Well Balanced Child

Goddard Blythe Sally

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Child

Informations

• Publié par: Hawthorn Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 0001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781907359576
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Well Balanced Child
Movement and early learning
Sally Goddard Blythe
The Well Balanced Child © 2004, 2005 Sally Goddard Blythe
Sally Goddard Blythe is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 1988. She asserts and gives notice of her moral right under this Act.
Published by Hawthorn Press, Hawthorn House, 1 Lansdown Lane, Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 1BJ, UK
Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]
www.hawthornpress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic or mechanical, through reprography, digital transmission, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover photo © Shutterstock
Cover design by Lucy Guenot of Bookcraft Ltd, Stroud, Glos
Illustrations by Marije Rowling
Illustrations for story by Sharon Rentta
Typesetting by Lynda Smith at Hawthorn Press, Stroud, Glos.
Printed in the UK by The Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire
Printed on acid-free paper from managed forests
Reprinted 2007, 2011, 2012, 2014 by Berforts Information Press, Oxford
Every effort has been made to trace the ownership of all copyrighted material. If any omission has been made, please bring this to the publisher’s attention so that proper acknowledgment may be given in future editions.
First published 2004
Revised edition published 2005
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978-1-903458-63-1
ePub ISBN 978-1-907359-57-6
Mobi ISBN 978-1-907359-57-6
Contents
Foreword by Harold N Levinson, MD
Guest Introduction by Ewout Van-Manen
Introduction
1.
Genesis
 
•
Why Movement Matters to Your Child
 
•
Movement and Early Learning
2.
Balance
 
•
Balance – the Primary Sense
 
•
Origins of Balance and Hearing
 
•
Development of Balance
 
•
Balance through Movement – Vital Training
 
•
A Sense of Direction
 
•
Balance and Learning
 
•
How is Balance Trained?
3.
Brain and Body – Developing the Mind
 
•
Motor Development
 
•
Reflexes – Signposts of Development
 
•
Functions of Reflexes in Early Development
4.
From Cradle to Coordination: Reflexes and the Developing Mind
 
•
The Moro Reflex
 
•
The Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex (TLR)
 
•
The Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR)
 
•
The Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR)
 
•
The Rooting and Sucking Reflexes
 
•
The Palmar and Plantar Reflexes
 
•
Babinski Reflex
 
•
The Spinal Galant Reflex
5.
The Music of Language
6.
Music and the Brain
 
•
The Power of Singing
 
•
Sound and Voice
 
•
Music and the Brain
 
•
What Else Does Music Do?
 
•
Music and Number
 
•
Arousal, Attention and Creativity
7.
Of Many Minds
 
•
What are the Implications of Different Stages of Brain Development for Education?
 
•
Development, Learning Readiness, and Play
8.
Feeding, Growth and the Brain
 
•
Good Fats and Bad Fats
 
•
Zinc
 
•
Magnesium
 
•
Calcium
 
•
Manganese
 
•
Social Context and Eating Patterns
 
•
Biological Factors
9.
Turning Children Around
 
•
Space to Play
 
•
Creating an Urban Utopia
 
•
School Study
10.
Learning from the Ancients: Education through Movement
 
•
Oriental Education
 
•
Greek Education
 
•
The Roman Way
 
•
The Age of Chivalry
 
•
Kindergarten and Nursery School Provision
 
•
Summary
 
•
Conclusion
 
•
General Themes in Child Development
11.
The First Playground
 
•
Why Movement Matters
 
•
Balance
 
•
Touch
 
•
Sound
 
•
Early Morning by the Pond (Story)
 
