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Mark's Recommended Interesting Reading on Child Education and Behaviour
The following are books I'd recommend as interesting reading concerning children, learning styles, and behaviour. Take it exactly as that -- "interesting" reading. I don't agree with everything the authors describe, and in some cases totally disagree with them, but I believe there are valuable insights in each of these books. In fact, I find some of the claims (esp. in the alternative treatment books) to be highly dubious -- but these books still offer sufficient insight, as well as practical suggestions that just might be very useful for you, that I considered them worth adding to the list.These books have been recommended to us by teachers who have extensive experience with children who do not readily grasp or can handle traditional learning styles. This is all in the name of figuring out what we can do to help our old child develop his own abilities. Along the way, I happen to have learned a fair bit about my own cognitive strengths and weaknesses, some of which now provide my sister with concrete proof that she always knew I was more than just slightly off-base from the rest of the family. :-).
For convenience of Toronto residents, I've created links on each title and author to the Toronto Public Library's search results for the given item. Their web site also provides handy links to additional books of the same classification.
This first set of books is great reading for people who don't understand what it's like for those of us with right-brained traits -- you'll understand what we see as "obvious" that to you seems counter-intuitive (Hey, it's not our fault you folks just don't get it. Maybe we'll have to explain it r-e-a-l-l-y s-l-o-w-l-y for you. :-).
-
Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception
, by
Thom Hartmann
: Great viewpoint of ADD/ADHD being "hunters" rather than the rest of the (left-brained) world being "farmers", and insight into relevant careers and educational frameworks for "hunters". Great in terms of ensuring one understands ADD/ADHD not as a disorder, but a different perspective of one's strengths and weaknesses, even going so far as to label people who are too focussed as perhaps having a different type of disorder.
- Right-brained Children in a Left-brained World: Unlocking the potential of your ADD child, by Jeffrey Freed: You won't see a lot of references to ADD/ADHD here, but then again, you won't find left/right-brained characteristics discussed in many other sources either. The two issues seem highly correlated based on personal experience, as well as my (layman's) research.
This set of books provides more formal treatments of the topics, with some providing constructive suggestions for altering behaviour, interaction styles, and diets:
- The First Idea: How symbols, language and intelligence evolved from our early primate ancestors to modern humans, by Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker: An interesting theory on how infants develop reason from emotion, rather than being two separate facets of behaviour. The implications I derived from this book when dealing with ADHD children is that engaging them in emotionally (friendly, not angry) reciprocating interactions can help pull them into developing richer reasoning and self-awareness abilities:
-
With an intervention program that focuses on basic emotional interactions in the context
of the child's individual processing differences, we have found that a subgroup of
children with ASD [Autistic Spectrum Disorders] are able to learn how to engage and communicate and,
therefore, advance to symbol formation, expressive language, and reflective thinking, as
well as to develop empathy and enjoy relationships with peers and adults.
If you want the essentials (since this is a long read), concentrate on Part I (Origin and Development of Symbols) and Part III (The Development of Language and Intelligence).
- The ADD Nutrition Solution, a Drug-free 30 Day Plan, by Marcia Zimmerman: Very practical advise and backing arguments for carefully tuning one's food intake to minimize ADD/ADHD issues.
- Healing ADD: The breakthrough program that allows you to see and heal the 6 types of attention deficit disorder, by Daniel Amen: Informal treatment of medical terminology, especially interesting if you want to understand what's going on inside an ADD person's head.
- The Explosive Child: A new approach for understanding and parenting easily frustrated, chronically inflexible children, by Ross Greene: Lots of practical advise (that isn't so obvious to all parents).
This last set might possibly be interesting to those keen on alternative methods:
- Say Good-bye to ADD and ADHD, by Devi Nambudripad: A bit too flakey for my tastes, but the massage therapy might work for some.
- Ritalin-Free Kids: A safe and effective homeopathic medicine for ADD and other behavioral and learning problems, by J. Reichenberg-Ullman and R. Ullman: I'm not a fan of homeopathy, but there are some interesting suggestions for herbal supplements.