NILD

I ordered their information because I was considering teaching at a private school that was interested in using it. They (the school) did not put a high priority on children with special needs, unfortunately, and decided not to do the program at all.

I felt the information NILD sent was somewhat vague and even secretive regarding methods. I assume it is a multi-sensory approach similar to Orton -Gillingham, but it was difficult to get much detail. The only other reason I’d probably not use it is that there is apparently no independent research on it’s effectiveness. Well, one other concern was that they wanted kids pulled out of class for 80 minutes twice a week. As a special ed. teacher, I know that kind of scheduling is very difficult. I’d prefer daily for an hour, for example. Personally, I’d rather go with a more recognized program such as Lindamood-Bell (which is what I am pursuing in addtion to Phono-Graphix). But NILD may be wonderful. It was just hard for me to assess it.

Janis

I remember trying to track down information on this, too, and I’m a pretty good detective. I decided that it was entirely too likely that they sprinkled a few of the right words in there, so that you would think it was like an OG program, and then made you invest the bucks. In my experience, if you’re program is that magical and mysterious… it’s probably snake oil. If a question is asked about methods and you’re just told how wonderful they are and not the basis for the wonderfulocity, that sends to me a strong message that it’s a method strong on good feelings and weak on content.

My son who I now home school was in this program for a year. Although I don’t agree with NILD’S claim that it will help any LD, I don’t think its “snake oil” My son is dyslexic. After watching the therapy sessions I realized that his decoding and phoneme awareness problems were not being addressed. We dropped NILD & began using the Wilson Reading program in Oct. Nathan was then reading at about a 1st grade level. After using Wilson for our Language arts curriculum 5 days a since then. He is almost at a fourth grade reading level and it’s only been 4 months. Needless to say we have both worked very hard.

We began the NILD program after a computer analyst in my husband’s office told us how much it helped him. He was mildly dyslexic, with processing and other learning and attention problems prior to NILD, He graduated with honors both from high school and college and in now the top programmer in the office. NILD is helpful for some people but they are very secretive and unwilling to help unless you spend a lot of money. Wilson is very different. I bought all the materials and self taught with the training videos. Wilson put me in touch with a trainer who has gone out of her way to help me teach Nathan and I haven’t spent a dime.

I am also homeschooling my son. Right now we are using Phonographix and this is helping him learn to blend (he was guessing at multi-syllable words). My son previously had 1 year of Wilson in school and did very well with it. He was up to level 3.

Is it a hard program to teach? I know there are 12 levels. It might be something we can use at home when we finish Phonographix.

How did you find your trainer to help?

Wilson is very teacher friendly, so I’m sure you could teach yourself with the videos as I did. I would be glad to correspond with you if you have? S and help any way I can. Where do you live? I am in VA Beach VA. My email address is : 3shulers @ mail.yellowstone.net.

I found the trainer by calling the Wilson office & they referred me. It turned out that the person I was referred to was a speech therapist who had evaluated my son 3 yrs earlier.

Looking forward to your reply,

Sharon

I am somewhat familiar with NILD or “The Discovery Program.” I know several students of the program and almost placed my son in it when I was homeschooling.

It is not a reading program, nor to is portend to be. The premise is that much of dyslexia or learning disabilities stem from poor wiring in the brain. The contend that through certain exercises - physical exercises - that involving crossin the midline of the body while performing increasingly difficult tasks and calculations will “rewire” the brain. It makes some sense, actually, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. We know so little about the brain.

As has been said, it is a considerable investment in time and money. The private school I know that uses it requires 80 min, 2x’s/wk, and an additional $120/mo for 3 years. They insist that all 3 yrs is necessary to see results.

I think for dyslexic children, it might work. But for children with auditory processing problems and the insuing weaknesses in reading, I don’t see how it addresses them - nor do I think NILD would contend that they do.

I’m always leery of a program that claims to be a cure-all.

Laura,

Wow! $120 per month is very reasonable. The school that was considering using it near here would have charged probably $300 or more per month! The teacher’s salary is fully paid by the parent fees if the NILD guidelines are followed. And a full time teacher can only have a caseload of about 8 or 9 students maximum. The training was $1500 last summer, so that was another issue.

I have the information packet and the program does work on underlying skills as opposed to being a tutoring program. It does work on visual and auditory perceptual skills and cognitive skills. As a matter of fact, most dyslexic children probably do have underlying auditory processing problems, although some have visual problems as well. Their premise is that if they can strengthen the underlying problems, the reading and other academics will be easier to access. This is probably similar to the premise of PACE, Fast ForWord, and other programs that profess to enhance cognitive or perceptual functioning. So the premise is not necessarily bad, but what bothers me is the lack of study by outside sources.

Janis

I failed to mention that we consistently do the rythmic writing exercizes daily. As you know, this involves crossing the midline of the body while performing increasingly difficult tasks and calculations. I do think there is something to the re-wiring claim.

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