VOICE – Personality Development in Children with Special Needs – P.R.Krishnamoorthy

(bear with me, this is a lengthy post)
Hello All,

sharing the details of another session i attended couple of weeks back. This session was organized by VOICE (Voice of parents For Inclusion Care and Empowerment) Team. The session details are:
Topic: Personality Development in Children with Special Needs
Date: 10th NOV 2019 – Sunday
Timings: 3 PM to 7 PM
Venue: LIBA, Loyola College No.1, Mahalingapuram Road, Nungambakkam, Ch 34      Fees: Rs 200 per family was charged (Refreshments were provided)
Also Volunteers were arranged to take care of the children.

About VOICE (In my opinion):
VOICE is a closely held network of parents who support each other with their needs and collectively stand up for the rights of our special needs children. Mano Ranjani (Well known as Ranjani) is heading this network/support group with assistance from like minded parents/ professionals / well-wishers etc… She does the job of connecting parents with the right network of professionals or parents. As a parent you can message her about any need related to your child’s development, she will try her best to connect you with the right resources. VOICE is not an organization or trust at present, they are merely connected through Whats-app and telegram groups and parents meet up sessions like these, but have a very strong network. I was introduced by a fellow parent (Rathna Priya) to this group earlier this year, and i must say that it has helped me in so many ways. If you know any parent with a special needs child, please ask them to be connected with the VOICE team, by contacting Ranjani. Their whats-app group is highly active.

About the Speaker (In my opinion):
P.R.Krishnamurthy is a Rehabilitation Psychologist running his own practice in the name of Satchita Psychological Research and Training Center in Palavakkam. He is an ex employee of NIEPMD, with strong academic background, extensive research knowledge and 10+ years of experience in handling children with special needs. From personal experience i have to say, he is very unique from other rehab professionals, he is extremely passionate about his profession, least focused on the monetary aspect, exhibits humility and patience with every one he interacts.
He is more interested in meeting up children’s who can be benefited from his time, rather than addressing workshops, training’s, sessions which keeps him away from the children. He accepts invitations from VOICE, as these workshops helps him to pass on the message directly to the parents. His intentions and heart, both are at the right place.

Events before the session:

I volunteered to pick up Mr.Krishnamurthy for the session, reached Mr.Krishnamurthy residence at 2 PM, which is in the outskirts of the city. Initially the plan was that he would join along with his family, but due to her daughter being sick, his family couldn’t make it. Even Mr.Krishnamurthy was unwell he was still having fever when i picked him up. The drive from his residence to LIBA took an hour, and he was dropping gems during the entire conversation we had during the drive. ( Also he gave shortcuts to reach the place, which my GPS did not think off !!)
We reached LIBA at 3:10 pm, people have just started to come in. All meet ups involving special parents cannot be expected to start on time, as everyone has to make different arrangements for their child and travel to this place on a day meant for them to relax. So VOICE was never strict on the start or end timings of the session, as it is always meant for the parents and it is very sensitive to their needs and personal situations. Volunteers were also lined up on time, they were already engaging kids with activities outside. Refreshments were arranged outside.

Even though Ranjani has organized many such meetings and events in the past, her anxiety levels are always in a high arousal state until the meeting ends. In fact, she was searching for someone to whom she can delegate the work of speaking about the VOICE Parent support group, she couldn’t find any, left with no choice she spoke about the group. Trust me, she was very Nervoussssss.. and she knew it! One more additional reason for her nervousness was that Director of LIBA had plans to attend this session, so she wanted things to go well and make better impression of our group.

Session began by 4 PM, as usual the higher percentage of the parents were moms, and very few were dads. Participants turnout were good, the hall was almost full, which was air conditioned nicely, in fact it was too much at one point, krishnamurthy wanted it to be lowered, as he was running a temperature.

Introduction by Ranjani

Ranjani gave an introduction about herself first, she has 3 children. Elder son – Vinayak who is 10 years old, 2nd Son is Chandru who is 7 years old and 3rd is a girl baby Vaisu (i guess) who is an year old. Her elder son Vinayak was diagnosed with Mild Autism when he was 3 years old. Then she told about VOICE group which was started in JAN-2017, initially with 10 parents who she regularly meet. During subsequent meetups, they had an event to celebrate the success of Sriram in his swimming competition, during which they came up with the name of VOICE. VOICE stands for “Voice of parents for Inclusion, Care and Empowerment of Children with Special Needs“. The main focus is on the Inclusion, which is a struggle for every parent.

Objective of the VOICE Group:

•  Connect families with special needs

When you first receive the news of the diagnosis about your child, you would form an opinion that it is happening only to you and lose your thoughts, fall in depression etc. It is not like that, there are other parents around you who are going through this as well, who are elder than you and experienced what you are and what you will go through. So please connect to other parents/families who are sharing the same path, learn from their journey and experience.

• Support in every possible way

We try to support each other in every possible way i.e. Financially, Emotionally, Physically, we need support from all corners to make it happen for our child

• Discussing problems

Most of them try to hide their problems from others or find a resolution to the problem by themselves, instead of sharing it with others. Some times we do it, thinking others may not understand the problem you have. It is not like that, we are a huge group where every one is facing or have faced the problem which you are going through now, which can be discussed among ourselves.

• Finding Solution

We work towards finding possible solutions and fixes for the issues which a parent or child is going through.

• Advocate rights of our children to the society

We are getting used to Rejections and Avoidance from everyone. For example,

1. When Schools rejects our children, no parents speaks up against the administration or the selection process.
2. When we go to park, fellow parents complain about our children’s behaviour so we avoid going there
3. When we go to family functions, due to remarks from other guests we avoid going to functions…

Which is not right. We should educate ourselves, and try to create awareness to people around us and be the advocate for our child .

• Representing the issues to the government.

There is a massive gap between us and the government at present, in fact government is not even aware of our or any such parent support groups that are formed till date. Most of the parents have not shown keen interest government initiatives as well, she asked the participants as to how many of them have the Disability Card, half of the participants did not take the disability card for their child. We are still not having the maturity and acceptance to get the disability card itself, we are the ones who need to change first.

What VOICE group does?

• Each Parent can contribute their time, talent, any work based on their qualification and experience for our children.

A Working parent who might have given up their career to take care of their child, can help the children to teach skill which they are interested in.

