Questions and Answers
Q: My 9 year old daughter has Depression and Asperger's disorder. She is exhausted when she gets home from school and is unable to do her homework.
A: Learning and all the activities involved in the learning process consumer significant amounts of energy. Your child's "Energy Bank Account" is out of funds (energy) by the time she gets home. Here is how this works.
We all move through our day adding and subtracting energy from our being. We have breakfast….we add energy. We have a fight with our spouse…we subtract energy. We have lunch with a friend…we add energy. Life is a game of energy in and energy out. It is similar to a bank account in that way. So let's use this similarity to give us a context, a framework, for discussion. Say children wake up in the morning with $10.00 of energy available. Let's say the effects of their various illnesses on their body and the medications used to treat them consume about $5.00 of that energy, although it is probably more. They get to school with $5.00 of energy left to spend. They use $3.00 of energy trying to interpret social cues, make friends, dealing with negative self-talk and self-esteem issues because of their lack of friends, so that leaves them with $2.00 of energy to spend on this huge task of learning.
We need to find ways to minimize energy going out in non-essential ways to free up energy to devote to the necessary task of learning. Re-examine how the child spends their time, which is how they spend their energy.
Is it essential they use energy to copy assignments from the board? Could another system be used freeing up that energy for learning? Copying assignments from the board may sound like a simple activity, but it reality it is an extremely complex task. It requires thoughts to be stored in memory, retrieved, sending signals down the arm and hand, gripping the pencil correctly, holding the paper, forming letters. If you are interested in learning more about the complex task of writing look into the work of Mel Levine, M.D. He is a pediatrician who has written multiple best seller books on learning.
Is the environment too stimulating to the child's sensory system? Would it help to have some small group learning environments? Does the child need more time to change classes? How much homework can this child get accomplished without triggering stress? Would breaking down large assignments into pieces make the task more manageable?
Re-examine all energy expenditures. See where keeping the task and goal the same but modifying the approach can free up some energy for the heavy duty task of learning.
We needn't reduce our expectations. These children can accomplish a lot…IF we support them adequately. These are exceptional children. Let's help them shine!
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