Some children are over-sensitive in some or all of their senses, so their world can be too bright, too noisy, too smelly and they can over-react to things they touch and taste. Where most children are developing their ability to use all their senses effectively these children will be learning how to protect themselves from overwhelm. They will be constantly distracted by stimuli in their environment that others would ignore and so they will often not be able to concentrate properly. This is particularly the case in the noisy and vibrant atmosphere of an infant classroom.

A classroom is a very noisy place. There is only about 15 decibels difference between the volume of the teacher’s voice and the volume of the background noise – and that’s when the children are working quietly! Classrooms are also very bright places, with lots of light and for young children lots of bright displays and pictures on the walls and this can be over-stimulating for sensitive children. Sitting on a plastic chair or on a scratchy carpet can be very uncomfortable for a child who is over-sensitive to things that touch their skin – if they are squirming around there is probably good reason!

In order to be able to concentrate in the classroom you have to be able to listen effectively, use your eyes properly and connect up different bits of information in areas all over your brain quite quickly. You need to be able to remember things too. If a child cannot do some of these things well they will be having to work so hard at concentrating that they can only keep it up for short bursts – and if they have problems in lots of areas, possibly not at all.

Some children have trouble processing what they eat and drink, and chemicals can be produced that affect brain processing or block vital nutrients – watch out particularly for aspartame and MSG. These metabolic problems are important, but they do not usually exist on their own. You will nearly always find that other areas of processing have been affected.

If we don’t understand why these children are having difficulty and tell them off or get frustrated with them they get stressed. Stress affects your memory, your visual processing and your ability to connect up information in the two halves of the brain. The neuro-development that child needs to mature their processing then comes to a halt – it can even go backwards if a child is really upset.

If these problems are carried into adulthood, the hypersensitivity which is behind many concentration issues can result in low stress tolerance and vulnerability to overwhelm. Underachievement is common, which can lead to low motivation and low self-esteem. For many, however, leaving school can be a release and when they have the space to move and freedom to choose where they want to focus their attention they can do extremely well.

When we are sharing a book with our children we assume that they are seeing what we are seeing. If they are struggling with their reading this is most unlikely to be the case.

Children who are slow to read will almost certainly be having trouble with their visual processing so that they cannot scan a line of print and see it in the way we do. This is nothing to do with their ability to focus, which is checked by an optician. It has to do with the way the eyes are able to move from left to right and work as a team, whether appropriate eye dominance has been established and if the child can retain a visual image of a word. The child may also be over-sensitive to light. They may have trouble with all the usual eye-related reflexes which should be helping them adjust the amount of light coming into their eyes or change their focus from distance to near-point appropriately.

Some children learn to read the words easily, but have very little comprehension of the text. This is a developmental problem with ‘brain integration’ which would be restricting access to the right hand side of the brain where the child gets a ‘picture’ of what the story is all about. The child can see the words but cannot see the story in their mind’s eye. This child may not have crawled properly, because the crawling stage of development is particularly designed to develop brain integration.

Many people may have had no difficulty with learning to read and understanding the text, but don’t seem to be able to read quickly. They may also find they often need to re-read sections of text and struggle to read for long periods. These people will also have visual processing difficulties, particularly with photosensitivity and eye-teaming.

Those who are battling against visual processing difficulties when they are reading will often develop a fear response, either conscious or subconscious. As a result of this, oxygen will be withdrawn from the cells required for the task and it will be even more difficult for them to perform. This is easy to spot because the child – and some adults too – will start to yawn. Beware of yawning – it hardly ever signals that a child is bored, more likely a time for the adult to stop!

If a child seems to be having trouble with listening they are often referred for a hearing test. If no problems are found with their hearing it is generally assumed that they should be able to listen, but listening is quite different from hearing. The brain has to do a lot of work to translate what the ears hear into an accurate perception and understanding of what has been said. This is referred to as ‘central auditory processing’.

Sometimes children are so slow in processing what they hear that each individual sound has passed by before they have had time to fully process them. They are left having to guess the missing sounds, a bit like having to interpret a code. It is no wonder that these children get tired when they are listening. Other children have difficulty with putting together what they hear in each individual ear quickly enough. They may have trouble with processing language, understanding and explaining things. Some of them will start to yawn when they are having to deal with comprehension questions – oxygen is being pulled out of the cells because the task is perceived as too difficult.

