Academic pressure on children

The joy of child birth is certainly the most cherished moment for any parent. It can be the most precious gift that a person can ever have and the moment one becomes a parent, it is natural for them to have dreams and desires about their children.  But this can turn out to be a nightmare if parents are not careful in exercising their control on imposing their dreams and aspirations on their children.

It is seen these days that many parents burden their kids with the unnecessary pressure of getting them achieve too many things and those that don't match the child's interests and aptitude particularly with regard to the choice of a career.

It is absolutely unfair on the part of parents to impose or force children into something where the child lacks interest. It not only demeans the child's self confidence and self esteem but also prevent him from becoming an independent person.
Parents should realize that every child is unique and can have unique interests too. It is important to respect their interest and help them discover their talent and encourage them. If a child's career is influenced by parents or peers it can leave the child feeling frustrated and dissatisfied in the long run.
Parents can help them to decide their career based on their personal interest, ability and aptitude.
Just as parents dream that their child should be the best, get them a good name and obey them, so does every child expect that the parents be supportive of their decisions, encourage them and respect their feelings.

There is no wonder that every parent loves their child unconditionally. But if this unconditional love makes them over protective of their children, it can create a barrier in the parent-child relationship.
In such an atmosphere, the child will start drifting away from its parents.

Apart from parents, educational institutions also play a vital role in pressurizing children. Children are subjected to undue stress in achieving ranks impacting their physical, mental and emotional well being. Many educational institutions run long hours till late in the evening and stress only on academics with no room for any other activity. Students are forced to study continuously for almost 10 to 11 hours with just a half an hour break for lunch. Almost every institute (particularly those that coach for engineering and medicine aspirants) only aims that theirs be the top most in achieving ranks. Instead of preparing them to be winners in life, they only train them to be toppers which brings laurels to their institute. Education has literally become a business to these institutions.

All the more worse, students are labeled based on their marks and ranks as toppers and under achievers (weak students). This in turn lowers the self esteem and confidence of students who are unable to withstand the pressure of coping with the long hours of studies and fail to perform well according to the standards of the institutes. They are then placed in a separate section that is meant only for the poor performers which means they are subject to more and more pressure to perform well. Not only this, they are looked down upon by their teachers and peers who are able to fare well. These students are just treated like a prisoners. 
They are treated harshly, are humiliated by their teachers and are looked at like total losers. This scenario is particularly true in the south where the craze for engineering and medicine is high and parents and the society see no world beyond these two streams.
There is thus undoubtedly an increase in the  rate of suicides among students owing to unreasonable expectations from parents and educational institutes failing which, engulfs them with a feeling of guilt and a fear of facing parents and society. All of this compels them to take such an extreme step of committing suicide.

It is therefore high time that parents stop setting huge expectations and educational institutions branded students as toppers or weak students.
It will be wise if we change our attitudes and consider what the child thinks is important to him or her rather than just laying a conventional path to be followed blindly and regret later.






 

Depression

The recent shocking incident of the death of a young, 33 year old actor, Uday Kiran, who committed suicide was reported to have been suffering from depression. While the truth of this is yet to be verified, this incident is certainly a wake up call for all those who seem to be depressed.


What is depression?

Depression is a very common psychological problem and can happen to anyone at any phase of life.
It is normal for anyone to feel low, sad or upset at times. But if someone feels low to the extent that one's state of mind affects one's normal functioning, it is high time one sought help.
Other signs include routine things like waking up in the morning, lack of interest in personal hygiene seeming difficult,feeling lazy all the time, problems in relationships, social withdrawl, difficulty in sleeping, anxiety over trivial things, out-bursts of anger, crying for no reason, lack of interest in anything, losing interest in activities that seemed to be enjoyable earlier etc. 
In some cases, helplessness owing to depression may lead to suicidal tendencies. Persons contemplating suicide may often talk about ending their lives, expressing a strong dis interest in living, research on suicidal methods. The above signs should not be ignored since there is no guarantee that a person thinking of suicide may not commit it. It is very important that these people  never be left alone.
Family members and friends can help them by being supportive and getting them professional help at the earliest.


