Overcoming ADHD in the 21st Century

Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center

Helping Children, Teens and Adults Succeed in the 21st Century

ADHD in the 21st Century

For the past 100 years tutoring has been the standard approach to help children struggling in school. For many of these children, tutoring was a Godsend—it provided a fresh look at the problem, a one-to-one student/teacher relationship and, typically, a quiet, undisturbed atmosphere in which to learn.

However, for a growing number of students in the 21st Century, tutoring has proven to be time-consuming, frustrating and painfully ineffective. While many of these children struggle with challenges such as Dyslexia or ADHD, many more have no official diagnosis and no significant challenges outside of the classroom.

Of those students that received extensive tutoring, many showed little or no significant improvement. And for many of these students, tutoring became a way of life, continuing on for years. It begs the question, “Is there a 21st Century solution to the struggles being faced by these 21st Century students?”

The answer is an undeniable, “Yes!” Rooted in 30 years of research and practical application, the combined fields of Neuro-Linguistics, Neuro-Kinetics and Neuro-Sensory instruction are helping today’s students apply their talents and abilities to make learning easier, faster and even more fun.

At the Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center, students are taught to improve their focus and concentrate, reduce their stress, organize their thoughts, manage their time, set goals and self-motivate. Essential learning skills like speed-reading, advanced memorization, writing composition, test-preparation and test-taking, enable these children to succeed where many previously failed (even with extensive tutoring).

Children must be given the skills to succeed in this century. And like the horse and buggy, it’s time lay aside those tired old flash cards, outdated phonics programs and other 19th Century tutoring methods. It’s time to offer these children 21st Century solutions to their very real 21st Century struggles.

If we step back for a moment, we see that ADHD, Dyslexia and a variety of other sensory-based learning challenges, have traditionally been characterized as “learning disabilities”.

That dubious distinction is no doubt due to the fact that many of those children and adults with a more non-verbal, right-brain learning style do experience significant learning and social challenges.

Unfortunately, the abilities of these non-verbal thinkers are often completely overshadowed by their dis-abilities. As a result. it is the dis-ability that serves as the context for most of the current therapies and tutoring methods intended to “help” or teach these non-verbal thinkers.

The fundamental flaw in treating the non-verbal thinker as disabled rather than gifted is that it pre-supposes that the non-verbal child is broken and needs to be fixed. It also places the focus of any treatment on the limitations of the child rather than his strengths.

This is analogous to using a hammer to drive a screw or using a screwdriver to drive a nail. You might get there eventually, but you’d have much better results if you simply learned to use the right tool for the job. In educational terms it’s simply trying to force the child into using a strategy for learning which is completely inappropriate for them given their particular gifts and limitations.

For these non-verbal children, the typical teaching and tutoring methods are a perfect example of using the wrong tool for the job. They also set the conditions for a relationship between the student and the teacher that is inherently adversarial in nature. The student is wrong—broken. He or she must be fixed, changed, suppressed, overcome, and conquered.

Conversely, the paradigm that right-brain, non-verbal children and adults are gifted, not broken, honors the child and the gifts that he brings to the learning table. It opens the door to a positive and cooperative relationship between the student and the teacher. Rather than being distracted by the limitations or situational behaviors of the child (the alligators), it focuses on the strengths of the non-verbal child and his natural abilities to learn and his real purpose and intent which is to learn and grow.

It is a fundamental principle of the NLC that all children be treated as individuals, each with their own unique set of talents and gifts that he or she brings to the world.