I first became aware of the issue with YouTube with our children on the autism spectrum. Many of these children have a tendency to get stuck on specific things, with videos being at the top of the list and with music coming in a close second. For more than forty years, I have been hearing parents tell me that their autistic child would watch the same video over and over. Not over and over like four or five times, but over and over like many hundreds of times. I was also hearing of children who, if they had control of a VCR or disc player, would keep rewinding and watching little snippets of the video over and over. What we came to realize was that the children memorized these videos or snippets and would get a huge endorphin rush every time what they anticipated happening did in fact happen. Quite simply, they became addicted to the video or their favorite parts of the video. Why else watch it over and over and over again? In some cases, the addiction was so strong that there was nothing, including eating, that the child would voluntarily do over feeding their video addiction. As it turns out, the iPad and YouTube provided the perfect pairing for creating and feeding the children’s addictions.

One of the issues for many children on the autism spectrum is lack of eye contact and not being present. For many of these children their ability to visualize, think in pictures, is exceptional; and if they become addicted to a video or a specific event, they can “watch” that event over and over again in their mind. If you are visualizing, thinking in pictures, you cannot really simultaneously process what you see well enough to engage in the moment, in the real world properly or to be entirely present. As an example imagine (but don’t really do it) driving on a freeway in rush hour traffic and computing something like 379 plus 86 in your head. Most of you to complete this task would need to picture, or visualize, the numbers to do the computation. Guess what you wouldn’t be doing while completing the problem? Would you believe watching the road. The more mental ammunition these children have to visualize, often the less present and engaged they are. This issue has become exacerbated for many children because of YouTube.

YouTube is the perfect vehicle for these children. It offers an endless variety of short videos that the child can easily locate, stop, go back to their “spot,” and revisit as often as needed. Many of these kids also find related videos easily as well. One of the favorite subjects for some of the children on the spectrum is roller coasters. This has to do with the imbalance between their central and peripheral vision and an attraction to movement and edges, which roller coasters abound in. Some of the children become amazingly talented at finding roller coaster videos, of which there is an almost endless supply on YouTube. The biggest video culprit isn’t roller coasters, however, it’s music videos.

When children watch the same thing over and over, or listen to the same song over and over, or even want the same book read to them over and over, we refer to it as perseveration. (See video below.) In addition, the perseverative child will perseverate with thoughts that lead to perseverative behaviors or actions that involve the senses, often leading to DSAs—Debilitating Sensory Addictive behaviors, or “stims,” all of which are harmful.

We tend erroneously to believe that most of what we know we were “taught,” but in truth most of what our brain processes and what we learn from our world, we learn simply by being present and aware. If a child spends hours a day watching the same YouTube videos over and over and then spends great chunks of the day not really being present, but watching the same videos in their mind, then they are not present, not learning, not engaging in life, and not developing as they should.

In school it is often the quiet child who doesn’t make waves or get into trouble that gets ignored. Unfortunately, many of these children and young adults who are off getting their YouTube fix fit into the same category. Parents and caregivers are happy that these children and adults on the spectrum, or with Down syndrome, or other issues that tend to slow down and misdirect development are quiet, happy, and occupied. Tragically we have seen many children and young adults left to their own devices—pun intended—become more and more addicted to their videos, with a resulting slowing down of their development or even regressing.

Parents, beware. Excessive screen time can be a significant problem—excessive perseverative screen time can be a disaster.

Here are a couple of links to assist you in restricting access to YouTube or other apps:

• https://www.imore.com/how-restrict-siri-airdrop-and-carplay-parental-restrictions-iphone-and-ipad
• https://www.guidingtech.com/block-youtube-screen-time-iphone-ipad/
• https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304

Of note, fortunately I have yet to hear of any children perseverating on any of my many YouTube videos. They’re safe and educational, not fodder for perseveration, I hope!