• Regular Outings to create opportunities for socialization and celebrating their birthdays

Most of the parents avoid going outings, due to their child condition. We plan outings within our family, so that we feel comfortable and our children feel comfortable

• Counselling sessions among parents and advocate the rights of these children in the society.

We need not approach a medical certified professional for counselling all the time, we can counsel among ourselves, the more we talk and more we share, we can find solutions to most of the problems faced by us. You can connect with senior parents and clear your doubts, get suggestions etc …

• Celebrating any success of any special children among our families and helping each other during emergency situations.

Even a slightest act done by our child will be a bigger achievement for us, which cannot be understood by people around us. Our child riding a cycle is a far bigger achievement for ourselves, which will not been seen as the same way by your next door neighbor. So you can share your success with our group.

What VOICE has done so far ?

Voice have invited professionals of all disciplines, like Sports Director, Psychologist, Disability Rights Activist, Advocates etc to name a few, to educate our fellow parents.

What Volunteers of VOICE do?

The important part of our group is Volunteers. We do not go outside as we cannot leave behind our children at home, so attending meetings such as these are highly impossible for such parents. To facilitate such parents to take part of in meetings we have volunteers, few are college students, sports coaches, swimming coaches, occupational therapists, Psychologists, special educators, who knows how to handle our children. so we can leave our children to them and attend sessions such as these.

Handling the Diagnosis of our child:

Most of us would step in to doctor office for the reason of speech delay thinking it is something minor, when doctor probes further on other symptoms, he would break the news to us that it is Autism, Red Syndrome, or any other technical jargon, which you would not even understand but for sure will give a shock and scare the hell out of you. To come out of the shock, it will take 1 or 2 years, which is the most crucial period for the child development. Whereas we would be spending that crucial time period in learning about Autism, its terminologies, its concepts, our mind continuously wanders around it. Instead we should focus more on the early years of the child. I wanted to share something which i learnt from a seminar, which depicts what the child needs. A Child needs:

• Parents & Extended Family

(Most of the time a child is restricted to her mom within the family, a mom by herself cannot be fully responsible for the child’s development, you need the fathers, and all extended family members co-operation for the child’s betterment)

• Pediatrician (For regular checkups to find developmental delays etc..)

• Psychiatrist / Psychologist 

Most of the parents rush now a days to visit psychiatrist, who prescribes medicines as the first resort. Even my son Vinayak was prescribed tablets for his hyper condition. We did not give medicines to him, we made him tired through physical activities which moderates his hyper activity and makes him sleep. Till the age of 7 or 8 years, do not provide drugs for controlling hyper activeness. However we need the assistance of Psychologist.

• Special Educator, OT / Speech Therapist (We are running around therapies all the time)

• Family / Patient and Advocate. and Government

These two are missing in all of us, we need to be in touch with an Advocate like a family advocate and Government. The group was started with an intention that, instead of working independently we have to work together towards our goal as a team. We have advocates and government officials in our group who guides us if we are taking a step towards a change. She narrated an incident about Deepak Sir (I personally met him during Advocate brothers reception function), who is differently-abled and uses crutches for his movement. During his childhood days, the school in which he studied left behind him for an excursion, because of his condition. Deepak sir was disappointed, and of all the other people he was angry towards her mom, because it should have been her who should have spoken up for her son.
We should realize that it is WE who need to speak for our child. Our child’s disability is more towards the communication of feeling/thoughts, hence till they develop their communication, we have to be our child’s voice. Like school denies admission to Children, Park denies entry to our children, our children made fun off at a function, we are focusing others instead we have to focus on the change towards ourselves first. When our children are ill treated or discriminated, we are to stand up first for our child. As a parent we have to stand up for our child and be the VOICE of our child. All children have rights. All children have rights, we are only classifying the children as Normal, Special, etc …

There was two videos played, one was about “Stop labeling the child” which makes everyone look at the positive side of the child, instead of negative side and the other one is prepared by the Volunteers about the work done in the past by Voice.
You can find the full version of the video on “Stop labeling the child” in the link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxNGI4lSBQQ

Role of LIBA in VOICE

The very first meeting done by VOICE was in a local corporation ground with rented chairs. Then they met LIBA director, at that time it was Rev. Fr. Christie S.J., requesting a place for such parent meetup sessions, who generously gave this class room for our meeting sessions. Now the new director is Rev. Fr. C. Joe Arun who was expected to attend this session, however due to unavoidable circumstances he could not make it. The important point about the group is that, the venue provided to the group is free of cost and the professionals who delivers sessions to us also free of cost, also volunteers provide their time free of cost. Our meetups are conducted for a social cause and not business minded.
Ranjani shared the pic where LIBA received best business school award in karnataka and requested Siluvai Raja sir to speak for 2 mins …
Dr. A. SILUVAIRAJA is the Assistant Professor for Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Chair – Admissiona and Chair – C.K.Prahalad Centre for Emerging India. He spoke about LIBA (Loyola Institute of Business Administration ), as one of the leading business school in the nation offering management studies. The specialty about LIBA is that it has 100% placement and average salary for the students are at 10 Lacs p.a. Spoke about initiatives by C.K.Prahalad Centre.

Introduction about Speaker – P.R.Krishnamurthy

Ranjani introduced about Krishnamurthy with his family pic displayed on the projector. He is a father of two children a 3yr old and a 5 yr old. He does not preach alone, he follows what he preaches in his own life, her daughters never attended school till date, whatever advice’s he has given to our children, has been followed for his children as well. Ranjani shared her experience with Krishnamurthy, he met him at a later stage, when her son was 7 years old, she found lot of differences between him and other professionals she has seen till such time. When he assessed Ranjani’s son for the first time, he told that her son will not fit in to Autism category, which was a surprise for her, as most of the professionals who she has met till such time have always told he is autistic, in fact she also had a disability certificate for the same. Krishnamurthy explained her that just because you have a disability certificate that says he has autism, does not mean he is autistic.

He is the only therapist, who has encouraged taking leaves, refunded money for classes not taken, at the right time he suggested to stop therapy for her son. No other therapist or therapy centers would do those things now a days. We as a parent after the diagnosis of our child, would focus on bigger things and leave behind the basics most of the time, whereas he would point us to smaller things, and attention to detail which are required to be taught to our children.

