Olive Hickmott: Wouldn't prevention be better?I am an experienced health and education coach, and have been for many years. I enjoy helping and working with people who are facing particular challenges.
I try to avoid complexity at least until I am confident that all the simple approaches have been taken. Complexity can come in many forms, normally I see it in the form of other people's intervention and interpretations.
Unfortunately, this unwanted complexity can come from the medical establishment who are often too quick to 'label' a child in difficulty and dismiss any claims that there is an intelligent spirit trapped inside, screaming to get out. They don't have the key to unlock the door and doubt that anyone else has, meanwhile an innocent child is condemn to a life of torment.
There is a key and there is a way to release the child within. You need patience and insight but most of all you need to listen. People do tend to over complicate things and then it is more difficult to see with true clarity, what is really happening and what is being most effective.
On meeting a new client, I always feel a sense of reluctance. Part of my reluctance in jumping straight in, is that I want to quickly solve the problem. I want to release this child from it's misery but I have this insistent little voice in my head, which is encouraging me to find the real source of the problem and to try and 'prevent' things happening in the first place.
It is always easier to address and treat the symptoms but this will not solve the problem, it will simply re-occur in a different form later. Something that is all to obvious in the short term effect of 'gadgets' and 'gizmos'.
Prevention is so much less stressful for everyone. It takes less effort, uses less time and resources and is much more effective. We all know it is difficult to break regular habits and practices, even if they are detrimental to our good health. We see the signs on cigarette packets but people still smoke.
I am currently taking part in a research project that will prove the real effectiveness of the work I do; helping people change their experience when they are very confused, clarifying their goals, building on their successes, etc. This research is aimed at overcoming the negative attitude of some educationlists and the cynical outlook of modern society.
It is important to prove the effectiveness of prevention, so that we can demolish these artificial barriers to progress and unshackle the men, women and children who are burdened by this way of seeing and perceiving their world.
Clearly, this will mean introducing the concept of 'visualisation' into teacher training, at an early stage and then adopting it as 'normal practice' in every school in the English speaking world. Having said, English speaking, the idea of 'visualisation' as a tool for enabling literacy is, by it's nature, not language specific.
It is interesting to note that Dyslexia is almost unknown in countries like China and Japan, where the symbols used in their written language are based on representative images or 'picture' characters.
Releasing the literacy geni from it's 'bottle', is not going to be an easy task and will require a lot of effort from everyone. If you would like to help support this worthy challenge in any way possible, I should be delighted to hear from you.
There is still much work to be done. The goal of overcoming Dyslexia, improving literacy and watching the trapped spirit of a child emerge from confusion, is amazing. The sooner you contact me, the sooner the adventure begins!
Olive Hickmott - Empowering Learning (Everywhere)
This image shows the first holes into rock drilled by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, with drill tailings around the holes plus piles of powdered rock collected from the deeper hole and later discarded after other portions of the sample had been delivered to analytical instruments inside the rover. 
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