Raising an Organized Child: 5 Steps to Boost Independence, Ease Frustration, Promote Confidence - Softcover

Korb, Damon, M.D.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1610022823 ISBN 13: 9781610022828

Verlag: American Academy of Pediatrics, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Organized children are raised, not born. That’s the philosophy behind this confidence-building, sanity-saving book. Fostering organized thinking in your child will help with concrete concerns (think a tidier bedroom!) and build critical life skills like learning to plan and grasping the big picture. Dr. Korb’s 5 Steps to Raising an Organized Child apply to all ages. So, whether you have an infant or a teenager, it’s never too late (or too early!) to foster organization in him or her and harmony in your whole family. Raising an Organized Child presents specific activities for your child’s age and developmental level to improve executive function. No matter if your child is just your average chaotic kid or struggling with additional challenges like ADHD, you can boost your child’s organization and lower your frustration with Dr. Korb’s guidance.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Damon Korb, MD, FAAP, is a practicing developmental and behavioral pediatrician and founder of the Center for Developing Minds. Dr. Korb is president of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics and an adjunct clinical instructor at Stanford University Medical Center. He is the father of 5 children and lives in Northern California.

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Raising an Organized Child

5 Steps to Boost Independence, Ease Frustration and Promote Confidence

By Damon Korb

American Academy of Pediatrics

Copyright © 2019 Damon Korb, MD, FAAP
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61002-282-8

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Introduction. A Parent's Predicament in Supporting a Growing Child's Organization, 
Chapter 1. Child Development and Brain Organization, 
Chapter 2. The 5 Steps to Raising an Organized Child, 
Chapter 3. Raising an Organized Infant: The Bonding Years, 
Chapter 4. Raising an Organized Toddler: The Great Explorer, 
Chapter 5. Raising an Organized Preschooler: The Years of Great Brain Growth, 
Chapter 6. Raising an Organized School-aged Child: The Master of Routines, 
Chapter 7. Raising an Organized Teenager: Preparing for Launch, 
Chapter 8. Organized Children Are Raised, 
Appendix A. Misunderstood Minds, 
Appendix B. Creating Mini Routines, 
Appendix C. Mind Mapping, 
References/Bibliography, 

CHAPTER 1

Child Development and Brain Organization

The concepts and recommendations described in Raising an Organized Child are directly or indirectly supported by years of scientific evidence about how the brain evolves with age and how organizational skills develop over time. This chapter focuses on the scientific discovery and fascinating process by which clinicians grew to understand the organized brain and provides background on the evidence that supports the practical teachings discussed in this book.

As a result, the material discussed in this chapter is a bit more technical in nature than the rest of the book. The material is being provided for any readers who wish to further their understanding of the scientific rationale for the importance of cultivating an organized mind. Because, as every parent knows, even your preschoolers will ask, "Why?" to most of your requests since even they know that the explanation is important. This chapter focuses on the "Why?" and the following chapters address the "How?" As such, this chapter is not necessarily critical or essential to your understanding of the practical advice and suggestions provided in subsequent chapters.

Organization of Cognitive Functions

Organized thinking covers more than just being messy or late. An organized child has not only the neurodevelopmental capacity (memory and thinking skills) to store and retrieve sequential and spatial observations and data (information about order, shape, and size), but the ability to process multiple layers of information simultaneously. The organized brain is capable of higher-order cognition, including conceptualizing, perspective taking, creativity, and complex decision-making. These mental tasks require a very complicated system of neurological integration (brain wiring that connects thought).

The brain relies on an intricate network of interconnected brain functions. The brain's organization is similar to the layout of a large city. Cities are divided into districts, such as industrial, residential, shopping, and entertainment. In a city, crisscrossing highways connect these districts and carry traffic back and forth.

The brain is similarly divided into regions Of neurodevelopmental function, such as memory, language, spatial and sequential processing, and motor control. Skills that a student must perform, such as writing a name, remembering homework, and playing dodgeball, require communication between these brain districts, or neurodevelopmental functions. For instance, consider a simple skill such as getting dressed in the morning. This task requires the sensory and motor systems to work in unison because coordination and balance are needed to put on clothes; dressing requires memory, for example, to remember that underwear should be worn before the pants, and so the brain creates a "getting dressed plan" that is stored and accessed each morning; attention must be given to details such as zipping the zipper and remembering to tie shoes; and tying shoes requires an element of sequential processing, because a number of steps are needed to make a proper bow. So, to complete even simple tasks such as getting dressed, a child's brain must network a complicated series of functions that occur in different regions of the brain. When one looks at it that way, it is almost a miracle that children make it to school each day!

Nerves in the brain serve the same function as do roads in a crowded city. They create a channel for communication between brain centers. The neural network is much more complicated than the congested Los Angeles freeway system. In fact, there are trillions of brilliantly orchestrated nerve highways where information travels at unimaginably high speeds. These nerves allow for different brain functions to communicate. With so much traffic, traveling at such high speeds, one would think that traffic crashes would frequently occur. If "crashes" happened in the brain, which they do, what would that look like? Picture a child who raises his hand in class in response to a teacher's question, and then, when called on, he forgets what he wanted to say. Consider a student who cannot help blurting out answers when the teacher is talking or interrupts his parents when they are on the phone. Remember the child who emotionally falls apart when he does not have situations go his way. Another common mental crash occurs when children are unable to pull themselves away from the television set or computer in order to get ready for school in the morning. These crashes occur in all people, but they happen more frequently when a person's brain is insufficiently organized.

Neurodevelopment of the Brain

The intricacies of the human brain and how it functions are a never-ending adventure. Each new discovery leads to even more questions. Research over the past century has provided insight into how the brain supports organizational skills. We can now point to a few specific regions of the brain that work together to support organized thoughts and actions. Some discoveries have been serendipitous (helpful even though they were made by chance, when looking into something else), such as those that result from assessing unintentional brain injuries. More-recent advancements in our understanding of the brain have come from exciting new technologies, such as brain imaging scans. Brain imaging technology allows researchers not only to take pictures of parts of the brain but also to watch how blood flows inside the brain while patients perform different types of mental tasks. The understanding is that brain regions that are activated require blood to deliver more oxygen. Elements of the executive functions (brain skills needed for planning, task completion, and self-regulation) can be measured with specific pencil-and-paper and thinking tasks. This allows clinicians to observe planning and organizational functions in a clinician's office. By using these tools with people who struggle, and with those who have savant or gifted abilities, scientists continue to expand the collective understanding about the efficient functioning of the brain. These tools, when applied to children of different ages, help us create a set of developmental organizational milestones that parents can use to guide their children's intellectual and functional growth.

More recently, studies of patients who have brain injuries, particularly strokes, have helped scientists isolate brain function throughout the brain. A stroke occurs when blood supply to a portion of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: American Academy of Pediatrics
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1610022823
• ISBN 13: 9781610022828
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 236
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar