Language Impairment Quotes

There was a beauty in the trash of the alleys which I had never noticed before; my vision seemed sharpened, rather than impaired. As I walked along it seemed to me that the flattened beer cans and papers and weeds and junk mail had been arranged by the wind into patterns; these patterns, when I scrutinized them, lay distributed so as to comprise a visual language.

I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they're communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they're actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person's body language. That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that's like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we're having a conversation. Singular. We're paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been booing on for the last several thousand years? I didn't even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. ... So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it's tempting to thing to yourself, 'The man can't possibly be that stupid!' But yes. Yes, he can. Our innate strengths just aren't the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we're lost and need to figure out how to get where we're going. That's how impaired we are. I'm telling you, we have only the one conversation. Maybe some kind of relationship veteran like Michael Carpenter can do two, but that's pushing the envelope. Five simultaneous conversations? Five? Shah. That just isn't going to happen. At least, not for me.

Neurology’s favourite word is ‘deficit’, denoting an impairment or incapacity of neurological function: loss of speech, loss of language, loss of memory, loss of vision, loss of dexterity, loss of identity and myriad other lacks and losses of specific functions (or faculties).

To express want is to own the desire, to stand in your own reality. The easier alternative is the language of impairment: “I can’t come because I’m run down, overworked, under the gun, tired, sick, or not up to it.” The underlying message is, “I cannot attend because I am impaired,” rather than the more honest and self-respecting response: “I choose to not attend because I prefer the other option.

Ecologically considered, it is not primarily our verbal statements that are "true" or "false," but rather the kind of relations that we sustain with the rest of nature. A human community that lives in a mutually beneficial relation with the surrounding earth is a community, we might say, that lives in truth. The ways of speaking common to that community—the claims and beliefs that enable such reciprocity to perpetuate itself—are, in this important sense, true. They are in accord with a right relation between these people and their world. Statements and beliefs, meanwhile, that foster violence toward the land, ways of speaking that enable the impairment or ruination of the surrounding field of beings, can be described as false ways of speaking—ways that encourage an unsustainable relation with the encompassing earth. A civilization that relentlessly destroys the living land it inhabits is not well acquainted with truth, regardless of how many supported facts it has amassed regarding the calculable properties of its world.

Autism, dyslexia, language delay, language impairment, learning disability, left-handedness, major depressions, bipolar illness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sexual orientation, and many other conditions run in families, are more concordant in identical than in fraternal twins,

Autism, dyslexia, language delay, language impairment, learning disability, left-handedness, major depressions, bipolar illness, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sexual orientation, and many other conditions run in families, are more concordant in identical than in fraternal twins, are better predicted by people’s biological relatives than by their adoptive relatives, and are poorly predicted by any measurable feature of the environment.

Brain development studies have shown that a traumatized brain is impaired in its ability to focus on language or verbal content. Instead, it tends to focus on processing nonverbal danger cues—body movements, facial expressions, and tone of voice—as it searches for information about danger and threat.

Dr. Murthy confirms the connection between loneliness and our physical health, explaining that loneliness is associated with a greater risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. And at work, he states that loneliness “reduces task performance, limits creativity, and impairs other aspects of executive function such as reasoning and decision making.

To Evelyn our relationship is yellow and blue, but to me it’s a gray place, most of it blacked out, bombed, footage from the film in my head is endless shots of stone and any language heard is utterly foreign, the sound flickering away over new images: blood pouring from automated tellers, women giving birth through their assholes, embryos frozen or scrambled (which is it?), nuclear warheads, billions of dollars, the total destruction of the world, someone gets beaten up, someone else dies, sometimes bloodlessly, more often mostly by rifle shot, assassinations, comas, life played out as a sitcom, a blank canvas that reconfigures itself into a soap opera. It’s an isolation ward that serves only to expose my own severely impaired capacity to feel. I am at its center, out of season, and no one ever asks me for any identification.

During infancy, a child does not distinguish between milk and tenderness, between solid food and love. Without food, a child will starve. Without love, a child will starve emotionally and can become impaired for life. A great deal of research indicates that the emotional foundation of life is laid in the first eighteen months of life, particularly in the mother/child relationship. The “food” for future emotional health is physical touch, kind words, and tender care.

