Zone’in Workshops

The foundation for children’s learning is movement. Whether children are using their hands to print, eyes to read, or bodies to play a sport, children can attend and learn best when they move. Technology such as television and videogames (TVVG) act as a restraint to a child’s movement, resulting in neurological impairment which impacts on learning. Recent years have seen such an explosion in the electronic media market, targeting children as young as 9 months old, that accompanying research on the benefits or harmful effects of TVVG cannot possibly keep up. What we do know is that an infant strapped into a car seat in front of a TV cannot move, and a young body that doesn’t move, doesn’t receive adequate stimulation for proper neurological development. Escalation of TVVG use in the pediatric population, has caused alarm in the pediatric school therapy and special education sector, where professionals are reportedly seeing an increase in the prevalence of developmental delays and a decline in school performance. As diagnoses of ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder and Developmental Coordination Disorder escalate, therapists and schools everywhere struggle to find effective treatment and teaching strategies for “Today’s Child”. Society is only beginning to see a glimmer of technology’s negative impact on the health and well being of children, and subsequent imminent decline of the educational empire.

Cris Rowan, a Pediatric Occupational Therapist and Sensory Specialist states that poor school performance seen in children who use excessive TVVG is due to lack of movement resulting in the underdevelopment of the children’s neurological system. Rowan performs workshops and develops programs available to review at www.zonein.ca for parents, teachers and therapists addressing the negative effects of TVVG on children’s developing central nervous systems. Rowan lectures workshop participants on how impaired neurological development can affect a child’s ability to print, read, pay attention in class, and even play sports. Rowan explains how a child’s brain can be viewed as a large city, with “input lanes” to the brain being sensory nerves and “output lanes” to the body being motor nerves. Sensory input from a child’s environment develops in a “hierarchal” way, with the balance (vestibular system), touch (tactile system) and movement (proprioceptive system) sensory systems developing first. Higher level seeing (visual system) and hearing (auditory system) sensory systems develop later and integrate to become a fully functioning sensory system. When children do not get enough sensory stimulation to their balance, touch and movement sensory systems, they have difficulty learning through their seeing and hearing sensory systems, which are the sensory systems children need to use most for learning in school. As child’s neurological development is rapid in the pre-school years, early intervention regarding decreasing TVVG exposure is crucial.

While the causes of developmental delays are multi-factorial, increased home TVVG use is the largest, statistically proven, contributing factor. In 2007 the Kaiser Foundation reported North American children use an average 6.5 hour per day TVVG, and over 50% of North American homes have this technology in their bedrooms. While North American TVVG addiction escalates unchecked, many countries such as Britain and the Netherlands are advanced in their recognition of this problem through establishment of camps and clinics to “de-program” their children from TVVG. While parents would never think to tie their children up, blindfold and gag them, they do allow the much more accepted form of restraint…TVVG. Ironically, studies show that well meaning parents of children with high TVVG use perceive the world to be more “unsafe” than parents of children with low TVVG use, and therefore doubly encourage their children to stay “safely restrained” at home.

In the past 100 years, while the world has changed dramatically, the biology of the human species has not. Transportation, communication and technological advances have made lives physically easier, yet mental stress is at a peak. The human body needs to move to survive, but in the new millennium, human movement is at an all time low. Use of TVVG with accompanying lack of body movement is not only linked to poor school performance, hyperactivity and attention problems, but also linked to obesity, addictions, accelerated sexuality, aggression, and sleep disorders. In 2001, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a warning that children under the age of two years should not use TVVG, and children with learning difficulties should not use more than one hour of TVVG per day. In classrooms across North America, children are either too sleepy or too hyper to attend to academic tasks due to poor development of their sensory systems. Gross and fine motor development is also impaired, resulting in children who are unable to sit up straight, hold a pencil or produce adequate printing. Why is this?

Consider for a moment the impact of sedentary movement and lack of touch stimulation from TVVG use on the human child’s developing body. Rowan reports that beginning in infancy and continuing through childhood, humans need to balance, touch and move for proper neurological system development. Through balance, touch and movement stimulation, a child gains the ability to maintain an upright posture, coordinate both sides of the body and muscles of the eyes, and attain optimal energy states for sleeping, play and school work. Infants, toddlers and children who are deprived of balance, touch and movement, show delays in printing, reading, speech, sports and their ability to pay attention. The ability to express language, as well as eventual printing and reading skills, are all motor tasks, using the fine motor muscles of the mouth, eyes and hand. Muscle coordination and control is best achieved through repetition, experience and interaction with other human beings. The foundation for development of good muscle coordination and control is adequate stimulation of the balance, touch and movement sensory systems. Long hours of TVVG therefore act as a restraint to balance, touch and movement, and directly impact children’s ability to perform academically and in sports activities. A good example would be a child who watches a soccer game on TV, but is not able to go out and replicate the motor components necessary to demonstrate good soccer performance. Playing outside and viewing three-dimensional nature is very different from viewing a nature program on TV! Another example is a child who is learning to print and read. Children need to practice letter production before they remember how to make their letters, and they need to remember how to make their letters to later recognize these letters when learning to read. Children need to consciously practice motor components over and over again, whether the motor task is printing, reading or playing a sport, before a subconscious “motor plan” is formed. Once a child achieves a motor plan for a specific task, the task then becomes subconscious, requiring very little “brain power” for completion.

