A: Relief for whom? Not the child; she has nothing to feel relieved about in the first place. In order to feel relief from the drug, the child has to be taught that something is wrong with her and that she should please us rather than herself. Dependent on approval, she will then feel relieved to meet our expectations, setting herself further away from optimizing her own talents.

The authentic child is learning happily all the time, while running around, climbing, giggling and connecting with herself or with others. She follows the guide from within.

Your question is extremely useful because you touch on our tendency to take harmful school tools and use them at home. I would like to offer real relief from the whole thought that a child should sit and study, or that there is such a thing as dyslexia. Do we really need to “fix” a child so he has the traits or timing of someone else? What for? Why compare? Why thwart the child’s ability to trust herself and to optimize her talents? After all, she is the expert on herself.

The idea that learning occurs while sitting with paperwork or books is manufactured by schools. Who would you be without the expectation that your child should sit and learn? Free of this concept you will not be able to see a problem. Instead, you will observe a thriving child focused on exactly what he is passionate about – the scooter, trampoline, building, annoying a sibling – and exploring how people react to his startling actions or words.

Learning how we cause some of the more difficult behaviors and how to respond productively to others will keep us loving, connected and in a state of delight with our children.

How Our Concepts Cause the Difficulties

In the process of trying to control how children should be, we actually cause some of the traits you are asking about. By getting children to sit quietly, we thwart the development of their ability to read and to sit when they are ready. Their proprioceptive system develops through physical movement and sensual experiences and so they must follow the call from within in order to be able to read and study in a sitting position at some point. (Although, why sit anyway?)

A child who does not fulfill his specific quota of hours and years of physical motion, tumbling, body touch, co-sleeping and other body experiences will have gaps in the integration of right and left brain, which affects the perception of direction, visual distinction and the grasping of other advanced concepts; he must learn through his own body in motion and in touch. So by coercing him to sit, we are actually causing the difficulties we are then struggling to “cure.” The child who tends to be labeled “hyperactive” actually needs this much activity and sometimes diet changes. Grains, starches, sugars and processed foods drive some children to heights of overflowing energy. In addition, an aggressive child needs relief from expectations and control, yet is yearning for their leadership.

So children need lots of sensual experiences and motion. In addition, expecting children to do certain things before they are ready causes them anxiety symptoms – all of which fit the model of one label or another. Other children are labeled because they are aggressive and angry. Such anger is often the result of teaching a child (through actions and words) that she must have whatever he wants. To add to all these, immunization, diet, TV and the environment can cause neurological disruptions in some children.

Dyslexia: A Human Creation

Forcing a timetable on a child’s development is the way we create dyslexia. If no one coerced a child to learn to read, would anyone have what we call dyslexia? How could they? It is not possible. A young child has no reason to think that changing direction changes the content or meaning of things. Does a dog become a cat if he is turned the other way? Does the chair become a table facing to the opposite? Do these children walk through the wall seeing the door on the other side? Do they eat the food on the left of their plate meaning to eat what’s on the right?

Most children start reading by seeing the word as a whole picture – a length, general density, things sticking up and down, and maybe first and last letters (doesn’t matter on which end). So, “stop,” “pots,” “spot,” “post” and “tops” all look like the same “creature.” Children also see all farm animals on four legs as cows, dogs or deer depending on the animal they first encounter. This is nature’s way of learning from the large to the small; the child recognizes the whole and gradually starts distinguishing smaller details.

Therefore, every child misses the difference between “b” and “d” or the order of letters sometimes, until his eye/brain and directional senses are fully integrated. Labeling and trying to fix this natural perception based on our rigid timetable is like giving crutches to a baby to fix the fact that she does not walk yet. This baby will need crutches even at two years of age and maybe for life, because such interference thwarts her inherit system of learning to walk. We will say then that the symptoms are real: She cannot walk. But we must ask ourselves how we manufacture these “symptoms.”

Similarly, by preventing the child from being in physical action and teaching him to read before his eyes, brain and body are ready, we thwart his natural ability to learn to read and we create what we then label “dyslexia.”

With more trees to climb and less TV, a child who needs more years of body/mind integration will be ready to read right on time – his time. You can add opportunities for opposition motion, dance, swimming, marshal arts, music, camping and tumbling in response to the child’s passions. Offer lots of human contact, touch and emotional connection. Even co-sleeping is directly related to body awareness and direction recognition. Read to your children as much as they enjoy it without hinting that they should learn to read, nor insisting that they sit still.

When manipulating a child to learn to read prematurely, not only do we thwart her progress directly, but also indirectly, by creating anxiety associated with reading and with learning. We have set up the child to fail. In her anxiety, she will start seeing more letters in reverse order and whole words mixed up. She may even end up with unnecessary glasses. (The letters chart at the optometrist’s office will look like a blur to an anxious child who already doubts her own ability to read.) Needless to say, this anxiety will affect her worldview and lower her self-esteem.

If the child self-directs her path toward reading with no pressure at all (as she does for walking and talking), she will have no problem reading and will read generally anywhere between ages three and 15. She will match correctly the readiness of all the components needed for reading and will therefore learn with ease and joy.

Mind Altering Drugs

Some labels lead to prescription drugs. These are mind-altering drugs and have a high price for the child and a high profit for the manufacturer (which does drive the trend to label and prescribe). Side effects range from confusion, violent hallucinations and low self-esteem, to death, killing and suicide, as well as to depression and dependency on drugs for years to come.

The use of drugs misleads teachers and parents. It often numbs the child just enough that parents are fooled to believe that, indeed, there was a chemical issue, which got fixed by the mind-altering drug. The child becomes more docile and behaves in the way the adults want him to (relief for them). He becomes more compliant, able to learn in someone else’s way and timetable, quiet and delusional by pleasing parents’ or teachers’ expectations. This “improvement” is not really a benefit to the child but a surrender to the system of control. Staying away from school, you can spare your child this grinding of her nature. Shee will get the most relief when we learn who she is and meet her unique aspirations in his own time and way. She will know the truth: I am amazing and perfect exactly the way I am!

I often try to help parents years later, when the child is dependent on a drug (often Ritalin) and has enough side effects to justify a new label and a stronger drug. By then this youth suffers depression, or violent hallucinations and emotional disconnection. A recent study shows that all school shootings occurred in the hands of kids who were using these prescriptions drugs or just getting off them.

Being that I am not an expert on mind altering drugs, I encourage you to read my friend John Breeding’s book: True Nature and a Great Misunderstanding. You will discover, among others, the politics and money incentives behind the creation of labels and their expensive and harmful “treatments.” Keep in mind, however, that the well-meaning teachers or therapists who recommend their use are as innocent as you are. They are doing their best with the information they have. Your goal is to discard information and ideas that do not fit who your child is, no matter how many “experts” tell you what to do (including this column). Trust your child’s ways and nothing needs fixing with drugs or in any other invasive way.

Without Labels

No matter how physical and real a label appears to fit your child, always ask yourself who you would be without believing that the child is supposed to achieve certain things at certain times. Labels and drugs distract us from knowing and supporting the real child. Without these expectations, there would be no labels because nothing would be seen as wrong. No labels means no drugs and no stress; no stress means nothing to feel relieved about. I hope you feel truly relieved to know that there is nothing to feel relieved about, while, at the same time, you can now see your child with new eyes as she walks her unique path.

Nature has endless possibilities to rejoice in. Each person sees colors differently and a whole different world of sounds and smells. How exciting!! As long as I don’t believe that we all have to see the world the same way and develop at the same time, I marvel at differences. Instead of seeing a child as failing to fit into educational fixed notions, you can be curious about his unique ways of being, growing, playing and learning. What kind of world is unfolding within him and how can you fit into his life and support his quest?

When you open your heart to who a child is, nothing calls for fixing and everything about her is delightful and sometimes requires adjustments in diet, environment, parenting ways, social connections and lifestyle. Yet, no matter what the causes may be, I consider each child and human’s trait as another way of being, formed by all the forces that be.

Keep in mind that expectations and control can produce every behavior and symptom on the lists describing learning disabilities. However, most “symptoms” are just children’s natural qualities to cherish and to respond to by providing outlets and opportunities.

When free and not distracted, children focus on what is right for them and they always learn in their own ways and time. Children do not need us to shape them; they need us to respond to who they are.

Naomi Aldort Ph.D. is the author of “Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves” (available on Amazon and in bookstores). Parents from around the globe seek Aldort’s advice by phone, in person and by listening to her CDs and attending her workshops. Her advice columns appear in parenting magazines in Canada, USA, AU, UK, and translated to German, Hebrew, Dutch, Japanese and Spanish. She is married and a mother of three. Her youngest son is thirteen-year-old cellist Oliver Aldort www.OliverAldort.com. For more information, visit www.NaomiAldort.com or www.AuthenticParent.com.