Some parents resist the idea of ADD for fear of seeing their children labeled and categorized. They do not like the idea of pinning a medical diagnosis on a child who, except in certain areas of functioning, seems quite well. Such fears are not baseless. Too often ADD seems no more than a judgment that characterizes a child as a problem student, incapable of normal activity. How people use language is quite revealing. People commonly say that this adult or that child “is ADD.” That, indeed, is labeling, identifying the whole person with an area of weakness or impairment. No one is ADD, and no one should be defined or categorized in terms of it or any other particular problem. Recognizing a child’s ADD should be simply a way of understanding that helping him calls for some knowledgeable and creative approaches, not a judgment that there is anything fundamentally or irretrievably wrong with him. This recognition should enable us to support the child in fullfilling his potential, not to further limit him. That even open-minded people may have difficulty coming to terms with this diagnosis is only to be expected. Our usual mode of thinking about illness (or anything else, for that matter) is not comfortable with ambiguity. A patient either has pneumonia or does not; she either has some illness affecting the mind or does not. There is a popular discomfort with any condition of the mind perceived as “abnormal.” But what if illness is not a separate category, if there is no line of distinction between the “healthy” and the “nonheaithy,” if the “abnormality” is just a greater concentration in an individual of disturbed brain processes found in everyone? Then perhaps there are no fixed, immutable brain disorders, and we could all be vulnerable to mental breakdowns or malfunctions under the pressure of stressful circumstances. We could all go crazy. Maybe we already have.

The right and left hemispheres of our brain show differences in their gross anatomy, many of which are also found in the brains of other animals. In humans, the left hemisphere generally makes a unique contribution to language and to the performance of complex movements. Consequently, damage on this side tends to be accompanied by aphasia (impairment of spoken or written language) and apraxia (impairment of coordinated movement). People usually show a right-ear (left-hemisphere) advantage for words, digits, nonsense syllables, Morse code, difficult rhythms, and the ordering of temporal information, whereas they show a left-ear (right-hemisphere) advantage for melodies, musical chords, environmental sounds, and tones of voice.

People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night. The self-control of morning people is impaired at night; the reverse is true of night people. Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts. The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort. Another way of saying this is that controlling thoughts and behaviors is one of the tasks that System 2 performs.

THE FIVE WAYS OF HIGH INTENSITY SELF-DECEPTION So, since we postulate psychosis as a continuum of self-deception experiences, it is appropriate to distinguish the main channels that the effort of self-deception, when carried out in a superlative way, would use to materialize a) Memory impairment This would be the case of one who remembers more easily successes than their failures at one end of low-intensity self-deception, or who changes his entire biography adopting a false identity at the other end, and through different gradations of self-deception. b) The alteration of the information from the 5 senses. This would be the case of hallucinations. c) Alteration of reasoning and logic. Even being true, the information coming from the memory and the five senses, it is possible to process it so that it reaches conclusions that are away from the premises and thus achieve self-deception. An attenuated example of this would be known "bias" and a stronger then this would be the total distortion of logic and language. d) Mysticism. While respecting the information that comes from the five senses, memory, and without destroying logic or reasoning, self-deception could be carried out in superlative dimensions if you follow the path of mysticism. Here, the mechanism operates like believing in stories that, because they are mystical, take place beyond the perceptible and, therefore, do not contradict the information provided by the five senses. e) Mixed. The fifth way, which will be the most common, will be a mixture of all –or some– of the above, in different proportions. In the famous Schreber case, for example, a mystical-type story is seen, along with certain "bizarre" content in its composition

System 1 has more influence on behavior when System 2 is busy, and it has a sweet tooth. People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations. Memorizing and repeating digits loosens the hold of System 2 on behavior, but of course cognitive load is not the only cause of weakened self-control. A few drinks have the same effect, as does a sleepless night. The self-control of morning people is impaired at night; the reverse is true of night people. Too much concern about how well one is doing in a task sometimes disrupts performance by loading short-term memory with pointless anxious thoughts. The conclusion is straightforward: self-control requires attention and effort. Another way of saying this is that controlling thoughts and behaviors is one of the tasks that System 2 performs.

Atonement, expiation, laundering, prophylaxis, promotion and rehabilitation -- it is difficult to put a name to all the various nuances of this general commiseration which is the product of a profound indifference and is accompanied by a fierce strategy of blackmail, of the political takeover of all these negative passions. It is the `politically correct' in all its effects -- an enterprise of laundering and mental prophylaxis, beginning with the prophylactic treatment of language. Black people, the handicapped, the blind and prostitutes become `people of colour', `the disabled', `the visually impaired', and `sex workers': they have to be laundered like dirty money. Every negative destiny has to be cleaned up by a doctoring even more obscene than what it is trying to hide. Euphemistic language, the struggle against sexual harassment -- all this protective and protectionist masquerade is of the same order as the use of the condom. Its mental use, of course -- that is, the prophylactic use of ideas and concepts. Soon we shall think only when we are sheathed in latex. And the data suit of Virtual Reality already slips on like a condom.

Study Questions Define the terms deaf and hard of hearing. Why is it important to know the age of onset, type, and degree of hearing loss? What is the primary difference between prelingual and postlingual hearing impairments? List the four major types of hearing loss. Describe three different types of audiological evaluations. What are some major areas of development that are usually affected by a hearing impairment? List three major causes of hearing impairment. What issues are central to the debate over manual and oral approaches? Define the concept of a Deaf culture. What is total communication, and how can it be used in the classroom? Describe the bilingual-bicultural approach to educating pupils with hearing impairments. In what two academic areas do students with hearing impairments usually lag behind their classmates? Why is early identification of a hearing impairment critical? Why do professionals assess the language and speech abilities of individuals with hearing impairments? List five indicators of a possible hearing loss in the classroom. What are three indicators in children that may predict success with a cochlear implant? Identify five strategies a classroom teacher can use to promote communicative skills and enhance independence in the transition to adulthood. Describe how to check a hearing aid. How can technology benefit individuals with a hearing impairment?

Etcoff decided to look at a population of people who can’t attend to language: people with aphasia, a language-processing disorder that profoundly impairs the brain’s ability to comprehend words.34

A general ban on corrupt action does not unduly intrude on the President’s responsibility to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” U.S. CONST. ART II, §§ 3.1090 To the contrary, the concept of “faithful execution” connotes the use of power in the interest of the public, not in the office holder’s personal interests. See 1 Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language 763 (1755) (“faithfully” def. 3: “[w]ith strict adherence to duty and allegiance”). And immunizing the President from the generally applicable criminal prohibition against corrupt obstruction of official proceedings would seriously impair Congress’s power to enact laws “to promote objectives within [its] constitutional authority,” Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. at 425—i.e., protecting the integrity of its own proceedings and the proceedings of Article III courts and grand juries.

C18: A child is autistic or has Asperger's syndrome. Should we use one language only with the child? Children diagnosed with a specific autism spectrum disorder have a greater or lesser degree of impairment in language and communication skills, as well as repetitive or restrictive patterns of thought and behaviour, with delays in social and emotional development. Such children use language in restricted ways, expecting much consistency in language and communication, and are less likely to learn through language. However, such children may experience the social and cultural benefits of bilingualism when living in a dual language environment. For example, such children may understand and speak two languages of the local community at their own level. Like many parents of children with language impairment, bilingualism was frequently blamed by teachers and other professionals for the early signs of Asperger's, and a move to monolingualism was frequently regarded as an essential relief from the challenges. There is almost no research on autism and bilingualism or on Asperger's syndrome and bilingualism. However, a study by Susan Rubinyi of her son, who has Asperger's syndrome, provides insights. Someone with the challenge of Asperger's also has gifts and exceptional talents, including in language. Her son, Ben, became bilingual in English and French using the one parent–one language approach (OPOL). Susan Rubinyi sees definite advantages for a child who has challenges with flexibility and understanding the existence of different perspectives. Merely the fact that there are two different ways to describe the same object or concept in each language, enlarges the perception of the possible. Since a bilingual learns culture as well as language, the child sees alternative ways of approaching multiple areas of life (eating, recreation, transportation etc.) (p. 20). She argues that, because of bilingualism, her son's brain had a chance to partly rewire itself even before Asperger's syndrome became obvious. Also, the intense focus of Asperger's meant that Ben absorbed vocabulary at a very fast rate, with almost perfect native speaker intonation. Further Reading: Rubinyi, S. (2006) Natural Genius: The Gifts of Asperger's Syndrome . Philadelphia & London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

It is fair to say that, though the main deficits incurred by damage to the left hemisphere are in the twin important areas of the use of language and of the right hand, the world itself usually remains recognisable, and mainly, though not always wholly, undisturbed. That is because the right hemisphere is functioning as normal. Things are very different when the damage is in the right hemisphere, and the subject is more – or wholly – dependent on the left. When those who care for left hemisphere stroke patients were asked to specify the most important problem encountered, they named difficulty writing or spelling; by contrast, when those who care for right hemisphere stroke patients were asked, it was loss of empathy. Almost half of carers for those with right hemisphere stroke reported as among the most important problems a whole range of cognitive and emotional impairments, as well as alterations to personality. Not one of the carers for left hemisphere stroke sufferers did so.4 For those with right hemisphere damage, they and their world had changed. For those with left hemisphere damage, they and their world were recognisably the same: it was their ability to handle it, to make use of it, that had altered. As we have seen, the foundational difference between the hemispheres lies in the way they attend – and how you attend changes the world. It also changes you, the one who is doing the attending. Since it is of such consummate importance, let’s take a closer look at attention from a hemisphere point of view.

It’s a perspective on story that may also shed light on why you and I and everyone else spend a couple of hours each day concocting tales that we rarely remember and more rarely share. By day I mean night, and the tales are those we produce during REM sleep. Well over a century since Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, there is still no consensus on why we dream. I read Freud’s book for a junior-year high school class called Hygiene (yes, that’s really what it was called), a somewhat bizarre requirement taught by the school’s gym teachers and sports coaches that focused on first aid and common standards of cleanliness. Lacking material to fill an entire semester, the class was padded by mandatory student presentations on topics deemed loosely relevant. I chose sleep and dreams and probably took it all too seriously, reading Freud and spending after-school hours combing through research literature. The wow moment for me, and for the class too, was the work of Michel Jouvet, who in the late 1950s explored the dream world of cats.32 By impairing part of the cat brain (the locus coeruleus, if you like that sort of thing), Jouvet removed a neural block that ordinarily prevents dream thoughts from stimulating bodily action, resulting in sleeping cats who crouched and arched and hissed and pawed, presumably reacting to imaginary predators and prey. If you didn’t know the animals were asleep, you might think they were practicing a feline kata. More recently, studies on rats using more refined neurological probes have shown that their brain patterns when dreaming so closely match those recorded when awake and learning a new maze that researchers can track the progress of the dreaming rat mind as it retraces its earlier steps.33 When cats and rats dream it surely seems they’re rehearsing behaviors relevant to survival. Our common ancestor with cats and rodents lived some seventy or eighty million years ago, so extrapolating a speculative conclusion across species separated by tens of thousands of millennia comes with ample warning labels. But one can imagine that our language-infused minds may produce dreams for a similar purpose: to provide cognitive and emotional workouts that enhance knowledge and exercise intuition—nocturnal sessions on the flight simulator of story. Perhaps that is why in a typical life span we each spend a solid seven years with eyes closed, body mostly paralyzed, consuming our self-authored tales.34 Intrinsically, though, storytelling is not a solitary medium. Storytelling is our most powerful means for inhabiting other minds. And as a deeply social species, the ability to momentarily move into the mind of another may have been essential to our survival and our dominance. This offers a related design rationale for coding story into the human behavioral repertoire—for identifying, that is, the adaptive utility of our storytelling instinct.

Because children of color are much more likely to be exposed to lead at a young age, it is devastating to think about what will happen to an entire generation of Flint children. What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years' time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.

Excessive Talking: You may struggle to control your thoughts; consequently, your language and speech come across as being rude or too loud because of the way you express your thoughts. Others may also interpret this as having impaired social behavior, not following the rules and instructions, or being a rule breaker.

ABUNDANT  (ABU'NDANT)   adj.[abundans, Lat.]1. Plentiful. Good the moreCommunicated, more abundant grows;The author not impair’d, but honour’d more.Par. Lost,b. v.2.

Another fascinating example of esoteric knowledge adopted by the informed to communicate secretly was the use of sign language for the deaf. Unknown to most people today, Renaissance Italian artists had no difficulties working with their hearing-impaired friends and colleagues. Even today, especially in southern Italy, there is a deeply engrained tradition of expressing oneself through nonverbal communication, using hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language in general. Leonardo da Vinci, in his day, encouraged other hearing artists to learn from the expressivity of the deaf.

impaired viewers by supporting broadcasters in the production of subtitled/sign language programs.