Strange as it may seem, a high proportion of children with listening difficulties actually hear too well. They notice sounds that others do not and are consequently easily distracted. If their hearing is very acute they will find the noise in a classroom very upsetting and will respond by turning down the volume, making themselves effectively deaf when under pressure. This is a reflex response normally designed for environmental noise such as pneumatic drills, but the child experiences the noise of the classroom as threatening in much the same way. If their teacher shouts or gets cross with them, their environment becomes even more threatening and their response will be prolonged.

Some children can process what they hear perfectly well, but just can’t remember what they have heard well enough. They may have absolutely no memory for instructions, for example, so they will find it really hard to get on and do what they have been told to do. If they are constantly reprimanded it will make matters worse, because memory always suffers under stress.

Young children are constantly on the move and we don’t expect then to sit still, but there is an expectation in the UK that they will be developmentally ready for sitting still before they are five years old. There are a number of reasons why children might not manage this.

Some children have a problem with the development of their vestibular system, which is associated with balance. Their listening and visual processing may have been affected as a consequence. These children will often try to ‘feed up’ information coming from their vestibular system when they are listening or focussing on print. You will see them begin to rock or be generally on the move as they start to focus their attention. You can spot this in adults too.

Some children seem to be particularly gifted at moving and thinking at the same time – this may be true of some ballet dancers and professional footballers, for example – and they simply cannot learn properly if they are not allowed to move. For them, being forced to sit quietly at a desk when they are being taught will make it very hard indeed for them to reach their potential academically. Unfortunately, if they then perceive themselves as failures, it may also prevent them from achieving at the highest level in sport or the expressive arts.

Some people have difficulty in isolating the muscle groups they need for a particular activity, so more and larger muscles become involved – you may notice that their whole head moves from side to side when they are reading, for example. This is associated with an immaturity in brain organisation and you will see a lot of overflow activity if this is the case, fidgeting, drumming, rocking, tapping – usually associated with trying to listen or focus their attention on an activity. Many creative people respond in this way.

For those of us who do not have these difficulties it can look as though a child is being wilfully inattentive. Teachers and parents often respond by saying ‘sit still and listen!’, or ‘stop messing around and get on with your work!’ Possibly the child can sit still, but he/she probably cannot sit still and listen at the same time, so well-meaning intervention is actually damaging the child’s chances of success.

Problems with motivation are most often associated with a child feeling that a particular task is too difficult and they will not do it very well. For example, a child who is good at maths but struggles with Problems with motivation are often associated with people feeling that a particular task is too difficult and they will not do it very well. For example, a child who is good at maths but struggles with English will probably be well motivated to do their maths homework but find all kinds of ways to avoid tackling any English. They expect to be rewarded by doing well at their maths, but there is no reward associated with English homework.

Motivation circuits in the brain work on either ‘reward’ or ‘punishment’. You do things either because you expect some kind of reward – like feeling good, pleasing someone, a sense of accomplishment – or because you will be in trouble if you don’t do it. Reward is a much more powerful motivator than punishment, but unfortunately for some people, work, leisure activities and school do not produce much in terms of reward. These people may need some help with their underlying problems.

Some people have metabolic differences in their brain in relation to the neurotransmitter that is responsible for the motivation circuits – dopamine. They may find it particularly hard to motivate themselves and may not respond to the ‘punishment’ motivator at all. If your child seems to be one of those it is worth trying to instigate some reward systems for things the child really has to do.

Many people are in fact specialists and can be extremely well motivated to do what is on their own agenda – they just find it hard to respond to anyone else’s. It is easy to see children with these problems as naughty – and adults as uncooperative- but this would be very unfair. They will often be doing their best and the ability to really focus on something that interests you and develop expert knowledge is usually seen as an advantage in adult life. The object of a child’s interest may be beetles now, but perhaps brain surgery as they get older!

Some children do really well at most subjects in school but have a particular problem with maths. This is usually to do with visual processing difficulties and the sort of visual integration that is tested in non-verbal reasoning tests, particularly Matrices. The reason for this is that maths concepts are primarily visually based and facts like number bonds and tables are also stored in the brain as a visual image. Children who also have auditory processing difficulties will struggle even more.

Some children have a particular problem with their short-term memory so although they have a good understanding of maths they find it hard to do mental arithmetic and lose bits of information when they are trying to work something out. Others have difficulty with the symbols used in maths and easily end up doing the wrong calculation.

