The Kinesthetic Intelligence
The name of the child I am observing has been changed for respect of privacy.
The child I am observing appears to be what Howard Gardner calls a “bodily kinesthetic” type of intelligence according the description in his theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI). He likes to run, climb, body slam, and touch
everything he can. This will appear over and over in his actions. The teacher’s
think he is possibly Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Although
he performs well in many areas, this predominant display of
intelligence type that he exudes, appears to be a dilemma only in his skills
with obedience to authority and controlled group settings. He
interacts on a daily basis with children, and is socially adaptive in that
area. He shares well. It is only with adults that he doesn’t seem to
conform. Could it merely be a lack of development in the child’s first
stage of life, and the control of the environment that a child must feel, taste,
hear and see the world around him to learn about it. I wanted to
observe this child to see if there was anything to learn that could aide a
teacher in handling a tactile mind with rebellion to authority, such as
this child displays, keeping in mind that maybe what science so readily calls ADHD is truly a developmental issue that wasn’t conquered in earlier stages of growth. I can only hope that an unbiased observation might be revelatory in this
regard.
It is 9:00 AM when I start observing. He is a young 4 year old, his
birthday being in late November. Many of the other children have already
turned five or are near to becoming 5. Several children have jars of bubbles and Andrew is one of them. He is playing with another boy. “I got it. I got it,” he says as he is running after blown bubbles to catch them. Then he says, “Dumb, dumb, ka, ka.” He runs over to a group of children standing around the teacher. He gives his bottle to another girl waiting and then wants bubbles, but doesn’t try to take them back from her. He looks to the teacher and says he wants bubbles. This appears to be a well-defined moment of Piaget’s symbolic thinking for this age group. Andrew gave his bubbles away without
reasoning that he wouldn’t have any if he did such an act. The only reason
this is obvious beyond a simple act of sharing was his reaction right after
the fact. His hands were now empty of bubbles and he acquired a
surprised look on his face and immediately asked the teacher for
bubbles.His action was without reason of consequence, that in giving
away he would be without. To continue with the observation, the teacher
tells him he will have to wait. He waits patiently. He tries to catch the
bubbles the girl is blowing and says to her, “Do you like to paint? They
are big bubbles.” It is interesting to note in his comment that, again, he
got this look on his face after saying ‘paint,’ which wasn’t relative to the moment, before throwing in a second relative sentence in after the look.
Finally he gets another jar of bubbles. He blows them and then tries to
kick them, but runs out of bubbles and comes to tell me. I tell him to ask
Miss Diana, and he goes to her and asks.
When he returned, I was leaning over to ask him a question with my book
in my arms and he asks me if I am cold. I asked him if he thought I was
cold because I had a sweater on and my arms folded. He said, yes. I then
asked him if he knew what bubbles were made of. He said, “a cup.” Then
he laughed and said, “I was making a bubble and it went up my nose.”
He then blew bubbles into the library house and the girls inside got mad.
He blew them two more times and one girl yelled very loudly, “Nooooo.”
He stopped and then began playing with 2 boys. One had bubbles. He told
them to kick the bubbles.
He is now playing alone again and attempting to catch the blown bubbles
back onto the blower. Another boy comes and he says to him, “Why
don’t we blow them.” He then caught one on the blower and touched it
to his nose. It got in his mouth and he spit on the ground. He then blew
bubbles on the boy who didn’t have any, then tries to stomp on the
bubbles as they fall to the ground. The bubbles stopped blowing and he
came toward me. We checked it, but it was fine. He then tried to placed
the caught bubbles on my pants. No harm done. He then told me he was going
to put it on his nose. He turned and went into the library. I went in there
also. Another boy told me I couldn’t be in there. He said my pillow was
the TV and I was sitting on it and broke it. The child I was observing told me I had to buy a new one and left. He went off alone. He tried to put a bubble in another boy’s ear. The boy got mad and told the teacher. The teacher said to go tell him that wasn’t cool. The boy did and the boy I was observing said, “It was cool.” They argued and the teacher took his bubbles away.
He became very upset. He threw the bottle and stomped his feet and
cried. She picked him up and consoled him. She explained it could have
gotten in the other boy’s eyes. But, he cried really hard and she had to tell him to take a deep breath. Then she gave him his bubbles back. She asked him if he knew how to blow bubbles. He said, “I blew some bubbles.” He went
running off with his bubbles and followed a bubble up to the top of some
block shelves. Another teacher told him to get down. He sang Humpty
Dumpty as he came down. But then forgot the rest of the words and
looked at me for help. I sang the song and he sang it with me. His facial
expression changed as we sang the words with a seeming questioning ‘in
thought’ type look. He climbed the shelf again and I told him to come
down, that I didn’t want him to break. He then told me he wasn’t an egg.
(Is this Piaget’s logical thinking or linguistic/symbolic association? He
knew he was a boy and not an egg?)
Another boy was playing at the water fountain and water was running
down the sidewalk and Andrew said, “Pee pee coming out.” Then opened
his bubble bottle and said, “Mama mia, papa via.” It is here I take note of
Erikson’s second stage of growth possibly having been deterred. The
article, “Analyzing Behavior to Promote self-Control,” suggests that
problems can arise when adults overact to fecal matter. Andrew likes to
say ka, ka, and pee, pee. These are some younger childhood behaviours
that he seems to still struggle with, once again. But, is it ADHD?
to be continued…
