This Valentine’s Day, Love All !

February 14th is an exciting day for young and old lovers alike. It can be a day of celebration of love. Love of all hues and colours, with all its grandness and simplicity. It gives me great pleasure to greet you all on the occasion of Valentine’s Day and say that I Love You All very much!

The word ‘Love’ has various connotations to it. As many connotations as the number of people who think about it and contemplate upon its meaning! The mother’s love to her children, the love between siblings, love and affection between spouses, the love between a Guru and a Shishya, love for God, the love among friends, the love we have for our pets, the love of the country, the love for a noble cause dear to us and so many others and then the most prevalent meaning as understood by ordinary mortals, the love between a young girl and a boy that has been celebrated through out human civilization in various forms of art and literature.

This love between a couple – a boy and a girl, a man and a woman, between two people of the same gender, as it is coming out of the closet more and more these days, generally have three faces to it. The intimacy, passion and the commitment. The generation and sustanance of love between two people depends on the amount of these three ingredients in different proportions.

First of all it is the physical attraction that brings two people close together. This attraction is triggered by the proximity of the two people. Perhaps they live in the same neighbourhood or study in the same class/college or work in the same company or may travel together to workplace. (It need not always be the physical proximity. It can even be the frequent proximity over an electronic medium like this, where the physical attraction exists only in imagination! 🙂 ) This proximity helps develop  aquaintence that may lead to excahnge of ideas and opinions. When the similarities in ideas and ideals become known, the attraction may grow stronger. They can come closer to each other  emotionally too and sparks fly, making the relationship a passionate one! But sometimes it is mere physical attraction that leads to passion and it may or may not last long. It may be just infatuation and may die down soon.

The emotional closeness leads to intimacy wherein the two individuals are ready to care and share. They may develop concern for each other’s wellbeing that leads to lot of sharing of personal information. This intimacy can lead to passion when the two may desire sexual intimacies. But their love may not feel complete until they feel committed to each other in this relationship. It is this commitment that takes them to the marriage altar.

Out of these three ingredients of intimacy, passion and commitment, passion may not last very long. After few years into relationship, it is bound to wane. It continues its existence, but not on the top of the list. Without a burning passion also, two people can remain good friends. It is the intimacy that keeps them close. Lot of sharing and caring continue to happen that keep them together. They show concern for each other and help the other resolve so many issues. In certain cases love can just be a platonic relationship (without hint of sexual desire between the two) being good friends and being there for each other in case of any crisis.  Coming back to what we were discussing, some times, the intimacy may slowly decline in relationships because of so many factors, like, getting too involved in their own careers, excessive indulgence in undesirable habits like drinking and gambling or even extra marital relationships.  People then slowly drift apart emotionally. They may even go in for a legal separation. But in some cases the commitment that they have made to each other can still bind them together, in the common interest of others who are depending on them.

Now a days we see lot of passion between a couple in the initial stages of friendship, which they may mistakenly believe as love. During the passionate moments they would have revealed their intimate matters to each other. But when passion dies and no commitment binding them, they can break apart leading to the emotional devastation of both.

It is this set of passionate couple that may go overboard celebrating Valentine’s day in all its elation. They shower expensive gifts to each other, dine at the most upmarket restaurant, promising everlasting love to each other. But without the commitment, it just can not last long. Many would be nursing a commitment phobia! How long can they go on like this? One of the partners is bound to seek the commitment in this relationship and the other partner feels that it is time to quit!

These days there are many ‘no-strings-attached’ casual relationships that both young girls and boys are ready to carry on. But it can have very serious repercussions, both on physical and mental health. They can not tread this path ignoring all the warning signs well written on the wall. Somewhere they need feel responsible for themselves and also the other person involved and wake up from this foolish stupor.

Marriage requires commitment. It can have the other two -passion and intimacy also in equal measures. To continue the commitment ’till death do us part’, lot of adjustments and compromises are needed. Subtle sacrifices are done. Love and trust are the strong pillars that keep the couple together. One needs to work on it like in any other relationship. No body can take the partner for granted. Mutual respect need to be accorded, space given to each other and yet feel totally connected. Valentine’s day or no valentine’s day, the intimate emotional bond can continue to get strengthened over the years……………….

All the above mentioned love are limited, conditional. If conditions are not fulfilled, then love disappears. But there can also be a love of a different kind that is limitless and unconditional! It is beyond bodily love or commitmental love. This love is in all our hearts. It is a gift that comes with creation. We are not aware of it. When we are ready to give that love unconditionally to others, the spring of love can overflow. It can touch every heart that comes in contact with that flow. This love is beyond gender, race or religion. It is the ultimate love that can soak everybody and is therepeutic to all. It can be panacea for all illnesses. It is spiritual. You just have to look within and unleash it. It can spread everywhere and pervade the whole universe. More you are ready to give, more it gets replenished. That is the Truth, the auspicious and the beautiful – Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram!

And it is this Love that I am giving all of you on this Valentine’s Day. I have no expectations of reciprocation from the other end.  I simply give becoz I have it in abundance! And I love giving 🙂

Love you all!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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High heeled shoes to up women’s libido!

I read an interesting (read nonsensical) piece of Research result, in New Indian express, bangalore Edition, dated 7th Feb 08,  found out by the Italian scientists. I call it ‘junk research’ as the results of such researches do more harm than good to woman-kind!

They have found out that wearing high heeled shoes can boost a woman’s sexual desire, as walking with high heeled shoes improves the strength of pelvic floor muscles thus upping her sex life!!!

Can anything be more stupid than advising wearing high heel shoes to improve strength of pelvic muscles? Are there no better exercises to improve ones muscles than to resort to heeled shoes?? Have we all not heard of people breaking their back bones by falling down, unable to balance themselves with a pair of high heels? How many ladies suffer twists in ankle bones, tear in the ligaments, postural faults, all because they could not manage their steps while climbing stairs or by walking on uneven surfaces with these shoes on?

Podiatrists (foot specialists) say that the anatomical position of a heeled shoe wearer is abnormal. This causes lot of stress to the feet as well as to the back bone. This leads to many stress fractures to the foot bones. This also leads to foot ailments, swelling of toes, shooting pain caused by injuries to foot nerves, swelling of the balls of feet etc.

When such is the long list of ‘rewards’ for the high heeled shoe wearer, was there any need to pump in funds to this kind of research to declare another ‘attractive’  result of increased libido for the wearer?! I wonder which woman would want to break her bones, have plastered limbs, be bed-ridden with a ‘high- libido’ !

Any takers???

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Britney Spears and Bipolar Disorder

The whole of last week saw all news papers covering the story of Britney Spears’ hospitalization, for the second time in a month for her mental illness. She has been diagnosed as suffering from Bipolar Disorder. Before we discuss what exactly is Bipolar disorder, lets have a peep at her life story so far:

Britney was born in December, 1981. That makes her 26 years of age now.

In 1993-94, when she was just 12 or 13 years of age, she gives a singing performance with Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake.

When 17 years, she releases her first Album “Baby one more time” that sells 25 million copies!

In the year 2000, She co-authors two memoirs with her mother.

In the same year she goes public about her relationship with her boyfriend Justin Timberlake. In 2002 she breaks up her friendship with Timberlake.

In 2003 MTV music awards function, she lip-locks with Madonna that shocks the entire audience. In the same year, she wins a Grammy award for best dance!

In January 2004, she marries her childhood friend Jason Alexander and the marriage ends after 55 hours!

In the same year she befriends Kevin Federline, a backup dancer. And in September 2004 she says “I do” in a surprise  marriage to Federline. She wears a designer wedding gown that cost her $26000.

In September 2005, they beget their first child, a baby boy.

In September 2006, she gives birth to another baby boy. During her 6th month pregnancy she poses sitting nude for Harper’s Bazaar magazine.

In 2007, she gets a divorce from Federline, citing irreconcilable differences.

In the same year she goes for a new hairstyle – going bald!

She gets in and out of Rehab centre for drug abuse and binging and alcohol.

In between her stays at Rehab centres, it was said that she even tried to hang herself once. I have no authentic info on this.

Same year, 2007, Federline files for custody of 2 boys and as she fails the drug test and also due to poor parenting skills, she loses temporarily custody of her 2 children to Federline.

In August 2007, she tries to make a comeback at MTV Video awards function and disappoints everybody with an awful performance.

In November 2007, she pays $120,000 to Federline as Lawyer’s fee.

Next day her new album “Black out” is released and does a roaring business!

In January 2008, she loses custody of her children to Federline. She is hospitalized for an evaluation of her mental status and is proclaimed as suffering from Bipolar disorder. She is discharged after two days.

On 31 January, she is hospitalized again and declared sick requiring longer stay and treatment for Bipolar. Britney alleges that her mother is sleeping around with her ex husband Federline.

Her mother gains legal control of her affairs from her manager who was allegedly using drugs on Britney and mismanaging her funds!

On February 6th Britney is discharged from the hospital much earlier than expected.

My goodness, what a roller coaster story of Britney’s life events!

You must be gasping for breath after reading her story…………………..

But it is all very sad. A teenage celebrity turning out to be a divorced mom at 26, losing custody of her 2 children and ending up in hospital for Bipolar treatment! …………….

What is Bipolar disorder???

Bipolar disorder was earlier called by the name Manic Depressive Disorder. As the name suggests, it is a Serious Mood disorder with extreme swings in mood – swinging from one pole of Mania to another pole of Depression! Hence the name Bipolar.

We all experience mood swings on and off. More so the teenagers with the onset of puberty and hormonal changes and changing expectations from parents, teachers, peer group etc. But these swings become a psychological disorder when the moods swing on and off in a day, in a week, in about two weeks, continuously for over two weeks and it totally turns the daily routine topsy-turvy.  The mood can change from elation to depression in cycles. 4 such cycles that may disrupt family and occupational relationships and routine work within a period of 12 months call for an evaluation by a psychiatrist. When the person is in manic state, he/she experiences elated mood, over confidence, requires less sleep than usual, is in a high energy state, may become restless, hyper active, irritable, argumentative, lose inhibitions, may indulge in drugs, smoking and alcohol, may even go overboard with sexual relationships. They may experience a sense of grandiosity, believe that they have high abilities and power, the sense of judgement lowers, may go on a spending spree, lavish reckless spending, will think the world is under their feet! They try to create situations with impulsivity, with shock value that gets the whole world’s attention.

You see many of these descriptions suiting Britney’s life happenings stated above.

This elated mood can last for a prolonged period or slowly fade giving rise to a feeling of low, a mood of depression! During this phase, they suddenly lose that confidence, start feeling inferior, lose interest in activities loved earlier, may withdraw from socializing, may experience a sense of hopelessness and worthlessness, may get suicidal ideations, may even attempt to take their life, become sad, irritable and anxious, sleep excess or very little, over eat or eat very less, low energy levels and fatigue, crying spells and may indulge in excess smoking, drinking and drugging, wrongly believing that all this would bring solace to their troubled heart and mind!

Again you can see so many of these depressive behaviours occuring in Britney’s life events.

These two moods may occur side by side or one long spell after the other, sometimes experiencing remission or rest from these swings and have normal moods and normal routine activities. The disrupted moods can cause havoc in a person’s life style. Just now you have read how Britney’s lifestyle changed from one episode to the other in such swift sweeping style!

What causes this disorder?  It is found that it can run in families – mother suffering and later on the daughter also catching on to this, making it look like a genetically caused disorder. But it is not so in many cases. Both men and women can get afflicted with this at any age. But usually the onset is during adolescence. It can set off in middle age too. But more women seem to suffer from this as women tend to be emotional and are vulnerable to normal swings in mood due to the hormonal disturbances in every menstrual cycle. The brain chemicals can also cause this type of disorder in some. The life environment and events can trigger such episodes. They may go to any length to seek attention from others. Sometimes, these attention seeking behaviours can have shock value like some instances in Britney’s life – overnight marriage and divorce, lip-lock with Madonna, going bald on an impulse, shaving off such long lovely blonde hair. It is found that many with Borderline Personality Disorder exhibit this kind of mood swings. Many cases go undiagnosed for years before it becomes unmanageable and then psychiatric help is sought. In some cases Bipolar can be mistaken for schizophrenia and wrongly treated, specially when the person starts exhibiting psychotic features like hallucination (sense perceptions that others around do not see or hear) and delusions (wrong beliefs) (Britney may have had this delusion of her mother having relationship with her boy friend and announcing it to the whole world!)

Pharmacological intervention by treating with mood stabilizers can keep the disorder in control. There is no total cure as such. Traces of these behaviours can remain for long. Psycho education to the person and to the family can help manage this better. Psycho therapy and counselling done parallely with medication can go a long way in stabilizing the moods and carrying on the routine life activities without much disruption.

In Britney’s case it was a matter of too much too soon. A young person will not be able to handle so much of success and money and name and fame all at once. Those things can become a very big stress to the mind, though on a positive note. A firm back up of values passed on from parent to child, a positive direction to move on, good support from family and friends at the time of emotional crisis periods, keeping oneself away from abuse of substances, indulging in healthy hobbies and interests can all help alleviate this mental illness to a large extent and manage life with a positive outlook.

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Down’s Syndrome and Suicide Bombing at Baghdad, Iraq

Two days ago we all learnt about a suicide bombing at Baghdad’s two pet markets, in Iraq, that killed nearly 75 people, wounding 150 people and hundreds of birds and other pet animals. Many of you may not even have read it as these days we have all become immune to such suicide bombings and killings as they have become the daily news in all news papers! and we have lost the sensitivity to even grieve over such matters.

But the most horrible fact about these two bombings were the two suicide bombers were girls with Down’s syndrome! and a person with Down’s syndrome does not have normal intellectual capacity and he/she is a mentally challenged person. How can such a person willingly give consent to be a suicide bomber? Surely, the girls here must have been tricked into it! and that is the most tragic part of the whole incident. How can this be an act of “jihadi”? Would Allah praise such an act??

Many of you may have heard of the term “Down’s syndrome”, but may not know what exactly the term refers to. Let me briefly explain.

Down’s syndrome is a life long condition of disability that results in mental retardation. The retardation can be of mild/moderate/severe degree. It is a chromosomal anomaly called “Trisomy 21” in which there occurs                  3 chromosomes in set 21 instead of 2 chromosomes. Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 in total) in each cell of the body, except in sex cells, eggs and sperms, where only 23 chromosomes are present. These 23 become 46 when the egg and the sperm  get fertilized to procreate and the species continues with 46. These 46 chromosomes are arranged in pairs of two and there are 23 such sets. But in Down syndrome child, the 21st set of chromosomes contain 3 chromosomes instead of the usual two (totalling to 47) and this excess genetic material in each cell results in a dsabling condition called Down’s syndrome, named after the scientist Langer Down who described this anomaly.

I have mentioned Trisomy 21 as the cause of this disability. In a small 2 to 3% of Downs syndrome, the cause is Mosaic Trisomy 21 that appears not in all body cells but only in few of the cells. Whether it is plain Trisomy 21 or mosaic, the features are the same and the degree of disability does not depend on the kind of the cause.

All children born in this condition share very similar facial characteristics that make them all look alike. They generally have a round, flat face with slanted eyes. They slant upwards and they have an extra skin fold on their eye lids that accentuate this slant. But they can have normal vision like anybody else. The babies have poor muscle tone and are floppy at birth. Slowly their muscle tone improves as they grow. It is also observed that these kids have a single crease running on their palm instead of the usual three deep ones that run on our palms (some normal kids also have only one crease on their palm, but not have down’s syndrome). They also have a large gap between their big toe and the second toe that usually grips the sandal. Their tongue usually protrudes outside as they have a smaller oral-cavity and a larger base of the tongue that keeps their mouth slightly open always. This may make them vulnerable to many respiratory infections.

Like in any other condition of mental retardation, these children also show delayed developmental milestones. Their motor (movement), speech and language, social and cognitive development are all slow. The condition can be detected at birth itself by the pediatrician and it is obligatory on their part to inform the baby’s condition to the parents at that time. But unfortunately in India, many Downs Syndrome births go undetected or uninformed to parents that it may jeopardize early interventional strategies that can mitigate the damages to a large extent.

The condition can not be cured. But their abilities can improve to a very large extent by training that is given in special schools. A positive and an accepting attitude on part of parents, siblings and other relatives can help the child to a very large extent to improve its skills. These days many early intervention programmes are taken up at various special centres to children of a much younger age, as soon as it is identified. Physio therapy programmes can improve their muscles’ and joints’ strengths that improve their mobility skills and their gross and fine motor skills (bigger muscles and smaller muscles of the body). Most of them have speech delays and speech problems. They may lack clarity in their speech, articulation problems, language reception and expression problems that can be reduced through speech therapy. Most of these children are friendly by nature and they draw attention from others through their smiling face and readiness to strike friendship with others. This also makes them very vulnerable and children need to be protected from any kind of abuse. Their social skills make them very endearing to all and they are very helpful in nature. Many of them love music and dance. Depending on their intellectual level, they can be taught functional academics that teach them the basic reading and writing skills. They are soon trained in vocations of their interest and later on as adults they can work in sheltered workshops under supervision. Some downs syndrome adults can lead fairly independent life.

As I mentioned earlier, they are prone to many respiratory diseases and many children have congenital (by birth) heart defects too. These children may have to undergo heart surgeries at a later date when they can withstand the surgery.

Coming to the sexuality aspect, they also have normal sexual desires like any other person. But their cognitive deficits may make them vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation. And as adults, they get isolated from the mainstream and this loneliness also makes them vulnerable to any kind of affection offered by the abusers. They need to be given sex education like any other person. The fertility rate is reduced in women with Downs syndrome and researchers believe that males may be sterile. But one case of a downs male fathering a child has been cited in journals. Many females with Downs are fertile and there are many instances of them carrying their pregnancy to term and successfully delivering kids – either downs child or a normal child. These are cases from abroad and in India, it is very difficult to get such a person married and expect to carry out the responsibility of a marriage relationship and rearing a child. But it is not impossible with family support. Just because somebody is disabled, we can not deny them their marital and sexual rights. It is purely their family decision.

When such are the abilities/differences in their ability levels of Downs syndrome persons, it is highly condemnable that two downs syndrome girls’ vulnerability was used and abused by the terrorist gang in Iraq and they have now fallen victims to their suicidal bombing pact!

Our heartfelt condolences to the families of these two innocent Down syndrome girls.

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BELCHING COWS & GREEN HOUSE GAS

The following is the letter to the TOI editor that mr vidyaranya bellur emailed, but unfortunately the letter was highly edited and published on 28/01/08. since he had emailed a copy to me, i thought of publishing it here unedited so that it might interest my readers and they may write their comments on this:

 

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Your news item “Sweden to study belching cows TOI dt. 23-1-08” is not only hilarious but epitomizes height of senselessness on part of research funding agencies. Cows every where have been nurturing from time immemorial on naturally grown greens and have been yielding milk that is nourishing human kind ever since civilization. Also, it is a well known fact that cow dung is an excellent manure that enriches the soil solely because it’s herbivorous nature. We may recall here how processed meat & bone were fed to these poor herbivorous animals which resulted in spread of mad cow disease in Europe which in turn lead to the butchering of thousands of innocent cows.

Now we hear of this crazy research being carried out on these poor bovines’ belchings which is supposedly contributing to the emission of green house gases! Instead, I strongly suggest the funding may be diverted to measure the emissions under the pants of junk food eaters where the results would indicate the contribution of human methane levels that would far exceed those of bovines’ belching!

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

B.S.Vidyaranya

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Dyslexia or Learning Disability – 10 – the concluding post!

I have decided to conclude the post today, however lengthy or short it may become !

We have discussed the various LD markers and also the probable causes. OK, Once we have identified a child with these difficulties, what do we do?

The child needs an assessment by an Educational psychologist or a Special Educator who may administer various tests to find out the its abilities in the areas of reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic. It is important to rule out any hearing or vision problems before conducting these tests. It is also important to collect information about the family history/background to rule out any serious emotional disturbances. If the child is suspected to be experiencing serious emotional disturbances either at school or at home, those disturbances need to be addressed first before proceeding with the tests.

The tests may be standardized psychological tests where norms have been developed earlier so that our child’s performance may be compared to those norms and its degree of difficulty assessed. Or psychologists can develop their own tests based on the criteria that a child of that particular grade/age needs to be proficient with. Some curriculum based tests can also be administered to find out the child’s grade level. A child is said to be experiencing Learning Disability if its performance is below 2 grade levels.For example, if a child who is in 4th Grade is only able to read and write at 2nd Grade level or even less, he could be having LD. If the child is good in arithmetic but not in languages or if the child is good in languages and is poor in computing the numbers, it could be a case of Specific Learning Disability. These labels are used only to exchange information between professionals and to understand the remedial measures required for the child, but not to demoralize the child or the parent. Professionals need to be extremely sensitive to the feelings of the parents and the child. We need to validate their feelings of shock, disappointment, disillusionment, anger or denial, that they may express when they learn about this condition of their child. Professionals need to offer counselling to the parents to make them understand that their child despite the difficulties, can still be able to come up in life in one or the other area of skill. Even academics can improve to a great extent given one-on-one remedial teaching, depending on the degree of disability – it could be mild, moderate or severe. Earlier the problem identified, earlier the remedial measures could start and better would be the outcome. Parents’ acceptance of the issue is the most important factor in proceeding further to seek help for the child to overcome the difficulties.

Remedial classes can be arranged by the school itself or parents need to identify such facilities in their area and the child can attend the classes 2 or 3 or 4 times a week according to its learning needs. Many schools in Bangalore have Resource Centres now that cater to the learning needs of these students. Their specific problems are addressed in these classes unlike in a regular tuition class. Teachers at school can be requested to reduce the burden of home-work to these students so that extra time can be devoted to the learning needs of the child. Teachers can also be requested to give due credits to the oral expression of these students than to evaluate them based only on their written expression.

Many parents realize that their child is having severe problems only when the child reaches the high school. Suddenly the syllabus also increases, parental and teacher pressure increase and the boy or the girl becomes self-conscious of the difficulties that they are undergoing and the insults that they hear from all sides, that they can get into depression. Their frustrations mount and they may become aggressive. Added to this would be the turbulence of entering puberty and various confusions that ensue. Counselling can help them realize their strengths first and then the weaknesses and how to overcome these weaknesses. It is important to keep in touch with the school teacher too to understand the academic and non-academic behaviour of the child at school. The school teachers who handle the child need to be sensitized of the difficulties the student is facing and how they can cooperate with the professional and the parent to mitigate the problems and boost the confidence of the child.

NIMHANS and St.Johns Hospital are the two places where certificate of LD is issued that can be produced at the State or the Central Board of Education to avail concessions in Languages (the language of medium to continue and the other two languages can be dropped), or substitution of a subject with another(a student I know of selected Music instead of Maths in CBSE) or extra time to write in the exam (for slow writers) or even the services of a scribe(for the severely dysgraphic) can be sought.

The Central Government has also introduced National Institute of Open Schooling System (NIOS)  for 10th and 12th Grade level exams, the Certificates of which are considered on par with the Board Certificates, based on which the student can get admission into mainstream college later on. The advantage of NIOS system is that the student can choose 5 or 6 subjects of his choice from a variety of unconventional subject-combinations. The exams are held once in 6 months (April and October), the student is allowed to write exams in as many subjects as he is comfortable with, which he would have studied at his own pace. The student need to get registered in one of the approved institutions of NIOS syllabus, can attend regular school or schools that offer NIOS syllabus and pass the exams at his own pace.

In case of severely learning disabled students, it is very important to recognize their particular skills and start training them in any Vocation of their choice from the High school level itself. Many schools with NIOS syllabus also have in-house vocational training facilities. Parents need to understand that it is important to make the student self-reliant later on with a vocation learnt earlier, than force the student to pursue higher education when the interest and abilities of the student do not permit this.

To conclude the series of posts on Dyslexia or Learning Disability, that started with a mention of the movie Taare Zameen Par by Director and actor Aamir Khan and how the sensitive portrayal and treatment of the subject catch the heart strings of the movie goers, I would like to tell all the parents and teachers (and other readers) that it is of utmost importance to help any child build good emotional health first, then teach the child all the Life skills, like, communication, decision making, inter personal relationship, emotional management etc, and then give due attention to its academic health too. Recognize a child’s hidden potentials/talents, encourage the child to build on those potentials, acknowledge every desirable behaviour and every small achievement that the child scores, correct the undesirable behaviour with support and love and BE  THERE  EMOTIONALLY  WITH  YOUR  CHILD  ALWAYS – IN ITS SUCCESSES and MORE SO IN ITS FAILURES!

I would like to quote here (my favourite)  sensitive plea of a child to its parents –

“LOVE  ME  MOST  WHEN  I  DESERVE  IT  THE  LEAST;  FOR  IT  IS  THEN  THAT  I  NEED  IT  MOST” !

Series Concluded

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Dyslexia or Learning Disability – 9

I feel the thread of posts is getting very long and I am afraid I may be putting the reader’s interest off the thread by my elaborate explanations! I think I should conclude it soon.

One or two features that were left out in my earlier posts are included here. The fine motor problems in writing that I have mentioned in previous posts can be sensed much earlier by the indicators, like, lack of firm grip over the objects held in hand, unable to hold writing implements and make lines and circles, unable to tie the shoe lace, difficulty to colour within the boundary, buttoning the garments, difficulty to string beads etc.

These children may exhibit gross motor problems too. Their attainment of gross motor milestones might have been delayed. They would have taken longer months to turn around, creep and crawl, move forward on four limbs, sit upright, stand or walk. They may be clumsy in their running and jumping. They may find it difficult to hop on one leg or skip. They may find it difficult to throw ball at the target or catch the ball. Children hone all their gross motor skills while playing outdoors. But it is very unfortunate that instead of allowing children to play in the evenings, parents are packing them off to tuition classes during this precious hour in the evening!  

Some of these children would have experienced delays in speech acquirement and development. This later on leads to language processing difficulty. Speech problems like stammering, stuttering, articulation difficulties (saying ‘guh’ for ‘kuh’, ‘muh’ for ‘nuh’. ‘luh’ for ‘ruh’ etc). Children who suffer from constant colds and coughs and ear infections may later develop auditory perceptual difficulties.

I have explained most of the markers of dyslexia and I am sure you can now identify those features of dyslexia if you come across them in a child. But what are the causes of dyslexia???

Well, no single cause can explain the Learning Disability that many children experience. However, researchers say that many factors can be linked with this condition.

Genetic: Since LD is seems to run in families, it can be attributed to genes.

Bio-Chemical: Imbalances in chemical productioninside the brain (neuro transmitters)can lead to many problems like ADHD that inturn can lead to LD, or memory problems.

Accidents can lead to brain injuries that can damage certain neural pathways necessary for learning to take place.

Many children who have had epileptic seizures that went unattended or undiagnosed in the earlier stages can develop learning difficulties.

Smoking, alcohol drinking or drug habits of the pregnant mother can lead to developmental anomalies in the foetal brain, which may manifest later on as Learning difficulties. Pregnant mothers who have an addiction to alcohol can give birth to children with Foetal Alcoholic Syndrome or FAS. Excessive smoking can can cause accumulation of nicotine in the pregnant mother that can sometimes lead to mutation of the genes that cause various problems to the growing foetus. Many drugs that are ingested by the pregnant mother to treat infections can also cause distress to the developing brain.

Severe emotional disturbances and depression of the pregnant mothermay affect the developing foetus that may show up later on as LD. 

Problems during delivery of the child, like oxygen deprivation to the brain(anoxia) due to lack of or delayed birth cry that can damage the brain cells. A prolonged labour can cause fetal distressthat sometimes leads to LD.

Environmental causes, like, deprivation of a stimulating environment at critical stages of development of a child that prevents optimal brain functioning, excess of chemicals like mercury, arsenic and lead in the environment can damage a child’s brain.

Since many of these causes are human made, it is in our own hands to take preventive measures that can save children from this affliction.

……………….. to be concluded in the next post

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Dyslexia or Learning Disability – 8

While constructing a sentence, children with LD may find it hard to structure their sentence grammatically. They commit errors with syntax. They can not string the words in the right order. They may write, “road goes on the car” instead of “car goes on the road”. Passive voice poses problem to them. The sentence “cat chases the rat” in passive voice may become “rat chases the cat”! “Rat is chased by the cat” would be too confusing to understand who is chasing whom! They struggle to express their ideas through writing or through speech. They may fumble for words or stop mid way in a sentence unable to understand how to proceed. Single line answers are easy to understand, but long answers are difficult to comprehend because of their confusion with sequencing of events/ideas. 

