Olivehickmott

Visual Thinking 101_84: Have you heard of Aphantasia?

Posted on April 28, 2024 by olivehickmott

This week I start a new series of free coaching calls for parents and teachers of visual thinkers. Children and adults have a whole range of visual thinking skills which have a significant effect on their ability to learn, especially for literacy, numeracy and concentration. These are the pictures you hold in your head. Some people have none, known as having Aphantasia, whilst others find them overwhelming.

First come and explore your own mental images. This is a fun class where you can explore what is meant by mental images and discover more about your own experience. Now comes the fun part, you can choose to improve or reduce the images according to your own requirements, with just a few simple exercises and no need for medication. Those who are often distracted can choose to reduce the number, its magic! Others may choose to improve their visual memory to help in exams.

Next we move onto exploring neurodivergent strengths; my favorite topic. We have identified 35 strengths that are often shared with neurodivergent students. When you focus on your strengths, learning is so much easier and more enjoyable.

Here are the list of our classes to help support visual thinkers, and they are free for anyone to join in. Please pass this onto your friends.

Monday 29th April 8pm: Exploring Mental Pictures, for those who feel they are not as creative as they used to be. Come and explore with us. Click here to book for free.

Tuesday 30th April 8pm: Neurodivergent Strengths and Challenges – there are many neurodivergent strengths that are well worth exploring to give you different perspectives on neurodiversity. Click here to book for free

Tuesday 7th May 8pm: Easy Literacy for Dyslexia: Learn the vital skill of visualising words for reduced anxiety and developing fluent spelling and reading. Click here to book for free

Wednesday 8th April 8pm: Thriving with ADHD: Many tips to learn about improving ADHD for your child and you without medication. Click here to book for free

Monday 13th April 8pm Mathematics and numeracy – How to better use your visual skills for all aspects of Maths. Click here to book for free

Tuesday 14th April 8pm: Clearing Energy when Exhausted – For those who are lacking energy and would like some skills to improve their energy banks. Click here to book for free

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

My name is Olive Hickmott, I am a health and learning coach, specializing in working with neurodivergent students. I would be pleased to support you in any way I can.
You are welcome to contact me olive@empoweringlearning.co.uk
Here you will find my learning platform for some of my training programmes and free live webinars www.visualkids.co.uk
You will find other useful information and Practitioner Training at http://www.empoweringlearning.co.uk
Here is my YouTube channel for more free resources: https://www.youtube.com/c/OliveHickmott
My latest books are:
The Elephants in the Classroom: using every student’s natural power of Mental Imagery to enhance learning: Neurodiversity through the lens of mental Imagery.
Bridges to Success – How to transform Learning Difficulties

#olivehickmott #visualthinking #empoweringlearning #neurodivergent #mentalimagery #visual-spatial-learners #neurodivergenttoolkit #Dyslexia #ADHD #Creatingmentalimages #memory, #creativity #mentalimages

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged #mentalimagery, #visualthinking, ADHD, Autism, creaivity, dyslexia, empoweringlearning, mental-health, mentalimages, neurodivergent, neurodivergenttoolkit, neurodiversity, olivehickmott, visual thinking, visual-spatial-learners | Leave a comment

Visual Thinking 101_83: What is visual thinking? ..Thinking in pictures, mental imagery, pictures in the mind?

Posted on April 18, 2024 by olivehickmott

Any of these, Visual thinking is one of the ways people prefer to think. They may recall pictures of things they have seen or seen pictures of, for example elephants, a dog, favorite film, their children, a house they lived in, the local supermarket. And they may create pictures in their mind of things they have never seen, using their imagination, for example a rainbow colored elephant doing Ninja dancing, an imaginary dragon, a helicopter landing in the sea. The picture above is mine, with credit to Quinten Blake’s “Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered” book.

It has occurred to me recently that some adults are not good at thinking in pictures and may even not know what visual thinking is. It is simply the ability to create a picture in your mind’s eye. When children are young you may hear them talking about imaginary friends, places they would like to go on holiday, a dragon they have invented or who takes them to ballet on Fridays. They have pictures for all these things and that is how they primarily think. Remember these are the pictures they have created in their head and not necessarily the ones they have been shown. Of course, they may use their other senses as well for thinking it is a personal preference.

The critical part is that we are born with diverse thinking skills which are underpinned by good visual skills for maintaining and creating mental imagery. At 6 weeks old we can recognize our mother and according to Dr. George Land, by 4 years old 98% of children are creative geniuses. Their heads are literally full of pictures. As we grow up we may lose these strengths if we don’t use them, which is a pity as they are invaluable for learning, creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, intuition, etc: much needed in adult life. Neurodivergent students have normally developed these skills into strengths.

Many adults may have lost some of these skills but others may just be creating images as an unconscious habit out of their conscious awareness, including recognising their own children when they come out of school. Just read through the following common expressions, known as visual predicates, and notice whether they trigger an image for you, albeit fleeting:

My failure shed light on a better way to do it
The grass was a vivid green
My resilience enabled me to bounce back
That illuminates the whole process
I can see where the last jigsaw piece fits
What a brilliant idea

If you are interested in this topic, the next class on exploring mental imagery, would be particularly helpful for you or your child.

Here are the list of our classes to help support visual thinkers, and they are free for anyone to join in.

Monday 22nd April 8pm Mathematics and numeracy – How to better use your visual skills for all aspects of Maths.Click here to book for free

Tuesday 23rd April 8pm: Clearing Energy when Exhausted – For those who are lacking energy and would like some skills to improve their energy banks. Click here to book for free

Monday 29th April 8pm: Exploring Mental Pictures, for those who feel they are not as creative as they used to be. Come and explore with us. Click here to book for free.

Tuesday 7th May: Easy Literacy for Dyslexia: Learn the vital skill of visualising words for reduced anxiety and developing fluent spelling and reading. Click here to book for free

Tuesday 16th April 8pm: Thriving with ADHD: Many tips to learn about improving ADHD for your child and you without medication. Click here to book for free

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

Visual Thinking 101_82: Free Coaching for Visual thinkers

Posted on April 11, 2024 by olivehickmott

Visual thinkers benefit from learning visually, so come and join one of our FREE coaching sessions, for visual thinkers, their teachers and parents.

In our experience of visual thinkers for over 25 years, there are some simple things students (adults or children), teachers and family members can do to make life easier whilst maintaining the student’s strengths and without changing who they are.

Who would think of making a dog look like this? Well a visual thinker. Visual thinkers use mental images to recall information they have seen before and to explore new ideas. These are invaluable skills for all sorts of things such as problem solving, empathy, hyper-focus, creating inventive solutions and so much more. These skills are also much in need in business today, so lets make sure students don’t lose them.

Enabling a student to use their natural visual skills, makes learning much easier and we see dramatic improvements not only in learning but also in their self-confidence. The reason is that simple steps scaffolding onto what they are already good at makes sense; using your own mental images is the key.

Here are the list of our classes to help support visual thinkers, and they are free for anyone to join in.

Tuesday 16th April 8pm: Thriving with ADHD: Many tips to learn about improving ADHD for your child and you without medication. Click here to book for free

Monday 22nd April 8pm Mathematics and numeracy – How to better use your visual skills for all aspects of Maths.Click here to book for free

Tuesday 23rd April 8pm: Clearing Energy when Exhausted – For those who are lacking energy and would like some skills to improve their energy banks. Click here to book for free

Monday 29th April 8pm: Exploring Mental Pictures, for those who feel they are not as creative as they used to be. Come and explore with us. Click here to book for free.

Tuesday 7th May: Easy Literacy for Dyslexia: Learn the vital skill of visualising words for reduced anxiety and developing fluent spelling and reading. Click here to book for free

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

Visual Thinking 101_80: Is this my ADHD?

Posted on April 4, 2024 by olivehickmott

Does your head ever feel like this? Completely overwhelmed and maybe even full of fog. Where has your clear thinking gone?

In today’s Guardian, Sian Boyle reports that life can be challenging when you have ADHD and autism. Read her article here.

With the increase in people requesting a diagnosis, Thea Stein, the Chief Executive of the Nuffield Trust, said, “The extraordinary, unpredicted and unprecedented rise in demand for autism assessments and ADHD treatments have completely overtaken the NHS’s capacity to meet them. It is frankly impossible to imagine how the system can grow fast enough to fulfil this demand.”

But are we looking at this problem through the right end of the telescope? Queuing up in a never-ending line for a diagnosis isn’t the only thing you can do to make progress and better understand your own experiences. Even when you have a diagnosis, you will still benefit from more understanding. I have been teaching free classes at two NHS Recovery Colleges for three years on topics such as “Thriving with ADHD”, “Exploring Neurodivergent Strengths and Challenges”, “improving sleep”, and “Recovering your energy”. The response has been comments like “Why didn’t someone help us with this information before? ” “This explains so much”. These sessions are not a diagnosis nor a treatment plan but an explanation of 5 essential topics and much more.

These are:

1. Identifying your neurodivergent strengths. ADHD is not a strength, but many of the underlying skills are, e.g. creativity, problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, etc
2. Mental imagery. You may have no mental imagery (the pictures you hold in your head), or superb pictures or anything in between. No pictures are limiting, too many are exhausting and will tip you into sensory overload.
3. Grounding. Not being grounded triggers more sensory overload and confusion. Nasal breathing right down into your belly slows the pictures demanding attention in your head.
4. Being Highly Sensitive: Another topic that can overwhelm you and make your brain feel like fog. We have simple guided imagery, from EnergeticNLP, that can enable you to be calmer and stop picking up everyone else’s energy.
5. Stress and anxiety: Several valuable techniques to explore your stress, reduce it and enable you to feel safe.

I also repeat all these classes and more live, 2 classes every week, click here.

Empowering Learning offers you the tools you can use to flourish with your 21st Century diverse thinking skills, proudly moving to your destination, that defines who you are, and that, belongs to you.

Our next free webinar on Neurodivergent strengths is on April 9th at 8pm UK time. It is a real joy to see attendees discover their strengths. Book here

And for those who think they have lost their visual thinking skills, join us on April 8th at 8pm and rediscover them.

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we offer neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. You will learn much more about your brain and how you can help it be so much more effective. It includes more details of all these points and a lot more. There is even a free introductory video there and the toolkit gives you the option to use the techniques and go back and listen again.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged #mentalimagery, #visualthinking, ADHD, Autism, creaivity, dyslexia, empoweringlearning, mental-health, mentalimages, NCW, neurodivergent, neurodivergenttoolkit, neurodiversity, olivehickmott, visual-spatial-learners | 2 Comments

Visual Thinking 101_79: Imagine if ..

Posted on April 1, 2024 by olivehickmott

Imagine if a whole education system said, “You do belong,” “We have your back”. Suppose we moved away from an obsession to label people as somehow broken and instead focused on teaching every child through scaffolding onto their exceptional diverse visual thinking skills. This is the 21st Century, our 4-year-olds are full of 21st-century diverse thinking skills. These skills are needed in business today, are born in children, and require additional support to develop further, e.g. creativity, imagination, problem-solving, critical thinking, intuition, compassion, and so many more.

Imagine if the whole system said: “We back your potential”. Many readers will have heard a doubting voice saying, “No, this isn’t for you, you don’t belong here, you can’t do that”. I have. Imagine if the whole country commits to unlocking the pride we should have in our neurodiverse community, then look at what we could build: A community where every contribution is equally respected, where you don’t have to change who you are to get on, where whatever your background, you can feel confident that your effort will be rewarded, and the future for you and your children will be better.

Above, I borrowed some words from Sir Keir Starmer’s recent speech and adjusted them for the children and the education system as that is where it all starts. These children could thrive to be exceptional neurodivergent people within an education system that values diversity.

Empowering Learning offers you the tools you can use to flourish through your 21st Century diverse thinking skills, proudly moving to your destination, that defines who you are, and that, belongs to you.

Our next free webinar on Neurodivergent strengths is on April 9th at 8pm UK time. It is a real joy to see attendees discover their strengths. Book here

And for those who think they have lost their visual thinking skills, join us on April 8th at 8pm and rediscover them.

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there and the toolkit gives you the option to use the techniques and go back and listen again.

Visual Thinking 101_78: Has your creativity gone?

Posted on March 27, 2024 by olivehickmott

A common theme at the Neurodiversity Celebration, last week, the extraordinary amount of creativity shared with neurodivergent people. These are the children who came into the world with all these creative skills and refuse to conform to the auditory sequential way they are being taught to be neurotypical. This may seem harsh but we know that children lose many creative imaginative skills prior to adulthood and today we need all the creative people to solve the world’s problems.

You can see in the cartoon from @Afterskool just where creativity goes when the focus is on conformity. We need to start working on this right now; moving the funding onto teaching visual students how to maintain and develop their exceptional skills and away from diagnosing them as somehow faulty.

Empowering Learning has been working with the strengths of neurodivergent students for 25 years and identified 35 strengths; e.g. creativity, problem solving, intuition, seeing different perspectives, to often seeing a better solution, and so much more. Identifying strengths is invaluable to guide your next step in life.

Our next free webinar on April 8th, gives you the opportunity to explore your own visual thinking skills. Don’t be concerned, we have seen many people recover their visual skills and creativity in just 60 minutes.

And on April 9th at 8pm, you can find the neurodivergent strengths associated with visual thinking.

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

Support for grandparents of ADHD children….

Posted on March 24, 2024 by olivehickmott

from another one of our Empowering Learning Practitioners.

Talking about grandparents and ADHD recently, they have a tough time. They want to help their grandchildren, they don’t want to upset their children and when they were kids nobody talked about ADHD, nobody knew anything about how to help these children – not sure it even existed!

