THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS

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THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS

• Michael Rizzo, Ph.D.
• Child Provider Specialists
• Weston, Florida
• 954 577-3396

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The Ingredients For An EASY Ride

• Individual is able to select appropriate targets
  to attend to, filter competing stimuli, inhibit
  impulsive drives and manage compulsivity.
• Prerequisite cognitive skills to do school work
  (reading, writing, and mathematics) are working
  well across all skill areas (visual,
  somato-sensory, and auditory).
• Emotional Intelligence is sound.

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FOR SOME CHILDREN, SCHOOL IS A PLEASANT JOURNEY.
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FOR OTHERS, IT IS NOT SO EASY
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INGREDIENT ONE

• ATTENTION AND RELATED SKILLS

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Planning Ability, Motor Activity Level, and
Attentional Vigilance

• These characteristics are often associated with
  ADHD. Unfortunately, it is not this simple.

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GARBAGE CAN CATEGORY
ADHD is a constellation of behaviors, which can
be driven by a number of underlying causes.
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• Just as a cough can reflect a host of underlying
  causes, so too, the behaviors associated with
  ADHD can come from many deeper-level cognitive
  origins.

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Core Elements of ADHD

• Impulsivity
• Disinhibition

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Impulsivity Defined

• Acting without thinking clearly or analyzing the
  consequences of ones behavior

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Disinhibition Defined

• The inability to filter competing thoughts or
  external distractions from immediate awareness

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Cognitive Distractibility
Easily internally distracted
Resistant to internal distractions
WHERE DOES YOUR CHILD FALL ON THE CONTINUUM OF
COGNITIVE DISTRACTIBILITY?
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External Distractibility
Easily Distracted
Difficult to Distract
WHERE DOES YOUR CHILD FALL ON THE CONTINUUM OF
BEING DISTRACTED BY THINGS IN THE ENVIRONMENT?
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Movement
Passive
Can sit quietly and passively
High need for movement Active
WHERE DOES YOUR CHILD FALL ON THE CONTINUUM OF
MOVEMENT AND NEED TO EXPLORE HIS/HER ENVIRONMENT?
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Cognitive Impulsivity
Poor Planning Skills, High Risk READY-FIRE- AIM
Plans, Minimal Risk READY-AIM-FIRE
WHERE DOES YOUR CHILD FALL ON THE CONTINUUM OF
BEING COGNITIVELY IMPULSIVE?
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COGNITIVE DISTRACTIBILITY
Easily Distracted
Distraction Resistant
SENSITIVITY TO EXTERNAL DISTRACTIONS
Easily Distracted
Difficult to Distract
NEED FOR MOVEMENT EXPLORATION
Passive
Motorically Active
ABILITY TO INHIBIT, FILTER THOUGHTS - IMPULSIVITY
Poor Planning Skills, High Risk
Plans, Minimal Risk
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Hunter/Warrior
Easily Distracted
Distraction Resistant
Cognitive Distractibility
Easily Distracted
Difficult to Distract
External Distractibility
Passive
Motorically Active
Movement
Poor Planning Skills, High Risk
Plans, Minimal Risk
Cognitive Impulsivity
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Villager
Easily Distracted
Distraction Resistant
Cognitive Distractibility
Easily Distracted
Difficult to Distract
External Distractibility
Passive
Motorically Active
Movement
Poor Planning Skills, High Risk
Plans, Minimal Risk
Cognitive Impulsivity
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INGREDIENT TWO

• PROCESSING SKILL EFFICIENCY

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Three Entry Points
Ears
Somatosensory
Eyes
Tactile Vestibular Kinesthetic
Auditory System
Visual System
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Auditory System

• Managing and organizing sound(s)
• Prerequisite skills for language skill
  development and reading

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Discriminating Input
5 4 3 2 1

• Location In Space
• Figure Ground
• Phonemic Awareness
• Making sense of degraded sound
• Inhibiting Competing Stimuli
• Examples 44 phonemes (w-r ) phonemic
  substitutions in speech, mishears words, does not
  listen well, cannot follow multiple step
  commands, seems lost when presented with language
  based curriculum

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Memory

• Immediate Awareness
• Intermediate storage
• Automaticity- Long-term storage
• Retrieval speed
• Can have great discrimination skills however,
  they are of little value if you cannot hold onto
  what you hear long enough to use it and/or store
  it for later use
• Examples knows the vowel sounds today, but not
  tomorrow, cannot follow multi-step directions,
  cannot retrieve what is stored in memory easily
  (stuttering?) bad at essays, good at multiple
  choice tests.

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Sequencing

• Ordering sounds in words when reading and
  spelling
• Ordering and holding of sounds long enough to
  generate words
• Ordering and holding of words long enough to
  generate ideas (visual images)
• Examples cannot substitute or reorder sounds in
  words and tell what word is (e.g., what is cat
  backwards, what is cat if the c sound is changed
  to a b sound) cannot comprehend when reading a
  sentence

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Closure

• Sound Blending
• Phonemic Synthesis
• Can remember and even reorder sounds however,
  cannot put them together into a meaningful whole
• Example can read sounds in El e- phant, but
  does not recognize it as elephant

5 4 3 2 1
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Planning and Thinking Ahead

• Organizing written and oral language prior to
  executing
• Required for proper syntax

5 4 3 2 1
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The Pattern

• The Somatosensory and Visual systems follow the
  same pattern of subskill development as does the
  auditory system.
• As one moves from lower to higher levels of
  processing information, the systems become more
  and more dependent and integrated with each
  other.
• THE BRAIN HAS SEAMS, BUT IS SEAMLESS.

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Somatosensory

• Managing and organizing
• Touching tactile
• Feeling vestibular
• Moving kinesthetic

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Visual System

• Managing and organizing what you see

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WHAT A SURPRISE!

• I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty
  uesdnatnrd what I was rdgnieg. The phaonmneal
  pweor of the hmuan mnid aoccdrnig to a rscheearch
  at Cmabridge Uinervtisy, it deosnt mtaer inwaht
  oredr the ltteers in a word are, the olny
  iprmoaatnt tihng is that the frist and lsat
  ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
  taotl mses and you can still raed it wouthit a
  porbelm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not
  raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a
  wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thuohgt
  slpeling was ipmorantt.

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Integration is Critical
Brain Stem
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Well Tuned Brain
P
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Motorically Compromised
P
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Motorically Compromised

• Expect
• Motor may have articulation problems problems
  in balance and/or movement hypersensitivity to
  touch and/or taste lack of coordination
  clumsiness poor grip difficulty writing poor
  athletic ability

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Auditorily Compromised
P
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Auditorily Compromised

• EXPECT
• Auditory no development of phonemic skills
  language delays speech problems limited
  reservoir of words compromised reading poor
  listening skills and difficulty following
  directions appearance of off task when language
  demands are high

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Visually Compromised
P
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Visually Compromised

• EXPECT
• Visual difficulties with misinterpreting input
  longer time to learn letters poor pragmatics
  poor social judgment inappropriate
  interruptions careless visual mistakes poor
  non-verbal communication skills forgetfulness
  about where things were put trouble with maps,
  charts, and graphs trouble writing difficulty
  keeping things on the lines in columns saying
  what often difficulty with easily getting
  abstract concepts

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Visual-Motor Delays
P
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Visual-Motor

• EXPECT
• Organization weaknesses time management issues
  prosody issues poor writing stroke
  directionality poor letter formation poor use
  of space avoidance of hands-on activities
  reliance on directions, not pictures, when
  putting things together clumsiness avoidance of
  pre-school tasks, such as puzzles, coloring,
  copying, cutting, tracing, etc.

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Auditory-Motor Delays
P
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Auditory-Motor

• EXPECT
• Articulation problems and speech fluency problems

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Auditory-Visual
P
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Auditory-Visual

• EXPECT
• Access to many words, but cannot see the big
  picture trouble ordering and organizing words,
  finding descriptors, and building arguments poor
  creative writing poor reading comprehension
  poor listening comprehension potentially many
  silly questions

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RED FLAGS

• History of ear infections, allergies, and/or
  congestion as an infant, toddler, and preschooler
• Needs information repeated multiple times
• Phonemic substitutions in speech
• Toe walker
• Pitches head slightly to one side to favor one
  ear
• Walked, but never crawled
• Hypersensitivity to sound, touch, light, taste
• Limited range of foods
• Poor adaptability
• Poor eye contact
• Poor social distance
• Primitive pencil grip
• Hand dominance confused
• Lack of rhythm and timing when singing
• Difficulty with social distance
• Monotone voice, poor inflections
• Poor shifting of topics
• Poor selection of appropriate topics
• Insensitivity to the agenda of the listener

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Well Tuned Cognitive Brain
P
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INGREDIENT THREE

• EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

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Emotional Intelligence

• The role feelings play in the everyday life of
• human beings has been largely unexplored.
• Feelings were acknowledged, but there was
• little comprehension of the underlying role
• emotions played in how successfully we
• managed our lives.

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Combining Intelligence and Emotions

• Rather than ignoring emotions, we need to
• bring intelligence to emotions. Only with
• emotional intelligence can people accomplish the
• following
• motivate themselves to persist in the face of
  frustration
• regulate their moods and delay gratification
• regulate their moods and keep distress from
  swamping their ability to think
• empathize and hope

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WHO SUCCEEDS?

• Those we consider successful in life are most
  often those who can develop and maintain intimate
  relationships, work well with others, and be good
  parents.

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KEY ELEMENTS OF EFFICIENT EQ

• Postponing Gratification
• Understanding and labeling emotions
• Managing ones emotions
• Understanding the emotions of others
• Modifying or adjusting ones behavior to manage
  the situation

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GOOD NEWS

• The good news is that these skills can be taught
  to young children. The problem is that these
  skills must first be recognized by parents and
  teachers as valuable and worthy of adding to the
  educational curriculum.

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EMPOWER YOUR CHILD

• Having a child with a high level of emotional
  intelligence is the best way to ensure that
  he/she lives a happy, successful, and responsible
  life as an adult.

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THE ELEMENTS IN HARMONY
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Questions