One of the parent, shared her experience (Ranjani must have been relieved, that attention got shifted from her) when she got the diagnosis that her son was in Autism spectrum disorder. After meeting him, he told, there is nothing like that available in her son, it is you as a parent who has to change since you are seeing him as a child with disability, he is completely normal. The personal session with him was surprising and also gave her hope and happiness, she mentioned that he also responded to her doubts through whatsapp. She thanked krishnamurthy sir whole-heartedly and also thanked ranjani for introducing krishnatmurthy sir contact details.

With that she invited Krishnamurthy to begin his session.

Where we have to go – Krishnamurthy

He introduced himself as Rehab psychologist, with 10+ years experience in the field. He done his higher education in NIMHANS Secunderabad, worked for NGOs in pondicherry, and later in NIEPMD. Finally began his own practice named Satchita Psychological Research and Training Center. He thanked VOICE for arranging this meeting.

He mentioned it is extremely time consuming process to discuss on the various types of treatments that are available and which treatment can be given to what type of child. Instead we should focus on creating awareness on the basic things, in other words ee need to know the direction for resolving the issues.

WHAT IS PERSONALITY ?

Personality refers to SELF. It refers to the character of the child. All types of Skill are visible like communication, socialization, understanding, retrieving, problem solving, etc.. these things can be seen visually whether the child is doing it or not doing it. SELF is something that is invincible. We make some calculated assumptions that child might be thinking like this or that, whereas it is the child who should tell us what is happening within him. So the process that is happening inside the child, when it is being expressed, does it get expressed as Behaviour or Cognition or Emotional.

We as individuals have evolved a lot in the society. Do you believe if something is happening without no reason at all ? When you buy a biscuit packet, you see whether it is good or bad condition, you see its flavor, you see its expiry date before purchasing it. How many of us have ever judged or analyzed the professional whether what he is doing to our child is correct or not in the therapy centers ?

3 ENTRY DOORS OF CHILD’s BRAIN

There are only three gateways or doors in which one can access a child’s brain, they are:

• Behaviour

Anything that is conditioned and trained within us is a behaviour.
For example, daily routines like waking up, brushing, drinking coffee/tea, eating breakfast, lunch, dinner etc. can be trained through behaviour. Most of the parents during their school days would not have had any idea what they did in school, because we have been trained through behaviour door during that time. Only after reaching college, we came to know about the outside world, our thinking began. When you train a children’s through behaviour, few kids who has appropriate intelligence will come out of the routine, whereas few kids will get conditioned to your training, they will only do what they were told and not any thing on their own.

When you train the kid through behaviour, they will begin to do things which they were unable to do earlier, you will see development due to that, but you can clearly see something will be a miss, because he would do things unnaturally or often expect a prompt to do things or be dependent on parents. Without reason, if there is a skill present, it will only become a condition. A routine that is conditioned becomes a behaviour.

• Cognition

It refers to thinking. Skill with understanding is cognition. Knowing alphabets A to Z is a skill, but if you don’t know how to write APPLE using that skill, it means that you do not have the ability to apply the skill, which means that you do not have cognition. If you do not understand a skill, it cannot be treated as a cognition. When you don’t know how to apply a skill, then you do not have cognition. Skill connecting with understanding is cognition.

For example, he asked how much is 5 + 5 participants responded 10 , similarly he asked how much is 8 + 2 participants replied 10 … why same answers for two different questions, it it correct ? It is correct because your answer is based on understanding, which is nothing but cognition. Numbers is the skill using it you arrive at the results which is a Cognition.

For example, if your throw a ball, the dog will bring it back, if you throw another ball, it will again bring the ball back, which is a conditioned behaviour. Now if i throw an explosive or bomb, that could happen? It will bring back the explosive or bomb to the owner. Why did the Dog do like that? Because dog does not know how to think, which is nothing but absence of cognition.

Our objective for our child is to lead an independent life. When he thinks, he speaks, when he speaks he becomes independent. He mentioned that he is stressing too much on the concept of thinking, because those who can think are those who can speak, once they began speaking, they become independent, who can lead his life.

He mentioned another analogy, where a Circus Ring master trains the tiger based on his command, the tiger will stand in different positions, it jumps inside the ring, rides cycle, catches ball, etc. everything is done by this animal. The Ring Master took break for a month, when he came back after a month, opened the cage of the tiger, the tiger ate him. WHY? A Tiger cannot think, till date whatever it learnt were through conditioning which is a behaviour and not cognition. Hence the tiger is unable to think.

• Emotion

Pain, Thirst, Hunger, happiness, feelings are all emotions. When you hit or beat up or a threaten the kid while teaching him, it will train them through emotional door. If we keep training our kids by threatening, beating them you are causing pain to the child, which will cause anxiety to the child as a result, the child will not be able to do anything. Our child’s workout from waking up till going to bed when compared to normal kids is very heavy all related stress accumulated during the day will fall under emotion.

• If you use Behaviour Door = It will become Routine and became a robot
• If you use Cognition Door = It will create Thinking
• If you use Emotional Door = It will become Aggressive

Just ask yourself where your child stands i.e. which door your child is standing …..

Be it an Occupational Therapist, Speech Therapist, any other professional or Parent , whoever it may be, they can only enter a child’s brain through these three doors.

LAYERS OF MIND

• Pre-conscious

All that is trained and conditioned is Pre-conscious. For example, a kid knowing A-Z , or responding to question “what is your name” etc. Exhibiting what he/she has been trained for is pre-conscious. A child who is trained and conditioned will not do anything outside that framework. It will only result in robotic response.

• Conscious

This is Thinking. Conscious controls pre-conscious and unconscious. Conscious acts create awareness and cognition. For Example,
If a child knows A-Z and can write a letter, it is a conscious act.
Assume that you are feeling hungry, but since you are currently attending the session you would be able control your hunger which is a conscious act.
Bladder control is a conscious act.

• Un-conscious

An act or a behaviour that is exhibited without any reason is treated as an Unconscious. The person who does that act, does not even know why he does it. Most of the unconscious acts are biological or sensory related. For Example, head banging, biting some one, etc.
Unconscious acts impact the emotional channel of the child.
He gave an example, where husband and wife were having a heated debate, during which some guest arrives at the house. The couple would act as if nothing happened and begins treating the guest, until such time they were fighting unconsciously, the moment the guest arrived they became conscious of the situation and acted accordingly. (One of the participant said, that husband and wife fights are mostly conscious, they clearly know what they are fighting for, how can we say it as unconscious, for which Krishnamurthy explained that the fight may start consciously but ends up with unconscious acts like either sobbing or banging their head or breaking things, which is unconscious)

In short,

• Pre-conscious, will create a routine and the child will become robotic
• Conscious, will create awareness and bring thinking to the child.
• Un-conscious, will create issues and cause behavioural issues.

HOW TO WORK ON COGNITION?

(The much awaited section of the session, after a heavy built up and strong base line)

He mentioned that working out in cognition is very simple…………..to hear, and very difficult to implement. He made a following demonstration for us to understand about cognition:
He showed three files, 1 is in PINK color, 2nd one is BLUE color and 3rd one is WHITE color. He picked up a blue color file and asked the audience what color is it, everyone responded blue. Now he asked the audience how were you able to identify that the file was blue in color.
Everyone responded that this is how we were taught since we were young.
Now he tells us that, the same teacher who taught you that this is blue, comes to you now says that i have mistakenly taught you what is blue, the color name is actually Green. From today when you see something blue, it should be referred as Green. Will you do it ??

What made you to identify Blue as Blue? It is because you know what other colors were like red, green, yellow etc….. Do you agree?
Differences give birth to cognition. If i keep showing you blue color and say it is blue all the time, this information will go to your memory. When an information is saved in memory it means that, only when you show the same file which is blue in color, one will be able to say it is blue. He will not be able to apply this information to any other object that is blue in color. In this circumstances understanding will not get created. It can be created through differences only.

If you work out more on differentiation, you will see better results and turn around in cognition. At this point of time, most of the audiences does not seem to buy it, as they felt it as something very simple. Hence he went for another example, he mentioned that most of the people will make mistakes when they were asked to identify the color between Blue and Purple. Have you seen it ? Why is it so? Because the difference between these two colors is very less. When there is a larger difference, identification gets formed, understanding gets created. Cognition route gets formed from difference.

There is a rule on how to teach using differences. You need to check the Learning priority before teaching the child. He demonstrated the concept of learning priority using below example:

How will you teach an Apple to a kid?

1) We can say Apple is Red in Color . A kid may see tomato which is also red in color, and refer it as Apple. Hence we cannot teach apple is something that is red in color, as there can be many other fruits and vegetables that can be red in color. This learning priority is incorrect

2) We can say Apple is in the shape of sphere/circle/round. A Kid may you take a ball which is sphere shaped and will refer it as Apple. So we cannot teach using apple using its shape.

3) We can say Apple smells like this . But it is hard to smell an Apple, as most of the apples in super markets are coming with added preservatives and waxing, hence you cannot sense the smell of it. So you cannot teach by smell.

4) We can say Apple tastes like this. This is a unique taste which is available for Apple only, which cannot be confused with any other fruit or vegetable. So learning priority for Apple is Taste.

Now you taught how to identify Apple. Using that now teach through differentiation. That is take Apple in one hand and orange in other hand, and explain the differences so that kid would understand it. Now when you teach Apple this way, differentiation will form in my mind . Now, you have taught through difference and also through learning priority.

In short, Learning priority is used for reasoning. Without reasoning in the brain, application will not be formed. You have to put yourself in the kids place and think like a kid, like a kid asks you “Why should i learn this?” The answer what you are going to give is the learning priority.

Instead of teaching with reasoning, if you simply show apple and ask the kid to say Apple, it will go to kids memory. When an information goes to memory, it will be struck in that. You will see kid repeating apple, apple apple all the time. You will see kids who will always write abcd or struck with numbers etc. because the information is not reasoned or not applied, it just went to memory.

Similarly for learning a Car the learning priority is Travel. The opposite of Car is Ship or Aeroplane. Like Car goes in road, Ship goes in water, Aeroplane travels in Air etc.

Road Map to Independent Living

• D – Difference
• U – Understand
• T – Thinking
• I – Independence

Through differences we can make the child understand, through understanding we can make the child think, through thinking we can make the child independent.

Left Hemisphere vs Right Hemisphere

Are we using the left hemisphere or right hemisphere when listening to the session, few said left few said right, the answer is both.
Left Hemisphere looks for Structure like shape, size, width, dimension, color, etc.
Right Hemisphere knows the purpose, that this is a room.

Similarly when you see me, Left hemisphere will look me as pant, shirt, color etc., whereas right hemisphere will know that i am a Human.
To perform an act, both hemispheres need to be connected.

When you dominate your kid through academics at an early stage, only left hemisphere develops, so no meaning will be gained. Hence Up to 6 years of age, no academics. When some one is teaching something to our kid, do not teach it in the same way, when you teach it , always teach through differentiation.

Training the Cognition

We can train the cognition through the below process in a sequential manner:

• Stimulation

Performing an activity without reason, is stimulation. For example, jumping for no reason is a stimulation. When you are asking me to jump without no reason, you are stimulating a particular neuron in my brain. Since there is no reason for that action, neuron will think that it should behave always like this, and by default the child will be jumping for no reason.

• Function

Performing an activity with reason, is Function. For example, you ask the child to jump on a pictured drawn as Apple or Horse.

• Thinking

Now you give the same jumping activity with a twist like ask your child to jump on a color which looks like the bird that fly’s around the house. The bird that fly’s around the house is crow, and crow is black in color, so the kid will have to jump in the black color. This is thinking. We should not tell the answer directly to the child.

• If you are working on the Stimulation you should convert it to Function
• If you are working on the Function you should Convert it to Thinking
• If you are simply giving stimulation alone, it will create obsession in the brain.

Identification of Actions performed by Volunteer:

He asked a volunteer to come up and perform few actions sportively, which we shall try to categorize as Stimulation or Function or Thinking.

Stimulation = > Jumping, making noise using remote, sitting on the chair,
Function = > Eating, Bathing, driving car, shopping using a list given by parents.
Thinking = > Reading, shopping without any list, classification of trash and non trash items.

You can classify your kids daily day to day activities in the above, when you see if a particular area has more stimulation, you have to convert it to function. Running is a stimulation, but if one is running in order to put the ball in the basket it is Function, if i am putting a ball in the basket by crossing all the obstacles caused by the team, then it is Thinking. Similarly asking the child to throw the ball in basket that is in post box color, is a thinking process.
His Advice to Parents:

1) This is the formula for improving your child. You have to train your mind over this and act accordingly during necessary circumstances. At the same time, dont ask for contact number of a place or therapy center, where they are doing all these. This is it !

2) To compress this knowledge it took 10+ years, which you are hearing it in a simplified manner. You cannot find this in any book directly. All these principles were learnt through trial and error. Apply this formula from a child’s perspective.

3) Do not believe in any professionals or traits, don’t praise any professional or look at him like god who is going to cure our child, which is incorrect. Always focus on the information that person shares, which is the only area that needs to be focused.

4) This is it about cognition, only if you begin working out on simple issues, you would know how to handle bigger issues.

5) If you are taking your kid to a therapy center or therapist, please observe what they are doing with your kid. There is nothing wrong in it, it is your child. If they create an issue in the closed doors, the impact of it is going to be faced only by the parent and the child, hence you have every right to ask what they are doing in there. If they ask you to take your child to a different therapy center, happily do so.

6) Cognition grows till we die, with respect to behaviour, what ever we had when we were at 18 yrs of age, the same will be there till date, whatever emotion got developed till 18 yrs of age, the same will be there till date for us. For cognition it is not like that, it changes over period of time, we keep our-self updated.

7) You need to know the basic information in order to raise a child. Only for specific issue you can approach a professional and not for everything. If you are in search for professional for every thing, you will not find one. One professional will not have all the knowledge any whatever knowledge he has will not be available in the people working for him. The correct thing is that as parents we have to do what is right to our children

8) To do what i have told , you need not be a doctor, OT , etc . 10th standard education is enough, to do what has been said in this session.

9) When the parent gets evolved, you will see changes in the child. When some one is giving therapy behind close doors, question them. If you think one person can change a child in a 45 min session, whoever that person may be, it is wrong.
Question What are we doing this ..? For what issue we are doing this? Which is the reason for doing in this way ?

10) Only if we all move together this will happen. 10 years from now, this is going to cause even more issues in future for generations to come.

11) Initially they labelled it is autism, later they called it as autism spectrum because these kids are intellectuals. When they are unable to define an intelligence in a child which is not age appropriate, they will label it as a spectrum. It is a dark world, if there is no light inside you, you will not know what is happening around you. You will get this through cognition. Your child cognition will be based on your cognition.

12) When someone is telling something don’t accept it as it is. If no justification or explanation is given for something, you need not do it at all.

13) Autism is not a permanent disorder. It will fade away. You can see vinayak as an example. But you need to travel in the right direction, Don’t get scared, every one is fooling you ( Probably the most soothing sentence of the entire session in my opinion) . Don’t look at me as an individual or a trait, the value is only on the words what i have spoken today and not on me. Don’t believe a person, only believe on what he says.

Other points to Remember

1.) Any thing that is conditioned is a behaviour. Only Thinking will bring cognition.

2.) Skill can be condition, Behaviour can be conditioned whereas Cognition cannot be condition. It requires understanding.

3.) There is no age limit to train the kid. The training method explained by me is not something new and there is no out of the world treatment available for our kid. The way in which our brain got developed is the same way our kids brain will get developed. Only when that development is not happening, we should find ways to stimulate it. Also please stop believing that out of world new treatments are going to fix these issues.

4) Performing cycling, swimming and skating are pre conscious, they are powered game, where no reasoning involved.
Football, Volley Ball, hockey, Shuttle Cock are Conscious as it involves Self, communication, socialization, goal etc.

5) Learning Priority is must before differentiation

6) When a kid is making a choice it means that thinking is present in that child.

7) Only when thinking happens, personality happens. When a kid is brought up through behaviour or emotional, personality does not come, only when raised through cognition, personality comes.

8) Difference in learning is cognition, difference in sense is sensory integration. Obsession breaks through difference.

9) Stimulation with reason is function. Without reason, if you give more stimulation, it will lead to obsession.

10) There are so many problems we have seen in our child, most of it will go off or we can make it go way, for that we have to work towards behaviour. We have 5 functions in behaviour, whoever knows that he will be able to work on behaviour issues .This is out of topic, hence he did not cover it in detail.

11) A child who began to think will be conscious about his presence, like if he has an habit of biting nails, but he will not do it in public as it will impact his self esteem. If a child has reached the cognition level, they will control themselves.

12) Mobile phones, Television, Gadgets, should have zero exposure to the kid. It will cause delay in speech, you might think that your kid is learning words by looking at the tv, it is not learning it is becoming an obsession . Will you give alcohol to your child? how come you are giving gadget ? Because problems through alcohol is visible , whereas problems through gadgets are invincible, end result is the same, it will form obsession and create an addiction.

13) When i keep answering to all your questions you will become addicted to me as Brain is addicted for information. It does what cigarette does to your body, the same thing happens through information addiction as well. Information is also a drug. Why is that even people with higher intelligence follow spiritual masters like Jaggi Vasudev, Ravishankar, Nithyananda, its not that they attain peace or feel peaceful. Whoever is answering more to your questions, you will get addicted to that person. It will forma pleasure inside you which is just like any other drug you consume. (Don’t take anything beyond this example, make life difficult for me. i am not against any of these spiritual masters ….or gurus ). Similarly when you are repeating same thing again and again to your child, which will turn in to obsession made then it will become a drug.

14) When you show differentiation in sound to your child, doesn’t use mobile phone, use live sounds. When a child is obsessed with listening to rhymes. Instead of videos, you sing the rhymes to them. Also it is suggested to sing rhymes that are in the child’s genetic language and not in any other language. They are looking for rhythm, which we should not give them.

Parents Questions and Answers (Biggest Portion of all)

My wife often tells me that my blog posts are lengthy, you should post them in parts so that it would easy for the readers. I rejected her suggestion because, if all the information related to a particular topic or session is available in a single page, it is easier to read to refer. If i break up bigger posts in to three or more different blog topics, most of them will not read it in sequence and get lazy and leave behind reading remaining parts.
i was so tempted to post this Q&A section as a different blog topic, but still for the same reasons i mentioned above, presented everything in a single post.

Q – If training through Cognition promotes the thinking ability of the child, should we only train the child through Cognition and not through behaviour or emotion all the time?

A – NO its not like that, Cognition way of working out is only for activities that involves thinking. For activities that does not involve thinking process, for example your daily morning routine, you can condition it through behaviour. Similarly when to sleeping, how to eat, how to stand when speaking with others etc, all these can be conditioned as a behaviour. Any aspect which involves thinking cannot be conditioned. You can use behaviour mode of training for our regular activities through rewards.

Q – If i am training my child in sports, i cannot train it through condition because certain aspects of sports requires cognition to some extent for playing. In which case, which is the right manner of training a child?

A – If a child is able to follow the rules and understand the situation and plays accordingly then he has understanding, which means cognition is present for the kid. However if he is able to perform well only in a particular ground, or under a particular coach or under a particular scenario, then it is a behaviour. You can even condition the child for different activities that are involved in the sport which your child plays.
Another parent, tried interpreting it, like when a child is trained in running with hurdles, which means he is trained to jump whenever he sees a hurdle in the race track. When he is walking in the road , if he finds a hurdle and jumps over it, it means that his cognition is working, instead he only jumps for hurdles in race track and not anywhere else, then he was conditioned to perform without thinking process.
Our focus is on the area of cognition, which tells the child how to think under different circumstances.

Q – My son while performing writing, he writes for few minutes in between he stops for couple of minutes and again resumes writing, some times he does that very slowly. Why is that or what can be done for that?

A – If your kid is doing the work without any issues, it is normal only. Over time, the breaks will decrease.

Q – If one cannot train a child through cognition or emotion, and the child can only be conditioned through behaviour, can he be sent to army where routine works like march past etc… happens ?

A – In which case he would not have the cognition to know whom to shoot 🙂

Q – Few therapists say that give Speech therapy before when child crosses 8 years of age, beyond which speech therapy will not work. Is it impossible to train the children after that time period, is there an age limit for training the children through the cognition, emotion or behaviour ?

A – There is no age limit to train a person. The therapists are referring to an out dated law. 0-6 years is a Neuron functional connection period. There are kids who spoke after 8 years of age. As per the law (claimed by therapists), by 6 years of age everything should happen, if a kid does not speak by 6 years of age, they should not speak even when he/she reaches 8 years or age, that is the law, right ! This proves that law is incorrect.
When we touch the fire, our fingers get burn right, this will happen even if we are at 5 years of age, or even when we turn 60 years old. Same way, at any age, changes can happen to the brain.
Neuron in brain acts like Crane, it will wait for the fish to be fed to him, until then it will wait. Everyone’s intelligence is growing day by day right, it tells us that our development does not stop at any particular age limit. Neuro-plasticity happens all the time.
The only difference is the intensity of stimulation, which will vary for a 3 year old and 8 year old, there is no difference on the process.

Q – If we train our kids using ABA therapy, then their behaviour will turn out to be robotic according to your explanation, is that correct ?

A – YES, ABA approaches the brain through behaviour. You give a snack to the child and make him say a word. His intelligence or thinking did not make him speak that word, it is the snack which made him to speak. Like snack, the child would require different kinds of reinforcement or reward to perform, at the same time, when the reward is not there or reward is stopped, it will cause issues at a different level. We are breaking the concept of SELF here, the child will not decide what he should be doing, it will be decided by the. ABA will create a stimulus and response, we are humans and we are not animals. You can use ABA approach for training them on daily routine activities, as it does not involve any thinking process.
Q – For what aspects we should reward our child.

A – Normal behaviour like toilet training, routines etc. for these things no rewards. If you began rewarding on all these aspects, then kid will perform it only when there is a reward.
If you want to condition a behaviour, there is a rule. On a particular time, make the kid to perform the behaviour, like if you made the kid to so something today at 1 pm, you should make the kid to do the same thing next day 1 pm as well, the child will process it as the day progresses. If you do not do this consistently, you will not find the kid to be co-operative.

Q – What happens when the kid does not understand taste, how to teach them taste?

A – This is an issue with sensory integration, you should expose the child through different tastes using sensory integration.

Q – You want to teach a new concept to a child through differentiation, which means you are teaching more than one concept at a time, will it not confuse the child, who is learning it for the first time.

A – No it will not. My objective was to teach apple, whereas through differentiation i taught orange as well. My brain will understand apple as apple only if i see a fruit other than apple, so for that i have to show another fruit for differentiation which is not for causing confusion, which is for better understanding. For example, how will you say something is tall, only when you what is short you can say that some thing is tall or not. Brain will always think logically, hence we have to provide logical way of understanding to the brain, if you do not feed the brain properly, it will take it up to the memory. When the information sits in memory, the child will keep humming those words all the time themselves. You can find it in most of the kids, that whatever you taught them will be mumbled by them all the time, like ba ba balck sheep rhymes or anything for that matter, which is self talking. If my brain gets the reasoning, self talk will not be there, for which you need to use this formula.
When you expose your children with more differences, your kid will have better understanding, if you kid has better understanding he will have better thinking, better thinking will make him lead an independent life. Our objective of providing training to the kid is to make the child independent.

Q – Child is able to select among the options provided during eating or other activities, but when it comes to school they are not doing the expected. Why is that happening?

A – Children does not like school, because they have very less differences. The uniform, classroom, teacher, routines does not interest them, they see no purpose in performing it.
For example, lets say that i ask you to climb a ladder up and down, on a daily basis for no reason, will you do it? May be once or twice, you shall do it, but you will not do it forever, when i do not give you a purpose or reason for doing the same. But now imagine, you are working in a shoe shop or book shop and your job is to climb the ladder daily, now it has a purpose, you will do it on a daily basis. Similarly, if your brain knows the purpose it will do it, if your brain does not know the purpose, it will refuse it.
From a kids perspective, he does not know why he is made to do all these things at this age, because his brain does not understands the purpose of schooling, so it begins refusing.
Q – Child refuses to write in school, but listens to everything else that is taught at the school. When writing is forced on her, she refuses to go to school. How to make her understand?

A – we have to check the reason behind the dislike of writing habit first. Is there a problem in writing, was there any fine motor skills issue present or not, etc ……If we find a pattern, we can fix that.

Q – When we teach through differentiation on objects like fruits or shapes, kids are able to understand it, but when it comes to alphabets, they are not understanding it easily why is that ?

A – When you teach Apple it has a meaning because it is an fruit, that can be felt and tasted. Alphabets are symbols, which has no meaning to it.When you are training a kid on something he does not understand, it will sit in his memory. Symbols are stored in a different place on the brain. Some kids would keep saying the alphabets all the time or keep writing the alphabets all the time. It is because Symbols are stored in Left hemisphere and meaning of symbols are in Right Hemisphere. If there right and left hemisphere is not connected it will never know what the symbols mean …
When you are teaching symbols to a child who does not understand it, it may be complex skill for him. You should always start from known to Unknown and move from Simple to Complex.

Q – How can you say that kid is performing an action without no reason, from kids perspective there may be a reason for doing it, which we may not know ?

A – Parent have an example, that his son likes to touch the elbow of his dad, which can be a sensory or stimulation or behavioural problem. May be he likes the touch, textures, pressure, etc. Just like coffee, tea, drugs, smoking, these are pleasure forms for the child. For your child feeling the elbow is a pleasure form,which is an obsession. To break it, we can taken antecedent action (prevent before it happens), by covering your elbow, but it would stop him from doing it on you, he would do it on some body else because the stimulation is still required for your kid inside his body, which is not being addressed. Whatever is the opposite texture to your elbow, keep 10 different varieties of it and make your child feel it. This is how neuron works, by default, one particular neuron is stimulated and seeking for a particular pleasure, if you stimulate another aspect then another neuron will begin to stimulate, they will establish a network and the obsession will be broken.

Q – A child laughs after thinking by himself

A – Leave it if the laughter is after a thought process, if the child laughs without reason, then we can treat it as a behaviour issue. We have to investigate on the reason behind laughter like what was his food intake etc. is he eating more salt / sodium, etc.

Q – Child seeking threads now a days, earlier he started with papers, where he tears the papers.

A – This is a stimulation. If he is looking at the paper instead of flapping it, then he is moving to different textures. Now he is engaged with threads, as his issue tuned to much finer objects. His issue is with Vision now, which is related to movement. You have to work on movement, you need to work on slow movements. we have to work on the root of the issue.
The basic law of the brain is, we have to work on the senses. In the dark room, take normal torch light, don’t use infra red lights etc. move the torch lights in a slow manner. law of brain in the dark room is to follow the light, you should move the torch light slowly in different direction. Initially he will not see it, as he seeks faster movements, but if you do this persistently, it will subsidize.

Q – Child makes noises by banging objects on the vessels, he seeks the noises made from different vessels. What could be the reason?

A – We have to look if he is seeking for any specific sounds or not, in which case it will be auditory issue. There might be obsession on that sound.

Q – How to make differentiation using Sounds ?

A – Do not use mobile phones for producing different sounds, instead, take vessels having different textures, like vessels, tumblers, bowels, etc. keep minimum 10 different textures. The sounds would be like tang, tank, tap, tip, tee, with no specific pattern, you should not use rhythmic sounds, it should be unorganized. Don’t keep two similar vessels next to each other, it should be distinct. When different stimulation are tried, you will reach the neuron that is opposite to the current neuron, once that is activated, network would be established.

Q – Child keeps his ears on his ears

A – If they are closing it half, then they are hearing a peculiar sound. We need to find that sound and keep variation of it. This is called obsession. It will not get fixed immediately. the default neuron in that sense is currently working , only if you do regularly it will break out.

Q – Child keeps hands on ears for particular sounds like when ambulance crosses etc.

A – He asked the parent what were the environment when the child 0-2 years old, for which parent responded they were staying in independent house mostly in a quite environment. We have to see the problem of a child from the root. Most of the issues that happen to our child happen between 0-2 years. Whatever development a brain should have had by 2 years of age, if we began giving that to the child, the brain will get processed. One of the important aspect during that age span is establishing network in the brain. Sensory integration and different stimulation’s will create the network. When network is established, obsession will be broken. You have to make the child sit in a room and give different sounds, so that adaptation forms.

Q – A Child has a sensory seeking for a particular thing, hence the therapists are giving it to him as he is seeking that. Is that right?

A – Assume that i like to drink tea very much, you gave me a tea in the morning and one in the afternoon, i drank. You thought that i like tea very much and give me 10 cups of tea a day, what will i do, i will also drink 10 cups of tea every day. You like jewellery, your husband bought you jewellery, would you seek for more jewellery or not ? seeking will only increase if we accommodate it.
Suddenly you stopped giving me tea, what will i do, i will go in search of tea shop. When a kid has seeking, it will always ask for more, the problem will also grow in to other areas.
We are used to eating idly, dosa etc. as breakfast, suddenly you get a job which involves travelling to different locations acroos the nation for next 2 years. So you had vada pav when you were in mumbai and you had poha when you were at Nagpur for breakfast, even though you were conditioned to eat idly, due to non-availability you ate what is available. When you finally return to your home town after 2 years, you will eat anything that is being served to you. Differentiation will break the problem. When you are having sensory seeking , the neuron which is active will keep attracting other neurons to it.

Q – How to train a child in thinking, who is not going to understand the same?

A – In the case you should simplify it, move from simple to complex, and known to unknown.

Q – Can food or Medicine promote thinking in a child?

A – Can you take a pill which will help you to think? Food or medicine in a organic component, which creates changes in the chemicals present in the body. When a pill cannot bring thinking to you, it will not happen to a child. If may help, but there is no link between thinking and behaviour.

• Medicine is an organic component
• Cognition/Learning is an thinking component
• Behaviour is an condition component
• Emotion is an aggressive component.

Q – Child makes sounds like humming, etc, Why is that?

A – When you use over academics, humming will happen, like rhymes. Self talk is also the same. The three important things are 1) Reasoning 2) Logic and 3) Need. If none of these are present in an activity or learning, there is no point in doing it.

Q – Child performs toe walking, he walks normally during activity in different pathways for sensory input but after which when he walks in normal surface he does toe walking. Why is that ?

A – Toe walking is an indication that the child is communicating an issue to us. Toe walking happens because, when they keep their bare foot on the surface the neurons give them the feeling of tickling sensation, due to that they will not keep it fully rested on the surface.
If you keep doing it regularly on the different textures, the foot will be placed on flat surface as well. You have to work on the different textures in the morning and evening, the foot will be placed in a flat manner sooner. Even for a CP child, the same practice holds good. If the child cannot walk on sensor path, you can make the kid sit and provide the pressure of different textures to his foot.

Q – Child before sleeps bangs his head in the pillow for 10 mins, what needs to be done?

