My younger brother had “learning difficulties” at school. His reading and writing skills were behind others in his class, and spelling was a constant problem — today he’d probably be diagnosed with mild dyslexia. I worked with him on-site one day and was impressed with his spatial and problem solving intelligence. As part of the business he runs, he was installing a sound system and video projector in a conference room. I watched in awe as he quickly added, subtracted and divided measurements in his head, solving the three dimensional problem of how to fit each component in. He still can’t spell — he has a secretary for that now — but he can run a successful business.

“Of all the children I see, 85% are boys”, says child developmental psychologist Julie Daniel. “Schools suit children with a certain kind of intelligence — academic intelligence — but children have many other kinds.” My 7 year old nephew has incredible eye-hand co-ordination and is very active. He has what I’d call kinesthetic intelligence. Children like that can have trouble sitting still in the classroom and find much of the teaching irrelevant to their way of learning. Consequently they may misbehave in order to regain some control in their lives, and out of shear boredom.

Some children, like my daughter, fit in well with the way the curriculum is taught, but even then there are problems. Over a few months, she came to believe that she wasn’t any good at maths, and subsequently asked me to do her maths homework. This consisted of the tedious task of adding and subtracting a list of one to two digit numbers. To spark her interest, I made her a linear abacus out of a piece of string and some beads. The beads were in her favourite colours and grouped in lots of ten, and provided her with a visual and tactile device for manipulating numbers. After I showed her how it worked, she wanted to use it to work out how much money she would collect if she sold all the raffle tickets in her bag. Excitedly we slid the beads from right to left and used the coloured groupings to count quickly a find the result.

In the film “The Man Without a Face”, Mel Gibson’s character agreed to tutor a young boy. He instructs him to dig rectangular holes in the ground and meets with a puzzled response — this is not how you teach maths. Later we see that this simple task has given the boy a feel for the space and volume of geometric shapes. It is a shame to see so many children labelled with learning difficulties or developmentally delayed. What’s worse is the prevalence of drugs like Ritalen to treat “hyperactive” children or those with the popular diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder. If your child has problems at school it may be that they are very intelligent in their own way, and just need help to find a learning style that suits.