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December 1st, 2002
 
Publisher
Simon & Schuster

Author
Mel Levine

Central Theme
There are no lazy children, just children with neurologically based output failure.

Overview
Dr. Levine is a developmentally-behavioral pediatrician specializing in those bright kids who are often labeled learning-disabled in an educational system ill-equipped to understand & facilitate individual children with their unique neurological peculiarities. Since all of us want to show off our accomplishments, Levine concludes children who are struggling in school don’t lack desire to produce, but are hindered by neurological factors that inhibit their effective output. Identifying and developing a strategy for helping the child within the system is doable and results in dramatic improvements in productivity.

Beliefs

1. Every child wants to succeed and be productive.
   
2. Productivity problems begin to emerge when the outcomes desired by the system collide with the child’s neurological ability to produce those results.
   
3. As children we are required to be broad generalists, whereas adults are allowed to specialize, meaning, kids are faced with a challenge that won’t have nearly the impact as they grow into adulthood.
   
4. Writing is the biggest orchestra for a child because it requires a wide span of abilities like creating, remembering, organizing, the physical act of writing, concentration and more.
   
5. The neurological peculiarities of a child can be identified and problems solved, but you must approach it like a detective trying to solve a mystery.
   
6. Among the symptoms and kinds of neurologically based problems children can have are the following: low motor turnout, forgetting how to remember, repeated energy crisis, controls out of control, words that can’t describe, deflation ideation, falling prey to disarray.
   

Questions Worth Discussing

1. Do you agree there are no lazy kids?
   
2. What challenges did you face as a child in trying to produce results in the educational system?
   
3. Can the educational system facilitate the child with neurologically based output challenges?
   

Provocative Quotes

• Laziness is not an innate trait. We all are born with a drive to produce.
  
  ML.


• Some individuals somehow, somewhere, lose momentum; in the pursuit of accomplishment they fail to produce; they stall out…they are not lazy; they have output failure.
  
  ML.


• 8low output occurs when one or more neurodevelopment dysfunctions interfere with productivity.
  
  ML.


• Writing is the largest orchestra a kid’s mind has to conduct.
  ML.
  

© 2001 - 2010 Dick Staub, CRS Communications.