Archive for the ‘Behavior Intervention’ Category

  So, he can’t read very well…. I’m just a parent, not an educator.

Today is Monday.  Today is the day to get started making a difference in your child’s academic life!  ”How?,” you ask.  “I’m not a teacher,” you say.  

Here’s the real truth; you are the very BEST teacher your child has.  You know your child better than anyone. You know the subtle nuances of their behavior, actions and language.  In fact, many parents these days  feel very out of touch with their children, due to lives that are rushed, anxiety-producing, and often extremely limited when it comes to spending time with their children.  There is an old addage that says, “Pay now, or pay later.”   If we don’t address problems with our children when they’re young, those problems only grow as the child does, and costs can become astronomical in terms of their future.

What Can I Do?

What you can do is start this week out with asking your child about their reading difficulties. Check out his internal information, discover what it’s like to be him in a classroom where he’s feeling less than successful. Some children can communicate what they think is wrong, some may be just as puzzeled about his situation as you.  What is most important, is to listen, and let him know there is help.  You may not know all you need to, but you are willing to join him, make a team effort in getting help, so he can stop feeling bad, frustrated, and lack in confidence due to his inability to read.

Next, you need to get on Little Giant Steps site and investigate the Neuro-Educational Services we provide and why the Neurodevelopmental Approach has the ability to change so many academic lives for students.  The free articles can help you to know what you need to know about development and learning.  The fact is, you are the best teacher, because you are the source of what your child was able to learn from an infant. You will be asked to commit to a program with your child, but if you can change his world for the better, for the rest of his life….. don’t you think it would be worth it?  Listen to other parents who have traveled this journey and succeeded.  So, it’s Monday! Let’s get started!  Your child’s success is waiting for you!

Parents Can Change The Course Of  Their Children’s Academic Life

A mother knows when there is something “unique” about their child and usually is the one who notices the inconsistencies in their learning behaviors. Once in a while a father will recognize something “quirky” or unusual.  Most times parents will experience frustration with their children who are disorganized, forgetful, messy, losing things pretty consistency and struggling in school.  Their frustration comes from what they know ~ their child is smart, but seems just not paying attention, listening, or some think they are rebellious, lazy or spiteful. 

A Neuro-Educational Specialist will tell you, what you are looking at is a child with a disorganized brain, coupled with low processing skills.  Most of these issues are related to a gap in their early development.  There are other issues that carry diagnosis, as well.  What we know is that with intervention at the root cause level in the brain, these symptoms can be addressed by trained parents.  Our job is to help you help your child.  Little Giant Steps has helped thousands of parents over the past twenty years. Parents learn through our online training exactly how to help their children get through this passage of time with the right brain-stimulating activities for addressing the needs to increase the neuro-pathways, organize the lower levels of the brain, and bring their processing abilities up to grade level.

My favorite expression a parent shared, “I now have a different child.  It’s like he’s whole.  He’s calm, enjoying learning for the first time in his life, and we are not always after him to do things, finish things.  Our lives are peaceful, and he has more confidence than we could have ever dreamed of.  He’s curious and excelling in his academics.  Thank you, Little Giant Steps.”

Check out our home page, the articles and investigate how to make your family discover the full potential of a “problem” child.

What To Do When You Know….

So many parents come to us after they have spent years knowing something was up with their child and their ability to learn and carry out simple plans. 

* They knew the child was smart, but was not being successful in school.

* They knew their child heard their directions, but consistently unable to carry out the directive.     

• * They knew their child was disorganized in their actions, thought processing, and behavior, but assumed they were just lazy or disobedient.  The list goes on.

When The Light Finally Goes On

Unfortunately, all too often it is the child that crashes emotionally that sounds the alarm that signals “vitally important” and something must be done to help this suffering child.  In my own case, my son stated, “I just wished I was dead.”  He was smart, creative, had advanced skills verbally, could do advanced math…. but only in his head. His motor skills were about 4 years behind his mind.  With other families I’ve had to opportunity to be associated with their child had other symptoms. Some couldn’t read, even though they were bright and articulate. Other’s showed signs of intolerable behavior outbursts when they would get frustrated, or they couldn’t tolerate noises or were distracted to the point of being on every-one’s black list.  These were all kids that the parents suspected there was something different, but didn’t act until it became a volatile event that literally shocked and shook their world.  Hearing my 10 year-old son wishing he was dead rocked my world. I suddenly saw the depression, frustration and outcry from his soul.  He knew something was wrong and no one was able to help him.

The Truth

There was help for him, but I, as his parent, didn’t know where to look.  I’d been after the school to help him since the day he entered kindergarten, because I actually saw his distinctive way of interacting with the world when he was three.  His pre-school teacher and I even discussed it at the time!  The school said, “His grades are above average, so we do not have any intervention for him.”  The day he told me he didn’t want to live any longer… the school’s answer just wasn’t good enough!  Then came the resolve and clarity that I had to save my son!  I didn’t know how, where, or what to do, but I could no longer ignore his sense of failure that had been a part of our lives for 7 years, regardless of what the school told me!  So, I prayed, I investigated, and I educated myself.  It worked!  I found a neuro-educational specialist who evaluated him, created an individualized program to assist in getting his brain and body better connected (created neuro-pathways) and communicating efficiently. We addressed his eye-hand coordination deficits with special activities that created neuro-pathways, we developed better cognitive skills and most important, I saw this child… a messy, disorganized child emerge as a clear thinking, acting, and confident son that by age 12 became a phenomenal success in school, athletics, and was spiritually centered.

So what’s my thought for you today?  Here’s a quote sent by a reader of our blog by Jim Rohn. It’s the secret to Little Giant Steps’ Neuro-Educational Programs:

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.”–Jim Rohn

I thank God everyday for the path I was able to find for my son. It allowed him to become whole, reach his full potential and bless others with his professional skills and service to God. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him grow and become a very successful dentist, father and leader in his community.

The Neurodevelopmental Approach is a simple discipline when utilized each day for a season of your child’s life that reaps benefits beyond many parent’s wildest dreams, not only for those with special needs, but for gifted children like my son, and for everyone in between… regardless of age or I.Q.  Now go have a blessed day!

 At Little Giant Steps (LGS), nothing makes us happier or more satisfied than seeing parents gain knowledge, skills, and confidence in why their child is having difficulty learning, why certain behaviors are occurring, and how they can be a part of a lifelong intervention that can eliminate destructive symptoms and learning issues. The Neurodevelopmental Approach has brought peace, pride and happiness to thousands of families.  For which, LGS is as grateful as the parents to see the success in learning that had alluded this family prior to becoming a client.

Here is a mom who discovered how she could lead her child out of the failure he was experiencing with dyslexia.  Another parent discovered there was help for her children with autism.

Then, there is Kathy, an educator who had a son totally unable to cope, OCD, auditory processing issues and more.  While her training as an educator had not prepared to for this dynamic paradigm change; she felt lost with little hope of helping her son.  She hung in there and worked the Neuro-Educational Program…. well let’s let Kathy tell you her story.

Have a blessed day and if things look down, just look up and ask for God to sustain, train, and love you as you pass through a difficulty!  See you next time!

 It’s Education, Not Medical

Jan Bedell, The Brain Coach

 Little Giant Steps has been providing children, teens, adults, head injury victims and learning disabled individuals with Neuro-Educational Programs for two decades.  Jan Bedell, M.Ed, M. ND. (The Brain Coach) founded this faith-based educational consulting and training service as a result of her desire to find a way to help her daughter.  After seeing such remarkable results in her daughter’s abilties following a Educational Neurodevelopmental Program, she stopped teaching and became certified as a Neuro-Educational Specialist.  Since then she’s helped thousands discover their full God-given potential and know freedom from anxiety and frustration in learning situations.

The Neurodevelopmental Approach is a methodology of education, not a medical model. This approach has been around for forty-some years. It was born out of the need to help children effected with cerebral palsy to learn and grow into their God-given potential. It was developed at a time when medical brain research was of the opinion that the brain was hard-wired and static.  It was thought there was nothing anyone could do to change the brain.  At that time, no one really understood the neuroplasticity of the brain.

