Marshmallow sitting on the front door mat. Notice the white bits on the mat from her preening. Quite messy, and rather difficult to get out the front door without sending her flying (not literally).
Jj is for Jottings 26. How More Routine, Fewer Choices Make for Smarter and Happier Children. Part 2.
Here is the second part of an article which appeared in the Pulse section of the Border Mail on February 6 last year, and it bears repeating. The first part was in Jottings 18. We will visit other parts of the same article in other Jottings.
GETTING your priorities right as a parent is a sentiment with which behavioural optometrist Michael Smith wholeheartedly agrees.
As thousands of students poured back into classrooms across the Border in recent weeks, the odds are that some of them will come across the path of the Wodonga Vision and Learning Centre founder.
Mr Smith believes about 30 per cent of children start school before they are ready.
For the past 30 years he has helped children (and adults) with “visual processing problems” who may be struggling in a classroom or with reading.
His work is about much more than prescribing glasses.
Behavioural optometry examines how a person’s vision affects how they function in the world around them, according to Mr Smith.
“Vision is your pervasive means of dealing with the world around you and if you don’t do that well then you are going to be compromised — at school, in sport and even at work.
But it’s at school that the problem generally rears its head, according to Mr Smith.
“Often a child who has not developed their vision adequately will be written off as clumsy or just not good at sports for example,” he says.
“But when you hit school, you have a situation that forces the issue and many kids are just not ready.
“They have not developed the skills they need to be able to deal with the classroom and they are the ones who end up needing intervention.”
So what does this all mean?
It begins when we are babies, Mr Smith says.
“Visual curiosity first triggers a baby to move their hands to try and grasp something or to roll towards something.
“Eventually your movement becomes more and more complex as you learn to crawl and then eventually walk.
“Once you are on the move your visual curiosity can take you to places you can’t reach.”
Mr Smith says that as we get older we don’t always have to go to things and touch them.
“Your vision has had so many experiences, you can look at something and know what is is,” he explains.
But if your visual system does not develop beyond that point, for whatever reason, problems can arise, he says.
“If, for example, you start school and you still have to touch everything you are not going to function in a classroom because you can’t touch words or numbers,” Mr Smith says.
“It is parents who give them their language and they need to both watch and listen to you. That cannot be replaced by a computer screen.”
He says once you have a vision problem it modifies the way your body works and the way you move.
It can also affect behaviour.
He says there are a lot of things parents can do to help ensure their child’s visual system develops properly.
But it requires an investment of time.
It means reading to your child is more important than the washing.
It means less time in front of the television or Xbox and more time playing outside.
“Children need a lot of movement experience,” he explains.
“They need outside play so go to the park, ride a bike, dance, catch and throw a ball or play with a balloon when they are little.
“Give them something to make or create — whether it’s Lego or some paper towel tubes and sticky tape.
“And you must read to your child. That is essential.”
Mr Smith says a lot of children come to him with poor vocabulary and don’t know how to construct a simple sentence.
“It is parents who give them their language and they need to both watch and listen to you,” he says.
“That cannot be replaced by a computer screen.”
But the investment of time can sometimes be the hardest thing to do, he concedes.
“It’s difficult because both parents generally have to work and our society is such that in order to support ourselves parents have to work,” Mr Smith says.
“The parent may only see their child for an hour in the morning and an hour at night and most of that time is spent pushing the kid to get ready for breakfast or dinner or out of bed or off to bed.
“It’s not quality time.
“It’s survival time.”