A – If it is not harmful, leave it. Some kid has a pattern before going to sleep, this may be the one for your kid. He is doing that whenever he is feeling sleepy right, try holding him and make him sleep. Keep him way from the pillows as they are looking for comfort.
This is a sense related issue. It is a texture related sense, you have to make him walk in different textures. Whatever is there in the brain, the same thing is available inside the foot as well. So when you work on the foot it will bring the changes to the brain.

Q – When working on the differentiation for the child, should we need to avoid / ignore their seeking needs or not ?

A – When kids seeking needs are not met, it will cause anger issues to the child. When you are cutting down their pleasure, it forms aggression in them. Pleasure is related to emotion, when you touch it aggression is formed. In that case you have to give them a time table, like this it is the time to play. Please keep working on the sensory, it will automatically fade out.

Q – How to train the kid in putting clothes in a laundry bag. He does not able to distinguish between the good and bad ones?

A – Learning priority for the kid should be there in order to understand. For example if you teach like a cloth is wet then it needs wash , so it needs to be put under a separate bin that will be picked up for washing. When the cloth is dry, it is a good one which should be kept in a separate place that needs to be folded aside. Another parent asked will the child understand our explanation …? They will understand most of the time, if not you perform it in front of them, they will learn from your action.

Q – Can we do de-worming to our kids ?

A – You can do it naturally or through medicines, if there are parasites in the stomach. Suggested duration is like once in 6 months. It is not mandatory to be taken once in 6 months, only when there is a reason to believe that kid has encountered with parasites.

Q – Child does head banging, it reached to an aggressive level which is beyond control ? How am i supposed to show differentiation is bringing the head banging down for my child ?

A – When there is no reason behind the head banging it is due to stimulation. It is a pain kind of stimulation. Child has some pain related issue, so to keep bringing the pain back to its body, in order to feel the pain. Please check if the banging is increases are decreases during gut related issues or not. It is related to sensory. Since it is at the point of obsession, we have to work on the differentiation on all five senses. Tactile, Visual, Auditory, Taste , Smell you have to show difference in all these senses. In visual differentiation, do not show different colors, you should show different movements. Through senses neurons will form the network, once the network is established these behaviours will fade away.

He gave another example from his experience,
There was a child who did head banging, we made him wear tight fitted clothing, which made the child to stop head banging. Like if is wears XL sized clothing, we made him wear L sized clothes. How did we find that?
We were unable to stop the child from banging his head constantly, if we try to hold his hands, he tries to hurt himself through other means. But the surprising part was that, even with all that struggle in preventing him from head banging, the child comes to me constantly. Me as a therapist is cutting down his pleasure, but still he is approaching me , instead of avoiding me. He was seeking something in me. When i tried to prevent him from banging his head, i held him tightly with my grip, which the kid liked, giving tight compression relaxes the child. So we made him wear tight dresses which made him to drop that behaviour. Once it is conditioned, the need of wearing tight clothing was also stopped. To find this it took 6 months for that child.
When headbanging happens with no reason it is a self stimulus. When it happens with a reason, then it is an attention seeking behaviour, for which you should ignore it totally.

Conclusion:

Session was formally closed by another special parent Deepa, which allowed parents to leave if they wanted to, however most of them stayed back for clarifying their doubts from Krishnamurthy. She thanked krishnamurthy, siluvai raja and director of LIBA. Also thanked parents for their patience and dedication for staying back for the entire session. Vinayak recited couple of thirukural and gave a momento to Krishnamurthy. He thanked everyone and mentioned that he is available for helping the parents and has no intentions to travel anywhere outside the nation.
Participants gave an energetic applause at the end, followed by a group selfie.

My personal feedback:

Questions from parents could have been reserved for later i.e. once the session content is covered, i felt lot of deviations from the topic, the flow got interrupted, extremely difficult for me to take notes as well:), Also for parents who wanted to leave early could have left after the session content etc .
From timing perspective, there was a change in communication at the last moment, initially it was 3 pm to 7 pm, later it got shifted to 3:30 pm, not many noticed the change. The intention of the session is to pass on the message to all the parents, hence they had to wait till all the parents arrived at the venue, which is good, but at the same time, no parent should be penalized for making arrangements well in advance for their child and made in time for the session at 3 or 3:30 pm, and was made to wait for an hour or so. VOICE should think of ways in which they could engage parents in a productive manner who came early or on time, so that the habit will catch on to other parents in Future. Perhaps show video of activities or achievements performed by the children of VOICE parents, or smaller clips covering key message shared by professionals in earlier sessions, success stories of parents, a slide show with details of members of voice like pic, name, location of the parent/child together etc, as they were equipped with projectors.
Krishnamurthy has never compromised on the quality of his content or disappointed parents when it comes to answering questions, he did his best till every parent got satisfied. He left the venue only after every parent who attended the session left. In the session he spoke about the details which parents are ignoring now a days and asked us to focus on the basics. He made everyone understand the concept and logic through different examples. Even though his entire content is less than one page, he took the time to kick start the thinking process in us, which made the session lengthy.
Krishnamurthy should be utilized by the parents, for understanding about their children and seek guidance on the direction that needs to be taken from thereon. I have to say, it was my pleasure picking up and dropping him off at his residence for the session, the conversation we had during the drive by itself can be another session. Due to his in depth knowledge, for every question his answers are always towards fixing the root cause and not merely arresting the symptoms. His explanations are something you cannot find in a book, its not copy paste material which he shares, its all out of his own personal experiences and research. (If i were to diagnose krishnamurthy, he is highly conditioned in seeking parents questions and responds in length, with no return of benefit to him. So no meaning to his activity, so he is highly stimulated Individual.)

There were few questions by parents at the end, which i could not hear clearly as people began to chat with each other, so few details were left behind.
Must say that everything went according to Ranjani’s plan, she should be happy. Also had a chance to meet parents with whom i have only interacted in Whatsapp. I felt she was anxious at the end, as the regular camera man who records the session was not present, hence she gave a change to a younger chap, worried as to how the recording is going to reflect.

Parents can contact Ranjani, if you want to be part of the VOICE Parents support group – +91 99415 33150
For appointments with Krishnamurthy, you can contact him for appointments – +91 98404 85111
These two people are extremely busy, hence you will not find quick response for calls made to them, i suggest to sent them a message through whats-app in a clear manner, so that they would respond at their leisure.

Regards,
Saranya and karthik
karthiksaranyaparents@gmail.com