While researching for various intelligences, I came across a TEDx video which will change many parent's viewpoint like mine.

But before that, I must tell you how I discovered what is the best way to teach phonetics to kids whose Spatial (imagination/ picture) Intelligence is very high but Linguistic Intelligence is not so great.

Its a simple technique but works extremely well.

Why some kids have this problem, that they are reading something, but writing something else. They write mirror words, mirror letters until they are corrected.  Very simple explanation, without getting into the technical or medical details of it is as follows:

When we see something, both eyes see same picture which is sent to the brain. The brain assess it and after combining them together, a complete picture is made in the memory, associated with the word and written down in your brain at one place. So in other words, what you see is what is written down in your brain at one single point.

With kids having difficulty, there seems to exist a minor anomaly in the way the brain sees or assesses through two different eyes. So there seems to be a confusion in what the alphabet looks to the left and right eyes together. Or there is a confusion as to what is interpreted or understood by the brain about what the two eyes have seen together.  So obviously, there will be a confusion in the memory of the child as two different images are stored in two different places associated with the same word!!!  So sometimes, the brain picks up the correct image and sometimes the mirror image.

Now can you understand that it not the brain but the eyes which are causing the child this problem, where he/she is unable to write letters, read letters or even associate the phonetics with the right sound if they are taught using the conventional method.

The treatment is very simple.

Since we are talking about the children who have very high Spatial Intelligence, use this intelligence to teach your children alphabets, phonetics,  grammer and languages.

Make the child close his eyes. Fold the hands togethers, and clasp all the fingers down. Then make only the index fingers point out together.

Make the child write using the two index fingers joined together on the floor or mirror. And while writing ask him/her to loudly speak the letter, its phonetic. Repeat for 10 days. Same time preferably.

I make it fun time by playing a game with him. I write letters on his back and ask him to imagine and just tell me the sound. Or I voice out the sound of any letter, and he has to write on my back.

The idea behind this exercise is that as a parent if you are aware of that one intelligence where your child is brilliant, you can use this intelligence to improve or teach maths, english, science etc easily.

You will not be the villain or the heroine of horror movies, everytime you take up that subject in front of your innocent child.

As in the video you will see, 1 out of 6 children have learning disability!!!!

I was shocked to hear this. But after listening to Dr Aditi, I am quite convinced that indeed when kids face difficulty in picking phonetics, spellings, writing words, numbers, drawing pictures, coloring neatly or building blocks, there is a physical problem, which can be very easily corrected by alert parents and teachers. All that is needed is a bit of awareness and patience with loads of love for the darlings around.

Dr Aditi