Sierra's Story - full details

Background

Sierra is my daughter.  She is now 12 years old, and we have been home schooling her since kindergarten.  She has always appeared bright, healthy, happy and interested in learning.  Initially, our home schooling curriculum consisted of a formal math program called Right Start Mathematics, Handwriting Without Tears, and science, history, and geography through reading, reading and more reading.  Sierra was doing mental calculations in her head by the end of 1st grade.  She appeared to be reading quite well (The full seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia by 1st grade), comprehended books on tapes way above grade level (like Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities, etc.) and enjoyed artwork that she created independently.  She was not that interested in coloring books, and rarely, if ever, chose to write words on her own.

At the beginning of second grade, I thought that it would be appropriate to introduce a slightly more "academic" curriculum and introduced several other programs in addition to the structured mathematics program, RightStart. 

One program we chose was Geography Matters' A Tour Guide to the U.S., which consisted of outline maps on which you draw and write in pertinent geographical data such as rivers, important cities, mountains, and the like.  The information to be added to the outline maps is obtained by cross-referencing an atlas.  I was under the impression this might be something she would like, given her interest in creating her own artwork versus just copying or working with existing artwork.

A second program that we started at the beginning of second grade was a history program that included some art projects and coloring pages that support and illustrate the details and the information for the time period being studied. 

A third program that we implemented at the beginning of 2nd grade was a spelling program that was specifically geared towards people with dyslexia.  We had tried it several times before but shelved it each time after one week or so when Sierra started giving me the “doe-in-the-headlight” looks.  I reasoned that previous efforts had been unsuccessful because it was too early for her to begin this. 

Another program that we introduced was a handwriting program.  We used Handwriting Without Tears in the past.  She did not experience any reversals of the letters or numbers in her writing.  I believe her correct orientation of letters and numbers is a direct result of Handwriting Without Tears.  Nonetheless, the quality and fluency of her handwriting was still lacking.  She also never voluntarily wrote anything.  I thought that we needed to introduce some kind of a handwriting program that would give her fluency and improve the overall sizing and flow of her manuscript handwriting.  I felt that the maturity of the printed handwriting needed work before starting cursive. 

The handwriting program we chose was a copy work program that had both manuscript and cursive samples in it of single sentence quotations dealing with different elements of character by famous people.  The program is called Character-Building Copy Work, created by a home schooler, Cindy Prechtel, and can be obtained by going to her web site (hyperlink).

The Problems

As the school year approached I was confident that we had selected a curriculum that would be conducive to Sierra's learning.  Within two weeks of the start of the school year I realized that something was not right.  Here are a few of the problems and issues we faced:

• Other than mathematics, I was getting a great deal of resistance on all fronts.  It was taking eight full hours for Sierra to copy a single sentence.  The scary part about this was she was able to memorize the sentence, tell you who the individual was and give you the historical data regarding that particular person after merely two reads through it, but she couldn’t just copy it. 
• We were dealing with a child sitting at a table in hysterics, hyperventilating, broken pencil lead, sweaty hands, and T-shirts drenched in sweat.  She attempted to persevere, and I knew in my gut that this was more than just a behavioral response and not wanting to do something new or different. 
• The problems also were apparent when the geography program was introduced.  Again there was great deal of resistance to the copy work, coupled with anger demonstrated at the coloring.  This manifested in heavy dark coloring and apparent lack of care in coloring within the lines.  The history program had the same problem with the artwork.  
• Sierra was very frustrated with the history as the same geographical region was address numerous times with just new information and details being added.  She would have preferred, I think, to get all the details and all the information all at once for every aspect of that particular region. 

When week two came along, the RightStart math introduced a new concept that required time testing.  The time tests went back to single-digit addition in order to decrease any anxiety that might be affiliated with time-test taking.  Each practice sheet consisted of twenty questions.   The goal was to time the child and work on decreasing the time it took to complete the addition questions.  Sierra was to try besting her time at each effort. 

A graph was supplied to track progress, but I had not glanced at it prior to starting the first timed test.  Sierra took 18 minutes to complete 20 single digit addition questions.  I went to put this on the graph and immediately saw that she was way off the scale–the chart started at started at three minutes!  We tried this several times using the exact same test, and there was no significant improvement in her time.  This was a subject that she truly enjoyed and she set out doing this testing with all expectation of success.  She had no fear or apparent anxiety or belief that she was unable to accomplish the task–until she fell flat. 

Within a short period of time she started to dislike math as well.  A big clue for me was the fact that when she answered these questions orally she could do them in about 40 seconds, but she continued taking 16 to 18 minutes doing them in the written format,  even after a great deal of practice

First attempted solution

Sierra’s 7 year Well-Child Checkup was scheduled to correspond with her August birthday.  I raised my concerns and asked about things like visual processing.  The pediatrician recommended that a school psychologist evaluate Sierra.  I made some inquiries and found a private school psychologist (going through the school system, as a homeschooler, would have resulted in a further delay). I wanted to resolve this as quickly as possible for my daughter.  I did not want her to undergo any problem she may have had any longer than necessary. 

The psychologist that we went to go see was very well intended and had our daughter’s best interest at heart; however, as we found out after the fact, her diagnosis was incorrect.  Accordingly, her approach to fixing the difficulties my daughter was experiencing were an astronomical failure.  As crazy as it sounds, I have to say that I am very thankful for this because, had we seen any initial improvement it would have further solidified our initial incorrect belief that this was a behavioral issue rather than a learning skills problem.

 Again, about two weeks into private tutoring with this counselor, I noticed that not only was my daughter not improving in her skill levels, but she was starting to exhibit some self-deprecating behavior and speech.  She was called herself ‘stupid,’ saying she was nothing more than a ‘baby.’  She was pounding on her forehead and pinching her arms and her legs and beating on herself, and I just knew that I couldn’t take it anymore because I knew she couldn’t take it anymore.  I knew we had to do something drastic. 

The psychologist told me that Sierra needed to write things down in all academic subjects because a lack of practice in writing was her problem.  All my mommy instincts and bells and whistles went off.  I contacted the folks at Right Start Mathematics, and their advice was to throw away the worksheets and do the mental math so that she could continue learning the mathematical information and data without being intimidated or put off by the written format.  I thought that was very good advice as far as her ongoing math learning skill was concerned, but knew that it still was not addressing the underlying problem of slow work, resistance to writing and an apparent decrease in function when working in a written medium. 

I also spoke with the occupational therapist who created the Handwriting Without Tears program.  She said not to do more than 10 minutes a day in handwriting or that Sierra could end up developing a behavioral aversion to handwriting.  Frankly, by that point I was convinced we had already gone way past that stage. 

The Solution – Found!

I was given great advice on what not to do by these experts, but I still had no answers on what to do.  Fortunately, the Lord is looking out for our family, and He guided us to cogntive skills training for her.  I have a long-time friend named Jane Leonard Davis who has a cognitive skills training center out in Conroe, Texas, called Brain Potential Institute.   I called her up to ask if that program was anything that might be able to help Sierra.  Her response:  When can you get here?   Two days later the car was packed and we were on our way from Florida to Texas.

Pre-test scores and what they mean

Using a cognitive skills test battery, Sierra tested as follows:

• Sierra scored slightly above age level in her processing speed skills.  Processing speed is the ability to do relatively simple mental tasks in a certain timeframe. 
• Her memory was that of a 16-year-old!  This made perfect sense to me as my daughter had always been able to memorize scripture, people’s names, and be able to give great detail and information about clothing people wore or locations and items that she had seen. 
• Her visual processing skills were slightly above age level.
• Sierra’s word attack skills were slightly above age level.  Word attack is the ability to know and apply the sound codes in order to pronounce unknown words.  Since the GCTB uses nonsense words, Sierra was unable to use her memory to help her with this test task.  As such it showed a huge disparity between her test scores and the age level of the books she was reading.  It was explained to me that  with a 16-year-old memory in a 7-year-old’s body, Sierra had memorized whole word groups as "single items-single sounds" and was actually reading chunks of words at a time.  If she had to approach a three-letter word she had never seen before, she could not sound it out. 
• Sierra scored at a 5.3-year-old level in Auditory Processing.  This is the ability to blend, segment, discriminate, and analyze speech sounds within a spoken pattern.  If Sierra had not seen a word and heard how it was pronounced before, she could not break down the individual sounds of that particular word.  This made a great deal of sense as to why she was not able do spelling of words like “in” and “pin” and “spin”, even after going over them a number of times and despite her memory skills and capability.  In short, she was unable to “hear” the individual sounds within the words and could not equate individual sounds with their written code.  She heard the words as a single item.  So if you gave her a word like “irresponsible,” it was one sound to her, rather than multiple small sounds that blended together to make a big word. 
• Sierra’s Logic & Reasoning score was also that of a five-year-old.  Five is the lowest possible score on the test battery administered.    Given her raw scores, I think five years old was a very generous score for her. 

We found out that the Logic & Reasoning score often directly correlates with ADD or attention deficit disorder.   The auditory processing skill, even more so than the word attack skills, were a direct indication of dyslexia. 

I was told my daughter has some fairly severe learning disabilities.  In the same minute I was told that there was a way to “fix” her deficits so that she could overcome the disabilities.  I didn’t waste time and Sierra immediately started the recommended cognitive skills training program.  Once she completed the requisite sections in the auditory processing part of the training, she continued on with rest of the codes and sounds in the language arts companion program. 

Post-test Scores and Improvements

After completing both segments of cognitive training, Sierra was retested.  Her test results showed a marked improvement:

• Her processing speed skills, which are the most difficult to move, went up to 9.2 years old from 7.8 years old. 
• Her memory, which was already excellent at 16 years old, was boosted to 18 years old.
• Her visual processing skills improved one full year
• Her word attack skills improved, primarily because of the fact that her auditory processing deficits were fixed.  Sierra’s word attack skills went from 8.2 years old to 18 years old–basically she can now read anything given to her regardless of whether she is familiar with the words or not.  It does not necessarily guarantee complete and full understanding of it, because obviously she is able to read material that far exceeds her maturity level or expectation of comprehension. 
• Her auditory processing skills were just phenomenally changed.  They went from 5.3 years old to 18 years old. 
• Sierra’s logic and reasoning skills improved from 5 years old  to 9 years old. 

These changes occurred in just 90 hours of training!  Traditionally the training runs about 76 hours for the foundational cognitive skills training (over a 12 week period) and approximately 120 for both training protocols combined combined (over about 24 weeks).  The huge changes in such a short period of time were readily seen by Sierra and it gave her almost immediate proof that she was succeeding and getting her problems “fixed”.  It really provided a much-needed boost of confidence. 

The most important thing that I saw though, aside from the color bar graph chart going up, was the fact that my daughter stopped calling herself stupid and ceased the self-damaging behavior.  Now, Sierra is more enthusiastic and is a willing participant, looking forward to learning rather than fearing an environment of failure.  Sierra sees herself in a more positive light too. 

Some of her prior behavioral issues have dissipated.  Obviously, with a seven-year-old we still see some areas for improvement, but we now are confident that they are just age related and have nothing to do with underlying cognitive function problems.  It is a matter of a “won't” instead of a “can’t”.  She is both academically and emotionally more confident and sure of herself in all areas, even outside of academics.  And she is now more willing to try new things.  I believe this change has come about because of the training and her improved learning skills.  Before cognitive skills training, she had a fear of trying new things.  If she couldn’t master them the first time out, she was convinced that they would end up in the “I can’t do it” category instead of the “I can do it” one.  She is still overcoming this learned behavior and sometime still falls into her old pattern of not wanting to try new things.  But this is becoming less frequent.

During training, a great deal of time was spent working on writing using other media than a pencil.  Sierra had acquired a learned behavioral problem in which she associated a pencil with negative and impossible tasks.  It was quite astounding, but you could “see” her brain shut down if she was handed a pencil early in her training.  It was like, "I don’t want to go there, I can’t see this."

To overcome the negative association of a pencil, we let her use her finger to write in colored sand, shaving cream, use a glow-in-the-dark pen, and anything we could think of that would make writing fun.  This gave her an opportunity to excel and to succeed.  By doing this she started to equate writing with positive experiences.  Slowly we reintegrated the pencil into her writing tasks. 

In addition to her learning disabilities, we discovered that Sierra also had something called Irlen's Syndrome (also known as scotopic sensitivity syndrome).  Briefly, this is oversensitivity to certain light frequencies, and it causes the light to reflect off the page a little bit like a strobe light in a discothèque for lack of a better comparison.  It made the words, letters and lines on the page jump, swirl, and undulate.  This made it really difficult for her to write on lines or color within the lines, as the lines and words were “moving”. Imagine writing while on a rollercoaster–your letters would not be very uniform or consistent. 

After some thorough evaluations she ended up getting glasses.  These aren’t ordinary glasses, but rather are tinted lenses.  Sierra has 20/20 vision, so it was not an acuity issue. Sierra’s glasses have a dark purple tint that filters out the light rays to which she is overly sensitive.  When I look through her glasses everything is a purple hue.  When she looks through them everything looks its appropriate color.  More importantly, the letters and lines stay put on her page.  Sierra has since repeated the test battery with her glasses on.  Her logic and reasoning score improved significantly as the patterns she needed to observe and respond to were no longer moving around because of light distortion.  Her final test score of 9 years actually increased to a 14.2-year-old level with no additional work.

Where We Are Today

We have a new approach to school.  For spelling, instead of giving her words to review, study and memorize, I actually give Sierra a blank piece of paper.  I tell her a word and she breaks down the sounds to their codes and writes them out.  Using the skills she gained during cognitive skills training, she does this very successfully. She can literally spell anything that I give her.  If she does spell something incorrectly, it is because she has picked a correct code for the sound made, but it is not the one that is appropriate for that particular word.  For example, if I gave her the word “thumb” she might spell it THUM not THUMB because she might not realize at first that the “mm” sound in this particular word was represented by the written code “mb”. 

In the September before training Sierra was unable to spell “in”, “pin”, “spin”, and “tin”.  Just after completing training she was willing to try spelling any word.  Within four months of completing the program she was tackling and correctly spelling words such as “bellicose”, “nefarious”, “propinquity”, and “convenience”.  She does this without any sweat, without any stress and with no broken pencil leads!  Sierra even enjoys alphabetizing her spelling words and looking up their definition when she needs to.  Occasionally, we have resistance and fussing, but she is after all still only seven! 

Sierra's handwriting has improved dramatically, primarily because of her Irlen's filter glasses, her newfound willingness to write, and the practice that comes with time.  She now colors within the lines, and no longer has trouble copying sentences for handwriting practice or writing and drawing in her geography notebook.  She is better able to stay on task and can switch more easily and readily from one topic to the next.  I have seen a decrease in what I would call delay tactics.  She is more motivated because she is getting better results.  Her written math computation speed is gradually catching up with her mental calculation speed.  I see a decrease in some of the negative learned behaviors and associations that were driven by her learning disabilities.

Sierra has been given a world of possibilities that would not have been available to her before these programs.  I encourage you to have your child put through the a cognitive skills training program!

Because of the huge changes that I have seen in my daughter (academically, emotionally and behaviorally), I was compelled to find the means, the opportunity, and the time to be able to present this type of training to other children and adults who could benefit from cognitive training as well.  Many of the children and adults I have evaluated have other areas of strength and other areas of weakness than those with which my daughter presented.  Nonetheless, the ultimate result is the same.   Anyone who repeatedly tries and does not succeed will stop trying.  This manifests as a perceived lack of motivation.  Because they do not want to experience the pain of failure, they fail to try.  It is wonderful to know that there is a fix or cure for the underling learning difficulty and that the resulting behavior can also, with time, be turned around.  The cognitive skills training protocols I use create new neural pathways that 'fix" learning skills to improve a child’s academics, or an adult's work prospects.  This also help with overall emotional well-being and self-esteem.

Please view our web site for information to help you decide how to help yourself or a loved one.   If you need further assistance, please contact us.   Be aware that if you choose the online BrainSkills approach, that you may need to supplement it if there is a deficiency in word attack skills, auditory processing, reading comprehension or rapid naming and rapid recognition.  Following through will a complete skills repair will ensure maximum benefit for your student.  The Brain Trainers are here to guide you in selecting the most appropriate program combinations for your specific learning needs.