Children also have small ocular muscles that control their eyes. To develop properly, the ocular muscles require adequate stimulation to the brain’s balance or vestibular system, through movement patterns in a variety of different planes. Because TV, videogames, and computers have small screens and are two-dimensional, children only have to move their eyes short distances. These children are not receiving adequate ocular muscle movement necessary for eventual printing and reading. A two-dimensional screen image is considerably different from three-dimensional “real” life. A common belief represented by teachers in Rowan’s workshops is that children don’t need to learn to print, as technology will replace this function. Rowan explains that printing is a foundation for literacy, as when children practice letter formation, they are creating letter visual memory, important for letter recognition and eventual reading. Rowan observed during her decade working in British Columbia’s school system, that classroom black and white boards are slowly disappearing, being covered with a year’s worth of artwork, planners, and calendars. Student use of classroom black and white boards is not permitted by many teachers, which is where children with developmental delays should be learning to print. Dr. Jean Ayres, a leader in Sensory Integration theory said children should not be using desks until the age of eight years old, to ensure adequate development of trunk, shoulders and hand. Desk use by students has again restricted stimulation of the balance, touch and movement sensory systems, and teaching style has become predominantly visual and auditory. For a child with auditory comprehension problems, learning in a classroom setting is impossible. Not a good teaching plan for today’s developmentally delayed child. Additional problems facing educational systems are lack of clear guidelines for teacher’s regarding children with developmental delays. Rowan’s recent review of Canadian curriculum indicate that while there is an “expectation” for teachers to teach printing, there are no guidelines. This essentially means each teacher decides what, how and IF they will teach printing. With no guidelines, there is no way to measure effectiveness of teaching techniques, or duration of printing instruction. With no curriculum guidelines, how could anyone determine whether a child who is failing in math, socials or science, was failing because of cognitive skill deficits, or failing because they are spending all their precious mental energy remembering how to make their letters?

Attention and hyperactivity…every teacher and parent’s nightmare. Rowan’s study found that 30% of elementary children have attention problems impacting their ability to learn. A study by Dr. Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman followed children’s TVVG habits from ages 0 to 7 and found that every one hour per day watching TVVG increased a child’s chance of attention difficulties by age 7. Christakis and Zimmerman go on to report that this is due to the fact that a child’s developing brain becomes “hard wired” for high paced visual and auditory stimulation. Rowan states that when “hard wired” children also receive inadequate balance, touch and movement sensory stimulation, that child becomes sensory deprived. Combine childhood sensory deprivation with sleep deprivation from being up half the night unsupervised playing videogames, and the result is a child who is immensely frustrated and truly a challenge to parents and teachers alike. Rowan reports that use of balance, touch and movement remedial techniques can work remarkably well to help a child reduce hyperactivity and improve attention for initiating and maintaining focus on task. These techniques simulate the type of high resistive “heavy work” that children performed in earlier generations. Rowan instructs workshop participants that every hour of TVVG use should be offset with one hour of intense exercise e.g. biking, running, climbing, jumping, and playing. Children need to learn how to be children, and children need to be taught the value of play.

While the lure of technology is irresistible and virtually unstoppable, society would be wise to open its eyes and its heart to the irreversible damage technology is inflicting on child development. Through the promotion of balance between exercise and use of technology, parents, teachers and therapists can optimize child sensory and motor system development, and ensure academic success for every child. Children are the future of this planet, but no child will be saving the planet while they are “lost” in the virtual reality of TVVG.

References

National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, 26th Annual Report to Congress, US Department of Education, 2005.

Pediatrics, Vol. 113 No.4 April 2004; Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children.

American Academy of Pediatrics, Vol. 107 No. 2 February 2001; Children, Adolescents and Television.
Pediatrics, Vol. 118 No. 5 November 2006; Reducing Children’s Television-Viewing Time: A Qualitative Study of Parents and Their Children.
Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Vol. 159 No. 7 July 2005; Association of Television Viewing During Childhood and Poor Educational Achievement.
Pediatrics, Vol. 113 No. 4 April 2004; Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attention Problems in Children.
Pediatrics, Vol. 116 No. 3 September 2005; A National Study of Neighborhood Safety, Outdoor Play, Television Viewing, and Obesity in Preschool Children.
Kaiser Foundation Family Report, Fall 2003; Zero to Six, Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers.