Just when you least expect it!

 Listen to what a mom has experienced with her daughter after the Little Giant Steps (LGS) Neuro-Educational Program:

 Aaron and His Journey

First of all, let me introduce myself.  My name is Aaron.  I am 20 years old and a sophomore in college.  I love the four G’s; God, guns, girls, and good old American guts.  I love to rock climb.  I go to church three times a week and teach a weekly Bible class for young adults.  I love hanging out with my awesome brother, David (I call him Dave – he’s 17 years old). 

 I was asked to write a letter about my experiences with Jan Bedell, founder of Little Giant Steps (LGS), and a Neuro-Educational Specialist.  If you are reading this letter, it might be because you are considering or have already started her program.  I can imagine that you might be feeling a little nervous about this.  I know exactly how you feel because I had to do the same thing my freshman year in high school.  I thought it might help you to know the end result of doing the LGS Neuro-Ed. Program.  I know how hard it was for me when all I had was a little piece of paper telling me to do all these strange things twice a day.  Hopefully, sharing my experiences with you will make it easier for you. (Now LGS provides online assistance for training, program delivery, and video examples for easier learning and understanding of what Aaron calls these “strange things”, which consists of physical and cognitive activities).

When I was in middle school, I was a big band nerd.  I LOVED music and still do.  However, apart from church and my family, I was pretty much a loner.  I had one friend.  He was my best friend and we did everything together.  He was very outgoing; I was not.  I pretty much followed his lead.  I started mimicking his actions and phrases.  Basically I was becoming someone else.  At this time, my brother and I didn’t get along very well at all.  He has learning disabilities and he used to irritate me a lot!  In school, it seemed like the harder I tried, the more I failed.  Many times I thought it was better if I didn’t try at all.  I did not have any confidence in myself.  I was taking 15mg of Ritalin a day and had to go to the doctor every three months to get my blood drawn.  . 

During my freshmen year in high school, my life began to change.  Actually, the changes started the summer before my freshman year, when I went to see Jan and she put my brother and I on program (we always called it “therapy”).  Most of the therapy I had to do was strange and boring but I was willing to stick to it and do it every day because I wanted to be smarter.  My Mom and brother and I faithfully did our therapy for several hours every day.  The one thing I had trouble with, though, was the eye occluding.  It gave me a headache and sometimes I had an upset stomach.  Also, I was using these funny looking glasses that my mom made and I didn’t want to wear them outside the house. 

A few weeks after school started, my grandfather, we call him Pops, suggested that I use an eye patch to occlude instead of those funky glasses.  I could see that the therapy we did over the summer was already making some changes in my life and I really wanted to do everything I was supposed to do so I decided to give the eye patch a try. 

I can’t count the number of times that I was asked, “What happened to your eye?”  I really got tired of telling the same story over and over again, and hardly anybody understood what I was telling them anyway so I eventually began telling people that the eye patch helped my brain to work better. I won’t lie to you; there were some people who made fun of me!  I also found out that if you have confidence in the fact that you are trying to improve yourself, even if that means doing something that is drastically different than what everyone else is doing, that you can gain people’s respect!  When I say you are becoming a better person, I am not saying that to make you feel arrogant or prideful; just simply, going through the “patch experience” not only helps improve your brain, it teaches you a lot about yourself!

            You have to learn how to live with only one eye.  For the first hour that you are covering your eye, your brain puts up a false depth perception.  So you can still function fairly well, but after that first hour, your brain looses that ability and you find yourself pouring juice on the floor instead of in your glass. Any doorway or pole that looks like it is a long way off…well…it may or may not be, and hurling objects become impossible to catch.  You will learn little tricks to help you.  Such as putting your thumb in the glass when you are filling it up so you know when to stop!  In fact, you will constantly find new ways to adapt to your new situation, and that, in turn will give you confidence in your ability to adapt to even more difficult situations.  Little by little, you begin to change the way you look at challenging situations in your life.  So, you not only get rid of the pesky learning difficulties or attention problems, but you also build up your self-esteem.

