Is your child a Kinesthetic learner?

I am a mother of four children. Most people say I’m crazy, I think I’m blessed. Like all mothers, I worry about my kids, want them to have the best education, want them to be happy, etc etc. My children are very young; in fact my oldest is only seven and just completed the first grade.

Your first is always a learning lesson. I feel sorry for the oldest of any family. My oldest boy was born and raised (to the ripe age of six) in the Caribbean. Moving back to the US was a major culture shock for him. Not only did he have to learn a new culture, he had to make new friends, get used to seasons and adapt to the very high paced, stressed out culture of the US. That’s not easy! To add insult to injury, the last school he was at in the Caribbean, did not bring him up to speed to where he should be at in the US…..so he was behind and had to catch up.

When a child is behind academically, it is such a stress on the mother’s heart. For one, you don’t want them to lose confidence and that is the first thing to go if a child feels he can’t do in school what the other kids are doing. Confidence is the MOST important thing a child could have in school and it dictates his/her success.

We worked with him all year and by the time the year ended, the comment I got was, “He is now finally at where he should have been at the beginning of the year.” I went home and cried in a corner. But here is what I have now learned and should have listened to my gut all along and not “traditional schooling” ideas. My boy is a kinesthetic learner and the majority of teaching styles in traditional schooling are not kinesthetic ways of teaching to help the kids learn.

Most would agree that there are three ways people learn best, auditory, sight and kinesthetic. A Harvard Psychologist named Howard Gardner discovered that there are actually seven ways (“intelligences”) that people understand and perceive the world. But for simplicity sake, we will focus on the three, but it is worth reading up on Gardner. All it means if you are a kinesthetic learner is that you learn best by movement or “doing”. If fact, science has concluded that ALL children are kinesthetic learners when they start out in school, but are forced to learn another style of learning because traditional school is so behind on how to teach kinesthetic style of teaching. Schools are slowly getting there, but it’s still a long way to go.

What I learned about my son is he is dominantly a kinesthetic learner and so am I still to this day. I was never able to adapt to a new style of learning and I can remember the frustration I had as a child to keep up. In fact, research has now realized that MANY children are getting misdiagnosed with ADHD and ADD and their child really is just a kinesthetic learner. These kids need movement, action, doing. The way that reading and writing are taught today is very linear. This is very frustrating to a kinesthetic child.

As soon as school ended I stopped listening to all the traditional advice and I went with my gut, which concluded that he wasn’t going to Summer school. I bought all kinds of manipulatives (manipulative materials are any concrete objects that allow students to explore an idea in an active, hands-on approach. Manipulatives can be almost anything – blocks, shapes, spinners or even paper that is cut or folded.) I bought site word games, made Pictionary cards, downloaded computer games and anything I could think of that would help teach this child to read while being in action or required movement. The result in just one week has been astounding. For starters this kid picks up on a word after only seeing it once and using it in a Pictionary game. He went through 15 complex words for his age and in less than 30 minutes of Pictionary he knew them all! His tutor came the next day to review the words and she was shocked at how well he knew these words that weren’t first grade words…..these were harder words.

This wonderful kid of mine is growing every day in confidence now that I’m implementing kinesthetic learning. For the first time he asked if we could do the pattern of “family game night, then the next night reading books, then the next night family game night and so on” - as he said to me just the other day. When school ended, he didn’t want to touch a book and started to cry and said he couldn’t read when I tried to push the subject.

Whether you have a child who learns best by kinesthetic style teaching or a child who is dominant in another learning style, all kids learn quickly and benefit from kinesthetic style teaching. Get playing with your kids, get moving with your kids, and get learning with your kids. If you have a child who is struggling in school or a child that you are wondering if they are ADHD (or has even been told they do have ADHD), I urge you to explore the idea of kinesthetic style teaching and implement family game night! From one mother to the other, it’s worth it!

Self Awareness…..Ouch!

I had some realizations this week that were really hard pills to swallow! But in the end it made me realize one thing – you MUST know who you are to succeed. And yes, that means the strengths and the weaknesses. It can be like a knife in your heart to discover some weaknesses and then try and strengthen the weakness! For starters, our weaknesses are weaknesses because it relates to an area of life that is hard to overcome otherwise it wouldn’t be a weakness! My realization, although may sound so silly to you, was that “Rome wasn’t built in one day.” I can hear you laughing. Of course I’ve heard that saying before and so has everyone else, but if you are anything like me, you have a ton of ambition, a ton of enthusiasm, a ton of optimism and you pull all those attributes together to create an awesome dream and whatever it takes you are going to get there by Sunday! Then when Sunday comes and you didn’t conquer the world you are so unbelievably deflated and have to start over to get there by next Sunday. Sound familiar?

I’ve been working with a talent management company. This company has been in business for decades and has mastered the art of developing leaders for Fortune 500 companies. They have lots of workshops, assessment centers, interviewing selection tools……basically a ton of ways of figuring out what competencies people have strengths in and what competencies are weaker areas and then putting them through the right workshop to develop those things they are weak in.

I was sitting with one of the Senior Consultants who is a master facilitator for this particular company’s workshops and he said something to me that was quite interesting. We were talking about all the “self-help gurus” out there that are motivating people towards success. He started his conversation with, “Firstly I think all the motivational speakers in self-help are doing nothing but selling lies!” (By the way, he openly admitted that he was a pessimist by nature.) Trying to keep an open mind I asked why he thought that. He simply responded by saying, “Because all they do is get up on stage, tell you how you can do anything you put your mind to and succeed while giving people all kinds of false hope that they really can do it without ever giving people the right kind of information about what it is about ‘them’ in particular that is preventing them from succeeding. That is what we do in here – we show people what their strengths and weaknesses are and then go to work on their weaknesses. Can a motivational speaker give you that?” Pessimistic? You bet! Just to put the record straight, I believe there a MANY motivational speakers and self-help gurus out there that have helped millions of people. I don’t believe they are ALL selling lies. There are many ‘greats’ out there lifting the earths vibration every day with what they do. However, this guy got to me with what he said. Since I believe that you need to keep your mind open to everything and attached to nothing, I deeply pondered his comment. He was right about one thing – you can’t completely succeed unless you know who you are – the whole package, strengths and weaknesses.

Of course given my personality, I went into deep self-reflection. Ouch! It kind of hurt and I realized that in order for me to really succeed the way I want to, I have to take one step at a time. May sound simple to you, but this is a big WOW for me. It isn’t always about going after the big whale; it most often is about going first after the small fish and letting the small fish grow. The path to success is through self-realization. Once you see yourself for who you really are you know WHY things in your life aren’t working. So for me, my BIG success will come one step at a time and taking the proper amount of time to do it.

I have big dreams and big goals. Have I hit all those goals? NO! I want whomever that will ever read this blog to go on a journey with me. I want this blog to be upfront and honest. I want to post things on my journey that are true and inviting for discussion. We are getting so inundated with all the hype these days that it seems that everyone is selling lies. Everyone has to make it ‘look’ like they are bigger than they are in hopes that that will get them the success they need. So although I would like to hide the fact that I’m still working on those goals (since society has taught us well to cover up) , the truth is I still have a long way to go, I also know I have A LOT to offer. So I’m going to take a deep breath and take one step at a time, even if it is painfully small and takes more time than anticipated to take that step before going onto the next step.

I encourage you all to dive into self-awareness and see what you may find. I know that there are GREAT things in there. But if you aren’t where you want to be yet, just like me, then what is it that is holding you back?