Phonological Dyslexia Phonological dyslexia is a type of developmental dyslexia where a person experiences extreme difficulty in reading as a result of phonological impairment. A person with this type of dyslexia finds it hard to manipulate basic sounds of language or phonemes. This is associated with lesions in the middle cerebral artery. Deep

It never ceased to amaze Lacey how ignorant people were about deafness. Forget understanding Deaf Culture. Forget hearing people respecting them as a linguistic community with a shared history, language, and pride. That was way beyond most hearing people’s understanding. Their perspective was that of pity, impairment, and fixing. Lacey was proud to be a Deaf woman, wouldn’t want to become hearing for anything in the world.

What apparently started as a loosening of semantic context, which allowed the patient to make a witty play with words about pyramids and 'extrapyramidal' disorders, completely lost its humorous character when the patient experienced the profound anxieties and cognitive impairments associated with a severe psychotic crisis. Experiencing the lack of precision of higher-order concepts, in this case clear distinction between pyramids in Egypt and pyramids in the brain, can thus be a curse and blessing at the same time: it allows us to detect the fundamental imprecision of language and the shaky metaphorical ground on which common concepts about ourselves and the world are based, and this experience can lead to a state of exhilaration about the fundamental nonsense of the world, the nonexistence of our assumed securities, and the shallowness of cherished beliefs, but it also confronts us with overwhelming complexity and threatening insecurity and throws us in deep anxious turmoil when confronted with the sheer chaos of being.

When some of the post-Soviet societies developed in unexpected ways, language impaired our ability to understand the process. We talked about whether they had a free press, for example, or free and fair elections. But noting that they did not, as Magyar has said, is akin to saying that the elephant cannot swim or fly: it doesn’t tell us much about what the elephant is. Now the same thing was happening in the United States; we were using the language of political disagreement, judicial procedure, or partisan discussion to describe something that was crushing the system that such terminology was invented to describe. Magyar spent about a decade devising a new model, and a new language, to describe what was happening in his country. He coined the term “mafia state,” and described it as a specific, clan-like system in which one man distributes money and power to all other members. He then developed the concept of autocratic transformation, which proceeds in three stages: autocratic attempt, autocratic breakthrough, and autocratic consolidation. It occurred to me that these were words that American culture could now borrow, in an appropriate symbolic reversal of 1989: these terms appear to describe our reality better than any words in the standard American political lexicon. Magyar had analyzed the signs and circumstances of this process in post-Communist countries and proposed a detailed taxonomy. But how it might happen in the United States was uncharted territory.

Reading Is Phondamental phonological information is an essential element of skilled reading in every language and writing system; impairments in the use of this information are typical of poor readers and dyslexics. The claim is not that phonics is all there is to reading. Rather, it is that use of the phonological pathway is an essential component of skilled reading.

the original color of the apple -Ozcan: So, it is nothing. Imagine that we live in a world of matter, with no color, no taste, no smell, no touch, no sound. Our five senses cannot receive any information about it. So, we live in nothing, our minds decide what it is, and our need to communicate has created languages, terms, and common concepts. I may see and hear nothing but what you see and hear, but we have agreed on terms and concepts that unite us on them. Ozcan added: But nothing is still a thing, our five senses restrict us, perhaps if we had five additional senses to receive the data of this nothing, our minds would interpret it, and deal with it. We need additional senses to receive data that we do not know anything about. Ten senses, for example? Are they enough? What if the nature of this substance needs an extra sense yet? Well, a hundred senses? What if the right sense is not among them? In the end, we do not need a large number of senses, but rather the appropriate sense to receive the necessary data about this substance. The next question, Ruslan: What if we got this sense, and then our mind rejected the reality of matter for some reason? And decided not to interpret the data correctly? Or ignored it? As it often does with our five senses. -What is deafness? -A defect in the ear, due to which the mind does not receive any information about sounds. -But sometimes the mind simply decides to ignore sounds despite receiving data. When it is engaged in something, for example, sleeping, our minds often receive sounds and decide to ignore them, just like that, even though there is no hearing impairment. Sight, touch, taste, smell, the mind can ignore its input if it so desires. He looked directly into his eyes, and advanced towards him a little, he said in a tone of ambiguity: But what if we already have this appropriate sense, Ruslan, but our minds interpret their data at will. Or decided to ignore it completely for some reason. And what is this sense? Let’s agree to call it zero sense. The sense through which we can receive the data of the original color of the apple

A prelingual hearing loss occurs prior to the development of speech and language while a postlingual impairment refers to a hearing loss manifesting itself after the acquisition of speech and language.

Many individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing tend to identify with the Deaf community. They contend that they should be viewed not as deficient or pathological, but as members of a different culture with its own language, traditions, values, and history. For these individuals, their deafness provides a sense of pride and helps shape their self-identity (Owens & Farinella, 2019). The Deaf culture does not embrace the term hearing impaired. Its adherents view spoken English as an optional second language with ASL as the language of choice.

Individuals who are hard of hearing are those in whom the sense of hearing, although defective, is functional either with or without a hearing aid. For these persons, the use of a hearing aid is frequently necessary or desirable to enhance residual hearing (Owens & Farinella, 2019). The extent to which persons with hearing impairment have difficulty developing speech and language is heavily influenced by the degree of hearing loss.

DSM-5 has replaced this simple term with the new diagnostic category of Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1, without accompanying intellectual or language impairment, a

Maybe this was a male-female translation problem. I read an article once that said that when women have a conversation, they’re communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they’re actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person’s body language. That is, on many levels, astounding to me. I mean, that’s like having a freaking superpower. When I, and most other people with a Y chromosome, have a conversation, we’re having a conversation. Singular. We’re paying attention to what is being said, considering that, and replying to it. All these other conversations that have apparently been going on for the last several thousand years? I didn’t even know that they existed until I read that stupid article, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one. I felt somewhat skeptical about the article’s grounding. There were probably a lot of women who didn’t communicate on multiple wavelengths at once. There were probably men who could handle that many just fine. I just wasn’t one of them. So, ladies, if you ever have some conversation with your boyfriend or husband or brother or male friend, and you are telling him something perfectly obvious, and he comes away from it utterly clueless? I know it’s tempting to think to yourself, “The man can’t possibly be that stupid!” But yes. Yes, he can. Our innate strengths just aren’t the same. We are the mighty hunters, who are good at focusing on one thing at a time. For crying out loud, we have to turn down the radio in the car if we suspect we’re lost and need to figure out how to get where we’re going. That’s how impaired we are. I’m telling you, we have only the one conversation.

Children requiring primary somatosensory interventions are likely are to display frequent sensory misperceptions, appetite, feeding, or metabolism problems, persistent somatic or visceral dysregulation, fine or gross motor movement or balance impairment, sleep problems, or endocrine issues. Such anomalies will be in excess of normal for the developmental age. The treatment protocol will emphasize somatosensory experiences, self-regulation, and movement interventions, all of which provide the appropriate nature and pattern of activation to help these lower networks change. Language, reasoning, logic, and understanding are de-emphasized in favor of core regulatory functions. The somatosensory activities must be carried out in a richly positive relational context (Core Element 3) as the activity itself is insufficient for positive developmental growth and neural organization. Sensory activities must be planned and scheduled at specific times each day for short periods of about 10 to 15 minutes. Pick activities the child will enjoy, as children will not repeat those that are unrewarding. The activity, environment, and method may need to modified periodically to keep them fresh, attractive, and fun. Never force the child into an activity if he or she is uncomfortable with it. Take baby steps if the child is uncomfortable. Find safe ways for the child to engage in and experience the activity.

What promises can you make to a child about the world of possibility ahead of them when the state has poisoned their bloodstreams and bones such that their behavioral self-control and language comprehension are impaired? How many graves has the government of Michigan set aside for the casualties of the water crisis that will end with a gunshot in fifteen years’ time? We all know how cops respond to kids of color with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.

As such, the traumatic is disclosed in the rhetoric, composition, and images invoked by Améry’s and Kertész’s texts, and their figurations of affect. Trauma functions therefore in these texts not at the level of explicit verbalization, or “naming,” but, rather, often at the level of certain failure of its coming into language. As such, testimony to trauma experience might take the form of a paradoxical expression, incomplete or impaired speech, instances of textual repetition—which resembles a stutter—and silence, or apophatic moments.6

Almost half of those in a heavily academic preschool went on to have emotional problems, compared with only 6 percent of those in the play-based preschool. The latter group also had fewer felony arrests and spent fewer years in special education diagnosed with emotional impairment. Perhaps most disturbing is the potential for the early exposure to academics to physiologically damage developing brains. Although the brain continues to change throughout life in response to learning, young children undergo a number of sensitive periods critical to healthy development; learning to speak a language and responding to social cues are two such domains. Appropriate experiences can hone neural pathways that will help the child during life; by the same token, stressful experiences can change the brain’s architecture to make children significantly more susceptible to problems later in life, including depression, anxiety disorders—even