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 7, 2020 ©NACD

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Teaching your child how to use estimation in math can significantly improve his learning curve. Estimation can increase the rate at which your child learns math facts, improve math conceptual development, and increase the overall intensity, and therefore impact, of math instruction. Estimation also provides a means for assessing his knowledge of math facts, as well as his understanding of math concepts. If your child is unable to make an estimation with a specific math function or operation, such as with fractions, then he probably does not understand the concept. Estimation is valuable for every child, whether learning single digit addition or calculus. Estimation is also a valuable tool for the development of visualization and conceptualization skills.

The process of teaching your child to estimate involves plenty of input and feedback. Before a child does a math problem, ask her, “What do you think the answer is going to be?” Have her estimate the answer and write that number above the problem. After she has completed the problem, discus how close she came with the estimation and how she might have approached it differently or better.

If your child is just beginning basic addition or subtraction, permit him to do whatever he likes, including using his fingers at first; but very quickly discourage the use of his fingers, and have him attempt to do the estimation mentally. After he has estimated the answer, have him calculate the problem in the normal way. After calculating the answer, then he should compare it to his estimation. If the answer is the same as the estimation, congratulate him or, if necessary, reward him with tokens or some other reinforcement. If he was close, give your child appropriate feedback, such as, “Well done, you were really close. I bet next time you can get it.” Feel free to cue him with such things as, “I think you know this one. Remember, two plus three is……” If it is a simple problem that he could know as a fact, encourage him to remember the fact. When you are comfortable that he has learned a fact, and his estimation is consistently correct, reward him by telling him that he got it correct and does not need to go through the process of calculating the answer. If his estimation is way off, encourage him to really think about the answer and not just guess. You can also teach your child to do such things as rounding. You do not want to provide this level of feedback and input on every problem. Be discerning and use it when you feel it is appropriate. But encourage him to use estimation on every problem, with the exception of very new processes that you are just introducing.

An important lesson often not learned well by students is that math makes sense; it is not just an unintelligible series of steps or procedures. The process of creating an estimation helps math make sense.

In order for your child mentally to go through the estimation process, he will either need merely to access a math fact (if he is doing basic arithmetic), or use visualization (thinking in pictures) or conceptualization (thinking in words). As your child develops estimation skills, he is learning when and how to apply the most effective and efficient tool for the situation, as well as how to move back and forth between visualization and conceptualization with ease. For instance let’s take an example that involves rounding. To add 298 and 403 in an efficient way using this process (certainly not the only way) you could think the following: 298 is almost 300 (conceptualization), and 403 is just a little more than 400 (conceptualization); so 300 plus 400 is 700 (visualization). 700 would be a good estimation, but if processing is high enough, you can take it another step: 298 is only two less than 300 (conceptualization), and 403 is three more than 400 (conceptualization). Three minus two is one (visualization or conceptualization), so the actual answer is 701. To help you understand these applications, go through the example and try visualizing when conceptualization was indicated and vice versa. It can certainly be done, but for most people it would be more difficult. Your personal strengths and weaknesses and sequential processing skills generally determine how you approach such problems. If you were unable to go through the process at all, please give our office a call, order Simply Smarter, and have someone get you on our evaluation schedule.

In terms of applying math to real-life situations, estimation becomes critical because you are often dealing with situations where you do not need actual answers nor have the means to get the actual answer. For example, if you are walking into a grocery store with $50 in your pocket and are buying groceries for a family of four, you had better be able to estimate or else face serious embarrassment when you get to the checkout with a full cart and insufficient funds.

As someone who is responsible for operating an organization, I am acutely aware of how easily a bookkeeper or accountant can miss-enter a number or put a decimal in the wrong place. When your child is working on higher-level math and using a calculator, he easily can make the same mistakes, and if he has not estimated the answer, he is going to miss unnecessary errors. Such errors can be significant if they were to occur during a major exam or on an SAT test. If I were unable to look at the big picture, get the concept, and estimate, many serious errors would go unnoticed.