Some children who have above average intellectual levels may find writing task very difficult. Their thoughts would be running at such high speed that their writing pace can not match the speed of their thought flow! And many find the repetitive writing tasks very boring and meaningless. Hence a reluctance to write.

Teachers need to be sensitive to their reading and writing difficulties. They should not pick these children and force them to read out a passage from the text book aloud in front of their peers. Anxiety increases their confusion and makes them commit even more mistakes.

Spelling difficulty is once again due to the inability to order the letters in sequence. Some may be good in phonetics and they may spell the word as they hear the sound (auditory speller) – fone for phone, nife for knife, nite for night, lefant for elephant (more like the current day mobile SMS spellings). Some children write bizarre spellings – totally unconnected to the word. To learn spellings, the child should have good visual memory to visualize the whole word in his mind and reproduce it or he must have good phonetic skill to divide the word into different syllables and learn the spelling of each syllable and string it together. This method is called syllabication or syllabification. The word “difficult” can be segmented into dif-fi-cult, the word television into te-le-vi-sion,  construction into con-st-ruc-tion, mansion into man-sion.  Here again there can be confusion between “tion” or “sion” and this portion of the word they need to visually remember.

To learn the spellings, the child also needs to master the sound-letter association. After single letter sounds, child needs to learn consonant blends, like, ‘pl’, ‘br’, ‘sp’, ‘cr’, ‘spr’, ‘spl’, ‘str’, ‘thr’ etc, consonant digraphs, like, ‘ch’, ‘sh’, ‘wh’ (2 letters making single sound), vowel sounds and many other letter combinations.

Numbers once again may pose problems to many children. While writing they may mirror certain numbers like, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7  and 9. They may read the number in reverse order, like, 23 as 32, 12 as 21 etc. Counting one-to-one will be difficult, concept of money can be hard to learn, Clock reading may become difficult. Temporal words like ‘before’, ‘after’, ‘some days ago’, ‘some days later ‘, ‘next month’, ‘last year’ etc would be difficult to conceive.

Simple addition and subtraction may be learnt easily, but graded sums would be difficult. The concept of ‘carry over’ in addition and ‘borrow’ in subtraction would be tough. Learning the multiplication table would be difficult as it requires sequencing ability and hence find multiplication sums difficult. So also the division sum.

Statement sums pose a big problem as the arithmetic language involved would be difficult to understand and they can not comprehend the different operations involved in the sum. Even if they were to understand the operations like addition and subtraction involved, they may get confused with the sequence of these operations.

……………….. to be continued

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Dyslexia or Learning Disability – 7

Continuing the writing difficultiesthat many children with LD face, they have poor handwriting as their finer muscle controls are bad in the initial stages and by the time they gain control over the finger muscles, the pattern would have been set and children demotivated enough by all the insults that they keep hearing that they never make an attempt to write neatly. Or occasionally, when they have received positive strokes by the teacher at school or by parents at home, sudden motivation can make them write neatly on that day for which lot of effort goes in. But it is not sustained for long as their mood gets spoilt by other demotivating comments. Hence we see lot of inconsistency in their writing. If a child has very severe degree of difficulty to write, then the child is said to have dysgraphia.

Since these children have poor spatial ability, they can not understand how much space needs to be left between words in a sentence or how much space would be required to write a longer word at the end of a line. They try their best to fit in a long word at the end of the line by over writing or by going out of alignment, or by erasing the word number of times and somehow fitting in the word that they lose precious time doing all this acrobatics!  

It becomes difficult for them to make connectivity to the next letter while using cursive style of writing (joining handwriting). Most of us are taught cursive letters of alphabet in isolation and the beginning of the stroke is always at the bottom of the line. But many a times, inside a word, these letters have to be connected from the previous letter from atop. Ex: in a word beginning with ‘o’, say, ‘owl’ or ‘toy’, the child can connect well. But if ‘o’ were to come in-between, like in ‘bowl’ or ‘vowel’, connecting ‘o’ becomes difficult. Many cursive letters pose this problem when they are positioned between two letters and the stroke has to continue from top. This makes the handwriting look clumsy.

Their writing looks clumsy because of unevenly sized letters in a word or inconsistency in maintaining the size and shape of the letters. Because of their slow speed of writing, they are always lagging behind others while writing dictation or while copying from the black board. They are unable to comprehend the rules of punctuation and capitalization of letters.

When the teacher realizes these difficulties that a child is experiencing, she should not insist on neatness, but focus on the content of the writing. As long as the writing is intelligible, she can overlook the minor errors and appreciate the content and the effort the child has put to complete the task. But unfortunately, most of the teachers insensitively scratch out all the work that the child has done with a bold red ink mark and place a remark “rewrite”, “poor handwriting, re-do” or some even tare the page into pieces, taring the self-esteem of the child into shreds!

