Pyramid of Potential

Vision, Copying from the Board, and What to Do About It

April 16, 2015

Hey Folks!

Autism Awareness Month:

On sale this month: Hypersensitivity and Anxiety

From a mom of 10 year old autistic girl after doing the following Moro integration exercise for 1 month:
"On Thursday, Susan's teacher called me. Of course, as I saw the caller ID I braced myself and answered the phone. She called to tell me that Susan had the best week ever with her. (Susan's been in this classroom for most of 4th grade and all of this year). She went to 3 assemblies and walked right in and sat with her class. She has NEVER sat with her class. Recently she stood just inside the door but usually she is in the hallway crying with her hands over her ears, sweaty palms and terrified. They are doing long division with remainders this week. She is picking it right up. (She is pretty good at math but it usually takes a bit for her to get the concepts and then she retains them. More impressive to me is that she only likes nice even numbers. In the past remainders would not be tolerated, there would be a tantrum over this gray area!)
To me the best part was she has seen Susan interacting with her peers and joining in conversations. (Never before). There is even a particular little boy who she is joking around with and calling her boyfriend! (He is also on the spectrum so I am ok with that!)
That night she came home and wanted to decorate for Easter. (Never really cared about decorating). Today she told me a little bit about kids at school with no prompting. She is sleeping less and kind of giddy at night. Physically she seems to be using her hands more without giving up, removing tape from a package and opening things."

We are starting our early bird special for the Brain Advancement Training. Head over to Brainadvancementteam.com for more information. Contact us if you are interested or have some questions. Act now to save the most money.

Thank you so much! Kathy

Vision, Copying from the Board, and What to Do About It

So your child or student has an accommodation that allows for not copying from the board. Is this a good or bad thing? In my humble opinion, it is both.

The Good:

Difficulty with copying, whether from the board or from a book, usually has to do with poor convergence - the ability to quickly and easily refocus from near to far and back again. If a person never developed this ability, you may see this: The child prepares to copy from the board. When he looks up, it takes a long time to focus, and it may hurt resulting in lots of blinking or rubbing the eyes. When he finally has memorized the words, he then looks down to his paper and has to wait for a long time as his eyes readjust and stop hurting so he can write the information down. If he has a poor memory, this will be even more difficult and slow. Once writing down what he can, he looks back to the board and waits for his eyes to refocus before memorizing again. The cycle continues, and by the time he has finished copying, he is way behind the class.

He might have an accommodation, or he may decide to deal with it on his own. He copies to his paper without ever looking at it. If he does not have to refocus, he saves time and it's much more comfortable. He has created his own accommodation. But he gives up good handwriting and staying on the lines.

The Bad:

Meanwhile, no matter how smart he is, he is feeling stupid. Why can't he do this when everyone else can?

It is because he did not develop the ability in infancy. When he was first born, he only needed to see a foot away to Mom's face. By the time he was combat crawling, he needed to see a couple feet away to his bottle, and by the time he was crawling he needed to be able to see across the room. If he missed developmental milestones, and "retained his primitive reflexes" he probably didn't develop good convergence.

The Ugly:

One day, this child will want to drive, and personally, I don't want him on the road with me, unable to converge as I get closer and closer - Ha! It is so much better to accommodate now, but to work on improving his vision at the same time so that he can converge.

The Improvement:

Step one is to replicate the first year of life by going through these stages again. The physical exercises are easy, and take only 15 minutes a day, using the DVD Maintaining Brains Everyday from www.pyramidofpotential.com/store.

Step two - after going through the exercises for at least 30 days to develop the brain, it is time to get an evaluation to test the convergence from a professional. By doing the "reflex integration" first, you might save thousands of dollars. I with the reflex integration was the silver bullet and would take care of the convergence by itself, but I have seen over the past 14 years that it is just the first step. So, to find the professional (a behavioral or development optometrist) go to www.covd.org .

Step three is to follow the directions of the optometrist to do Vision Therapy. It is very effective - I've done it myself!

Next week we will take an in-depth look into tracking - what it is, why good tracking is important, and different means to improve it.

It's a conference!

Get your calendars out!

Consider a vacation in Saratoga Springs, New York!

June 28 - The Plastic Brain:

Improving Memory, Attention, Processing Speed and More

Registration is at www.tinyurl.com/plasticbrain

Save by registering before May 15!!

Throughout the day, Ms. Johnson will train participants in exactly how to remediate some of the most difficult problems that are a result of incomplete brain development in infancy. However, as she likes to say, there is no silver bullet! Each child is an individual who will require a unique approach.

Ms. Johnson will describe a model where the emphasis changes from spending increasingly more time and energy on academics to incorporating brain development into early childhood, special education, and regular education classrooms, freeing up the teacher to teach more academics as a result.

She will share the results from an elementary school in Wisconsin who is implementing these methods with significant cognitive improvements in less than a year! "the improvement in the classroom has been the best news that we hear" Wisconsin Teacher Ryan McBurney

The Developing Brain and Case Histories

Body and Mind Health, and the effect on brain development

Nutrition, Stress, Exercise, Sleep

Neurodevelopmental Stages; Why Cognitive Skills never Developed

Primitive Reflexes

Symptoms and Integration exercises

Incorporating reflex exercises into the school day

Sensory Development

Auditory Processing

Symptoms of an auditory processing disorder

What to do

Visual Processing

Tracking and Convergence Screening

Simple eye exercises

Irlen Syndrome and Colored Overlays

Vision Therapy

Cognitive Skills Development

Phonemic Awareness

Attention

Memory

Logic and reasoning

Processing speed

Integrating brain development into school day without losing precious academic time

June 29 - Primitive Reflexes:

Foundation for Learning

Registration is at www.tinyurl.com/primreflex

Save by registering before May 15!!

The primitive reflexes have been around as long as people have been around. They are present primarily to force the infant to move the body in such ways that it develops and matures to survive. The additional benefit, as humans, is that along with motor movements, many other brain components are developing that help with academics: the visual system, the auditory system, the ability to concentrate, remember, and understand.

Several people have commented that they believe this is the missing link. And indeed, in my experience since 2000, I have found that the integration of the primitive reflexes to be one of the least expensive and most effective therapies today.

"I have a student that a year ago was basically a selective mute on the Autistic Spectrum. I have put a lot of work in class working in the Moro and can report that she changed like a light switch coming on. She is speaking in class, she will transition independently, is reading basic readers, and is exhibiting significantly fewer behaviors to the point that we may be removing the 1:1 behavioral specialist from her IEP." - California Teacher Mark Steiner

Introduction

Case histories

History of Reflex Integration

Research

Primitive reflexes guidelines

Beyond Primitive Reflexes

Moro Reflex: