Sight words are difficult to learn for a child who finds it problematic to recognize a word without taking conscious note of each individual letter. Many of these children dutifully sound out words such as cat, and, and in while their peers are blithely reading quickly and fluently. Problems with auditory closure may make it difficult for a young child to obey directions, or to follow a story that is being read to a group. A child with auditory and visual closure problems may find school expectations overwhelming.
If your child is having difficulty in school and testing for a learning difference has been suggested, visual and auditory closure problems may be diagnosed. While there are children for whom this is a major problem and require professional help, some children just have to be shown what is expected.
Children can be pretty concrete when it comes to academics. When learning to write, a child may question what number a non-perfectly written 2 is. Adults then sigh and correct their writing but often just asking a child "what number do you think it is?" helps the child realize that slight differences don't change the reality of numbers or letters.
Although some children have extreme problems with closure, many just need some explanations and practice on these skills. Books with rhyming words, (nursery rhymes, Dr. Seuss, etc.) have a pattern that most children pick up from repeated hearing. Pointing out the obvious helps the child who doesn't seem to be able to predict that fish might rhyme with wish. Adding why to a short question requires your child to expand her answer. Modeling expected answers also helps some children. The talkative child may learn to hold back a bit and the shy child may learn to answer in more than one word.
Visual closure may be helped by copying a picture, a word or a sentence. Pointing out which letters go above or below a line is useful to some children. Boxing a word to emphasize the shape of the letters may help.
There are electronic games that help a child learn about closure, but more important is the act of playing. Running, jumping, playing outdoors, making up games with one's friends, settling arguments without adult help, all these activities help a child understand the world. Taking a child to a museum, pointing out new things, using vocabulary, reading to a child, and demanding that a child at times calm down, watch, listen and learn helps children to understand how they learn. Experience helps with closure.
Remember school is a place where children are taught to think in a specific manner. All stories must have a beginning, middle and end. Most of today's children's stories have predictable happy endings. Math problems require that all work be shown even if we can do the easy stuff in our heads. We ask children "what do you think the author meant," but a child may hesitate answering because they think, "I am not the author so I really don't know what he meant." We expect children to give exact answers in a specific manner but not until they get older do we explain to them that there is more than one answer. Some children just need to be told that there is a specific way to do things in school and it isn't worth the effort to argue about it. There will come a time when they will have more choices and more power.
I have a feeling most of us originally saw the world through different eyes -- but the group activity of school narrowed our vision.
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