Many children develop a fear of maths and this creates real difficulties because it blocks a lot of the processing they require for the task. Their brain integration, memory and visual processing will be affected and fear-based reflexes may take over, paralysing the brain circuits they need to use. These children really need to be taken back to work on maths concepts from a point where they feel secure so that they can experience success.

A difficulty with maths in childhood is often something people can laugh about as adults if it has no effect on their life skills, study or employment opportunities. For many, however, the difficulty can lead to problems in the workplace, stressful compensatory or avoidance tactics and a sense of failure which can stop them having the confidence to develop their gifts.

Writing is a really complex task, dependent on maturity in a large number of developmental areas and also a lot of practice, so it is not surprising that many children struggle to produce neat handwriting. A child’s sense of touch and muscle tone need to be mature, so that they can develop the right pencil grip and their spinal reflexes all need to be properly integrated so that they can develop a good writing posture and efficient action coming from the wrist. Their visual processing needs to be mature, so that they see how their writing is supposed to look, with the right spacing and punctuation and they have to be able to coordinate their visual and motor systems. Their auditory processing also needs to be well-developed, so that they can manipulate the sounds and sequence them in the correct order for spelling.

One of the most significant causes of handwriting difficulties is a problem with motor planning. This involves a problem with the connections in the brain that turn the intention to write into the physical act of writing. Children with motor planning difficulties will tend to write their letters quite slowly, find it hard to join their letters and be very slow to commit their thoughts to paper. It can be quite difficult to understand that an otherwise bright and very verbal child struggles so much to do any written work. Often these children are accused of being lazy and poorly motivated, but no child is going to be well motivated to do something which they find very difficult.

Many of these problems are avoided if children learn to type. This cuts out some of the difficult stages of motor planning, puts less stress on fine motor control and allows more space for thinking about the writing content.

One of the things that worries us most about our children is if they seem to be having a problem with making friends. This can be simply because they come from a different background or have different interests, but often there are particular reasons for their difficulty.

Children who have difficulty from the time they go to nursery are often hypersensitive. They find their environment overwhelming and find it particularly difficult to cope in addition with other young children who can be loud, invade their space and do things they are not expecting. They may feel more secure staying on the sidelines or playing by themselves.

Children who are slow to develop language will also tend to have difficulty socialising. They will probably be having trouble following what the other children are saying, as well as struggling to communicate. The problems which have caused them to be slow with their speech are also likely to cause problems with reading body language, so they can easily misread situations and find it hard to mix in with the others. They may plunge in regardless, and put other children off, or they may prefer to hold themselves back.

Some children have real problems with social comprehension. They just don’t seem to ‘get it’. This is usually caused by problems with brain organisation, particularly the way the two halves of the brain are working together. Some children will tend to be obsessive, for much the same reasons. This may take the form of wanting to engage in a particular activity all the time, such as obsessively colouring, which may not interfere much with social interaction. Some may tend to go on and on about their particular obsessions, however, regardless of whether anyone wants to listen. This may cause them to become socially isolated.

Any of these problems can lead to a child being bullied, and sometimes there are much more subtle issues which cause a child to put out ‘bully me’ vibes. Children very often do not tell anyone that they are being bullied for fear of reprisals, but bullying is now known to have serious long-term consequences and should be dealt with promptly.

All of these difficulties will often continue into adult life, as an unwillingness to socialise, low self-confidence and low self-esteem.

Speech development is very complex and depends on maturity in a number of areas of development as well as plenty of practice. First of all, a child has to be able to hear properly and any disruption to hearing in the first few years of life is likely to have an impact on the development of the child’s language skills. Although many children with speech and language difficulties have had problems such as glue ear, many have shown no sign of hearing difficulties.

In order to develop mature speech and language skills a child has to be able to listen effectively. This is a complex process, dependent on a number of underlying skills. They have to be able to process the sounds quickly, so that they can perceive every element of a stream of language without missing bits. They have to be able to direct incoming sounds rapidly to their language centre in the left hand side of their brain, which depends on right ear dominance being established. They have to be able to put together the information that comes in to each individual ear, to compare it to what they have heard before and make sense of it.

Memory skills are important. If a child cannot remember what they have just heard they will not be able to recognise the words later, or reproduce them. Sequencing skills are also important, to get the sounds and words coming out in the right order. Some children have motor planning difficulties, so that they know what they want to say, but what they finally say is not what they intended. Motor planning difficulties can prevent them speaking at all, or cause a disorder in their language. Articulation difficulties can also be caused by a problem with muscle tone, so their speech lacks clarity.

