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!