Teaching your child to use estimation can make the difference between a bored poor math student and an excited superior math student. It can also help produce those rare anomalies: children who love math and by extension, love such amazing things as physics. But of even greater importance, estimation teaches your child not only how to think, but to think. We always need more people who can think.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 22 No. 3, 2009 ©NACD

The post Estimation: How to Accelerate the Learning Process with Math and Build Visualization and Conceptual Skills Simultaneously appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

TV/Videos and The Preschool Child

For over twenty-five years, the National Association for Child Development (NACD) has had the opportunity to serve a large, international caseload of children covering the entire functional spectrum. Our work with innovating ways to accelerate the development of children with profound developmental issues (such as brain injury, autism and Down syndrome) has provided us with significant insight into the development and education of typical and highly capable children as well. Because NACD trains parents to work directly with their own children, we are privy to the structure of the child’s day, diet, and free time activities as well as their developmental, educational and therapeutic input and opportunities. Our unique position has afforded us the opportunity to find out, quite simply, what works.

We have found that carefully selected television programs, commercially available videos, and individually designed videos can be powerful tools for advancing the development of preschool children across the spectrum—from the severely developmentally delayed to the highly capable and gifted.

Using Television to Develop Visual Function

Our years of working on ways to improve visual function have yielded a number of techniques of visual stimulation. Many of these techniques have proven to be helpful not only in the development of vision but also as educational tools. One of these techniques involves the use of television. Below we offer a brief explanation of some fundamentals of child development, and specifically visual development—including some common problems that occur—to provide a framework for understanding how and why television, properly used, can be an important tool for helping even very young children develop and learn.

To develop well a child needs to follow a specific path and to move through the normal developmental steps fairly rapidly. At each stage of development there are specific things that the brain is learning to do. The brain will tend to keep working at a stage until the next piece starts to kick in. Staying too long in one stage is not a good thing. In normal development we see all children start off life as visualizers, meaning that they think in pictures not words. They think in pictures because words have no meaning. In normal development the ability to process language starts kicking in within six months or so, and the child begins to think in both pictures (visualizing) and words (conceptualizing). If it all happens as it should, language starts to develop, and we end up with a good balance between the ability to think in pictures and the ability to think in words.

Vision develops essentially the same way in all children although at different rates. The peripheral vision develops first, followed by the central (macular) vision. You avoid running into doorframes with your peripheral vision; you see detail, and learn, with your central vision. When reading a book, you are using your central vision. When looking at someone across a table, you see their face in detail using your central vision while the rest of the room is slightly blurred because only the small circumference of that face fits within your central visual field. One good way to recognize your central versus peripheral vision is to recall the after-effect of a flashbulb going off in your face. Your macula, the area responsible for your central vision, is located in a small spot on your retina, and it is very photo/light sensitive. When that flashbulb goes off it temporally bleaches out your macula so that you lose your central vision. The spots you see are actually temporary blind spots where your central vision should be. The development of your central/macular vision is very important to many aspects of learning and overall development. Many of the problems exhibited by children diagnosed with developmental delays result from the lack of properly developed central vision.

Problems with Visual Function in Autistic Children

One of the most common characteristics of autistic children is the lack of development of the central vision. Autistic children do not make good eye contact—not because they don’t like you, but because when they look directly at you they can’t see you. Autistic children typically havehyper (enhanced) peripheral vision and hypo (diminished) central vision. Therefore, they experience the visual world more through their peripheral vision and less clearly or not at all through their central vision. They display this lack of visual development in another characteristic commonly associated with many autistic children: They don’t watch television. Many will stand directly in front of a TV and bounce or display excitement in other ways, but they are not “watching” the TV, they are “stimming” with the TV. Essentially what the child is doing is engaging in a form of repetitive sensory play that amounts to “playing with what is broken” in their vision (i.e., their vision is not functioning properly because the central vision is undeveloped, therefore they are playing with—and reinforcing—their peripheral vision only).

The Danger of Stimming—“Debilitating Sensory Addictive Behavior”

There are many forms of repetitive sensory play, and all fall under the informal heading of “stimming,” short for self-stimulating behavior. NACD has developed new terminology for this behavior, which we call “Debilitating Sensory Addictive Behavior,” because of the addictive nature of the behavior and how detrimental it is to development and even to the structure of the brain itself.

Children can engage in Debilitating Sensory Addictive Behavior with any “broken” or underdeveloped sensory channel. Engaging in these repetitive behaviors actually becomes addictive, much like an addiction to a drug. As the child engages in the behavior his brain produces endorphins—which are feel-good chemicals that can become as addictive as narcotics. The more a child engages in the behavior, the more endorphins are produced, and the stronger the addiction becomes. Unfortunately, not only is the child becoming addicted to a useless behavior, he is reinforcing what is already wrong with his sensory system. As described above, kids stimming with television are strengthening their peripheral vision and failing to develop the central vision.

Autistic children (and other children with visual delays) learn a variety of ways to “stim” with their peripheral vision. They often become adept at spinning objects or flipping anything that is not nailed down in an effort to get their “fix.” NACD has discovered, however, that although the TV typically provides an autistic child with an opportunity to “stim,” the TV can also be utilized very specifically as a tool to develop the central vision. Developing the central vision is the key to normalizing the vision so that learning—rather than stimming—can occur. TV is, in fact, such a great tool for the development of central vision that if it did not already exist as an instrument for entertainment we would have had to create it as a therapeutic tool.

Early Stimulation of the Central/Macular Vision is Crucial to the Development of Children within the First Two Years of Life

As mentioned earlier, all children’s vision develops pretty much in the same sequence. Peripheral vision first, followed by central vision. Typical babies begin life using their peripheral vision; then, as they receive specific opportunities/stimulation to use their central vision, it develops as well. (It is no accident that nature’s survival system for babies is designed to place them eight to twelve inches from their mother’s face when being fed and held.)

A typical baby deprived of specific opportunities/stimulation will be slow to develop their central vision, and if they are very deprived of these opportunities they are in danger of becoming globally developmentally delayed. To some degree all babies “stim” simply because early on it is the only thing they can do. If they fail to develop the global neurological maturity needed to engage in exploratory or play behaviors, they become increasingly adept at stimming, and their development slows or stops. Early stimulation of the central/macular vision is crucial to the development of children within the first two years of life.

How Reading to Your Child Stimulates Development: Vision, Language, Sequential Processing

It is often said that if you can’t do anything else with your baby, read to them. As most parents discover, “reading” to babies and very young children involves not so much reading text as it does looking at picture books with them, pointing to or directing their vision to specific pictures (or, if you will, teaching them to use their central vision). The closer something is to a child, the more the child’s central vision is engaged and the less peripheral distraction there is.

No one questions the importance of reading to children, but it is important to look at the development that occurs throughout the process. When you read to your child there are the obvious psychological/bonding /nurturing benefits. There are also very significant auditory benefits. Essentially, we use reading to teach children a “foreign” language—their first language. Initially we point to a single object and name it “puppy,” then we expand the information as the child’s receptive language skills develop, and it becomes “black puppy,” then “little black puppy.” We proceed along, matching visual information (the pictures) to the auditory cues (the words). In so doing we are not only teaching language, we are also developing a vitally important neurological function—we are developing the child’s ability to take in and manipulate pieces of auditory and visual information in a sequence. This ability to process information is called “sequential processing.”

NACD Innovates Methods of Developing Sequential Processing

At NACD we have been investigating and working on methodologies to build and develop auditory and visual sequential processing, as these are the basic components that give us access to our innate intelligence. (NACD has actually started an international initiative to raise the sequential processing skills of people all over the world through a program called “The Project 9 +/-2.”) We have found the act of reading to a young child—or showing a child pictures and naming them—achieves a vital step in the developmental process.

