Join us for an insightful conversation with Judy Panning, a retired music teacher with over 35 years of experience, who has now dedicated her time to helping students with ADHD. We explore the challenges faced by children with this condition in a traditional classroom setting and discuss innovative solutions that make learning not just accessible, but thriving for each child. Judy shares her hands-on techniques that include movement and creative strategies tailored to individual student needs.
Judy Panning is our special guest today on Must Know People. We're going to be talking a lot about kids and developmental issues, things like that. And Judy is, what, a 35-year teacher, veteran? Is that right? Yep. 35 years of teaching music at South Central Calhoun.
Well, I started in other places. So I started in Arizona and taught for Six years out there. And then I came here and I taught for a little while in Carroll. Then I ran a studio for a few years. And then I got started with what was Southern Cal at the time. And they merged to become South Central Calhoun. And I was there about 20 years.
So the reason we wanted to talk to you is because you are now retired from teaching, but you've gone into a kind of a different phase of your career. You're now dealing with kids with ADHD and the school year has just wrapped up. And I'm sure parents, if they have kids that have this, I'm sure they've been very frustrated throughout the whole school year. And so we just kind of wanted to talk about that issue a little bit and just get it out in the open. Every class period you had, there were kids that were having issues. Can you talk about that?
Absolutely. So I was a music specialist in my former life. So kids would come to me for either 20 or 30 or 45 minutes, depending upon the schedule. And every class had at least one, maybe five or six. And so it just varied from class to class and from week to week. And You know, sometimes there were absences. And so you would adjust what I was doing so that I could meet the needs of those kids. Some of them came with one-on-one help. So they would come with an associate or there would be an associate for a classroom if there were, you know, a few kids that would just need some special attention. And so typically was a woman. That person would sit, you know, in proximity to the kids who needed some help. and help in whatever way was needed. Maybe it was reminding them to stay on task, or maybe it was taking something away when they couldn't handle it, or giving them something else that they could handle. So yeah, we just kind of worked things out depending upon who was there.
See, that's the difficulty with ADHD. There's really three different kinds. You can have kind of the dreamer, the one person who can't stay on task. You can have the kid who's just hyperactive and can't focus. And sometimes it's just a combination of everything. So really, you've got to learn what each student's issues are and try to customize everything for that student. That's right. How difficult was that for a teacher? You've got different kids every class time. So you're dealing with probably hundreds of kids throughout a day.
Yeah, I'd have between 150 and 200 kids a day. And, you know, I wasn't teaching reading and math. So the grading that I did wasn't as specific, but I was teaching concepts and I did want kids to learn. It wasn't just playtime. So I did really work a lot of hands on things, a lot of Group work, if we could get it, a lot of high motivational things. And I have to say, for a while, it was really the thing to reduce recess time. And so when that started happening, there was a huge shift in how the kids functioned. And they would play at recess really hard, but they would come and they would need to move. So toward the end of my teaching career, I made sure the first 10 minutes was movement. We would do folk dances. We would do creative movement. We would do something to get the kids up and moving because kids can't listen unless they move. They can either sit still or they can listen. A lot of kids can't do both.
So that's interesting that the shift in the focus of the day at school changed and that caused kids with ADHD or any kind of development like that caused them even more issues.
Yeah, they need to move. All kids need to move, but kids with attention issues need to move even more.
You said you didn't have a ton to do with parents and talking with them, but I'm sure you did with school officials. What was their approach a lot of times? I mean, because one blanket idea doesn't fit all when it comes to this.
Right. And so there were special ed people and IEPs and, you know, there's a whole host of help in schools that kids can get. And so, There were all those plans and people to help and special classes. And so it's just a matter of going around and talking to teachers for me and finding out often what kids can do if kids needed something special and what I needed to do. And after a while, I got to know the kids because I would have them five, six years. just because we started in preschool at the end of my teaching for SCC. And I stopped at third grade. So that's a lot of years. So I would get to know the kids and what they could do and what their functional level was. And, you know, part of it for me was where I would seat them in the group. It never bothered me if kids needed to move. I just set them let them be at the outside of the classroom. And so if they needed to spin or if they needed to move their legs or wave their hands or whatever, it wasn't bothering anybody else. But there are other teachers, especially if kids are all sitting in desks and they're supposed to be really focused, where that kind of stuff just doesn't work. And so just talking to teachers to find out, you know, who does what and how it all works in their rooms a little bit to make my room a little bit smoother.
What do schools do for students like these? Are there anything special? You mentioned there might be a special teacher assistant that might come along with some students. But what's the school's idea of dealing with this?
Well, at least in your experience, the idea of an individualized education plan, the IEP plan. is a really big thing. So when kids either have behaviors or learning issues, there's a whole process to go through to get children staffed into special education. And when that happens, they have this special plan. And it might mean a special person to help. It might mean getting out of the regular classroom and into a different classroom to get help from another teacher. It might mean a change in the assignment, the workload that they do. So it really varied for each child. Those special ed teachers and classroom teachers in general, boy, they're just amazing, the work they do.
What are schools getting wrong, in your opinion? I mean, you're not an expert, you're not a doctor or anything like that, but you're a veteran teacher and you've seen a lot over your 35 years.
Kids need to move more. And the idea of movement breaks is something that lots of teachers try to do. So I wouldn't say they're getting it wrong. I would say they're working really hard to figure out how to get it right. And it's real work. And every year. they get a new crop of kids and it's a whole new ballgame. So kids need more recess. They need more movement time. And that isn't always conducive to getting the kinds of scores that schools need to keep their funding. So it's kind of a catch-22.
Do schools promote medication for these kids? I don't know how to say that delicately. Because I don't want to get anybody into trouble or anything like that. But ADHD is always like, well, they've got a pill for that. And I'm not sure that can't be the right answer for everybody.
Well, I don't think it is. But I think that kids who really have trouble, really struggle, and either are pulling themselves off task or other people off task. A classroom teacher will certainly talk to parents and say, you may need to have your child evaluated. And so that evaluation process requires a doctor. And then, I mean, between all the forms they fill out and all the information they collect, they make decisions. And medication is one decision that people can make.
And it can be a right decision for a child. It can change lives in very positive ways. So parents, I'm sure it's got to be ultra frustrating for them. I mean, as a teacher, it can be frustrating as well. But any advice for parents out there that have a child that's maybe struggling a little bit? What should they do? What should they be looking for? And maybe what's that first step?
Well, I think the first step is remember your child is struggling. They don't do it on purpose. So finding ways, there's lots of help out there. There are great online resources. There are magazines, there are support groups, there are help groups. So as a parent, I think the best thing you can do is educate yourself and understand how this child operates and how you can help to structure their lives. so that things work better, smoother. Typically, people who have attention issues need a lot more structure than average folks. And whether they learn to do it for themselves or need to have it superimposed by a parent, that usually leads to them developing that on their own. But those are the kinds of things that parents can do.
And they might try a hundred things that don't work. Exactly. And one thing, the 101st thing may help out quite a bit. Nothing will ever cure this. I mean, at what ages do these kids start to develop or just show signs of ADHD? Is it immediate?
I don't know about immediate. And there are preschool... I don't know what you would call it. I'm not coming up with the word, but there are lists that you can look at and see, does my preschooler have ADHD or is this typical needing to move because I'm only four? So kids need to move a lot. And in our society, a lot of times that doesn't happen. And the push for academics really young, is problematic for kids who really need to move and really need to develop all their stuff before they get to school. Sometimes they're given expectations that are just too early. And that's how our society is. So finding a balance for that is sometimes hard. But kids, typically, the kinds of behaviors that you see for kids with ADHD are the kinds of behaviors that two and three and four year olds normally do. I mean, they can't sit still. It's not built into them yet and shouldn't be expected. And most of the time isn't. But for kids who don't grow out of that and who still need that amount of movement when they're five and six and seven and eight, they're causing problems in the group that they're in. And that becomes quite difficult.
Now, you opened a business here in Carroll called Repattern. You took your retirement and you went back to school, by the way, to study something called the Alexander Technique. And we're going to get to that here in a bit. But you also help kids with ADHD. What do you do here that you try to help them focus?
Right. So I have a program called Building Better Focus. And I have to say that studying the Alexander Technique led me into reflex integration. So kids can get stuck in a movement pattern that is very immature. And that pattern is automatic. There are no choices. People develop compensations, but those patterns often cause, and the compensations often cause problems for learning and attention. So part of what I learned when I went off to study was how to, I won't say diagnose, I call them checks, how to find what those patterns are and then develop a series of movements that will help children move through that pattern. early pattern and let it mature so that the brain can grow.
So what kind of patterns are we talking about? Give us a typical example.
Well, so typically when I see kids who don't have good attention, there are several reflexes that are kind of out. One is the moro reflex. So when children are in the womb, they're in a fetal position, which pretty much everybody knows is sort of curled toward the front. And if they're born with a natural birth process, they come out and the very first thing they do is arch the back and the legs and arms go out. And that's called the moro fling. And then they breathe. So that's a reflex. And kids are born with that so that they can do that so that the brain can integrate that and move on to other movements that need to happen so that as those movement patterns sort of are absorbed by the body, then the brain grows and kids have choices about movement patterns. So that's one that I see. Another one that I see very frequently is called the ATNR, the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex. And sometimes it's called the fencing reflex. And it's designed to help kids, babies, reach out into the world and get things. So when they turn their head to the right, for example, the right arm will extend and the other side flexes and comes in. So one side is stretching out and the other side is pulling in. Well, if you get stuck in that pattern, then anytime you look to the right, certain things are going to happen in your body. And typically when I check that, I see that the head and neck are kind of stuck, if you will, onto the whole torso. So usually the shoulders turn right, the rib cage turns right, and the whole body just kind of follows wherever the eyes are going and wherever the head is going. And so those kids can't cross the midline. the up and down midline that goes through the nose and the belly button and down between the feet. And if you can't do that, it means that the two hemispheres in the brain are working independently rather than communicating across the corpus callosum, which is the big communicator that connects. And if that's happening, there's really no way kids can pay attention or really sit still.
So how do you correct something like that? Well, that's that seems like a tall task. I didn't understand all the words you said.
Well, so you come in and you start working with movement. Typically, I'll work on one side of the body and get get the arm and leg on one side of the body to work together. And then we work the arm and the leg on the other side of the body to work together. And then we start crossing. So you use one hand and the opposite leg. And we do this walking across the room and touching a hand to a knee and just kind of crossing over. We might play games where there's something you need to reach on the other side. We might do exercises. And I sometimes do passive exercises where the child just lies there. And there's always a parent or another adult in the room with me because I put my hands on kids and somebody needs to watch that. So typically, if they're really struggling with that pattern, that cross lateral pattern, then the parent will take the hands and I'll take the legs and we'll just move the child. And that. begins the pattern in the nervous system.
You're building a new pathway.
Exactly. And once they sort of get it, which may take a few weeks, then they can start doing some things on their own.
So what seems very simple for some people can be very difficult for others in childhood. How early do you start working with kids on this?
Well, the youngest kids I have are about five. And The problem with working with young kids is you can't expect them to necessarily be through the patterns, the reflex patterns, because some of them are still needed at that age. So, you know, a four or five or six year old is still working on that contralateral movement, even if they don't have attention problems. That's just a developmentally appropriate thing for them to be doing. So, I have to take that into consideration and not push the child beyond their developmental level. So typically this kind of work can take a year for some kids.