Speech and language issue in childhood often lead to problems with a lack of confidence and difficulty socialising as they grow up. This is because their difficulties tend to affect their understanding when people are speaking in a group or in difficult listening conditions and this can leave them feeling one step behind and unable to participate appropriately in discussions. This can sometimes also lead to social isolation or bullying, which can have long term consequences.

There are three basic types of memory, auditory, visual and motor, all of which can be long-term or short-term. Many people are very good at some sorts and very bad at others. They will often learn to compensate in weak areas, so they may translate a visual task into an auditory one, for example, or vice versa. For this reason we may not realise they have a memory problem and be puzzled when they do not perform in situations where compensation is not possible. A good memory is assisted by having good associative memory ability, which involves connecting one piece of information with one or more other things to make the memory stronger.

There are many different types of auditory, visual and motor memory as well. Someone may have a good ear for a tune but struggle to repeat a simple instruction. Some children may have a really good geographical memory but have no memory for the shape of a word for reading and spelling or number bonds and tables facts. Others will be very good at recalling what they have heard, but have a very poor visual memory for where they have left things or how sums are laid out on a page. Many people have motor memory problems, so they find it hard to learn to write easily or pick up technique in sport. And let’s not forget procedural memory, which involves remembering to put the tops back on felt-tip pens or to flush the toilet.

Memory is really important for learning, of course, but it is also damaged by stress. If a child has a problem with memory we need to be sympathetic, help them to make associations with memory systems that work for them and make sure we teach to their strongest memory channel while the problems are being sorted out.

Disorganised children can drive us mad. They never seem to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment. You send them upstairs to clean their teeth, put their tie on and get their school-bag and then ten minutes later they are still there. After much shouting you finally get them into the car and then find they still don’t have their tie. You come home from the school run, go upstairs and find the top left off the toothpaste, the tap still running and a bedroom that looks as if a major burglary has just taken place. As you are beginning to calm down you get a phone call to say that they needed their sports kit, can you bring it in? Similar problems occur in the evening around work not handed in, assignments, books and equipment for homework.

It takes a great deal of patience not to get cross under these circumstances and the teachers experience the same frustrations at school. If a child can’t read easily we are sympathetic. If they can’t organise themselves we usually get cross. They make us late, create a lot more work, upset other people and we think that if only they tried they could be just as organised as us. The trouble is, they can’t and the more we tell them off the more stressed they get.

Unfortunately stress does further damage to the brain integration they need to be organised. There is a large area of neuro-development that has to do with how the brain is organised to support who we are and what we are going to do with our lives – the terms are ‘brain integration’, ‘differentiation’ and ‘laterality’. If that development is not complete the child will have organisational difficulties.

Sometimes things simply get in the way to disrupt the development of organisational skills and it is fairly easy to sort out. Sometimes it is a little more complicated. It is no coincidence that a high proportion of children who are very disorganised are actually very bright and very creative. That creativity may not always be in terms of art and construction, but in a tendency to be original and a little bit different in the way they approach things. These children may be destined to do things a little differently from the way they have been done before and a rigid brain organisation may interfere with the flexibility they need in their thought processes.

Disorganised children often grow up to be disorganised adults. If they can be very focussed and organised in all the things that matter to them, this should not be a major cause for concern. If they have not found a focus in their lives, however, it suggests that brain organisation is not yet complete and they might benefit from some support with that process.

Some children seem to develop perfectly normally at the pre-school stage but are just a little clumsy. They are the ones who tend to fall over nothing and have a knack of knocking things over at the table. They may also tend to be ‘in your space’ too much or unaware that they are walking in front of you or across you. Once they get to school they seem to have unexpected difficulty with writing easily and quickly. They tend not to be very interested in sport, but some may be very keen and very frustrated that they do not do well. They are often very disorganised.

Some children have a lot more difficulty than this. They may have been slow to develop motor skills such as dressing and seem ungainly when they run. They may be slow to get changed for games and struggle with fiddly fastenings. For them sport is a nightmare, to be avoided at all costs. They will have had huge difficulty in colouring in between the lines and they will hate having to write or draw.

These children will have problems with their ‘body in space’ awareness and the brain circuitry which is involved in carrying out a planned motor task. There may also be issues with their muscle tone, sense of touch and sense of balance.

When these children grow into adults they may carry a legacy from these issues. The most common problems are disorganisation, a slowness with written assignments, low self-esteem and anxiety issues associated with poor body-in-space awareness.