Help Recovering Cognitive Skills Lost to Chronic Illness

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions sometimes can cause a loss of cognitive skills so great that the victim needs to relearn how to concentrate. This article’s suggestions on how listening for the repeated, familiar sound patterns of rhymes helps increase a child’s attention span will work for the adult impaired because of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia as well.

An Easy Way to Increase a Child’s Attention Span

When you teach a child how to increase his or her attention span, you do that child a big favor. Learning becomes easier. It can also be fun — especially when you’re doing the teaching in a way in which the child doesn’t even realize it’s happening!

Rhyme Time

(An excerpt from Alpha Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours)
by Pamela Rice Hahn and Dennis E. Hensley, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2000 Pamela Rice Hahn

Rhyme

Rhyme is a series of word endings that repeats the same, or similar, sounds.

Old Mother Hubbard went to her cupboard….

Rhymes can be used to add a whimsical, yet effective, touch to ad copy:

e.g.

You can always trust our milk, so buy some now.

The only stuff fresher is still in the cow.

If you’d enjoy playing a word game designed to increase attention spans and improve the vocabulary in young children, take a look at Task: Rhyme Time from page 14 of Alpha Teach Yourself Grammar and Style in 24 Hours:

Task: Rhyme Time

Rhymes increase a child’s attention span because the child soon learns to listen for the repeated, familiar sound patterns. You can use this to your advantage if you have a youngster in the car with you during a long trip.

Example:

Through the fog, the little green frog in a soggy wet bog jumped from log to log before the dog could hog all the grog.

Play a game to see how many rhyming words you can use in a sentence. This stuff is allowed to be fun, too. (Don’t forget to let the kid win!)

End note:

One of the sentences that survives from when I’d play that game with my daughter is: Please don’t tease the fleas on my knees, you’ll make them sneeze and wheeze; just give them a cuddle, and give them a squeeze, and feed them some cheese.

I recited that sentence to my granddaughter shortly after she’d celebrated her fifth birthday. She listened to me say the sentence and remained silent for a minute, then said, “You left out trees.” So, we modified the sentence to: Please don’t tease the fleas on my knees, the breeze from the trees makes them sneeze and wheeze; just give them a cuddle, and give them a squeeze, and feed them some cheese.

Reprinted by permission:
Copyright © 2000 Pamela Rice Hahn
All Rights Reserved

For more fun with rhymes, check out the read-aloud story The Ball That Started It All in The Blue Rose Bouquet.

Wonderful Books of Read-Aloud Rhymes by Shel Silverstein:

Related posts:

1. Setting Goals While You Cope with a Chronic Illness
2. Understanding Autoimmune Illness
3. Disabling Chronic Illness Quote Designs
4. Chronic Illness Serenity Prayer Designs
5. Chronic Illness Realities Comic Strip Calendars

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