Archive for the ‘Learning Disability’ Category

Take Advantage of our Neuro-developmental (ND) Screenings

Certified Neuro-developmental Screener

Nancy Williams will be providing ND Screenings in Spring, TXMay 1st, 2013.  If you’d like to get a snapshot of your child’s current developmental function, then please email Nancy ( nwilliams@littlegiantsteps.com ) for appointment times, location details, and answers to any questions you may have.

For more details about what screenings cost, how they differ from a full professional ND Evaluations, please visit this page on our website.

Little Giant Steps, a neurodevelopmental/educational consulting group, has been providing services to those who struggle with learning for over twenty years. Remember, you can improve the levels of academic success – learning difficulties do not have to last a life-time! Conact Nancy today, space is limited.  nwilliams@littlegiantsteps.com

 A Great Service For Children Struggling With Learning.

Remember, learning issues, disabilities do NOT have to be a life sentence!

Little Giant Steps will be offering Neuro-developmental Screenings in OKC on May 2^nd. We have a few appointment times open. If you or anyone you know would like to take advantage of this special offering: $25 for each family member, plus a free seminar to teach how to interpret the testing and discover your child’s current level of processing, and resources you can use at home; please have them contact Neuro-Educational Specialist, Ruth Young (be sure to give her your phone number). Ruth will be providing screenings that day. She will schedule your child, give details, and answer any questions.

Thank you for sharing this information with those who are seeking help for thier child.

 What a Difference A Neuro-Educational Program Can Make

Meet Timothy.  Little Giant Steps,(LGS) and his dedicated family had the pleasure of working together toward making learning easier, successful, and opening doors that seemed to be closed to him. I hope his story will encourage you, and if your child needs help, then visit our services page on our website.

We provide professional neuro-developmental and academic testing followed by an individualized Neurodevelopmental Program and Training, which is what Timothy’s family chose to do.  However, we also have programs that will meet the learning issues or problems, regardless of where you live.  Jan Bedell, M.Ed., M.ND., founder of LGS has created neuro-educational programs such as  ”At-home Programs,” “Developmental Foundations“ and “At-A-Distance Programs” so you have a choice.  If you live outside of our home state of Texas, we can help you help your child, teen or adult to become neurologically efficient, and make learning easier regardless of age or I.Q.  Whether your loved one is gifted, typical or challenged; receiving, comprehending, storing and recalling information can be improved and you will see a confident and successful individual emerge as a result.  Now, listen to Timothy’s mom in 2009:

“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,

NOW…FOR THE UPDATE WRITTEN IN APRIL 2013!

” Timothy is doing great!  He is making mostly A’s in school. The teachers are blown away with the fact that he really doesn’t need any accommodations especially when taking the standardized tests.  He reads very well but struggles with spelling.  I cannot tell you how many times he notices how much better he reads than his friends who are dyslexic. He says, mom, they need Jan Bedell’s program!

The reason I am contacting you is because Timothy is on the tennis team at his middle school and will try out for the high school team in May. He has found that if he does the skip cross before he plays his match, he does better. So, he wants to know if there are any exercises or movements that would increase his coordination. He really is doing very well in my opinion but he wanted me to ask anyway.  Tell Jan thank from us.” D.C.  

Need More Answers?

EVERY MONDAY EVENING….

  “Ask the Brain Coach About Learning Issues.” Free Consultation. See details: http://www.littlegiantsteps.com/ask-the-brain-coach/

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!

  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!

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.

Just When You Least Expect It!

We’ve been on the LGS Neuro-Educational Program and know it works….

“I finally completed the boys monthly status report and I am mailing it out tomorrow, but, I wanted to share something with you that happened this week that is not on the report. Trent wanted to invite a friend over to spend the night, but we were in the car and the number was not accessible. I told Trent that he could call him on my cell phone and amazingly he remembered his friend’s home number, but that is not even the best part. His friend was at his grandparent’s home (who he stays with quite often). I asked Trent if he knew that number and at first he said that he didn’t, then, Trent said, Wait, I think I know it and sure enough it was the right number.

My heart leaped for joy. Last year this 13 year old boy was doing good to remember his own phone number and now he is a walking phone directory. Praise God!!!!!! We have seen other signs of progress after being on the Neuro-Developmental Program that I included on our monthly report, but this one was a dozy. I think God knew that we needed the encouragement to keep going and finish the race. Thank you guys  at Little Giant Steps so much!”

Little Giant Steps is dedicated to helping all children learn easier, process information more efficiently and create improved short and long-term memory.  We utilize what God’s provided ~ the neuroplasticity of the brain.  A feature that can create new neuro-pathways, stronger connections.  Visit us online for more information.  Also, see the research we’ve completed in public schools.

Jan Bedell, The Brain Coach

Twenty Years Of Success

Little Giant Steps, a neuro-educational consulting group, founded by Neuro-Ed. Specialist, Jan Bedell, M.Ed. M.ND. has developed successful programs to eliminate the symptoms and reclaim the function in the brain which allows for the elimination of ADD and ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorders), as well as many other issues in learning.

Learning disabilities have a set of symptoms that will allow diagnosis or a description of a certain malady or abnormal function.  It’s a “naming” process. At Little Giant Steps we are more concerned with the root cause of the dysfunction and addressing the issues by helping the brain to function more efficiently and effectively.  This may sound pretty daunting, but the fact is as infants there are certain developmental steps the body and brain must achieve in order to become and have the functioning ability as God intended.

The Cost Of Missing The Developmental Steps

When an infant misses vital developmental steps, then we see symptoms and dysfunction typically in their ability to learn easily.  Babies were meant to be on their tummies on the floor where their movements begin to map the brain, so as their neuro-musculature system gains strength and grows the functional ability of the brain can organize movement on the floor with gross and fine motor skill development and eventually to higher levels of function that go on throughout our teen years.  Unfortunately, parents bring their infants home in seats, and keep them in some kind of seat most of their waking hours.  SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) which began occurring in the 1960′s resulted in parents being instructed to never put their babies on their tummies while they sleep.  However, putting your baby on his or her tummy during waking hours IS VITAL if you want a full and efficient neurological system to develop the communication between the brain and body.  If you choose not to follow these natural demands of the human developmental requirements, then you will have a child who will be functioning very much like a internet “dial-up” connection.  Eventually you’ll get the message, but for the most part the window of opportunity will have closed, or the frustration levels will have gotten so great you’ll put the whole episode behind you or ignore it.

School’s Are Needing Help!

Typically, these areas of need begin to show up with great clarity when a child goes to school.  Why?  Because the demands of the breadth of abilities in a classroom require the teacher to teach to the middle of the ability stream, and if your child is on a dial-up connection and unable to receive, process and store information at average and above, then they get lost in the dust. The school’s are saying we have a Learning Disability Epidemic and they can’t address all the needs being required with such diverse levels of comprehension, processing and memory failures.

Learning Disabilities Is Not A Life Sentence

Schools, parents, and others have been sold a bill of goods that their child will need to cope and compensate for their learning disability. That’s a lie.  Learning disabilities can be addressed at the root cause level in the brain by retraining the brain, developing strong connections between the brain and body and neuro-pathways made to operate more efficiently. One of the first things Little Giant Steps does is to help organize the lower levels of the brain, which happens when there is sufficient crawling, creeping, and other vital activities are accomplished during infancy. Our programs work on people of all ages. We have a senior program called Motion & Memory which we use to restore abilities to adults and senior citizens who have lost or are losing function.  Our programs developed for children utilize cognitive, physical, and sensory stimulation to create what was not created at the earlier stages of development.  No coping or compensating is needed when a person is functioning with neuro-efficiency.  That’s what Little Giant Steps is all about ~ leaving learning disabilities and learning issues behind.  The good news is that it matters not whether the individual is gifted, typical, or challenged. All will improve to function at their fullest God-given potential with the Little Giant Step Neuro-Educational Programs.  Have a great year!  If your child or even you need our help, then contact us. We have free consultations so your questions can be answered and most importantly this year can be one of the best years in your or your child’s life!