Translator: Sandra Potter Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Albert Einstein was expelled from schools due to poor behaviour.
He was regarded as lazy.
Walt Disney drew all the time, and he was reprimanded and questioned
by his father, who didn’t see the slightest value in that activity.
Eric Clapton was expelled from the school where he studied
because his only interest was music,
and one day, he played a musical instrument inside the classroom.
Rafaela Silva, a Brazilian judoka and Nadia Comăneci, a Romanian gymnast
were both Olympic champions.
What they really liked was outdoor activities:
Rafaela - playing football in the street with friends,
and Nadia - climbing trees.
Our children are not here to adjust to our expectations.
They’re not here to be or to do what we idealize internally.
While traditional education,
be it what happens inside a house or inside a school,
insists on behavioural patterns, results, and performances,
our children continue to be born
with more diverse talents that demand more diverse possibilities.
As leaving the world of geniuses and landing here in everyday life
is something that happens in our homes.
I’d like to tell you what I’ve experienced and continue to experience.
One day, my three-year-old, youngest son said to me:
“Mummy, I want to talk to God and ask him to undo the night.”
“Why my son?”
“Because I don’t like to sleep.”
When he said that, we were hugging in the dark in another episode
in the series about the moments before sleep comes.
He resists falling asleep until the last possible moment,
and he wakes up at 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. shouting, “Mummy it’s already morning!“
and I in despair, feeling like I have sand in my eyes,
try to convince him and say, “No Son, it’s still dark, go to sleep.”
However, none of my efforts work in these moments,
because when he wakes up, he’s already ready to go.
With him, I’ve been introduced to a different world than I’m used to.
My son didn’t start walking; he started running.
I don’t know what it feels like to walk with him in a baby stroller
because he was never happy inside one, except as a newborn, of course.
When he was still a little baby,
he’d throw his little body the direction his little eyes wanted to explore.
With him, I began to understand intuitively what I’d heard from mothers
who came to my office to tell me
about the challenges they faced with their children,
who weren’t quite like the kids they interacted with.
I hear a lot of things like this:
“But this boy never stops”,
“Does he run on 220 volts?”,
“How do you cope?”,
“This isn’t normal”,
“Have you thought about going to a doctor for medication to calm down a little?”
If I had to choose a word to represent children in general,
that word would be ‘movement.’
The natural way a child has to learn what they experience,
to express themselves, and to understand the world
is by moving and experimenting freely.
Movement isn’t synonymous with disease, pathology, or disorder.
Movement is power, vitality, and a thirst for life.
Worrisome isn’t the child who is all the time doing something -
moving and exploring.
Worrisome is that child who is too quiet,
who no longer invents or plays with imagination and their own body.
I, Cecília, have a constantly moving child in my house.
Yan, my three-year-old son,
is that child who, in the critical eyes of adults, doesn’t stop.
He’s that child who, when he sits for lunch, takes two spoonfuls,
runs around the table, and sits down again,
a child that when he’s going to watch something on TV, he’s jumping on the sofa.
He’s that child, who when he goes to play with mud or paint,
he needs to pick it up and pass it on his body.
His games are more intense and physically challenging.
A friend once commented: “Wow, he doesn’t stop, does he?”
I remember saying, “He doesn’t stop.”
I’m glad he was born into this family, because depending on where he was,
he likely would’ve gone to a psychologist or a neurologist and even been medicated.
For 20 years I’ve been receiving children in my psychological practice,
and the most frequent demand that comes to me
is to assist children who are too agitated,
who don’t match what their families and schools expect:
that they should sit quietly and concentrate.
After all, a child like this is impossible without limits,
can only be hyperactive and have to be taken to a professional
to fix this agitation once and for all.
This is what I hear from their mothers,
who come to my office weekly to share how challenging it is,
not just to keep up with their children on daily basis,
because sometimes energy and patience are missing, but above all,
there is the challenge of dealing with the criticisms and judgments
that come from others, from their own family, and from the school
who insist that children should stay seated for three to four hours,
looking at the teacher, copying the lesson.