That was my next question is how long does it take to establish this as habit?
Well, we kind of go through levels. So we might work on one reflex for a while and then that one kind of starts to integrate, so we'll move on to something else. And typically, once the nervous system begins the integration process, unless something interrupts it, something traumatic, an accident or something, it'll keep going on its own. So parents sometimes say, oh, we have to take a break. It's too bad. But, you know, we can't get there for three weeks. And when the child comes back, It's a whole new child because things have kept working for those three weeks that we've been working on. And they can do all sorts of new things.
You probably notice a big difference in three weeks compared to day to day or somebody who's around the child every single day. They probably wouldn't notice something that you would.
Correct. And I keep lots of notes so that I can go back. And sometimes parents are frustrated because reactions, nervous system reactions look like misbehavior. And sometimes, depending on the personality of the child, it could be a choice. I mean, they could be choosing to do something that deliberately won't work. But most of the time, it's because their system is overwhelmed. And so then I back off and we try some other things. And parents sometimes see that as they're watching all these sessions and they're just frustrated. And then I get to look back at my notes and say, yeah, but remember when they couldn't do more than three exercises in a session. Remember when they would just totally go off the rails and look what they're doing now. So typically I say in 10 to 12 lessons, you're going to see some progress, but Depending on the child and what's, I like to use the word stuck because I think it's easy to understand that you can be stuck in a movement pattern. So depending upon how many movement patterns are stuck, that's what tells us how long it's going to take.
Is that the same for a child that's just very hyper all the time and just can't focus? Are you talking about the same thing? Yeah.
Yeah.
So it works in pretty much every case.
Yeah.
I mean, if that's not fair, tell me.
Well, kids come in with diagnoses, and I don't really deal with diagnoses. I deal with behavior and bodies. So I look at the child's behavior, their reaction to their environment and their situations, and I look at what the body is telling me. So when I give them a movement to do, can they do it? Is it smooth? Is it rhythmic? If it's not, what's the catch? What's not happening? And then I start to key into that and we start to work through that and then things change. So it's for me constantly watching and constantly monitoring and constantly changing what we're doing. And you have to understand we play. Some things look like bopping a balloon around or walking on a balance beam or playing catch with a ball. Some things look like running around on scooters or jumping on a trampoline. And some things look like, let's see if we can do five moves reps of getting your leg to move like this. And so all of those happen in one session, in one lesson. I typically have a list of things that the child needs to be doing. And I run through the list as quickly as I can, kind of gauging what they'll let me do next. And sometimes we get through the list and sometimes we don't. It's pretty variable for each child.
I'd assume that summertime is a great time to work with a child because they're not tired from the school day or things like that, or they just have more time to focus, right?
They have more time to devote to this. I mean, there are lots of other activities too, ball games and swim team and camps and fun things that kids should definitely get involved in. But yeah, it's a good time to work on this because they can go out and play.
It's an interesting topic. And we're not dispensing any medical advice. We're not. We're not. We're just simply saying, you know, here's here's what you offer here at Repattern is the name of your business. But you also teach other things. I mean, when you talk about movement, music is a big time movement activity, which can really, I assume, have a lot of benefit for a lot of students.
Yeah, I do early childhood music. Early childhood music is really my passion. So I like to work with kids from, you know, I don't have baby classes right now, but I've got kids who are 18 months old and up till five. And yeah, we get on the floor and we move and we bang on things and we listen and sing and do all the things that are really good for nervous systems. And I try to incorporate as much developmental movement into that as possible so that we're starting to work on crawling. in case they didn't do that or didn't do much of that. We work on spinning to get vestibular sense going. We work on tiptoes and foot things that some kids do better than others and, you know, jumping and hopping and all of that stuff goes into those classes. But then as we move up, I also teach some group piano lessons. And it's been really interesting to see how fingers work or don't.
Those are real fine motor skills.
They're very fine. And some kids really have problems. And so it's interesting to see what I can do to help that develop as they're kind of getting into that.
