A variety of children come to school, who differ in the level of training, hobbies, characters and temperaments. Of course, most teachers prefer to work with calm and self-possessed children who will behave well in class and not be too much trouble. However, in almost every team there is an overly nimble and restless child who does not want to stay in one place for a long time and distracts his classmates. What to do with a hyperactive child and can you find an approach to him?
How does hyperactivity affect child development?
It is worth noting that with the normal development of a child, he should strive to move, run, jump, play, make noise and even occasionally indulge in and not obey adults. But when such activity goes beyond a certain norm – the baby cannot concentrate, sit still, speaks loudly and reacts to the slightest stimuli – this indicates his hyperactivity. The very prefix ” hyper ” here means “over”.
Hyperactivity is the predominance of arousal processes over inhibition reactions. It is considered normal when these processes take approximately the same time with small deviations in one direction. With hyperactivity, the child is excited almost instantly, and the process of inhibition, on the contrary, takes quite a long time.
For example, consider a situation where a test is being conducted in a regular classroom. Children are focused and busy with tasks. Suddenly a balloon flies past the window. According to the reaction to this stimulus, the children’s collective will be conditionally divided into three groups.
- The overwhelming majority (about 2/3) will pay attention to the ball, perhaps exclaim or comment on something. And when the object disappears from sight, they will continue the task.
- Some children will not even look in the direction of the ball, or they will do it very reluctantly. Then they will return to their work almost immediately.
- There will be a child who, when the ball appears, will immediately run to the window and will not return to its place until the ball is out of sight. And even after that, it will be difficult for the baby to immediately continue with the interrupted tasks.
According to this example, in the first group, the excitation process takes approximately the same period as the inhibition process. The second group is characterized by a bias towards the process of inhibition, when children are so much carried away by the current task that they fully focus on their activities. The third group is the classic manifestation of the behavior of a hyperactive child.
The main manifestations of hyperactivity in children
Unfortunately, some people and even school teachers are not sufficiently aware of the intricacies of child psychology and do not distinguish between hyperactivity and poor parenting. Therefore, the label “hyperactivity” is hung on children who have practically any deviations from the norms of behavior.
You can track the consistent development of a child and accurately determine his hyperactivity by the following typical manifestations.
- Easily distracted from any, even the most interesting, activity and immediately switches to another type of activity.
- Instantly excited and instantly involved in any active activities.
- Speaks loudly and quickly.
- Makes common mistakes in writing assignments:
- ignores punctuation marks;
- skips the last letters in words;
- simplifies or abbreviates words, for example, instead of “hammer” – “skein”;
- corrects the text in error correction without much result.
- He fusses, makes a lot of unnecessary movements.
- Drops and loses objects all the time.
- Speaks indistinctly and inconsistently, it is difficult for him to have a coherent monologue.
- Differs in untidy appearance, does not control its appearance during the day.
- Often keeps his desk, briefcase and room in a mess.
However, all this refers to the side effects of hyperactivity. The main characteristic of such a child is the physiologically determined need for constant active movement. And attempts to suppress it on the development of the child have an extremely negative effect, causing severe nervous tension.
To diagnose hyperactivity, you should contact a neurologist who, using special test techniques, will be able to determine this problem. However, quite often such a child is forced to independently adapt to the environment, which is not always successful.