A child of movement doesn’t have that to give,
and to demand this from them is insane.
It’s like stopping in front of a guava tree in the orchard
and expecting to pick a lemon.
This is a right way to hurt a child emotionally
and to take the thing from them that’s most dear and powerful - their essence.
A child that moves a lot will be bothered,
because they demand an absurd amount of dedication from us,
and we must leave our comfort zone.
Because we live in a context that values the quick elimination of suffering,
of the things that bother us, and of unexpected results,
our children are paying a high price.
Childhood has been pathologized, and children have been medicalized,
often hastily in a misguided and even irresponsible way.
Data from a nine-year comparative study done by Anvisa, a Brazilian health agency,
shows that in 2020 a record number of psychostimulants were purchased,
among them, methylphenidate, which is used to treat ADHD,
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In a published study in 2019 here in Brazil,
a boom of diagnoses for this disorder was identified.
Some of the reasons found in this study that justify this increase
are excessive pressure exerted by parents and educators
for better academic performance by their children,
and diagnosis mistakes made in a hurried and decontextualized way,
which consequently enables improper prescription of medication.
This is quite worrying
because, depending on the way which it is used and the dosage,
the natural spontaneity and vitality of a child can be supressed,
and it can also cause dependency.
Learning difficulty,
lack of discipline, and excessive activity of a child inside a school
are behaviours that have been mistakenly identified
as sole indicators of this disorder.
In reality, for us to guarantee a correct diagnosis
it’s fundamental that we not only use data
obtained from questionnaires and behavioural observations,
but also that a complete psychosocial clinical evaluation is done,
with help of health professionals
with specialized training and experience with this disorder.
That means it’s of fundamental importance
to individually look at each child and their life story.
Unfortunately, this isn’t what has been happening in many of the practices
of pediatric professionals nowadays.
Just to have an idea,
in 2011, a survey of 8,000 children and adolescents,
who used medication to treat ADHD was done here in Brazil.
What was discovered in this research
was that 60% of them, in fact, hadn’t even been diagnosed.
There are children who have some kind of disorder
that when diagnosed fairly and early, which is quite different from hastily,
can benefit significantly with appropriate interventions
by acquiring more quality of life and emotional health.
Among the children who are diagnosed,
some need and benefit from the judicious use of a medication,
but they represent a minority.
I remember the day I met Ana in my practice,
desperate because of the careless feedback she’d received from the school,
which had already pre-diagnosed her five-year-old son as having ADHD.
Then, I had Teo for his first assessment.
He was a bright-eyed boy, communicative, full of ideas,
searching my gaze, so we could play together.
He chose the paints and sat for 40 minutes,
discovering new colours and their mixtures.
In the end, he chose to clean up and organize everything.
There was no sign that I was with a child who had some kind of behavioural disorder.
Right then, I understood the adult world needs to pay attention to the obvious:
Each child brings within them a particular universe,
and some naturally show a need
for movement and more experimentation when compared to their peers.
They’re the ones I’ve been calling “children of movement.”
A child of movement needs to be understood for their vital need
for physical experimentation.
A child of movement doesn’t need to be punished, calmed, or medicated.
They just need to be seen and understood for what they are.
Now I want to tell you the story of a girl who, until the age of eight years old,
could barely stay seated in a classroom.
Her parents were called weekly by the school
and they had already quit believing in their daughter’s future,
until one day, they decided to take her to a professional
to fix that agitation once and for all - they couldn’t take it anymore.
That professional didn’t see any problem,
but he identified her need to move more freely,
and he suggested the family put her in a dance class.
It was in this context of dance, that this girl found herself
and built a beautiful career.
This is the real story of Gillian Lynne,
a dancer, ballerina, choreographer, theatre actress, and British TV presenter,
who was known worldwide
for her famous choreographies of two Broadway musicals:
“Cats” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”
In her autobiographical book, published in 2012, she said:
“I suffered from a sort of excess energy,
so much so that I was a real headache for everyone.