Before we move on to like the Alexander technique that you studied for a couple of years, ADHD, does anybody ever grow out of it? Is it something you're going to deal with no matter what stage of life you're in?
Yeah, I think that would be more accurate. There may be ebbs and flows, you know, so for a while it may seem like it's not so bad. And then, you know, you get married and have three kids and it comes right back.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think that it's something that you always have to think about.
After you retired, you had, I mean, you could have just retired from teaching, you know, gardening, whatever you wanted to do. You went back to school.
Yeah.
So you went to the University of Illinois, correct? Nope. Nope. I'm sorry. That's okay. Got the alma mater wrong.
I studied in a studio. So running this studio right now, it's a bucket list thing for me. I've wanted to do this for a quarter of a century, which labels me as old, I realize.
Time is just a construct.
Exactly. So when I discovered the Alexander Technique for myself, I had trouble singing. And since I was singing for six hours a day, it was kind of important that that worked. So I found a teacher in the eastern part of Iowa, three hours away, and I would go on a Sunday afternoon, drive three hours, have a two hour lesson, come back three hours and then teach the rest of the week. And I would do that once a month. And I did that for a year, maybe a year and a half. And then I decided I was ready to teach what I'm doing now. My husband and I looked at it and decided it was silly to open the studio and then go back to school and study. So I just went back to school and studied. And I'm so glad I did because studying how the body moves, which is what the Alexander Technique study is, led me into the reflex integration. And then also into being able to look at a child and understand their movement patterns better than somebody who doesn't know all of that.
So in other words, you learned way more than you thought you were going to learn.
Exactly. And it's really proving helpful right now.
So what is the Alexander Technique? If somebody said, define it for me.
It's really a way of thinking. That's the easiest definition. So it's about understanding how you move and looking at your own habits and deciding that there's a process that might work better. and being aware, stopping, and using a good process. We work on a lot of body mechanics and a lot of body mapping, but it's really about becoming more aware of yourself and how you move and then stopping to make choices about moving better.
And it's all basically to reduce pain in the body? Is that the big thing?
That's why most people begin. So when I was training, I worked with musicians. I worked with somebody who was an athlete. I worked with someone who was, she worked at home, but she worked at a desk all day long. And she also was a runner.
As many of us do.
Yep. And she also was a runner. And so each of these people had a different issue. And most of it was pain-related. One of the musicians I worked with was an organist who happened to have a spine issue that was pinching a nerve. And so getting that taken care of and then learning how to do things better. so that everything worked more smoothly was an interesting process. I worked with a flutist who was having pain when she was playing. And so we worked out ways to hold the flute, ways to stand, ways to get the body lined up, ways to breathe. So there are a lot of things. I mean, in class, we often talked about, you know, kitchen work because chopping things and doing dishes, all of those things are pretty hard on the body. So if you can find ways to make them easier, you're ahead of the game. You have alleviated pain by not allowing it to happen in the first place.
A lot of times people will just say, well, I'll just take a pill to try to alleviate pain. But really what you're doing is just masking and not working with the problem, right?
Right. And so studying the Alexander technique is a way To actually get to the crux of the problem and change it so that it's not there anymore.
So you're working with people right now on this and you really got to just examine. There's no computers here. I mean, you're just examining exactly how somebody moves and saying, okay, let's break every little bit of that down and slow it down and rework how you do things. And that eventually solves the problem. Right.
My studio is called Repattern for a reason, because all of us live in movement patterns. And the idea is that if you can look at the pattern and make a choice to do a different pattern, that will work better than you're ahead of the game. So you have essentially repatterned your nervous system.
So I would imagine somebody who sits at a desk computer, you know, you're kind of hunched over prime person to study. How can I improve my posture to get rid of the pain and things like that? I mean, would it even work for carpal tunnel and some things like that?