However as parents and educators worked with children suffering from many learning, mental, and handicapped challenges, these dedicated people didn’t care what the prevailing scientific thought was (nor did they believe it was true), they just pursued what worked for their children and believed in the spirit of themselves and their children’s abilities.  As a segment of people became convinced as they addressed learning issues through the symptoms of the dysfunction, they began to see amazing results in what these children could do academically.  Because they were outside the medical models, funding resources, and the fact they relied on the actual results they were seeing (anecdotal information was not acceptable to the scientific community), they were either ignored or discredited by the medical community.  Today with the advancement of technology, brain imaging, development of neurosciences, educational advances, the forbearers of this modality (The Neurodevelopmental Approach) have been vindicated.  They were right!  The feature of the brain called neuroplasticity allows the brain to change, create, repair, and improve processing, cognitive, and academic abilities through the use of brain-based stimulation that builds connections and improves neuro-efficiency (communication between the brain and body).

If It’s Working, Keep Going

Due to the fact this small band of professionals and parents were interested in cause-effect and results in improved function they were experiencing and witnessing in their families and clients, they continued working in the direction the successes lead. They labored for children’s advancement and developed an entire neuro-educational program that mapped the root cause of symptoms seen in learning difficulties and the appropriate brain-based activities that would create neuro-pathways to address those issues and close those gaps of dysfunction. This new way of working toward better learning abilities was called The Neurodevelopmental Approach.  It does not diagnose, nor medicate, or label the child.  It simply looks at the limiting symptoms or dysfuntion and provides recommendations of activities that will address those specific areas.  Much like a person going to the gym and lifting weights and seeing the change in the body’s ability to adapt with greater strength,  the goal with the Neurodevelopmental Approach is to gain function to the best of each persons capability, typically to grade level.  Since development is a long process, the Neurodevelopmental Approach is often likened to a repair service for foundations.  When a child, teen or adult misses steps or stages of normal development, they have gaps in the foundation of their learning abilities.  The Neurodevelopmental (ND) Approach is simply a “repair service” of those foundational areas of function.  For instance, if a baby misses the stages of crawling and creeping there are many areas in the development of the brain go missing i.e. lower level brain organization, mid-brain level of organization, impulse control, memory & learning, emotional responses, autonomic nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, and eye/hand coordination.   An ND evaluation illuminates those areas that will improve with intervention.

A professional evaluation is provided by a Certified Educational Specialist.  First, a full battery of academic testing is done and the results will be utilized as the bench-marking system to chart any changes as a result of the Neuro-Educational Programs implemented.  Next, will be observing and evaluating  the levels of sensory in-put function (Visual, Auditory, Tactility). The next primary area evaluated is sensory out-put. The motor out-put function (Fine motor, Gross motor and Language). Then the individual is evaluated based on nine levels of development for each level of sensory in-put and out-put function.  The brain is 3% cell bodies, 97% connections.  Creating connections is the goal. It is the job of the Neuro-Educational Specialist to provide a program based on the individual results of each child, teen or adults evaluation.  Then the parent or individual is trained in the appropriate brain-based neuro-developmental stimulating activity for which they will do for a period of four months. A re-evaluation is performed every 4 months and if the problem is resolved, the individual is graduated from the program. If they still are in need of intervention, then a program adjustment is made, or possibly another area of dysfunction will be included and addressed in the new program.  When the individual is functioning at the appropriate grade level, then they graduate from the Neuro-Educational Program. When functioning successfully, they are considered to have neuro-efficiency.

Typically we see people who’ve been on the Neuro-Educational Program continue to improve and refine their abilities.  Symptoms such as Dyslexia, ADD, ADHD are eliminated in most cases.  Improvement in functional ability is assured when the Neuro-Educational Program is followed.  It’s a program that every human being could experience gain!  For more information, please see our free articles, Videos, U-tube Testimonies.

Inefficiencies in gross motor, fine motor, muscle tone, auditory processing, visual processing, sensory function, academic learning, behavior, development, and cognitive function can all be addressed using a Neurodevelopment approach.

The Central Nervous System

Often, the symptoms associated with FAS/FAE are actually inefficiencies involving the central nervous system. The primary job of the Neurodevelopmentalist is to find methods that will impact the central nervous system in order to address the source of the developmental problem areas. This includes a variety of stimulation activities that will correct the underlying problems. Therefore, an individual with FAS/FAE is approached just the same an any other child, whether the child is labeled Autistic, Developmentally Delayed, Learning Disabled, ADD, ADHD, or Down Syndrome. Neurodevelopmentalists are interested in what is going right (the strengths), what is going wrong (the weaknesses), and how to best impact the central nervous system to positively change function. We can positively impact the central nervous  system because of something called brain plasticity, the brain’s ability to change function, structure, and chemistry if the correct stimulation is provided to facilitate such change. There is no magical age at which this can no longer work. Function can be improved at any age, though it is usually easier and more quickly impacted if started at a younger age.

Sensory Dysfunction

The difficulties in behavior, attending, and learning associated with FAS/FAE are usually caused by underlying sensory dysfunction. Children with inefficiencies taking in, integrating, organizing, and processing sensory information often become very confused, overwhelmed, emotional, and hyperactive. Neurodevelopmentalists commonly see children with the symptoms in the following areas:

Hearing:  Hearing may be hypersensitive to certain frequencies, or the individual may be unable to filter out sounds in a noisy environment- often manifested by degradation of behavior in these situations. ICAN Neurodevelopmentalists use Samonas Sound Therapy to normalize these insensitivities when indicated. This highly sophisticated sound therapy uses the most advanced technology in the world to retrain hearing and auditory processing problems, and ultimately helps improve reading skills in those with low auditory processing. Significant improvements in vestibular function and behavior are also seen with the use of sound therapy.

Next time Little Giant Steps will bring you more of Kay’s article and discuss more sensory issues.

 Fireworks is what we expect to see on the 4th of July.  In many ways  fireworks are somewhat representative of what happens in our brains when learning.  The fuse is lit, vital connections are made and a beautiful celebration of  color, light and sound fill the night sky!  Can you imagine if the explosive agents (connections) in a firecracker didn’t work? How much a of a bang  would you get?  Can you imagine if the triggering mechanism wasn’t installed correctly?  The firecracker certainly would never live up to its potential (light, sound, movement), because there would be no way for energy to flow properly so all that was supposed to happen could be delivered.  All the parts were there, but  weren’t connected so it could work successfully.

Little Giant Steps have been solving learning problems over the past two decades.  We make sure the connections are there so the best performance of the brain and body can happen! We call it neuro-efficiency when there is extremely high velocity of signals flowing through the neuropathways between the brain and body working in an organized fashion.

A child, teen or adult won’t ever reach their full potential if the “wiring” or “connections” in the brain aren’t developed and in place properly.  Your brain needs to be developed so there is organization and connections, much like the requirements in a firecracker. We are seeing epidemic proportions of students who are smart, but struggling and falling behind in school.

Can the lack of organization and lack of connections be fixed?  YES!  And quite frankly it is a natural progression  that should occur in the early months and first years of a child’s life, but for whatever reason those vital steps are being missed. ( See the article “Teaching Babies” for a better explanation).  Little Giant Steps neuro-educational programs are designed to provide curriculum AND embedded in those programs are activities that will organize the brain and cause enough specific stimulation to the brain so massive connections are created by doing these programs every day (5 times a week, twice a day for no more than 5 minutes each session!)  Does that sound like an exceptionally difficult fix?  For normal pre-schoolers, down syndrome, or mentally challenged we have the “Early Learning Foundations“.   For those older children (even adults) the “Developmental Foundations” will do the trick.  For those who have more complicated situations, then we recommend a professional Neuro-developmental Evaluation.  The important part is get busy.   Educate yourself, investigate and then get with the program.  Let’s get these learning issues dealt with so your child, teen or even yourself can experience being free from learning disabilities!  Let Independence Day have a special meaning this year, one that will last for a lifetime of freedom!

ADD and ADHD Can Be Left Behind With The Neurodevelopmental (ND) Approach

Children and adults have been given labels of ADD and ADHD in sky-rocketing numbers in the past few decades. As all labels, they are to describe an object or, in this case, a set of symptoms. LGS, Little Giant Steps, is an educational consulting group who is responding to the “root causes” of ADD and ADHD with life-changing methods utilized in The Neurodevelopmental Approach. We rely on the use of natural features of the brain to repair itself through specific brain stimulation techniques that any adult or child can do. See our website and learn more about this exciting technology that only God could have provided.

 Articles on ADD

ND program results for Reading Comprehension

ND program results for Math

ND program results for Word Recognition

Justin is much more dependable than he used to be. He can be trusted to do a job well and thoroughly and even has been trusted with training others to do some important things (milking the cow, for example). He also has made great progress in acting in more “socially acceptable” ways. Other people used to cringe when Justin arrived. Now, they actually look forward to his company! While he still “talks too much” and occasionally too loud, he catches himself (which is a “Giant Step”) As parents, we have repeatedly rejoiced over this.

Furthermore, while Justin has never been academically behind, his nearly illegible handwriting had always been a limiting factor in his schoolwork. While his penmanship is not “textbook neat” it is now entirely legible and is no longer holding him back in his other schoolwork. He has even begun to enjoy composition work, which in the past was his most dreaded task.
On LGS program from May, 2009 to August 2010 Marie, Karnes City, TX

My 16-year-old son has always excelled with fine motor skills, and academically he’s had no real problems. I have always noticed, however, that he was lacking in gross motor skills. He could walk and talk and do all the essential things, but he was uncoordinated and not athletic at all. He has had a job for over a year, is very artistic, likeable, funny and talented. I always worked under the theory that some people are just stronger in some areas than others, and he’s just not an athlete. No problem — he excelled in other areas, so no big deal.

When he turned 15, I started trying to teach him how to drive. There were the usual problems at first of making turns too wide or too tight, etc. My more experienced friends told me to be patient, that those skills would come. But after many times behind the wheel, I began to wonder if he would ever “get it.” He wasn’t noticing cars turning in front of him, would only brake when I yelled to STOP (after saying slow down, start braking, and other encouragements, until it became necessary to scare him into actually stopping), wasn’t noticing when lights would turn yellow or that it had turned red, or even that there was a signal ahead at all. I would tell him to turn into the next subdivision, or some other such instruction, and he would say okay and then just not even slow down. I kept wondering what his mind was on that he wasn’t paying attention to me or the road or anything.

I took a break and a family friend worked with him for a time. The results were the same — my son couldn’t stay in his lane, didn’t seem to be paying attention, and came precariously close to driving full speed into ditches and other cars. No matter how much practice he had, he wasn’t improving. Over the course of several months, I had come to realize that my son was more than just uncoordinated. He had a lack of spatial awareness that was severely affecting his driving ability, and probably other areas of his life that I was unaware of.

I had heard about Little Giant Steps and the neurodevelopmental approach from friends, and I wondered if the program could help my son. I had mostly heard of the program helping kids with dyslexia and auditory processing problems, so I wasn’t sure if my son could be helped, but I wanted to check it out. We had our first evaluation five weeks ago and were given exercises and activities that were supposed to help. Last weekend, I finally took my son driving again, and there was a world of difference! From the very beginning of the driving session, he turned into the correct lane, stayed in his lane, kept the proper distance from other cars, was aware of other traffic, paid attention to traffic signals, etc.

I am so excited about his progress! We still have some practicing to do for sure. I have been letting my son drive everywhere we go, and I have noticed that the longer the session, the less he pays attention. But I am greatly encouraged that with practice and continued participation in the program, he will be a safe driver within a couple months. K. B. in Dripping Springs, TX