Is There an Emotional Link to Learning Difficulties?

By IAPH Therapist Kathleen Freeman

In The past decade, more children have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and ADD with hyperactive behaviour (ADHD) than in any previous decade. In this article, reference to ADD refers to both conditions. Two years ago, after Dr Anke Koelman was interviewed on television regarding the work with ADD at her learning centre in South Australia, She assessed and treated fifty children, all of whom had been diagnosed as having ADD symptoms. Some of these children were on medication, others had been advised to take medication, but the parents were looking for alternatives. On the basis of her educational assessment, she concluded that in forty-eight of the fifty children (96 percent), the so-called ADD behaviour was caused by emotional and learning problems. As soon as the learning problems and related stress were resolved, the concentration problems were resolved as well. In most cases, concentration was not specifically addressed in her session with them; it became a non-issue. How is it possible that so many children had been misdiagnosed?

Symptoms of ADD / ADHD

According to Dr. Harry Nash, “Children with both types of ADD suffer from difficulties in certain basic components of behaviour which most of us take for granted. “Dr. Nash and other experts in the field of clinical neurology describe children with ADD as sharing the following symptoms of behaviour...

• slow selective attention
• inability to sustain attention or block out distractions
• poor goal setting
• lack of organisational and planning skills
• difficulty in initiating relevant tasks
• inability to persist through to completion
• weak handwriting skills
• inability to anticipate behaviour of others or consequences of their own behaviour
• speech and language disabilities
• difficulty in self-calming

The majority of these symptoms can also be the direct result of a learning problem or an emotional challenge. For example, speech and language problems almost always result in reading, writing and spelling problems. Difficulty in initiating relevant tasks is often the result of a learning problem, because the child knows there is another insurmountable obligation ahead. Poor concentration and inability to persist are often the result of a long history of trying in vain to do the task. This leads to a continuous feeling of being overwhelmed.

The child who is under chronic pressure to perform has an increased sensitivity to distractions, along with other symptoms of learning problems. Poor organisational and planning skills can also be the result of incomplete sensory and brain integration, for which drugs are no solution.

What is Happening at School?

The child’s teacher plays a very important role, because the teacher is often the first
to discuss the possibility of a childs challenges due to children behaving differently at home because they are in a safe and familiar place with the parents.

The teacher may often suggest seeing a medical practitioner or child psychologist and will often put the behaviour or the learning difficulty down to ADHD, the child is almost always condemned to a drug trial, whether or not he or she has ADHD/ADD.

If the child does respond to the drugs, he or she then qualifies for a life sentence of medication! However, A child with “true ADHD” is I believe, a child who cannot concentrate in any context, even if he or she wants to. If the student is able to concentrate while playing football, enjoying computer games, or when otherwise involved, yet is unable to concentrate in the classroom, then the ability to sustain attention is there. This child does not have true ADD, and the reason for the lack of concentration may be that the child is anxious to do well, to please the teacher and just be the same as his or her class mates. How well can you concentrate when you are under emotional strain or just bored, uninterested or tiered or cannot do what is expected of you? Often girls will daydream or start talking when they switch off, whereas boys will tend to fidget and look for distractions.

Each child has an individual switch– off behaviour pattern that occurs when he or she is faced with the stress of not being able to learn with peers. Therefore a child’s inability to concentrate in the classroom may be the actual cause of these ADHD symptoms.