BY CHIKA ABANOBI
Dr. Primrose J. Fakudze, from the Kingdom of Swaziland, is an international expert on child psychology in education. She was invited to Nigeria by one of the top agencies in education to come and consult on some issues relating to child development. And, since she arrived she’s been doing something for a good number of Nigerian schools and hopes to be around till sometime in August.
But last week, Education Review ran into her at a Safe School Best Practices Training Workshop held at Redeemer TEAP International School (RTIS), Abuja, where she was invited by Exam Ethics Marshals International, organisers of the workshop (watch out for a detailed special report on it), to address the teachers and parents on how to deal with child-learning difficulties. A short address it was but it ended up stirring up something deep in the audience as to make many of the members come flocking to her after she left the stage to either learn more or collect her contact telephone number, home or email address.
In a chat with Education Review, she revealed why special attention should be paid to kids with learning difficulties. “I am a child psychologist, a PHD holder in Child Psychology, from University of Pretoria, South Africa. When it comes to a child I have to specialize on children because I was once a child. And, everyone of us has been a child, not so? In Nigeria, they say abi? I have been working with kids because I understand what kids are going through.
“When I was nine-years-old, my mother was told that her child cannot write. I am from a poor polygamous family. They say ‘look’, I would say ‘look’, but when it comes to writing, I could not spell it. And that is called learning disability. My mother didn’t know anything. They kept on pushing me because my mother was the headmistress of our school. This one, pass; that one, pass. But when I reached Form 1 (JSS 1) it became a problem. I repeated the grade three times. I was in a boarding school.
“For me, I am very good in telecommunications technology, in computers and all that. But when it comes to reading, it takes me more time. Other people spent about seven years doing Clinical Psychology but for me I spent 10 years. Knowing your child’s IQ makes you to give an allowance on your child’s learning capabilities. If your child has 62 per cent learning difficulties, it shows that your child will take 62 per cent additional time than it is normal to catch up, so accommodate your child. Not every child will be a professor. There will be chefs, musicians, IT gurus, actors and actresses. A child can be intelligent but there are related difficulties that contribute to their learning difficulties. Kids are not like us that when we have some difficulties we go and tell a friend, we go and seek for an advice. Kids are always struggling with what we call unanswered questions: Why is my mother suffering? Why is my mother not going to work?
The first step is, knowing who your child is, knowing your child’s 1Q. It really helps. When I talk of learning difficulties I am talking of a normal child with high IQ but when it comes to reading it is becomes a challenge. They are struggling in English; they cannot read poems or engage in spellings; others are struggling in Mathematics but we are not going to use assumptions when it comes to that. We need to come out with diagnosis before we can know what you are talking about.
“Cases I have encountered in Nigeria are HADD, Hyperactive Attention Deficit Disorder which goes together with learning difficulties because when a child is hyperactive, academically the child may not be able to concentrate in class, but I don’t want to say how many percentage are out there until I come back and partner with stakeholders or rather concerned organizations. As a parent, you need to know who your child is because you will never be able to deal with something that you don’t know. I wish all parents can come out and understand their kids better. As a matter of fact, we hardly know our kids. We wake up early in the morning and we are off to work or business.
“So what I am doing in Nigeria is identifying children with learning disabilities. To me, it is passion because I know what it is for a child not to know how to write. And parents at home don’t know that their kids have learning disabilities. They go to school, whether they are doing well or not doing well, they shift the blame on the teacher. But it is high time we make it our concern.
“During our time, our parents would open up our exercise books and check what we did at school and take us through the home assignments. If I ask you today: when last did you open your child’s schoolbag? So, there are a lot of gaps; it is not only in Nigeria. Where I come from, we tend to be very busy too. Of the eight hours that you have in a day, give your child at least an hour. That will be the best gift you can give to your child.
“A wise mother knows that part of the need of a child is to see her mother preparing her food. A child comes to you, ‘Mummy, I am hungry.’ You say: ‘Go and tell your auntie’ (meaning your house help). She comes back again to you another day, ‘Mummy I am hungry,’ ‘Go and tell your auntie.’ That child will never come back to you for anything even for sexual abuse. She will not tell you because to her, everything is, ‘go and tell your auntie.’ Kids learn by touch. That’s the best way to teach a child. You wake up in the morning, you go to where he is sleeping and you brush that child, ‘my son, I am going to work. Go to school and represent me.’ That is love.”
But Fakudze is not totally impressed with the knowledge-level of our educational/child psychologists. She thinks they are more theoretical than practical. “Nigerian people are intelligent, almost everyone of them is learned,” she confessed. “But I have met one or two education psychologists, and when I asked them if they can help to run a test with a diagnosis on a child I was suspecting might be dyslexic and all that, they could not. They told me that they were not taught up to that level. It was a challenge to me. Well, they can still catch up at their own time and at their own pace.”
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