Stimulating Central Vision

How much does a young child learn from a book or picture card twelve to eighteen inches from their eyes as opposed to things placed further away around the room? NACD’s findings suggest that a young child learns a lot from things placed at the distance of a book being read, and much less from things across the room. When we bring a book up to a child we are pulling it into their central visual field. At twelve inches the child may be seeing a significant part of the page in detail, and with the peripheral field being limited it is relatively easy for the child to attend and to see the image. If you held a book out ten feet and had the child look at it, you would find the child’s attention would generally be much shorter and more difficult to hold because, at that distance, the child would have difficulty locating the image within his central visual field. This is because when attempting to see a small object held at a ten-foot distance, perhaps 95% of the child’s visual field would be peripheral, not central. Remember, peripheral vision develops before central vision, so for young children, particularly those under two years of age, their focus is constantly pulled to those things around the periphery. In other words, they are “visually distracted” or “distractible.” The more visually distracted the child is, the less she will pay attention to visual cues, thus the less attention she will pay to the information being “taught,” and the less stimulation and development of the central/macular vision will occur.

Will My Child Learn More in Preschool than at Home?

At NACD we have been privileged to work with some of the most motivated and informed parents in the world. All of the families we work with—be they parents of children with significant developmental issues or parents of “typical” children—wish to help their children achieve their innate potential. They come to us because they want to assume the primary responsibility for their child’s development and education. They want the best for their children and use schools and outside services only as an adjunct to what they do at home with their children. For many of these exceptional families one of their first big decisions is if and when to start their children in daycare or preschool situations.

Ultimately the answer comes down to the needs and resources of the family. But, one of the questions asked more often than not is, “Is my preschool child going to learn more at a school than at home?” The younger the child, the simpler the answer because the younger the child the more they need direct, one-on-one contact and interaction. The younger the child, the more specific the developmental/educational input needs to be. In general, nothing beats one-on-one teaching. Teaching one child at a time permits the input to be designed to fit the individual; it also permits virtually immediate modification of the input in response to the child. Most parents are not even aware of how often and how rapidly they modify what they are doing with their child when they are interacting one-on-one. For example, if you observe a parent looking at a book with their child you will see the parent constantly responding to the child’s cues. If the parent picked a book with more text than the child can process, you will see the parent start to simplify the story or even start just pointing at the pictures and talking about them; they may even put the book away and get another or go to something else altogether, naturally and spontaneously modifying the input to fit the child. The further you get from the 1:1 teacher to student ratio, the more difficult it becomes to provide children with the specific, appropriate input needed to stimulate their brains and maximize their developmental progress.

The Significance of the Learning Environment

There are tremendous differences in the quality of preschool learning environments.
Preschool children are distractible and have short attention spans. It comes with the territory. Preschoolers have short attention spans because their sequential processing skills have not yet developed to where they can process a lot of associated pieces of information. They can move from this to that, taking in little pieces and chunks of information, but they cannot attend to one subject for a long time if their processing is not up to the task.

The significance of the learning environment cannot be overstated for children at this age. The more distractions there are in the environment, the more difficult it is for young children to filter out the extraneous input and focus their attention, even if there is something in the environment that is appropriate to their learning level. How many adults would attempt to study new information in an environment containing the distractions that exist in a room full of preschool children and a lot of “fun stuff?”

Many parents ask about putting their children in schools and situations with other children so that they can learn from the other children. NACD recommends parents be very selective about such situations. The better organized and structured the environment is, and the fewer visual and auditory distractions in the environment, the better the odds are that any child will in fact learn something specific and appropriate.

Learning Occurs when Specific Input is Provided with Sufficient Frequency, Intensity and Duration—Random Input is Distracting

In any given environment a child will generally learn that which is being presented with the greatest intensity. Imagine a room with fifteen or twenty children where a few are playing in a sand box, a couple are looking at books, a few more are painting, a group are huddled around a teacher reading to them, and one is throwing a humongous tantrum because he can’t have the truck he wants. Guess what is being presented with the greatest intensity—and guess what is being learned? The reality is that for most preschool-aged children in a room with many other kids, a myriad of toys, and a lot going on, it is very difficult for them to learn what we would like them to learn. Learning/development occurs when we provide the brain with specific appropriate input, and the input must be provided with sufficient frequency, intensity and duration. Random input is distracting, and random extraneous input does not stimulate neurological development or the learning process.

Using Video Tapes to Teach

I have been known to tell parents to save their money and not send their child to the preschool, but to go to the preschool and videotape a child doing the things they would like their child to learn. Video tape a child climbing the slide, doing the monkey bars, riding the trike, drawing a circle, taking off their coat—doing any of the things they would like their child to learn from another child—then let their child watch it at home.

I used to do a lot of all-day seminars. We would start off with my speaking throughout the morning, then take a lunch break, and, because we had a lot of information to give the attendees in a day, we would show a video of me speaking during lunch. After lunch, we would follow up with me speaking live throughout the afternoon. A lot of me! After we had done a number of these seminars I started to watch the attendees during the lunch break, and it became evident that they paid better attention to me on the video than when I was standing in front of them. The videos were no great production—they were simply a talking head, my talking head, the same head they had been hearing all morning—but the audience seemed more focused and less distracted watching me on TV than when I was standing in front of them. Once we recognized this phenomenon, our first thought was that our society is in big trouble because we have become so trained to watch the tube that these adults were simply reflecting that training. (To some degree that may be true—I don’t think too many people would argue that the use of audiovisual media has been abused, particularly with children, and that the majority of the content is garbage.) But the answer was not so simple as that. We wanted to understand what was going on in the brain that would make people pay more attention to a person on TV than to the same person standing live before them. One of the questions we asked ourselves in order to find the explanation was, “Who does notwatch television, and why not?”

Well, experience had shown us that many autistic children do not “watch” television; little babies do not watch television; many children with obvious visual issues do not watch television; many children with globally low developmental function do not watch television; and, except for brief moments on Animal Planet, my dogs don’t watch television. And what do all of these examples of individuals who do not watch TV have in common? They all have poor or underdeveloped central/macular vision.

As we looked further into this and explored the development of attention to television in our children, we came to the realization that television provides a unique form of visual stimulation. The images on television can only be perceived using central/macular vision; one cannot process the information on the screen with peripheral vision. Children with poor or underdeveloped macular vision do not attend to television because they cannot see it; the image provides them with no meaningful information.

NACD Discovers TV Can Be a Powerful Tool for Visual Therapy and More

We decided if we needed to develop central/macular vision then perhaps we needed a specific instrument that required the use of that vision—the TV. We started having parents sit in darkened rooms about two or three feet from the TV, with their “blind” or visually impaired, or autistic, or delayed, or simply young children, and we “taught” them to watch TV. For content we used whatever we felt would best attract the individual child’s attention. We used a lot of homemade videos of everything from Mom talking directly to the child to videos of themselves or siblings, to spinning objects and black and white shapes. We incorporated their favorite music and voices and in general used whatever we felt might attract their attention. In the vast majority of cases the children would first glance at the TV and then, generally, over a relatively short period start attending for longer and longer periods of time. Within a short time the children did start to attend to the television and develop their central vision. They then began to make eye contact, and look at books and pictures better, and in fact do all the things they should be doing with their central vision to learn about their environment. In autistic children we saw a significant decrease in the visual sensory play (Debilitating Sensory Addictive Behaviors) and a corresponding improvement in their overall function.

Not only were we discovering that the children’s visual function was improving, but because of the content we were using, the auditory and language skills were developing as well. Once we had the children attending to the TV, we started to experiment with content, and many of the programs we designed for families began containing various therapeutic and educational videos.

TV Screen Holds Visual Attention, Helps Brain Tune Out Peripheral Distractions

So, back to my mesmerized audience, why did they attend so well to the talking head on TV? We found the answer, once again, by working with our clients. As we began to use therapeutic videos, we were happy to see that many children learned exceptionally well using the methodology, but we were surprised to find that many parents were having the same experience I had at my seminars. The children were often attending better and learning better from the videos than when the family was actually presenting the information live! We were learning that not only is television a great tool for developing central vision in children, but it really is an outstanding educational tool.

