Just received this letter from a mom about the wonderful things she’s experiencing with her daughter’s improved abilities:

        Just a short note of encouragement to you for all your hard work in bringing this program to all of us.Our daughter, Shannon age 11, has ADHD & CAPD and had her initial eval. with Ruth on Feb. 18th. We’ve been on program for about 4 weeks now. Her #. letter sequencing age was 4-5 yrs old at eval., I believe. We’ve neverbeen able to give her more than 2-3 letters at a time when she’s asked how to spell something. Last night, she asked how to spell “Twilight”, I just rattled it off without pausing in the middle and I waited for the backlash…..”WAIT…THAT’S TOO FAST, I CAN’T DO IT THAT FAST!!!” But that never happened. I can’t believe it. A few hours later I pointed it out to her and she smiled and said, ” hummm, maybe I am getting better!”. I think that sole experience will be the best motivator for her. She sees tangible evidence that all this work is actually changing her brain.

ANSWER:  Many Children Have Low Auditory Progressing Abilities Which Decreases The Ability To  Receive, Comprehend, Store, and Retrieve Information.

Why are so many children struggling with low auditory processing?
            Many years ago, when our educational system was developed, we were primarily an auditory society; we ate together as families 2-3 times a day and TALKED.  We read as a family in the evenings or listened to radio broadcasts for hours.  We developed our auditory processing ability by practicing. 
            Today, our society is primarily visual with T. V., computers, movies, electronic games, etc.  These all consuming visual activities permeate our lives and leave little time for the truly important practice of listening and developing our auditory processing abilities.  Even though our society is primarily visual, we are still using the educational delivery system that was developed for a primarily auditory society. 
 
What can be done?
            Since the brain is dynamic and ever changing, much can be done to remediate the processing ability of any person, at any age.  By providing specific stimulation to the brain to increase ones auditory processing ability, global benefits will result for the child or anyone who applies these activities for a four month period. 
            You can request a FREE auditory test kit  or by emailing: orderdept@littlegiantsteps.com  Put “Free Auditory Test Kit” in the subject line. This kit will allow you to test any individual ages four to adult.  Also, reading the Auditory Processing Booklet will add to you knowledge and skill.  This information will give you a baseline to work from and a better understanding of your child’s struggles or inefficiencies.  To increase auditory processing, digit span exercises can be done with a four minute time investment and the reward of increased abilities globally.  Instructions for digit spans are also included in the free kit.
              In addition to digit spans daily, I encourage you to read to your children at least one hour a day as an additional way of developing processing skills.  When they are not listening to you read, they could be listening to books or stories on tape/CD (without the book).  This is a great way to add value to the time spent playing with legos, coloring or other fine motor activities.  Listening to audio stories and books (not music) increases vocabulary, helps reinforce sentence structure, provides opportunity for narration, models good writing structure in addition to developing auditory sequential processing. 
            Audio stories are also a wonderful way to productively occupy pre-school children while you are schooling older siblings.  You can see amazing results when you get your child up to grade level in his/her auditory processing abilities.

Winning Over Learning Disabilities

Jan Bedell is known as “The Brain Coach!  Here is her post for today:

  I am privileged to see some of the most dedicated parents in the world!  I had a family in my office yesterday with 3 children on the autism spectrum.  She has been faithful to do her neurodevelopmental (ND) program and Samonas sound therapy with the children for several years.  After all that hard work, two of the three would not be “suspect” to the untrained eye to have any  unusual or autistic issues. The other child is so mild that people that don’t see them often are amazed.  The thing that I thought was so momentous about this mother is that she finds herself expecting another child and one of the first things she thought of was putting the infant on an ND program very early to make sure he had a great start in life.

When we came to Little Giant Steps two years ago, Timothy was barely passing 2^nd grade.  He wasn’t reading very well, couldn’t remember things that he learned the day before, couldn’t concentrate because the noise in the classroom bothered him and he was just really frustrated.  At home, just cleaning his room was extremely overwhelming for him.

     One of the first things we noticed after he was on the program for about four months is that he was able to clean and organize his room with little supervision.  It is like we have a different child!      

     Timothy has been back in public school for 4^th grade (after being home schooled for 1½ years and focusing on the Little Giant Steps program) and is making mostly A’s and a few B’s.  His reading has improved beyond our wildest hopes.  He has improved exponentially in every academic area.  His teacher said, “I don’t know what you did with him, but this is not the same child as in 2^nd grade.” 

     I met with Timothy’s dyslexia teacher recently because she sent out results of her end of year testing. Even though the report showed that his scores increased in every area, I wanted to know if this was satisfactory progress. His teacher said, “No it wasn’t just ok progress, it was GREAT progress!”. She said he was the “STAR of the class” and that all of the students look to him. For example, at the beginning of the year he could read 15 out 50 words. At the end of the year he could read 45 out of 50 of the words on this specific test. She said most kids do not make this much progress the first year!!!  She said, “You know, he still has a whole year left in this class.” 

     Here are Timothy’s TAKS scores for this year: 

• Reading:  93 (only missed 3 out of 40). This score is one point away from “commended”.
• Math:  82 (only missed 8 out of 42). Because of this score, he will not be pulled out of class next year for math tutoring.
• Writing:  72 (only missed 7 out of 28).  His writing improved a lot this year and I know it will continue to improve next year.

     We are so proud of him and he is proud of himself, also. These scores are just more evidence to substantiate that the ND approach to learning is incredibly successful!   D. C. in Frisco, TX  May/2009

 It Works In Schools – It’s Guaranteed

“What a fantastic math facts system!  In 18 years of teaching, (first-graders) I have tried many ways to teach math facts but this system was by far the easiest to implement and I had better results with this system than anything else I have tried – all in just 7 minutes a day!   Even my lower-level students flourished and were successful under this system. (3 students did 100% in 3 min or under.)

Here are just a few of the results that made me sit up and take notice:

   Child #1 – Able to do all 70 problems in 2.5 minutes – 100%!

   Child #2 – Unable to identify numbers at year start. At end of the year, he did better than all the top students in other first-grade classes. 

                      My biggest success story in math! 

   Child #3 – Considered RTI, he was easily able to do math and was keeping up with the rest of the class.                                                            Tanda Trussell, 1st Grade Teacher

Math Facts In 10 Min. A Day

Teachers are using this supplemental math facts system and discovering the multi-sensory, neuro-educationally-based system works:    “I like the quick one minute drill to keep focus.  You can see how much they’ve grown for the week.” Maxine Bonner—Grade 2  

“My kids really love the sounds between the rows of the facts.  They will giggle.  Everyone will laugh and predict what is said.  It takes my students two or three days to learn the facts.  They know them by the end of the week.” Jennifer Baggett—Grade 2

Math Facts In 10 Min. A Day

Teacher’s comments after only 8 weeks of use:  

“The teachers seem to like the Rapid Recall programs we have given them and are beginning to see some results. ” Alma Gutierrez—Principal            

 “I have students completing one minute drills that I didn’t think could.  This is surprising me!”  Candi Voyles—Grade 1