I have a word of caution.  There are going to be days when you want to pull your hair out, maybe even days when you feel like you can’t possibly do this anymore, but you NEED to stick with it.  Whatever you do, push on till the end.  It is very important that you have some one who loves you very much BUT will not let you slack off or slide or quit.  They have to be able to be firm and pull you through when you don’t feel like going on.  This is very important in everything you do and in every area of life.  I’ve been lifting weights for about 3 years now.  About a year and a half ago, I hooked up with a good partner and I workout almost every day, except Sundays!  I see the importance of going to the gym every day.  Even when I’m feeling tired and not wanting to workout, my partner is right there saying “here we go, build those big arms.”

My parents were the awesome partners for me!  They were always behind me 100%.  They pushed me and pushed me!  Sometimes I was SOOO mad but I did it and now I am Ritalin free.  I can listen to lectures in my college classes and pay attention and understand without any problems.  I have wonderful friends that love being around me and I love being around them.  I’m also a lot better in sports now.  Before I started Jan’s program, I wasn’t very coordinated, but now I love playing sports because I’m good at it (the cross crawling, creeping, marching and skipping really helps with coordination). 

I have so much to be thankful for because of the confidence and pride I carry in knowing that I really can do anything I set my mind to!  I cannot talk enough about Jan’s Neuro-Educatiional Program.  I haven’t even talked about the WONDERFUL young man my brother has turned out to be and the progress that he has made.  He had to wear an earplug and a lot of other stuff that I didn’t have to do.  He was even worse at sports than I was and now he’s on his high school football team!  My brother and I are now best friends.  We have a special bond that we enjoy as a direct result of Jan’s therapy.  Everyone who has put 100% into her therapy could probably write letters very similar to the one I’m writing to you.  One day you will look back at this time in your life and appreciate the hard time as a turning point in you life for the best! 

 Your sincere servant of hope, 

 Aaron Thompson  AKA Pirate (because of the eye patch), AKA Superman (because of Philippians4:13)

The Neurodevelopmental Approach

In the 1940’s, a team of specialists including educators, neurologists, pyschiatrists and so forth, explored the potential to improve function in brain injured children. The result was the famous/infamous Doman-Delacato developmental profile. This profile was an attempt to decide what was necessary and sufficient to achieve “normal” human function. It looked at the inputs to the brain – tactile, auditory and visual, and the corresponding outputs –speech and language, manual function and mobility – from birth level to “normal” human function. Having completed all the steps of this profile, an individual was pronounced “neurologically organized” and hence capable of any normal human activity. If one of these developmental steps was missed, specific stimulation was supplied to complete that step and hence accelerate the individual through that step so that higher levels of function could be achieved.

This was a true work of genius. First, it challenged the premise that the brain was fixed in function and that if an injury occurred or a developmental step missed for whatever reason, be it illness, genetic anomaly, etc., that there was nothing that could be done to improve function. The ability to evaluate an individual that couldn’t talk or move or take standardized tests was an important breakthrough. Plus, by stripping away unnecessary developmental steps, it simplified the evaluation process. This work brought great hope to those that previously had been considered hopeless. It has given rise to many early intervention and “stimulation” programs and the whole sensory integration therapy now claimed as the territory of occupational therapists.

Many have taken this neurodevelopmental work forward. More specific steps of development have been identified, and new ways to provide specific stimulation as well as nutritional and metabolic breakthroughs have enhanced our ability to help individuals function at higher levels than ever before.

Implications for Babies

The great news for parents is that knowing the developmental steps used to evaluate individuals with problems, helps us design the best developmental environment for our babies. Since we can accelerate the learning and function of an individual with problems, we can also accelerate the learning and function of newborns. Why would anyone want to do this? Visions of “pushing” little ones in inappropriate activities come to mind. The fact is that little children love to learn. Very few respect baby’s wonderful ability to learn and to absorb information from his environment. By simply improving the environment of the child so that developmentally appropriate activities are available, little children can be physically and mentally excellent. This will avoid errors that result in learning problems down the road. Plus, we can approach the God-given potential that individuals have. Perhaps we can approach the abilities of our forefathers and send Godly, intelligent and capable children into the future.

This author’s own son was a fully automatized reader at the age of 24 months. He read at college level at the age of seven. By the time he was 12, he could read faster than any individual the author has seen.

The author had a Montessori school in the 1980’s and ALL of the 3 and 4 year olds were readers. This was not a population of bright and superior children. Some children, who couldn’t speak at the age of 2, were reading and speaking by the time they were 3 years old.

All of this is possible using the principles derived from the neurodevelopmental approach. What a refreshing vision in a country that enjoys a 40 to 50% illiteracy rate, despite the millions and billions spent on public education.  Read More:   By Kay Ness, Certified Neurodevelopmentalist

Learning Issues Are Not A Life Sentence!

Little Giant Steps offers consulting services to families with children or adults who want to improve their current level of functioning. We work with those who may have come to us with a plethora of labels including: Learning Disabled, Developmentally Delayed, Dyslexic, Distractible, Down’s syndrome, Autistic, OCD, Bipolar, ADD, ADHD, Down’s syndrome, Asperger’s Syndrome, Hyperactive, Auditory Processing Disorder, and more. We also work with those who are considered: typical, accelerated, and gifted to improve their overall function and continue making progress in all areas of learning.  While Little Giant Steps has five Neuro-Educational Specialists that serve the State of Texas, there are ND associates located throughout the U.S.and Canada to help your children, teens or adults. 

An overview of the process:        

 Consulting services are based on four-month cycles or trimesters for evaluations. Each trimester begins with an evaluation. A certified Neuro-Educational Specialist will conduct the evaluation. Educational Testing will be initiated as a way to establish a base line from which we can see the advancement of the individual’s progress.  The evaluation is based on neurodevelopmental models developed by several outstanding  researchers and organizations in the emerging science of neurodevelopment.  A home neurodevelopmental and educational program is specifically designed for the client based on the information gathered in the evaluation. Little Giant Steps supports the family in the utilization of their program. The family and n maintain close communication for the four-month period to ensure that the program is implemented properly and to help the family maintain their motivation. The family and the Neuro-Educational Specialist will work together to resolve learning difficulties and inefficiencies. The client’s success on the program is based upon communication, implementation, and a positive environment. Ongoing communication and input between Little Giant Steps and the family promotes dynamic implementation of the plan. Lasting progress is obtained when the plan of activities is performed consistently with proper techniques and positive reinforcement. It is our experience that the program is implemented more effectively when the family is in close communication with the consultant. Therefore, the family is urged to maintain regular communication with Little Giant Steps.

The role of Little Giant Steps is to provide educational testing,  evaluations, write the plan of activities which address the neurological inefficiencies, train families to implement the activities, and provide ongoing expertise for each family.

The family’s role is to provide information on the client history and evaluation forms as well as additional information as requested from time to time. They will receive training in activity procedures, communicate frequently with Little Giant Steps, consistently implement the plan, and schedule revisit appointments every four months. Based on prior experience with the time necessary to address neurological disorganization, the family is urged, but not obligated, to remain on the plan for one year to eighteen months in order to insure neurological efficiency and optimize the progress the client will be obtains.

Please review our success stories, as nothing works better than listening to someone who has traveled the journey successfully!

Fun Will Always Win

Regardless whether we are a child or an adult, when we are learning new things, if it’s fun ~ we’ll pay attention, relax and allow ourselves to be guided into a new experience. When a child, teen or adult has lower than grade level processing skills (Auditory or Visual), they tend to loose their traction with the amount of information coming into their ears and eyes.  Next, confusion rules their consciousness, soon followed by frustration, and then all processing shuts down, as the emotional toll becomes greater than their coping ability.  This kind of thing has happened to all of us for one reason or another at least once in our lives. It’s nothing we haven’t experienced. Some have greater coping skills than others, and some are so persistent in their quest for things, they will forge on regardless.  Those brave and determined souls are not the majority of us!  When we shut down, then learning takes a back seat and only the emotional state remains for us to cope with. There is a tried and true way to overcome these road blocks to learning and it’s called The Neurodevelopmental Approach.  We also call it, The Neuro-Educational Approach.

What Can You Do To Help Yourself or Your Child?

 1. Get the Free Auditory and Visual Test Kit from Little Giant Steps.  Here’s the link to order it free of charge.  Follow directions. It will help determine if there is a processing issue.  Get both Auditory & Visual Test Kits. If you  or your child isn’t up to what is considered grade level, then you will want to work on the deficit, and eliminate it!  That’s what Little Giant Steps does; eliminate learning issues!

2. Next is to practice twice a day for two minutes each session.   What do you practice? You go through exercises that you learn in the Test Kit. We have digit flash cards available (read about them at the link) or better yet, we have a computer program (Sequencing In A Flash) that will help improve both visual & auditory processing abilities.  If you are working with a child, then be sure and set up a reward system for them to do the practice activities twice a day for two minutes.  Some parents like to use a point system for each day of the week and redeem the points for something the child would like at the end of the week.  Even if it’s for you, or your teen, a reward system is a great way not only to improve ones processing abilities, but help establish a goal that is pleasant to achieve. For more information Jan Bedell, the Brain Coach, has written a booklet  (The Best Kept Secret In Education ~ Auditory Processing) that not only details the benefits to be gained, but offers other games, and ideas to help develop better learning abilities.

3. Practice every day until the learning road blocks are eliminated.  You’ll know when you see the evidence of the new neuro-pathways providing easier receiving of information, processing, comprehending, storing an recalling what’s being learned.  It is self-evident!  Many parents say, “All of a sudden he could read!”  or “One day he remembered things he’d never been able to before!”

If you choose to use flash cards, make sure the few minutes of interaction for you and your child is fun!  The auditory games can be played anywhere!  Some play these “listening” games while driving in the car, or while doing chores, etc.  Let your imagination flow! The more fun, the better for everyone.

As one parent said, “I’m surprised when I approach this part of my day as a “fun” assignment, both my child and I feel happier and more relaxed to go back to the other things on our schedule!”  I think that’s a universal truth.  When we approach anything with the right attitude, we can make our time spent better, more appreciated, and happier!  The best way to learn is to have these neurodevelopmental precepts in place: Intensity, Frequency, and Duration. 

Linda Kane, a Neuro-Educational Specialist, states: “Stimulation needs to be given with proper frequency, intensity, and duration. Frequency means having enough opportunity and repetition in order for the stimulation to produce a change in the brain and become learned information. Often, we are testing for output without ever properly putting in the information. Intensity refers to the strength of the input of the stimulation. Is the stimulation at a level where the individual is actively engaged with it, or have they tuned out because of lack of intensity?”

 You can drag an individual through an activity, but without a high level of involvement and interaction, change or learning will not occur. Duration has dual meaning. It refers to the time the stimulation is being given. Usually the shorter the duration the higher the intensity. Five or ten minutes of mathematics will have a far greater impact than dragging a child through an hour of math. Duration also refers to staying with the stimulation for however long it takes to produce change. Specific stimulation will produce change. It may take time, though. Many times the stimulation is creating, developing, and building new pathways to the brain. Usually that work produces internal changes that are not always seen. Just because immediate improvements are not evident does not mean it is time to stop offering the stimulation. Again, specific stimulation does produce change, but one must stay in for the duration needed to see the outward changes, which brings us back to the Neurodevelopmental (ND) Approach. By knowing what is specific, through the ND Approach of looking at things, you can have significant change.”

Educating Yourself Can Make a Dramatic Difference In Helping Your Child Succeed.

This mom shared with us how the Little Giant Steps Neuro-Educational Program has made a difference in her daughter’s life.  She’s given us permission to share it now with you!

“After 10 months on the Little Giant Steps program, this week all the letters my 10 year-old daughter had continually and consistently written REVERSED since kindergarten have flipped and now fluently come out on paper facing the right way.  She doesn’t even pause to ponder which way the letter “p” faces.

I thank God and rejoice that her learning problems are falling by the way side as her brain changes and new neural pathways are built.  This learning challenge seems to have vanished!  I thought it would remain a challenge and she would always pause to ponder which way her letters and numbers go. This is truly the difference in The ND Approach vs learning to compensate!

Our diligence and hard work on program is paying off.  I am celebrating and wanted to share.  We had a Little Giant Step today!”  C. K. in Perry, Georgia

  Every Day We See Success

Every day the Neuro-Educational Specialists see children, teens, and even adults move from being people who struggle with learning to folks with confidence, increased comprehension, and faster processing of the information they encounter.  There is no magic. It’s all done by addressing functional issues in the brain. Mostly those developmental steps or stages that may have been missed for a variety of reasons.

Here’s what a reader has said about the information we have on our blog.  I hope you, too, will join the growing number of people who now know that having learning issues is not a life sentence!  It doesn’t matter whether an individual is gifted, typical, or has special needs.  Ones potential can be realized with the right application of a Neuro-Developmental/Educational Program .  That is Little Giant Step’s specialty! We’ve  even created an at-home program for those who desire to make a difference in their children’s lives.  It’s called: Developmental Foundations.  Investigate, gain knowledge, then you can make a difference in someone’s life, as well.

“I truly wanted to write down a small word in order to thank you for all the nice items you are showing on this website. My time consuming internet research has finally been rewarded with extremely good facts and strategies to exchange with my friends and family. I would mention that we readers are definitely lucky to exist in a useful site with  many wonderful professionals with good techniques. I feel really lucky to have seen your website and look forward to some more amazing moments reading here. Thanks again for everything.”

Little Giant Steps (LGS) is here to make a positive difference in peoples lives!  Come by and read our helpful articles! They’re FREE!  Learn about the ND Approach. We have a full length seminar available on our store!  If Dyslexia is a problem, see the training sessions we’ve made for you.  Have a blessed day and come back soon!

 Faith Plays A Part Of Our Daily Life

 Little Giant Step’s committment to helping those with learning issues is founded and grounded in a belief of God’s miraculous design of the human being….. in his image.  Every child we work with starts out in a place of  dysfunction.  It takes the faith to do a program that will build a foundation totally unseen.  However, as many can testify over the past twently years Little Giant Steps’ programs work!  The missing pieces of the neuro-developmental foundation are put into place through daily activities, cognitive, visual, auditory, and tactile.  Every day physical, mental, and emotional boundries are met and exceeded until the dysfunction has been eliminated.  God created the neuroplasticity of the brain, so injured parts can be healed, and incomplete connections can become whole and strong.  We apply what is needed to stimulate the brain to develop as it was intended.  We are blessed, our clients and the children we work with are blessed and grateful for the knowledge we possess.

With our faith being such an important part of what we do daily, we also feel very strongly about the importance of the strength of families, and our nation.  Today, I want to share a song that we believe our country needs to hear.  It was sung at a Diamond Rio concert.  We hope you share our appreciation of this song and pass it on to those who believe in freedom, justice, and in God we still trust!

We Knew There Was A Problem With Learning

 Our daughter knew she was behind and couldn’t read like her friends. She would retreat to Mom whenever she grew uncomfortable with her limitations. It was one of only a few coping mechanisms she had for the internal struggles that ensued. I knew I had to do something, anything, to help her overcome her learning challenges. We suspected Dyslexia when the usual switching of her B’s and D’s lingered. She would skip words, start reading a word she couldn’t decode and fill in the wrong word with one that started with similar letters. She complained of headaches when she did academics. Keeping her on task and getting her schoolwork done everyday put a strain on our relationship and our days typically ended in tears.
 

Some Help Is Not Really Help

I had no idea it would be such a challenge for a homeschooler to get help. Even tried and true homeschool sources couldn’t offer any resources that we could afford. As with many homeschoolers, we have both a large family (8 children) and a single income. So we searched and searched, bet couldn’t seem to find any way for her to be tested or evaluated to see if she truly had Dyslexia or something else. I was also concerned that even a Dyslexia diagnosis would not help us to fix the problem for her.
After trying a developmental pediatrician through our insurance we were told she had ADD and should be put on Ritalin. We knew this was a wrong diagnosis; her issues had nothing to do with an inability to stay on task, and everything to do with her inability to read at grade level. We felt like we were back at square one with no real options to help our daughter overcome her challenges. We were at our wits end, yet we owed it to her to find something to help her reach her potential.