•
General Programmes for Children 6 –7 years and above
 
•
Summary
Numbered References
General References
Resources
Appendix: Towards a Holistic Refoundation for Early Childhood: The Hawthorn Press ‘Early Years Series’
List of Figures
1.
Characteristics of the movement in the Womb – Piscean
2.
Movements characteristic of the first 4–6 months of life – Reptilian
3.
Movements in the Quadruped position – Mammalian
4.
From Crawling to Walking (hands still not entirely free from balance) – Primate
5.
Bipedal – Human
6.
The 3 Planes of Gravity/Axes for Operations in Space
7.
Hierarchical View of the Brain (The Evolutionary Brain)
8–9.
The Moro Reflex
10.
The Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex (TLR) Extension
11.
The Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex (TLR) Flexion
12.
Early attempts at Head Righting in the Prone Position
13–14.
School Aged Child attempting to ‘accommodate’ the effect of a residual Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex (TLR) when sitting
15–18.
Infants in prone, sitting and standing positions showing line of gravity from head to toe
19.
The Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR)
20.
The Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR) in Flexion
21.
The Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR) in Extension
22–23.
Sitting Positions Typical of an older child with a Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR)
24.
The Rooting Reflex
25.
The Sucking Reflex
26.
The Palmar Reflex
27.
The Plantar Reflex
28.
Infant Babinski Reflex
29.
The Spinal Galant Reflex
30.
The 3 Dimensions of Music
31.
The Tree of Knowledge: Stages of Maturation in the Central Nervous System
List of Tables
1.
Human Brain Waves and Associated States of Arousal
2.
Change in Neurological Scores and Percentile Rating Score on the Draw a Person Test before and after Nine months of Developmental Exercises in School
List of Abbreviations
ATNR – Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex
DHA – Docosahexaenoic Acid
EFAs – essential fatty acids
Hz – herz
RAS – Reticular Activating System
STNR – Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex
TLR – Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex
VOR – Vestibular-Ocular-Reflex
For my Mother
Over the last 15 years I have been particularly lucky to meet men and women who were world experts in their field. These were people of extraordinary intellectual and creative stature – pioneers who had spent a lifetime developing and testing their ideas.
Their published works often showed only a fraction of their thinking. In hearing them lecture and in discussing ideas with them, I have learned more than in a thousand pages of reading. With each one, I was struck by how these most brilliant of minds never belittled the ideas of others, and I have constantly been reminded that ideas are rarely born of individuals; rather, they are conceived as a result of thoughts and discussions shared. In other words, creativity is usually born from shared experience and the sparks that fly between.
This book is dedicated to all the men and women of ideas who have shared their thoughts and wisdom, and by so doing allowed the knowledge of today to be, and the dreams for tomorrow to exist.
Acknowledgements
My husband Peter, and my children James, Thomas, and Gabriella.
To Ewout Van-Manen, Professor Lyelle Palmer and Dr Harold Levinson for their time and generous contributions to this book.
To all the people who have been involved in the work of INPP over many years and in many different ways. All have contributed in some way to the work that INPP does today.
To Martin, Rachel and Richard at Hawthorn Press for all their help, advice and support, to Marije Rowling for her beautiful illustrations of babies and Sharon Lewis for drawings for the children’s story ‘Early Morning by the Pond’.
Foreword
by Harold N Levinson, MD
The Well Balanced Child is a magnificently titled and highly informative book skilfully written by a dedicated therapist. This work explores the scientific essence underlying the age-old truth ‘Sound body, sound mind’, and explains why early movement is vital for developing sound balance as well as the interrelated and dependent foundations for normal or sound language, learning, cognition, and affect. In other words, according to the author the balance mechanism is rather like a piano that is genetically given to a child at birth. However, the child must learn to use and play the piano if the amazing potential and neuropsychological ‘tunes’ held within the immature brain are to unfold normally. And most important, the succeeding chapters provide all readers, especially interested parents, teachers, and other professionals, with the crucial new-age insights required to maximize sensory-motor and related cognitive functioning via balance enhancement in both normal and abnormal children.
In order to preserve focus and avoid needless confusion, this well-balanced content was sensibly designed to flow like a harmonious and soothing tune devoid of the harsh tones characterizing confusion and complexity. However, to properly understand this written melody’s foreground in its true depth and scope, it appeared essential to highlight and emphasize its vital background. Thus, for example, upon recent independent validation, my three decade-old research effort has belatedly been credited with providing the first (1973) and most comprehensive understanding that the many and diverse symptoms characterizing dyslexia and related learning, sensory-motor, attention deficit, and anxiety or phobic disorders were caused by a medically diagnosable and treatable signal-scrambling dysfunction within the inner-ear and its ‘super-computer’, the cerebellum – the lower ‘reflex’ brain of man and the highest brain of most animals. Previously, these important insights, as well as those that follow here and contained within this important work, were scientifically overlooked or denied.
In addition, my research also demonstrated that dyslexia was not just a severe reading disorder characterized by reversals, as traditionally thought and defined. Rather, dyslexia was shown to be a cluster of many and diverse symptoms in varying intensities affecting such major areas of higher order functioning as read