Sometimes carpal tunnel has some unique issues unto itself because there are swelling issues and narrowing issues and sometimes reworking your use. really helps. And other times surgery is just the only thing you can do. But lots of times you can lessen pain to where you can put up with it and don't need the surgery. So there are things that you can do. And I mean, carpal tunnel isn't just about your wrist. It's also about your elbow and your shoulder and your upper back. I'm not a chiropractor. but everything's connected. And when you start looking at the patterns that you're using, and most of the time when there's pain, we have the tendency as human beings to dwell on that pain and to sort of lean into the pain in a way. So if you can find a workaround so that you can work through the pain and you can come up with a process that So that your brain doesn't have to constantly be thinking about the pain. Sometimes the pain will just go away and you don't have it anymore.
So it's interesting when you work with ADHD, you're generally working with kids. If you're talking Alexander Technique, you're working with adults mostly. How easy is it to change those patterns for adults? Sometimes I think it'd be hard.
Well, you have to make a decision that you want to change how you think and change how you move. Otherwise... it's kind of a futile effort for me to show you how to do it and do things with you if you're not actually willing to look at it and make a change. And for some people, that's easier than for others.
How long does it take for somebody to, well, let's say they're committed to it, to see some results from this? Can they see some after a first session just saying, I didn't realize I was doing this or...
Yes. And you typically see more things. So when I give a lesson, people will usually have an aha at the lesson. And then if they come back in a week or two weeks, I usually ask about that. So how did it go? And it's about thinking. It's about thinking about what you're doing. So I'll ask about it and they'll say, yeah, and then I noticed. And so typically between lessons, as people are working more with what we've been doing, they notice more things. So that's the process we go through. And then we kind of take that level and move it to a different level.
How long are your sessions with people? Are they fairly quick or are they extended periods?
45 minutes at a time, typically. And the number 12 works really well. So when I recommend a course of Alexander Technique lessons, I usually say plan on coming for 12 sessions because by the time you're through 12 Alexander Technique lessons, you've learned some of the principles of the Alexander Technique and your nervous system has started to take on some new patterns. When I work with ADHD kids, it's the same thing. 12 seems to be a nice number. Now 16 is a great number too. And when FM Alexander, the founder of the Alexander Technique, required all of his students to take 30 lessons. And by the time you're at 20 or 30, your nervous system is a different animal.
How many studios like yours are there out there? I've never heard of one that did things that you're doing here.
We're in kind of an Alexander Technique desert. I am the fifth teacher in the state. There is one in the northeastern part. There are two on the eastern part of the state. There's another one floating around somewhere and there's one in Des Moines. And then this half of the state is me. I'm the only one in this half of the state. There's another teacher who only teaches online in Omaha. But if you go to the Twin Cities, there are probably five Alexander Technique teachers. And where I was in Champaign-Urbana, there were probably 10 Alexander Technique teachers because there's training there. As far as working with kids who have attention issues. I do know of other studios like this, and there are other programs similar to mine in Des Moines, in Omaha. I don't know if there's anything in Ames, but bigger cities would have stuff like this. It's kind of unusual to have me out in the middle of here.
Town of 10,000 and your studio is available here. Yeah. I know you have a Facebook page and, you know, you've got a website and things like that. So if people want more information to find out more about what you do, where do they go?
Well, my moniker is Repattern, the numeral to learn. So if you check into Facebook, it's at Repattern to learn. And The website is also repatterntolearn.com.
And you've been open how long?
Since the beginning of 2024. And I've been in this location since last August.
And things are going well. Yeah. Yeah. You've got a summer session, of course, coming up as well. So again, repatterntolearn.com is the website where you can look up Repattern on Facebook. You'll find it right there. Judy, thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate that. And it's kind of interesting how just simple things can make big differences for kids or for adults. And if you want to try to do everything drug-free and everything like that, there's options for people out there.
Absolutely.
All right. Well, thanks for joining us for so much, and I appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