………….. to be continued

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Dyslexia or Learning Disability – 6

In my last post I was discussing the various forms of Visual and Auditory perceptual difficulties that many children with LD face. And the link provided by Mr. John Heyas in his comment to Post 5 threw much more light upon visual perceptual difficulties. Here we may recall how the little fellow Ishaan Awasthi in the movie “Taare Zameen Par” perceives all the letters and numbers dancing on his page and flying away making it impossible for him to understand what was being asked in the question paper! How numbers and words get mirrored, all jumbled up and the best thing for him at that point of time to do was to go on a dream trip! Yes, many of these children sit day dreaming in the class room as they can not make any sense of the lesson being taught by the teacher! Isn’t the dream world more interesting and more motivating than the drab, repetitive lessons taught by an unenthusiastic teacher in the classroom?!

Children with reading difficulties also make errors in leaving out the prefixes and suffixes in words – they may read unlikely as likely, indifferent as different, or teaching as teach, survived as survive.

Children who have severe writing difficulties often show decline in their academic scores as they come to higher classes. Many parents say that their child was scoring very well in Kindergarten levels, but started showing difficulty to score marks as he came to 2nd and 3rd standard. It declines further by class 5 and is when most parents wake up to the fact that their child might be having some learning problems.

Writing is a fine motor activity,ie, it requires the finger muscles to be skillful to graspthe writing implement (crayons, chalk pieces, pencils, pen etc) and have control over writing. Writing with a pencil/pen, that too within the boundary of two or 4 lines is a very sophisticated action that is at the top of hierarchy of fine motor skills that is attained by the age of 6 or 7. But unfortunately, in India, children as young as 3 or 4 are taught to hold pencils and expected to write inside a book! Many of us may remember writing on a black slate all the class work till 2nd standard! This places undue pressure on a child who may be developmentally still lagging behind. It becomes a very big strain for the young child to continuously hold a pencil and write one full page of letters of the alphabet! Their finger muscles may start aching.

Added to this difficulty may be the establishment of handedness. By three years many children would have established their hand preference to do little tasks. But many are still shifting between the left and the right hands. It is wrong to force a child to use his/her right hand while the child may prefer the left hand. The left or right handedness depends upon the dominance of the left or the right hemisphere of the brain. The left hemisphere of the brain controls the movements of the right side of the body and vice versa. If a child prefers to use his left hand for most of the tasks, forcing a change in his /her handedness can lead to lot of confusion in the brain and may slowly lead to aversion to write. It is wise to leave the decision of using hands to the child itself. Teachers also need to be sensitive to this issue.

Writing poses difficulty initially to left handed childrenas our writing is from left to right. (Other than Urdu/Arabic language, are there any other languages that require writing from right to left? Readers please enlighten me) For a lefthander, the movement of hand from left to right is restricted, whereas for a rightv hander, movement is unrestricted from left to right. This restriction of movement poses difficulty to establish neat handwriting. Also, children using left hand to write do not get an immediate feedback of their written workas their left hand covers what is being written! Not so for a right hander. He/she has full view of what is being written and can even make suitable corrections then and there. All this difficulty makes many left handers take up hooked writing position of the hand so that the movement becomes easier from left to right and also a feedback is visible. But young children who pick up hooked hand position may tire soon as it is an unnatural position to hold for long for the young hand. Teachers and parents need to be aware of the difficulties a left handed child experiences while picking up writing skill. Their understanding and sensitivity can ease the pressure upon the child and can motivate a child to improve his/her writing skill. Otherwise, an insensitive handling of the issue by elders and insensitive teasing and insults by peers about the left handedness can leave an emotional scar in the child’s mind and can lead to low self-esteem and de-motivation!

Also, children require time till the age of 6 or 7 to gain control over the size of the letters that they are expected to write. It takes time for some children to gain the concept of configuration of various letters – the direction of the strokes and curves of letters. If they are forced to limit the size of the letters within certain boundary, they can not make a proper impression in their brain. This leads to confusion about various letters and numbers. These children need large spaces to practice writing, like on the floor or on the wall or on black boards where they need not limit the size of their letters and slowly they get the shapes of letters or numbers well ingrained in their brain. Then they can start reducing the size. In addition to just writing on a plain sheet of paper, children benefit by writing on rough surfaces like sand or a spread of rough powder of ‘rangoli’ where there is an additional input through tactile mode. Tracing with fingers the letter templates on a sand paper or tracing the stencils also provide better impression.

In our schools teachers insist on neat handwriting and cursive style (joining the letters) of writing by 2nd standard when the children would be about 7 years of age. Yes, many children would be able to write according to the teacher’s expectations. But those who fail to write are subjected to severe punishments and insults! This is what puts off many kids from writing and an insensitive treatment can lead to rebellion in them!

……………….. to be continued

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