 Depression can be attributed to a number of factors such as failure in exams, love life, marital life, career, loss of someone close through death or separation from a loved one or a divorce, financial problems, problems in relationships, work pressure, parental pressure for students in achieving ranks and success in examinations, hormonal changes in women or simply for no reason at all or it can be genetic.That is, if a person has a family history of depression, he or she is at a high risk for the same.



Here are a few simple guidelines one can follow in dealing with depression;

- Do not suffer in silence. Talk to someone close to you, someone you trust about your disturbing condition. Sharing your problems helps ease your burden.

- Keep yourself occupied with activities that lifts your mood and boosts your morale.

- Exercise regularly to keep yourself fit mentally and physically.

- Eat right at regular time and avoid junk.

- Set a regular sleep pattern to ensure a good sleep for 7 to 8 hours.

- Stop comparing your life with that of others. You never know what the others are going  through and what the future has in store for you.

- Last but not the least, please do not ignore the signs of depression and get help.


Depression can be cured. It is important to keep in mind that depression is not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, it's the strongest people who have the courage to reach out for help, not the weakest.

Tips for parents and teachers

Here are some important points that should be kept in mind when dealing with children and children with learning disabilities in particular:

1) The first thing I would like to elicit is not to label any child as 'weak', 'dull', 'lazy' or with any such negative words. Just go on encouraging the child even for his/her little achievements.
This will not only build up their self esteem and a sense of well being but also with the belief that no matter what, you are there for them.
It is very important to win your child's confidence first and only when one becomes a fearless individual any learning is possible.

2) Have patience in abundance. Irrespective of how many times you keep correcting the child for his mistakes, he/she is likely to repeat it. And it is natural for any parent or teacher to lose temper at some point. But when we are dealing with children with LD, we must always keep in mind that scolding or spanking never works. Once you scold the child, you can hardly expect the child to learn something for he is totally engulfed with fear.
So, there are 3 keys to work with these children:
1) Patience
2) Patience and
3) More patience...
Now that I have emphasised the importance of patience, I shall discuss other tips.

3) Make learning such a way that the child does not feel he/she is learning at all.
They are already subjected to a lot of pressure at school and tutions. So why again learning or studying at remedial class? Ofcourse our aim is to teach the child the skills he/she is lacking but teach the child such a way that he feels he is playing a game and is having fun. This way learning becomes an automatic process.
Our motive is not to make the child learn but is to make him acquire some skills.

4) Never ever compare the child with his/her siblings or other children.
Every child is different and so are the needs and difficulties.
Never even compare yourself with your child. This is how some highly successful, ambitious parents think " I have always been 1st in the class, why is my child like this?" , "I hold such a high position in my work, what will others think about me when they learn about my son/daughter?", "All my friend's children are doing well in academics, why only my child?", "My 1st son is so bright in studies and look at my 2nd son...what a shame!" Such beliefs and comparisons are highly damaging and harmful to the well being of your precious child.
Please stop comparing your child and don't pressurize the child. By doing so, you are only killing the real potential in the child.

5) Learn to recognise your child's strengths than always focussing on his/her weaknesses.
Let yourself believe the fact that not flourishing in academics is not an end in itself. As the saying goes, "all roads lead to rome", so does any talent that the child has can make him a successful human being.

6) Last but not the least...love your child for what he/she is, accept the child for what he is and be your child's best friend, not the one who scares the child with your tantrums or threats, for fear begets nothing.

Only you can be the best supporter of your child.

A Case Study:

Here is a case study of a child with learning disability...
Rohan (name changed), a class 5 boy who has been diagnosed with learning disability was brought to me for remedial support.
He was administered intelligence tests and it was seen that he has an IQ range of above average intelligence.
However, on assessing him, I observed the following symptoms:

1) He writes words purely phonetically, i.e; by their mere sounds. For example, writes "coud or cud" for "could", "shud" for "should", "wite" or "wit" for "white","rite" for "write" etc. So he has a problem with words with silent letters and often tends to omit them.

2) Has reversals of words and sometimes letters also like writing 'b' for 'd' and vice versa, confuses with 'saw' and 'was', 'very' and 'every' and so on..

3) While reading it was seen that his reading is considerably slow and has no understanding in reading where there are commas (,) and full stops (.).

4) Encounters severe problem when it comes to writing as he makes a lot of errors in spellings, formation of sentences and grammar mistakes.

5) When I dictated a few sentences to him, it was found out that he missed out adding a full stop at the end of a sentence and a question mark at the end of every question. Also, he would start every sentence with a small letter.

6) His oral ability is better than his writing ability.

However, he as an exceptional ability in drawing.



Taking into account all the above mentioned problems, I devised a lesson plan that would better suit his needs which includes activities and exercises on sentence formation using a word, changing statements into questions and vice-versa, exercises on homophones and homonyms, words and sentence dictation, reading exercises, story writing, picture comprehension, playing various word games and several other activities and after 1 month of remedial teaching for Rohan, the following were the observations:

He is now able to write the correct spellings of some words like 'could', 'would', 'should', 'knife', etc and he has also mastered the magic 'e' rule for words like 'care' (to which he would earlier write 'car'), make, bake, fate, though he still makes errors with some other words of higher difficulty level like 'sacrifice', 'disturb'. But with continuous remedial help, there is a greater possibility that he will learn such high level words also over a period of time.

He now puts full stops and question marks where ever it is appropriate and begin every new sentence with a capital letter.

Even while reading, he is able to read with an appropriate pause when he encounters a comma or a full stop though his initial problems like slow reading and taking time in identifying some hard words still persists.
The progress in all these areas is not yet consistent ( he still makes some errors occasionally) but now he knows that which has been repeatedly taught to him and can apply it with some hints or clues. For instance, he now writes the correct spelling for the word 'should' most of the time but this cannot be accounted for his permanant spelling for this word because there is still the risk that he may go wrong with the same word some other time. But when I tell him to look at the word again and see if it is the correct spelling or not, he can tell me that he has written it wrong and he is now able to correct his error by himself.

Needless to say, there is definitely some progress in the performance of Rohan after 1 month of remedial teaching and I am definitely hopeful that he will show considerable improvement in his reading and writing abilities over a period of time though it is difficult to determine in exactly how much time or duration of remedial teaching he will learn to overcome his problems. This is a slow and long term process and with regular remedial help, change is definitely possible...remember, "Rome was not built in a day"!

The next step in teaching phonological awareness after the child has mastered letter sounds is to read sight words. For example, simple words like 'cat','bat',mat' etc.. and once the child is able to read these sight words correctly,keep increasing the difficulty level of the words appropriate to his/her age and class.

Ask the child to write clearly the letters of the alphabet in order, starting with lower case letters and then with capital letters.
Score the number of correct letters written and also note whether the child has put any letters in the wrong order.

Where it is required to teach a child letters, always start with the lower case and once he/she has mastered all the letters in the lower case, then start with the capital letters.

Spelling nonsense words:
Present some nonsense words to the child and ask him/hher to read them. For example words like 'wat', 'ket', 'tas', 'serk','twemple','hosjer' and so on.. and see whether the child is able to pronounce them correctly. Also ask the child to spell these nonsense words. Minor errors like spelling the word 'hosjer' as 'hosger'or 'housjar' can be acceptable but not 'hasjeer' or something that sounds very much deviant from the actual sound.

Now ask the child to say some words backwards- where the first and the last letter sounds have to be swapped. For example, you say 'pat' and the child has to say 'tap'.
Try some more words like, brush and the child has to say 'shrub', pool-loop, 'pan-nap','shop-posh' etc...
Gradually increase the difficulty level by presenting some harder words such as 'eem' and the child has to say 'me', 'keal' and the child says 'leak' etc...

Rhyming words:

Present to the child a set of words like 'cat', 'mat', 'big','rat' and ask the child to identify a word that does not rhyme with the other words. Continue this activity until the child has learnt to pick up the word that does not rhyme with the words in that set.

Blends and diagraphs:

Learning This Ability!

Learning disability or learning this ability?
What I mean by this is, a child who has learning difficulties may encounter difficulty in acquiring skills related to reading, writing, spelling, math or all of these but the child may be flourishing in other areas where academic learning is not concerned.
Hence I would rather call this difficulty as "learning this ability" since it is confined to a specific problem in academic area.

In some children, we may witness problems in behavior also such as throwing temper tantrums, being violent or socially withdrawn, hitting self or others, banging head onto the wall or floor and so on..but such behavioral problems can be dealt with various behavior modification strategies with the help of a psychologist or a special educator.

In regard to my earlier statement in this post, "learning this ability", I shall discuss briefly about a few basic remedial strategies in various areas of difficulties that a child with learning disability usually has.

Remedial Techniques:

The core problem in children with learning problems is the lack of phonological awareness.
I strongly feel remedial program should start with teaching phonological processing (letter sounds and their pronounciation in words) for lack of phonological awareness leads to problems in decoding and thus resulting in poor reading.
To start with, individual letters and their sounds has to be taught.
For example; letter a says ah, letter b says ba, letter c says ka and so on...
Confusion may creep up when the child has to learn the sounnd of the letter 'k' as it sounds similar to that of the letter 'c'. So for letter 'k', we say its sound is kicking ka.

More on remedial techniques to be dealt in subsequent posts...

World of L.D - You are not alone..

It is quite natural for any parent to get upset when they learn that their child has a learning disability. And as i have already mentioned, learning disability is a hidden handicap, as it cannot be seen and understood by others like any other disability. But learning disability is not an end in itself. It is only a condition where the brain processes information related to learning in a different way.

Parents and teachers need to understand that learning disability is a condition and not a disease. There is no cure for learning disabilities but considerable improvement is definitely possible through remedial education and children with learning disabilities can be assisted to lead a successful and happy life.
There's a popular saying "If one door is closed, there is always another door open". Similarly, if a child's capacity in one area such as in academic area is limited, the child may shine in some other area.
Children with learning disabilities usually exhibit some unsual abilities as in singing, dancing, sports, drawing and painting etc..

Some of the well known examples of successful people with learning disabilities are Albert Einstein, Galileo, Thomas Edison, Mozart, John .F Kennedy,Tom Cruise,Agatha Christie, Alexander Graham Bell to name a few.
These people were not essentially labelled as learning disabled because they lived before the term came into existence and before any diagnosis was made but they have exhibited signs related to A.D.D, A.D.H.D or L.D.
These people have not only conquered their disabilities, but also the hearts of millions of people across the globe and have made an ever lasting mark in their fields.
Talking to children about the similar difficulties that these people too had will help him understand that they are not alone and will foster hope thus moving them ahead in life towards the path of achieving their future goals.

It can be very hard for parents when they discover that their child never writes in the class, never copies from the board, is always distracted and distracts other children in the class, never completes any task" and so on...
At home when they open their child's books, they are again shatterd to see red marks all over the book, incomplete tasks of the child, lots of errors in writing and poor scores in the tests.

Initially it is very natural for anyone to think that the child is not interested in studies, has no concentration, always wants to escape from school work, but it actually may be something else..

If a child persists in the same manner, get him or her assessed for various tests like testing for vision, hearing, and then assessment for "LEARNING DISABILITY".
First, if a child is not able to copy from the board or write in the book, it is crucial that he/she be tested for any visual impairment.
Or, if a child has trouble understanding what is being said or asked, it may be due to problem with hearing, hence testing for hearing should be done.
If there are no problems in both, vision and hearing and the problem still continues, then the child may be suspected for "Specific Learning Disability".
The child is assessed in various areas like reading, writing, math by a special educator/remedial educator/ psychologist and actual problem of the child is identified.
Remedial education is then carried out in the problem area by the remedial instructor.

Another important point to be remembered by all the teachers and parents is that it is quite common for children in pre-primary level to exhibit problems that children with learning disabilities usually exhibit like reversals with letters (b/d, m/n, p/q, etc), spacing between lines and several other problems related to learning problems. But these errors should not be mistaken for learning disability until the problem persists beyond class 2, irrespective of repeated correction and adequate instruction in the problem area/s.

This however, does not mean if a child exhibits any of the signs of a learning disability, it can be ignored till the age of 7 years. If a child shows any signs of learning disability, it can be an early indication of a learning problem and appropriate remediation should be carried on to correct the problem. What is to be ignored is labelling the child as learning disabled. Only if the problem exsists even after the child attains 7 years of age and if the tests indicate the prevelance of a learning problem, should the child be considered to fit in the diagnostic category of learning disabilities.