For many young children, the first signs of school difficulty appear long before they can be measured through grades or test scores. They may show up in the way a child sits, moves, listens, holds a pencil, or struggles to remain engaged in a classroom routine. According to Athena Oden, Pediatric Physical Therapist and founder of Ready Bodies, Learning Minds LLC, those moments are often interpreted through the question of what is wrong with the child. She believes education needs a more developmentally informed question about whether today's learning environments are aligned with how young children actually grow, move, and prepare to learn.
Oden frames the current moment in education as a perfect storm. From her perspective, many children experience fewer opportunities for varied movement and physical exploration during their earliest years while simultaneously encountering increasing academic expectations at younger ages. She argues that this combination can contribute to learning and behavioral difficulties that are often attributed solely to the child rather than examined through a broader developmental lens.
The conversation arrives at a time when childhood itself is changing. 40% of children have a tablet by age two, nearly one in four have a personal cellphone by age eight, and children eight and under spend approximately 2.5 hours per day with screen media. Research examined links between early screen exposure and developmental outcomes among young children, reflecting growing interest in how early experiences influence cognitive, language, motor, and social-emotional development. Beyond the screen, even from infancy, children are limited in the development of movement by all of the containers used by parents in very early childhood.
Oden believes discussions about childhood development are sometimes reduced to a simple recommendation that children spend more time outdoors. While she supports active play, she suggests the issue is broader than any single activity. Development, she explains, occurs across home environments, schools, transportation routines, community settings, and everyday interactions. When key developmental experiences are limited across multiple settings, challenges can emerge later in the classroom.
At the center of her work is the concept of embodied cognition. Through her educational programs and seminars, Oden draws on the concept of embodied cognition, a growing area of developmental and cognitive science that examines how movement, sensory experiences, and interactions with the environment contribute to learning and cognitive development. Ready Bodies, Learning Minds, which provides professional development, educational resources, motor lab programming, and training for educators, therapists, and families, explores embodied cognition within the context of child development and learning.
"We often think of learning as something that happens primarily in the mind, but development tells a different story. Children build cognition through movement, exploration, sensory experiences, and interaction with their environment," Oden says. "The body is not simply carrying the brain around. It is an active part of how learning and intellectual ability happen."
According to Oden, this perspective changes how educators and families might think about school readiness. Rather than focusing exclusively on academic skills, she encourages greater attention to the developmental foundations that support learning. She points to visual, auditory, motor, tactile, equilibrium, joint control, digestive, circulatory, and even adrenal development as interconnected systems that contribute to a child's ability to participate successfully in classroom activities.
To address those needs, Ready Bodies, Learning Minds has developed programming that can be implemented in homes, classrooms, and after-school settings. Oden notes that the organization's developmental activities are designed to support whole-child development through structured exercises that target multiple systems simultaneously rather than concentrating on a single skill area.
After more than two decades of presenting on child development, Oden says many teachers already recognize the developmental challenges they are observing in classrooms. In her experience, there is growing awareness that academic success and developmental readiness are closely connected. Techniques that have long been used, such as pencil grips, bouncy seats, and extra recess time, will not change classroom performance.
According to Oden, many of the challenges being discussed in early childhood education today cannot be solved by asking more of children. They require a closer examination of the environments, expectations, and experiences shaping development long before a child enters the classroom.
"Children are not failing education," Oden says. "In many cases, education is asking children to do things before development has prepared them to do them. When we respect the developmental needs of childhood, we create better learners and classrooms where success becomes possible for far more students."