Little Giant Steps ~ A Silver Lining

My frustration came up one day when speaking to a friend and fellow homeschool mom who shared with us that another mutual friend had similar issues with her daughter and that she not only overcame her issues, but advanced to college level work by the age of 16 using the program. Hope returned. We learned about this program called Little Giant Steps (LGS), which uses a neurodevelopmental approach to addressing a gamut of learning disabilities. Nationally, LGS  Neuro-Educational Specialists are part of the International Christian Association of Neurodevelopmentalist (ICAN) network.

The approach has found that certain children have incomplete neuropathways that cause the brain to become disorganized and information is stored and recalled improperly. By doing certain exercises, these pathways are completed and the brain becomes properly organized so that information can be stored and retrieved efficiently and without obstacles.  When our daughter was first evaluated by an LGS neurodevelopmental specialist, we were shocked to discover that she couldn’t skip across a room, crawl or track an object with her eyes. Though she seemed to go through all the stages of development as expected as an infant and toddler, it was clear that there were pathways that were not complete and likely the source of her reading challenges and other physical manifestations we hadn’t realized before.

Our Journey To Healing

We began the journey of healing. And we are so relieved and grateful. In the first four months alone, our daughter improved one and a half grade levels! Along the way, an extra blessing surfaced. Our daughter had also been diagnosed with scoliosis. The curvature of her spine had advanced so drastically and so quickly that the doctor believed she would require a brace. But to our surprise, her scoliosis not only arrested, it receded (which is medically unheard of) due to a hanging exercises required by her neurodevelopmental program.  Our daughter is not even halfway through our eighteen month commitment with LGS, but she has made significant strides and for the first time in a long time we, with God’s help, feel she is FINALLY on the path toward healing… healing for both body and soul.  T.H.

With All The Resources We Have….

Why, at this time in our history, when we know more about what an infant and developing child needs to gain optimum brain and body growth, many parents are unaware?  Little Giant Steps has been doing all they can to get the word out so parents can be raising healthier, brighter, and happier children.

What is most distressing, from our vantage point, is that learning disabilities have become an epidemic force in our educational systems.  Teachers are being more and more stressed by the wide diversity of learning readiness in their students. More children are coming to school with low processing abilities, disorganized thinking (which means a disorganized brain), and behaviors that reduce their ability to receive, comprehend, store, and recall information.

The Neuro-Educational Specialists know that symptomatic functional learning deficits are typically caused from early developmental insufficiency (lack of required developmental activity). They see in their daily practice of working with children and their families that these issues can be eliminated by doing specific brain stimulating activities with a child for whatever time it takes for the brain to develop the neuro-pathways or connections.  As one researcher states, “Those undeveloped (incomplete) neuro-connections are in the brain just waiting for the developmental stimulation process to complete the circuit.”

All Parents Need to Know

A child must have focused attention from the parents for its whole health, and for its complete and fullest potential to be realized. They need sleep ~  sleeps that’s recommended. Most of our kids are sleep deprived in our country! They need nutritious and balanced food intake. They need to be stimulated and nurtured by their parents.  They need to be allowed to be on the floor during their waking hours, from the time they are new born babies, until they have mastered the art of walking, because it is on their tummies that their neuro-musculature develops, their brains and bodies become mapped, so the impulses of thought and action, cognitive thinking, comprehension, organizing thoughts, processing information and all the many things for which the brain is responsible can be efficient and effective.  I’ve said this many times, but it bears repeating,”Becoming neurologically efficient is like going from a dial up connection on the internet to a high speed optical line.”  Both ways work, but the dial up line leaves people frustrated, with many items never being completed, and almost all, eventually, give up!

Please, if you’re a parent, take a look at the free articles we provide for your journey to becoming a well informed parent who desires the very best for their children, and not just give them lip service with good intentions.  You’ll be surprised how much you can learn and how much you can do to change the course of your child’s academic journey.  Leaving children in infant seats, jumpers, swings, high chairs for most of their day, is literally putting their early and complete neuro-development in jeopardy.

Little Giant  Steps is truly the best head-start program ever.  Yes, there must be parent involvement, but that is at the heart of achieving the best parent a child could ask  or pray for.