For children to be able to learn how to read and write without problems a certain maturity of their brain and their sensory and motor abilities is necessary. Both vision, hearing, fine and gross motor abilities must have matured sufficiently. No sensible pedagogue tries to teach a newborn baby how to read and write.

In children who have problems to learn how to read and write there are defects of vision, hearing and/or motor abilities. But there is also insufficient maturity of the brain.

Academic dyslexia. Researchers nowadays define dyslexia or specific reading and writing disability as deficiency of the phonological system.

Such deficiency is characterized by a reduced ability to perceive and recognize the sounds that make up language and to “ translate “ these sounds into letters and letters into sounds. Children with phonological problems may have difficulties distinguishing between sounds that are similar. Their articulation is often poor and they have deficient short term memory of sounds. Characteristic for persons with dyslexia is that their spelling problems remain even when their reading ability improves substantially.

Almost half the children with reading disabilities have visual problems. These may be problems of focusing the eyes on one point (convergence) or following the text (tracking). Some children have not developed eye dominance and involuntary change of dominant eye while reading causes the text to jump. These children are usually farsighted. They often get tired and loose concentration after having read for a while and their eyes may smart and itch. Since the reading process is not automatic it demands their full attention, preventing them from understanding what they have read.

In order to write without problems the child must have developed the fine motor ability of his hand and be able to hold the pen in a correct grasp and easily cross the midline of his body. In order to fashion the letters automatically the child must have developed his kinaesthetic sense of arms and hands. Otherwise the fashioning of the letters will demand his whole attention and the child will have problems to think of what to write

Gross motor ability is important for the development of speech and language. Children with severe motor handicaps, i. e. cerebral palsy, in many cases never learn to speak.

All the abilities, necessary for reading and writing are controlled from different centres of the brain, especially the neocortex. Together these centres constitute the neurological network of reading. In order to learn how to read and write without problem all this network must function properly. When one or more of these abilities is not sufficiently developed, the centres of the brain that control these abilities do not function properly either. This hampers the ability of the brain to direct the neurological network of the reading process in a proper way.

Research has shown that the cerebellum is vital for speech. From a nerve centre in the right hemisphere of the cerebellum there is an important nerve connection to areas of the left frontal lobe, that are essential for speech development. In some children with speech problems, i.e. autism, this centre in the cerebellum is smaller than usual.

Academic research has devoted considerable effort to study the symptoms of dyslexia and to put forward hypotheses about the causes of dyslexia.

Many studies on how different educational methods affect (or rather do not affect) reading and writing disability have also been done. On the other hand there has been no interest in studying those methods that for many years have been used successfully to help children with reading and writing disability.

22 Swedish dyslexia researchers have endorsed a report according to which no research has shown any connection between motor problems and reading ability. These researchers allege that the reason why teachers use motor training in dyslexia is that they are ignorant and do not know how to teach children how to read and write.

However it is false to say that no scientific research has shown a connection between reading disability and motor problems. There is a lot of research that has demonstrated how motor exercises improve reading and writing ability.

British psychologist , Peter Blythe has helped children with dyslexia for more than twenty years by integrating their primitive reflexes. He has developed exercises that children can do to integrate different primitive reflexes.

An article in the British medical magazine, The Lancet, reports a study on children with dyslexia who were helped by integrating the asymmetric tonic neck reflex (ATNR) with motor exercises. It turned out that these children significantly improved their ability to read compared to an equivalent control group who did not get such help and whose reflexes remained unchanged.

Primitive reflexes are automatic stereotyped movement patterns that are outside voluntary control and direct the movements of the foetus and of the infant during the first months of life. Before an infant learns to walk it spends a lot of its time making rhythmical baby movements according to inborn directions. These movements help the infant to integrate its primitive reflexes and the baby must learn to master a considerable amount of movement patterns before it is ready to crawl or walk.

At the age of three the primitive reflexes should be fully integrated and no longer interfere with movements.

In some children , a greater or smaller amount of primitive reflexes remain active, which can be caused by the children having omitted some of these rhythmic baby movements or not having done them sufficiently.

Non integrated primitive reflexes can cause problems with fine and gross motor skill, with vision, hearing and/or articulation and language.

Several primitive reflexes are important for reading and writing, among others the asymmetric tonic neck reflex (ATNR), the symmetric tonic neck reflex (STNR), the grasp reflex and the palmomental reflex.

Before the asymmetric tonic neck reflex (ATNR) is integrated, the child will have problems to cross the midline of the body with the hands or the eyes. This may cause reading problems because the eyes may have problems following the written line from left to right. There may also be problems with binocular vision. There will also be insufficient connections between the two hemispheres of the brain obstructing the cooperation between the hemispheres which is essential for the reading process.

Another reflex that is usually not integrated in children with reading disability is the symmetric tonic neck reflex (STNR). This reflex is active in children who have never crawled. An active STNR may cause problems with accommodation, i.e. the ability to look alternately at a far and near distance. Children with this problem often become far sighted and must strain their eyes when they read and therefore they easily tire.

In reading and writing disability the grasp reflex and the palmomental reflex are often active. These are reflexes of the hands and if they are not integrated there will be problems with fine motor skill and writing. If the grasp reflex is not integrated the child may have problems holding the pen correctly and automatizing writing. These children may press the pen hard and usually have poor handwriting. An active palmomental reflex may also cause poor fine motor skill and bad handwriting but may also obstruct articulation. Many children in whom this reflex is active have problems articulating clearly, which may contribute to their phonological difficulties.

The rhythmical movements infants do before they learn to walk are important not only for the integration of primitive reflexes but also for the maturing of the brain. Rhythmic movement training on the basis of these rhythmical baby movements has been developed by a Swedish lady, Kerstin Linde.

The rhythmic exercises used in this training have several effects that are important for reading and writing. They stimulate the nerve nets and myelinization of the nerve fibres and develop the neural network of reading of the neocortex. The rhythmical exercises help to integrate primitive reflexes that are important for reading and writing, like the symmetric tonic neck reflex , the grasp reflex and the palmomental reflex.

It is also very important that the rhythmical exercises stimulate the cerebellum and speech centres in the left frontal lobe. When these centres are stimulated by rhythmic exercises speech improves as can be seen in the case of autistic and severely handicapped children.

In children with visual problems such as squint or double vision such problems usually decrease or disappear after rhythmic training. There are probably several mechanisms for that, one being the integration of primitive reflexes that affect vision.

Here are two examples of how rhythmic movement training affects speech, motor abilities and vision.

Lisa was four when she started rhythmic movement training with Kerstin Linde. She had cerebral palsy and could not sit without being supported. She could not do anything with her hands and held her arms bent and fists clenched all the time. She could say single words but her articulation was such that only her parents understood what she said. She had a marked squint of her right eye. Already a few weeks after she started the training she was able to totally relax her arms and hands. Her fine motor ability improved and she started drawing and painting. She started to talk very much in sentences with several words. After six weeks of training her squint had improved and was almost gone after a year. After four months she was able tell long stories and dreams in a somewhat inarticulate but fully comprehensible way.

Maria was twelve when she started rhythmic movement training and reflex integration with Harald Blomberg. She had marked gross and fine motor problems and had not learnt to read. She walked with her hips heavily rotated inwards and tripped over her feet when she tried to run. Her back was bent and her arms were weak. Her articulation was poor. She had problems with her eye movements and binocular vision and had been prescribed reading glasses. Several primitive reflexes were active, among others the asymmetric and symmetric neck reflex.

After three months of rhythmic training she started to read and after a year she read quite well. Her eye movements had improved and she had no more problems with binocular vision and she did no more need her reading glasses. Her articulation had improved a lot. After half a year of training she learnt to run. She started to play basket ball and became a good player.

All children with reading and writing disability do not have conspicuous motor problems. In a Swedish study only about 25 percent of children with reading disability had motor problems primarily concerning fine motor ability, speed and coordination.

In this and similar studies, the presence of active primitive reflexes had not been checked. However, experience from helping children with reading and writing disability shows that also children without marked motor problems have active primitive reflexes and that rhythmic movement training and reflex integration improves their reading and writing ability.

Lars Eric Berg has reported how a group of children with reading problems have been helped by rhythmic movement training and reflex integration.

In a Swedish school there were problems a few months before the students were to move to form four. Nine of the students were so poor readers that their teacher estimated that the school needed to employ a teacher half time for remedial teaching. The remedial teacher tested grade two and the result showed that their reading was so poor that they needed remedial teaching at that level.

Instead of hiring a half time teacher it was decided to try rhythmic movement training and reflex integration. In February the group started reflex and rhythmic movement training once a week. Lars-Eric Berg tested each student and gave them individual training programs. The remedial teacher was present and learnt how to work with motor training during her lectures. The parents were instructed to help their children with rhythmic exercises every day. No additional remedial education of reading was started.

After three months the remedial teacher evaluated the reading ability of the children. All students except one were normal readers for form three. In three months the group had made up for one year of reading development only by motor training.

The parents also reported many positive side effects of the training. Motor ability of some of the boys had improved to such a degree that they now qualified to play in the football team where they rarely had been admitted before.

One girl who used to keep to herself and had no pals started to invite other children home and joined the scouts.

Harald Blomberg , M.D., psychiatry specialist, has more than 15 years experience of helping children with motor problems, attention disorder and learning disability. He teaches classes of rhythmic movement in Sweden and many other countries. His level one class is Rhythmic Movement Training and primitive reflexes, his level two class is Rhythmic movements, reflexes and emotions.

In the beginning of 2006 a new class in English will be introduced: Rhythmic Movement Training, Primitive Reflexes and Dyslexia.

In this class Harald Blomberg will explain how our ability to read and write depends on various factors such as our vision, our ability to recognize the sounds of the language and our motor ability.

Participants learn how to test the primitive reflexes and to recognize other kinds of motor disability that affect reading and writing and how to use rhythmic exercises and reflex integration to deal with such problems.

The significance of vision in dyslexia and methods of testing vision as well as exercises to remedy visual problems are especially emphasized in this course.