In this article you are going to read about a term coined by the author - “neuro-adept parenting”. Reading the first sentence may have made you feel a bit overwhelmed as your parental responsibilities are already significant without adding a new, somewhat nebulous one called neuro-adept parenting.  Be it known this feeling is normal.

It is difficult enough trying to balance parenting responsibilities with making the mortgage payment, putting food on the table and keeping up with utility bills etc. In addition, parents today are often intimately involved in helping children be successful in their education. So, it is not surprising when you read you needed to now become a neuro-adept parent that your overload barometer began to rise.  But, before you let yourself get overwhelmed, slow down and read through this article to learn how you can become a neuro-adept parent, by just thinking about what you are already doing in a little different way.

To begin to understand what being a neuro-adept parent is all about, read through the list of criteria below. A neuro-adept parent knows their child’s brain:

• Is a complex organ that scientific technology is starting to understand at a deeper level

• Consists of many different parts that work together to make meaning of the world

• Is pre-wired – child is born with - a maximal capacity (Intelligence – IQ – multiple intelligences)

• Needs appropriate nutrition to reach it maximal potential

• Needs appropriate sleep in order to work efficiently

• Needs ongoing developmentally appropriate stimulation

• Learns most effectively when information is provided in the child’s preferred learning or thinking style

• Has an individual threshold for stress that when breached, decreases the potential for learning

• May not be working adequately when learning is difficult or below average

You are a neuro-adept parent aren’t you? You know something about each of these criteria don’t you?  Knowing about them is a good start.  You are probably doing even more than you think when it comes to applying neuro-adept parenting skills.  In order to clarify what the application of these criteria might look like for a parent, the rest of this article will briefly discuss what neuro-adept parents are doing.

1. Neuro-adept parents know their child’s brain is complex and that technology is starting to understand the brain at a deeper level.  This particular neuro-adept parenting skill is probably most applicable to parents who have a child with learning difficulties – not due to decreased intellectual potential.  The most common neuro-learning difficulty seen in schools is dyslexia or an inability to read effectively. 

Neuroscience research has shown, when comparing the brains of children with reading challenges with the brains of normal readers, that the activity in the brains of the children with reading issues is different than the activity of the brains of children who read normally.

This information has led education researchers to develop new instructional strategies. There has been research that shows the brains of children with dyslexic can be rewired by intensive remediation training and they are able to function more similarly to the brains of normal readers. The pictures below, which were included in an article by Lisa Trei in the Stanford Report, February 2003, show these differences.