Nowadays, I hear it said that I would have been labelled as hyperactive,
and my diet would have been a pill.”
What Gillian’s parents didn’t know when she was a child
and what many parents, educators
and childhood professionals still don’t know today
is that this excess movement can indicate a special intelligence
that embraces very specific talents and abilities.
Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences,
presented a bodily-kinesthetic theory,
which is characterized by how well one can use their body
in highly differentiated ways.
He reminds us that every child is intelligent in their way,
and we can no longer educate and demand standardized results and performances
with everybody doing the same things and learning the same way.
Children of movement need to be understood for their vital needs,
and their parents also need be listened to and welcomed,
because the truth is that they have been overwhelmed
with too many criticisms, judgments, and demands -
like they were not educating their children.
And now I’d like to advise you to not take your child away from movement
in any consultation with childhood professionals,
and not before carefully evaluating the quality of your time spent with them:
How well do you listen and communicae with your child?
Is there welcoming and validation for their needs,
or is most of the time spent on punishment, correction, and reprimands?
Does the school accept your child for who they are?
If not, I suggest you rethink things
because school is the world we choose to present to our children.
All this makes a tremendous difference
in the way your child will feel about themselves,
and how they’ll express themselves, communicate, and behave with you.
If you, as the mom or the dad, identified some flaw
in these points that I brought here - and you certainly will -
because the truth is that our real life is way different than the ideal world
of creation and education of a child, right?
But if you identify some fault, make it a point to adjust that first.
Then if necessary, seek a professional to help and guide you.
I remember, when I was still a psychology student,
I did my internship at my paternal grandparents’ children’s education school,
a beautiful school,
which kept the child’s best interests and needs as a central pedagogical goal.
We received an eight-year-old child who had already been “invited to withdraw”
from three Belo Horizonte schools because he didn’t stop quietly,
made a lot of messes, and caused disruptions between teachers and children.
My grandmother guided me
to be responsible for this child outside of the classroom,
following his ideas and movements, and proposing outdoor activities.
I confess that at first, I was very apprehensive.
I asked myself: “Is this the best way to take care of this child?”
My grandmother, in all her wisdom, sat down with me one day and said:
“Cecília, the discipline of a child doesn’t have to be forced.
It comes naturally
with the interest and security that we build in this relationship.”
I’ll never forget it.
In the third week of doing what my grandmother taught and guided me to do,
Antonio arrived at school, put away his belongings, sat in his place,
and he stayed inside the classroom on his own, not leaving anymore.
He, indeed, had a need to move around
and to come and go more often than his peers.
As he was respected in his needs
and had the freedom to experience what his biological rhythm said,
surprisingly, when he left the room, he returned quickly,
and participated actively, interested in what was proposed.
It was then that we discovered he was a gifted child with high abilities.
I also see adults in my psychological practice,
who don’t know what they like, what they’re good at,
and what their natural abilities and talents are.
These insecure, emotionally fragile adults are full of unfulfilled dreams,
and are full of fear to live life, as their hearts beat and ask them to do.
Some need medication to sleep;
some need medication to wake and get up.
They are essentially disconnected adults,
And this disconnection didn’t happen from one hour to another.
One source of disconnection is childhood,
when they wanted and needed to talk and express, but they had to be quiet.
And this is what I wanted to tell you -
it’s possible for us to create new plots and new endings.
If we want our children to become secure, self-confident adults,
who are proactive, resilient, and know why they’re here in this life,
we’re going to need to make room, so they can be who they are.
I was gifted by life.
I have a child of movement in my house who I learn from everyday.
It’s darn challenging to be the guardian of a child with that power.
but I’ve learned that it’s not my son who needs to quiet down.
It’s not the children of movement who have to settle down.
It’s the adult world that needs to move around to accompany them,
and provide conditions for them to be who they are,
so that can bring their contribution to this world
in constant transformation and movement
and with even more complex demands.
Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)