Workshop at The Circle creates awareness about Affolter method to deal with autism, other child problems

You don’t make the grass grow faster, when you pull it. Putting children so early in schools is just like pulling the grass, according to senior speech and language pathologist Eva Baerner.

In Europe, she said children below the age of six are sent to institutions for learning but not for school learning, that is to read and write. “We start that at six years of age,” she said and added that they want the children to easily learn how to read and write but it is essential that a child should have a lot of time to play and experience. “If you always make them learn, they don’t have the time and energy to make all those experiences [of childhood],” she said.

Baerner practices Affolter method in her techniques to facilitate perceptual cognitive representation through interaction with the environment. She has also travelled to Namibia and China as part of the senior expert services and taught various other therapies in addition to the Affolter method.

She was conducting a workshop ‘Introduction to Affolter Concept’ at ‘The Circle: Caring for Children’ an institute in Defence Housing Authority on Saturday evening. Affolter is the tactile-kinesthetic system that enables learning through touch, feeling and body position which is crucial to problem solving experience.

The CEO of the Circle, Sadaf Shahid, said that the pressure of sending children to school early has become an integral part of our society, due to which the children are being deprived of play, which is such an important part of development and learning through experience. “The moment a child is sent to school, there are expectations and the child isn’t given opportunity to grow on his own,” she said.

The Circle aims to help children lead independent lives and cope with the learning process at their speed and according to their own unique development process. The Circle team comprises speech-language pathologists and speech educationists who provide individualised speech, occupational and remedial therapy, as well as formal reading and math skills to children with language disorders.

In The Circle, Sadaf said that they enrol children around the age of two or sometimes even less, if their symptoms are serious. “If there’s a child with Down syndrome, we can start his training at one year of age,” she said.

“We work with children with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, late language emergence, sensory integration dysfunction and all other language delays,” she said. First they assess the children and according to their need, provide them speech or occupational therapy. “If they are toddlers, we begin with play, if they are grownups, they are analysed on standardised scales, and are provided therapy based on where they stand,” she said.

The first three years are the most critical years of speech and language development in children. Any pathological interruption or disturbance in the process might place the child at risk, leading to impairment or functional limitation.

The Affolter concept

The Affolter Concept provides the exact remedy to these problems in children in an interactive way that is based on learning through the activity of their own hands. “With your hands, you can feel all the textures and how much pressure the activity is involving,” Baerner said and added that the child would know if the object is soft or hard or juicy. “All these experiences are necessary for the development of every child to learn,” she said and added that all the children should learn by this method especially those who are differently-abled.

For children born with disabilities, she said that parents could judge that there is something wrong with their child. If a child cries very often, if the child doesn’t like being picked up, she said there could be a possibility that the child may be facing certain disabilities. However, she said that it is very difficult to decipher the specific problems a child might be facing.

As for the signals which parents should catch regarding their babies, Sadaf said the earliest diagnosis is of hearing impairment which can even be at the time of birth. “In most countries there is newborn screening, but not in Pakistan,” she said and added that what parents can observe is that if a child doesnt react to loud noises, it can be the first red flag. If the child isn’t sitting at six months or the neck holding is as delayed as in seventh or eighth month and is facing difficulty in communication even in the 14th month, the parents need to be worried.

If the child turns one and doesn’t utter a single syllable, it is alarming, according to Sadaf. In the case of hearing impairment, she said a newborn must get a hearing-aid and they train their mothers at the clinic.

Teach by touching

We cannot touch the brain of children and change anything there. We, however, can go through their body to keep giving them new information and make their brain work better. By touching something, the child feels it, then movement is adopted to what the child feels. “When the child has new information, he or she analyses this new information and step by step, the child is able to do different activities,” she said.

The tactile kinesthetic experience is a learning style in which learning takes place by the students carrying out physical activities, rather than listening to a lecture or watching demonstrations. She said that the tactile kinesthetic experience is between the body and the environment and is also the root of all the abilities of everything that children achieve when they develop, like their speech or school performance, attention or memory.

The tactile system, she pointed out, gives information through the skin that involves touch, pressure, pain, temperature or vibration. Whereas, the kinesthetic system provides information through muscles, tendons and joints. Speaking on the development of interaction of a baby, she said that if a child touches something and finds it reliable, the tension of the baby can be reduced. The moment that baby is moved, the tension can mount up.

Teach by holding

After the touching, comes the holding. “If you put your finger in the baby’s hand, it will hold it, but it won’t let it go for some time because babies don’t have the ability to let go,” she explained and added that between four to six months, holding is okay and letting go is to be learnt later. The most important questions for a baby are where my body is and where is my environment. If the baby is touching the mattress or the ball or sitting on the floor, it gets information about the environment.

She said when the mother picks him or her up and then puts the child down, it gives a baby an idea of what is happening. “If they are not nicely carried close to the body, they feel insecure,” she said and explained that the reason for it is that their body doesn’t get much information. They often start crying when they are put in the bath tub, but when their feet touch the floor of the tub, it becomes normal to them. “Many of the children look for the situation where they can find corner or a boundary, because they really feel secure,” she said.

Perceptual development

Speaking on the levels of perceptual development, she said there are models in which each sense is used separately. “In the beginning the children cannot connect to what they see or hear,” she explained and added that after sometimes the intermodal level starts where various connection between senses work.

But if one sense is not working well, it affects the other senses. In the third level which is the serial, she said that time comes when the child does one thing after the other that can be in a sequence. “There are many activities that have sequences and cannot be changed,” she explained and added that in order to clean teeth, toothpaste has to be opened before pressing the tube and putting the paste on the brush. Children learn a lot of knowledge about serial activities by trial and error, which is very important thing for learning.

There are signs that can signify if a child has a tactile-kinesthetic perceptual disorder. Like if the child has visual and auditory abilities and knows nursery rhymes and can count, but doesn’t have constructive playing and has no speech for communication. Such children can be hyperactive or aggressive or have slow speech development or poor articulation or bad hand-to-hand or hand-to-eye coordination. They can also have poor visual figure-background perception.

When to go for therapy

Go for therapy if you find these signs in your children

1) Does not say a single word after 20 months.

2) Does not indulge in pretend play.

3) Avoids eye contact.

4) Does not respond to loud noises.

5) Indulges in hand flapping, body rocking or other repetitive motions.

6) Has unusual reactions to sights, sounds, tastes, smells and physical sensation.

7) Has trouble in staying focused or is easily distracted.

8) Fidgets and squirms while sitting.

9) Has difficulty keeping emotions in check and has outbursts of anger.