Observing our audiences’ and clients’ responses taught us that television—and computer—screens provide stronger macular input than other images. As I am writing this article my vision is focused upon my computer screen. The screen offers such strong macular stimuli that my brain almost entirely tunes out the peripheral field. If I look up from my screen to my coffee cup, for example, not only do I see the cup, but also my vision gets pulled out to everything else that is cluttering up my desk because the cup does not have the same power as the computer does to hold my central vision. Now, when I switch off my computer screen and look across my office to a twelve-inch television (not turned on) that is sitting on my credenza, my vision is pulled to the books, pictures and various memorabilia I have on my shelves. The TV before it is turned on has no more—and probably less—power to hold my attention than most anything else. But, turn the television on and everything else goes away. If I turn the TV off again and look at the credenza, most everything there has the same ability to attract or detract from my visual attention. We can safely assume that for a young child who is just developing their central vision, the peripheral distraction they have to deal with is significantly more compelling than mine.

Videos are Powerful Learning Tools—Content Counts

As NACD learned to use therapeutic and educational videos, we encouraged families to make their own videos. These included close-ups of Mom saying words and emphasizing the various sounds heard in the English language; showing objects and naming them; filming animals and naming them; modeling directions being followed; modeling progressions in expressive language; modeling self-help skills; showing children how to crawl, ride a bike, and do long division. We have found this kind of video to be an excellent tool for stimulating development and teaching knowledge and skills.

In recent years, commercially prepared videos and DVD’s have been developed specifically for babies and young children. Some are really good, and some not so good. If the content is good—that is, it is teaching the child to identify a letter or a number, or to differentiate between a cow and a horse, or modeling appropriate actions and behaviors, that is all fine. I believe commercial producers are just beginning to scratch the surface relative to content, and they have a long way to go before they really understand the best ways to present the information. However, the tool exists, and it is powerful.

It is important for parents to understand that videos can be an extremely useful tool in the education of young children, but they should be selected carefully and used judiciously. There certainly can be too much of a good thing. And, any amount of a bad thing is too much! I personally find most children’s television programming to be horrendous. In the language of computers, “Garbage in—garbage out.” Content counts.

I also find that parents are spending far too little time interacting with their children. It seems our society subtly pressures parents to abdicate the responsibility for their child’s development and education to the “professionals.” I personally do not perceive most daycare and preschool programs as a good thing. So few of them recognize or provide an optimal environment for neurological development and learning. In our current culture they are a necessary reality for many families in which both parents need to work. However, we must not kid ourselves into thinking that having a two-year-old spend eight hours a day in preschool/daycare is a good substitute for quality time spent with parents. When it comes to helping young children learn and grow, the more one-on-one interaction the better.

Informed Parental Involvement is the Key to Good Child Development

I often comment that those of us who function reasonably well are lucky accidents, and those who don’t are not so lucky. The reason I feel this way is that most parents do not have much of a clue as to what pieces need to come together for their children to end up having their neurological act together, and, unfortunately, it appears most professionals do not either.

We can continue to throw more money at education, increase the hours children spend in school, and develop yet more reading and math programs that are not significantly different than the thousand that preceded them, but until we get back to parents taking a primary role in teaching their children, and acknowledge the necessity of providing individual attention and an environment that nurtures neurological development, we are going to continue to see our children fail to achieve their innate potentials.

To stimulate a brain—to teach a child—we need to provide specific, developmentally appropriate input. If we provide a child with appropriate input in an appropriate environment, not only will learning occur but the brain will learn how to process more information better. It is up to parents to make sure that information is of a quality that enhances the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth of our children. Parents who do so are their children’s heroes, and the children of such parents are our society’s hope for the future.

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

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 19 No. 5, 2006 ©NACD

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Visual Pursuits refers to the coordination of eye movement as eyes move while reading or following an object. Each eye is controlled by three sets of two muscles that work by one muscle opposing the pull of its antagonist muscle. They include: 1) the superior rectus muscle (which pulls the eye up) opposing 2) the inferior rectus muscle (which pulls the eye down; 3) the lateral rectus muscle (which pulls the eye out) opposing 4) the medial rectus muscle (which pulls the eye in); and 5) the superior oblique muscle (which pulls the eye out and up) opposing 6) the inferior oblique muscle (which pulls the eye out and down). Thus, for one eye to move smoothly, it requires the cooperation and coordination of six muscles all working together. For both eyes to work smoothly together, they require twelve muscles to work together.

It is not surprising, therefore, that many children have problems in the area of visual fusion and pursuits, and that NACD frequently recommends visual eye muscle exercises.

Visual pursuits are a form of fine coordination. Lack of good visual pursuits causes the individual to frequently lose his or her place while reading. When this happens, the child will do one of three things: a) pause until he again locates his place, which slows the reading time; b) omit words and continue to read; or c) substitute his or her own words and continue reading. Omitting or substituting words can frequently change the meaning of what the child is reading, causing the comprehension to suffer.

Most eye examinations do not test for visual pursuits nor do many ophthalmologists treat it. Poor visual pursuits can be effectively treated by NACD programs, including the following: crawling, creeping, overhead ladder, horizontal and vertical tracking, spinning, visual pursuit activities, black light activities, hand-eye coordination activities, etc.

Convergence is the ability of the two eyes to work synchronously together. We can test for convergence with a pen light directly in front of the eyes one foot away. The light should produce a reflection of itself exactly in the center of both pupils. If the reflection is to the inside of the pupil, the eye is looking outward in an external, or divergent, strabismus or exotropia. If the eyes fail to converge perfectly and turn either in or out, this is called a strabismus.

At birth, a child’s eyes are not yet able to converge properly. Convergence must develop in vision and does so during the creeping stage of mobility. Early attempts at convergence are inefficient and are called yolking or accidental convergence. In order for the eyes to learn to converge, the eye must, with frequency, intensity, and duration, look at an object at a fixed distance from the eyes. While crawling on his stomach, there is no fixed object for the child to see. He can look out at varying distances. If the child misses creeping on his hands and knees and either sits or stands and walks, he again sees at varying distances with no fixed target. Developmentally, only creeping on hands and knees gives the eyes the ever present fixed target they need. It is the floor that is at a constantly fixed distance from the child’s eyes, equal to the length of his arms.

If the child has a strabismus, creeping can help eliminate it. To give the eyes a more distinct target while creeping, put a small piece of colored tape (one inch by one inch) on the back of each hand. Use red for the right and green for the left. While creeping, the child looks at the hand moving forward.

If the eyes do not converge, each eye may see a separate picture, causing double vision or diplopia. Double vision confuses the child. It is like looking at a T. V. set with a poor antenna causing ghosts or double images.

Because double vision confuses the brain, it tries to stop it by squinting the eyes. The name for strabismus was “squint” because many children squinted to eliminate double vision. The other method that the brain uses to stop double vision is by the cortex of the brain suppressing the vision in one eye. If one eye is frequently squinted closed or suppressed by the brain, it will eventually, because of lack of use, become weak. This is called “lazy eye” or amblyopia. This occurs in approximately 4% of all children. In these cases the child alternately uses one eye and then, moments later, the other eye. There is less danger of one eye becoming a “lazy eye.”

If a child has a strabismus, strabotomy or surgery to the eye, should not be considered until the child has properly completed the creeping stage and until proper eye exercises have been tried for a reasonable period. Surgery for strabismus has a poor success rate even when done early. If the strabotomy is done, follow-up exercises and creeping can help to improve the results.

NACD uses a variety of specific exercises to improve convergence. Good convergence, or fusion, leads to good depth perception. This is the ability to judge how far various objects are from your eyes. The development of this ability is essential to many daily activities.

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

Journal of the National Association for Child Development 1984, Volume 5, No. 4

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