הפרעות קשב או דפוס קשב

Attention deficits or perhaps attention patterns?

What defines attention deficit disorder, which is why many children are labeled as having learning disabilities?

A neurological syndrome characterized by hyperactivity, excessive talkativeness, a fondness for extreme intensity, concentration problems defined as “split attention” and mainly behavioral problems.
Children who suffer only from ADD without the motor/behavioral component do not receive the same level of negative attention from the system. They simply do not interfere with classroom conduct.
We, in the Raviv method, do not use the word “attention deficit disorder”. From our point of view, it is correct to say “attention pattern”.
Why?
Let’s start with an imaginary exercise:
Here we live in a society of hunters and gatherers, the first stage in the evolution of Homo sapiens. The group consists of about 30-40 individuals.
Here I am a hunter. I go hunting with 10 of my friends.
I need to simultaneously focus on the animal, communicate with my friends (eye contact, gestures), and pay attention to the fact that no enemy/predatory animal is coming behind me. At a certain point I break out into a fast run – either I run after the hunter or something chases me – and when the episode is over, if I survive it, I rest under a fresh tree to replenish my energy supply. If I were attentive and not particularly sensory-motor – I would not survive.
Here I am, a woman, and going out to gather with my friends I have to simultaneously pay attention to the other children, sometimes carry a baby, communicate with my friends, beware of enemies/prey animals, and gather. Not easy if I am attentive and lack well-developed sensory-motor abilities.
Our brain has remained the same structure, the same exact brain for the last 150,000 years.
What has changed is our culture.
Today, in the Oriole culture, people with “hunt and gather” skills present the patient with repeated failures in the areas of learning, negative criticism and environmental reactions that can cause emotional problems such as low self-esteem or a feeling of incompetence that does not match reality.
It is certainly possible to develop effective attention skills deliberately.
Many children start school when their brains are not ready to learn because readiness for learning involves, among other things, the skills of regulating attention.
Since the brain is an electrical chemical system, regulating attention means regulating the activity of brain waves.
The stages of a child’s development are those of developing sensory motor skills: the skills required to connect the person with his or her environment: vision, hearing, feeling and movement. These skills are identified with brain waves called alpha.
Attention and learning are identified with beta brain waves. Beta waves are waves that are identified with high electrical activity and therefore require the use of more energy.
In the early hunter-gatherer stage, humans used the beta wave range only in situations where they had to respond to immediate danger: fight or flight. These situations amounted to an average of twenty minutes of vigorous
brain activity in the beta wave range. After which humans returned to their characteristic alpha wave range and the energy balance balanced itself. (Remember the fresh tree?)
Which also explains why learning and stress are naturally linked.
Children who have not developed the ability to regulate attention (control brain waves) use their sensory motor abilities to stimulate high brain activity because that is the only way they are able to concentrate and learn. And here is what the system defines as “AD(H)D: Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder.”
Children/people defined as having AD(H)D are sometimes treated with psychiatric medications such as Ritalin, Adderall, and Concerta. These are stimulant medications: psychostimulants.
When the child/person takes the medication, he/she does not need excessive motor activity to stimulate beta waves – the child “calms down” and the characteristics of “attention deficit disorder” improve.
To be an effective learner, prepare a child for academic learning, correct learning disabilities, or treat attention deficit disorder without medication, the child/person must be taught to control the regulation of his/her brain waves.
To develop this ability, the brain must undergo processes of exposure to appropriate stimuli and very focused training.
This is what we do in the Raviv method.