Understanding the root cause of a learning challenge can uncover a pathway to lasting improvement in attention and academic achievement.
Many parents reach out for educational services after someone in their child’s life suggests their child might have an attention or learning disability. This was true for Adam*, a curious and outspoken fourth grader who loved learning about history but hated going to school. (*Name changed to protect student’s privacy.)
🏫 His teachers reported that he struggled to stay in his seat and needed constant support during independent work time.
🏡 At home, homework and chores led to frustration.
❤️🩹 Like all kids, Adam wanted to do well in school and please his parents and teachers, but he often felt confused and didn’t understand what he did to get into trouble.
When the school’s learning specialist suggested Adam may have ADHD, his parents decided to explore educational therapy at NeuroAide.
During our intake evaluation, we discovered that Adam had significant deficits in his auditory processing skills and weak body-brain integration. I explained to Adam’s parents that attention challenges often result from weaknesses in underlying cognitive skills. These deficits meant Adam had to work much harder than his peers to perform simple tasks. This new insight gave Adam’s parents the understanding that Adam wasn’t willfully ignoring requests; he was genuinely struggling to process what was being asked of him.
We immediately began targeted interventions including regular sessions at my office, home exercises, and a specialized sound therapy program. After nine months of dedicated work, Adam’s transformation was clear:
🏫 His teachers reported increased engagement in lessons and said Adam appeared more comfortable in the classroom.
🏡 At home, Adam better understood what his parents expected of him, and his parents understood how to communicate in a way that works for his brain.
❤️🩹 The best change of all, Adam began enjoying school more, he is in high school now and wants to be a history teacher.
Adam’s story illustrates why understanding a child’s unique learning profile is so crucial:
It provides immediate insights into the best ways to support them
It creates a clear roadmap for effective interventions
It helps parents and teachers provide the right kind of support at home and school
When we understand how the brain learns, we can better support every learner’s journey to success.
The Learning Foundation
As we saw with Adam, what appears on the surface as an attention problem often has deeper roots in how the brain and body work together. Before we can effectively help struggling learners, we need to understand this crucial foundation of learning.
Body-Brain Integration
Many parents and teachers are surprised to learn that a child's learning ability begins in the body, not the brain. Our earliest body movements in infancy lay the groundwork for later learning and attention. When these early movement patterns don't fully develop or integrate, they can create unexpected barriers to learning.
Balance and coordination play a crucial role in enabling a child to maintain focus, control their body movements, learn to read and write, and effectively engage in the learning environment.
Challenges with body-brain integration might look like:
inattentiveness or defiance
fidgeting or difficulty sitting still
resisting certain physical activities or sensations
motion sickness
clumsiness or poor balance
Processing Skills
Body-brain integration precedes and promotes the development of processing pathways in the brain. Our brains must smoothly integrate information from multiple sources - visual, auditory, and movement - to learn effectively. If just one of these systems is not working efficiently, it can harm a student’s ability to learn effectively.
👂 Auditory processing, how the brain interprets sounds, is essential to learning and academic performance. Imagine chatting on the phone with a poor cell connection, sounds are cut off, unclear, and muffled. It’s frustrating and you quickly want to hang up until you can find better service. This is how it feels for an individual with weak auditory processing skills.
Challenges with auditory processing might look like:
difficulty following directions
challenges learning to read
confusing similar-sounding words
noisy environments are fatiguing or overwhelming
struggles pronouncing words correctly
👀 Visual processing pathways in the brain are responsible for interpreting information from the eyes. These skills are unrelated to visual acuity which is what is being tested at an optometrist and fixed with glasses. Visual processing skills are within the brain and are related to how we make sense of the visual world.
Challenges with visual processing might look like:
frequent headaches
losing place when reading
poor hand-eye coordination
reversing letters (like b, d, p, q) past 2nd grade
easily overwhelmed by a lot of visual information
Not only do we need strong development of individual processing systems, but we also need to integrate the information to make sense of the world. For effective learning, processing and integration of information must happen simultaneously and automatically.
Dysfunction in the development of these systems or the ability to integrate from them will result in challenges with attention and learning. The role of parents, teachers, and educational professionals is to accurately identify weaknesses and find paths to remediate them.
Addressing the Real Problem
Many students like Adam are labeled with “attention problems” when the real issue lies deeper. Processing challenges often look like attention or behavior problems. In reality, they are masking struggle and frustration.
We’ve all experienced trying to follow a conversation in a noisy restaurant, at the end of a long day. At first, you concentrate hard to hear what’s being said. But this is quickly fatiguing and you soon start to tune out. This is similar to what students with processing challenges experience in the classroom every day.
When a student appears inattentive, they might be:
Working extremely hard to make sense of verbal instructions
Take longer to organize information in their mind
getting overwhelmed by background noise or visual stimuli
struggling to maintain the physical energy needed for good attention
Traditional classroom strategies - like moving a student to the front of the room or repeatedly asking them to “pay attention”- often don’t solve the problem. These approaches do not address the underlying processing challenges that make paying attention so difficult in the first place.
When we identify and support underlying challenges, attention improves. Students who previously seemed “distracted” or “lazy” can meet their full potential once we remove these barriers to learning.
Supporting your learner
Identifying processing challenges is the first step.
✍️ Start observing patterns. Notice when your student seems to struggle most:
During whole-class instruction, in groups, while working independently?
In noisy environments or quiet ones?
With verbal or written directions?
At specific times of day?
These patterns provide valuable clues about what type of support your learner needs. For example, if your child consistently struggles with verbal directions but does well with written ones, this might indicate auditory processing challenges rather than an attention disorder.
📈 Simple changes can make a big difference:
Break instructions into smaller chunks
Provide visual support alongside verbal information
Allow extra processing time before expecting a response
Build in movement breaks between tasks
After Adam’s parents understood his auditory processing challenges, they began giving him directions in shorter phrases and waiting longer for him to respond. These small adjustments helped immediately, even as we worked on underlying skills.
⚠️ FAQ: When should I seek professional help for my child's learning?
Consider reaching out to an educational therapist if:
Your learner shows consistent frustration with learning
Basic accommodations aren’t providing enough support
You notice patterns of struggle across different environments
Your learner is falling behind despite trying their best
The journey to supporting struggling learners starts with understanding, patience, and careful observation.
Small changes today can lead to big improvements tomorrow.
Key Takeaways
What looks like attention problems may be processing challenges
The body and brain work together to create learning readiness
Small changes in support can make a big difference
Early intervention is key to preventing frustration and building confidence
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