So I am delighted that Jean Ramsey, one of the longstanding Empowering Learning Practitioners, is putting on this programme. She brings together her decades of experience with all ages of children, with all sorts of challenges.

Do contact her on 07814-184901 or jean@coachingforschools.com

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ADHD, children, education, empoweringlearning, jeanramsey, mental-health, parenting | Leave a comment

Visual Thinking 101_76: Neurodiversity Celebration Week.

Posted on March 22, 2024 by olivehickmott

What an exceptional conference, thank you: 25 events, more than 80 presenters on a whole variety of topics. The topic I have just listened to, on neurodiversity around the world had 8000 people registered. And it was all free, sponsored by Lexxic.

The conference finished this afternoon but recordings are still available here and on Youtube. I recommend you select a few and listen in, that call to your particular circumstances.

On Monday March 25th at 9:30 I have set up a free meet-up, to discuss some of the key messages, from the conference, for our work at Empowering Learning. Here is the link. We have decided to extend this invitation to all our followers including Empowering Learning Practitioners, those currently studying the Neurodivergent Toolkit, those who join our free coaching sessions, those we are coaching and your friends and relations. If you haven’t got time to listen to the recordings do come and join us on Monday and see how our work at Empowering Learning fits into the worldwide movement to improve the experiences of neurodivergent children and adults. I look forward to when neurodivergent children and adults value their own strengths and those around them see their uniqueness’s.

Do take a look at the Empowering Learning page. You can book the free classes, next week, to explore how you can learn how to spell and read easily with Dyslexia on Monday 25th at 12 noon, and Thriving with ADHD at 12 noon on Tuesday 26th. We will cover topics you have not heard of before.

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

Visual Thinking 101_74: Do you know what it is like…

Posted on March 16, 2024 by olivehickmott

To grow up as a visual thinker, and 98% of 4-year-olds are, and not to have learned how to use your mental images for literacy and numeracy and not being overwhelmed by too many pictures.

I do, and the experience wasn’t great. I struggled with spelling and reading all through my education, including university. I was speaking to a mum today of a 20-year-old who is Dyslexic, can’t do maths, and is always confused by too much stuff going on in his head. But he is too embarrassed to ask for help because he thinks he is stupid and can’t be helped; “it’s all too late”. I didn’t spell and read visually until I was 50, and I just don’t want that to happen to anyone else. I asked mum what he is good at and after a couple of questions, she said, “seeing the bigger picture”, “creative problem solving”, “creative and critical thinking”, etc. These are the fabulous neurodivergent strengths common to many neurodivergent students I meet. Regrettably, students don’t often appreciate them as there are simultaneously too many negatives.

Do take a look at the Empowering Learning page, try the free classes to explore your own mental images (even if you don’t think you have any) and your neurodivergent strengths this week, on Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th. After that you can dive into a new way of thinking about Dyslexia, ADHD and Dyscalculia, all for free.

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

Visual Thinking 101_73: Latest for visual thinkers

Posted on March 13, 2024 by olivehickmott

After a very busy autumn and new year of releasing the new Neurodivergent Toolkit we have now updated the Empowering Learning Web-site. It is quite remarkable how much we have learned through coaching students year on year. Diverse visual thinkers are extraordinary and we will continue to learn from them, and the written words of enlightened leaders in the field, in order to support others.

The neurodivergent toolkit offers you a synopsis of our work over the last 25 years in exploring Dyslexia and ADHD and offering really simple solutions, all born of practical experiences of neurodivergent students and what works best for them, starting with their strengths.

Do take a look at the new Empowering Learning page, pass it onto your friends and let us know if there is anything you would like to see or change there. I am always happy to talk with parents for 30 mins for free to get them started in a journey they may have had no previous experience of.

Click here for future classes

To explore more of the tips and tricks we have for neurodivergent children and adults, do click here. There is even a free introductory video there

Olivehickmott

Visual Thinking 101_84: Have you heard of Aphantasia?

Visual Thinking 101_83: What is visual thinking? ..Thinking in pictures, mental imagery, pictures in the mind?

Visual Thinking 101_82: Free Coaching for Visual thinkers

Visual Thinking 101_80: Is this my ADHD?

Visual Thinking 101_79: Imagine if ..

Visual Thinking 101_78: Has your creativity gone?

Support for grandparents of ADHD children….

from another one of our Empowering Learning Practitioners.

Visual Thinking 101_76: Neurodiversity Celebration Week.

Visual Thinking 101_74: Do you know what it is like…

Visual Thinking 101_73: Latest for visual thinkers

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