Your Questions Answered…

Q:  Thank you for responding to my inquiry so quickly.  My daughter is 11 years old.  She has  been diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalcula, other language and auditory processing deficiencies, ADD  – I think you can get the picture.  We have tried different therapies including neurofeedback.  Are you familiar with that?  It actually helped
her a lot, but as soon as we stopped the treatments, she digressed back and now its like she never had the treatment at all. Its so expensive there is no way we could continue with that on a regular basis.   She is currently in  visual therapy and we do lots of different exercises at home everyday which help a tiny bit, but the process is VERY SLOW.  She has learned to read and thankfully is reading chapter books now which are at her grade level (5).  Math is a real problem.  She can’t memorize or understand.  She gets words all mixed up in her mind.  She can’t retell a story the way she hears it.  She is very “spacy” – looks like she’s in a daze a lot of the time.  She is very willing to work hard and try to help herself, but needless to say it has been a real struggle for all of us.

What kind treatments/therapies do you offer?  Are they home-based?  What is the cost?

A: It sounds like your daughter has a lot of different processing difficulties.  The vision therapy will help the two eyes work together as a team. The work is slow but worth the effort. Neurofeedback works with the speed of the brain and can be quite effective but it can sometimes wear off after awhile (the brain really likes it natural speed).  There is another very helpful method that improves learning and attention by improving the timing of the brain. This is much more permanent and can help with the attention, focus and coordination resulting in better ability to pay attention, read, work math problems, handwrite.  We usually get a year and a half growth in reading and math without tutoring!  This is a home training program where we ship you the equipment and step-by-step training guide then help you work with your child on-line using our virtual classroom and by telephone.  We have had great results with this program and it sounds like one that would benefit your daughter.  You can check it out at www.hardybraintraining.com.  It is called the Rising Star Program.

For the last 6 years I have been bombarded with requests from families who have brought their children to my center to help their neices, nephews and friends who live far away.  And – finally – I am getting the home training programs ready so I can help kids who don’t live near me in southern California.

Soon we will have our programs that help children memorize math and help children remember words so they don’t get all mixed up in their mind ready for home use.  I expect to have these up in the next few months.  After that the dyslexia help and handwriting programs will be up and ready for home use.

In April we will start offering auditory processing help in a home training system.  I am wondering if, in addition to auditory processing problems, your daughter may have difficulty making mental pictures of information she hears and reads. Children who don’t make mental pictures process with words and can appear “spacy” looking like
they are in a daze because they don’t look at you when they are listening because it overwhelms the auditory cortex when there is a lot of visual information coming in.  Does she look at you when you talk to her?  Does she look at the teacher when the teacher is talking?

I think the best place to consider starting is with the Rising Star program to get the attention, focus and timing organized to make learning faster and easier.

Once the timing is better it will be easier to get started on some of the other programs that will help her become more successful in the classroom.

Please let me know about her eye contact when she is listening and any other questions that have come up.