Brainskills

Brainskills is an at home version of the PACE program. It has a subset of the PACE procedures. I went to the training program for PACE in Sarasota and they were also training camp counselors in Brainskills. The learning center was going to use Brainskills at camp. So I have a pretty good idea of what the program is.

It is intended for a child who doesn’t have severe problems. It works on processing speed, visual processing, spatial reasoning ect—all the things PACE does. We went for PaCE, even though it was much more expensive, because our son has both auditory and visual processing problems. His problems are fairly severe and we wanted the best shot we could get at helping him.

PACE markets itself as a cognitive program but in realty there are a number of procedures that are more sensory-motor in nature.
Brainskills has far fewer of these than PACE. It also has less variety in the cognitive procedures than PACE.

From your description, Brainskills sounds like it might be a good match for your son.

Beth

Just a thought, which has nothing to do with what you are asking, but my son has always taken a longer time to answer a question. It was not matter of him understanding, but a matter of him being able to formulate an approriate response. In first grade, this was not noted as a problem, but was listed as a problem once speech language was done in third grade. He had a lot of difficulty in second grade when they had to write stories and write an answer in sentence form. He was unable to this with successs. My son's processing speed is at low normal which is low for his IQ. He has an auditory memory deficit, along with an expressive language disorder. Hope this is helpful to you, even if it was not what you were asking.

Hi, would you share with us your views of PACE after your son completes the program? As a practitioner I continue to have huge concerns how to help those students I teach who have extremely slow processing speeds and multiple processing issues. As a teacher, I CAN teach reading and math skills, I, however, am struggling with how to help (if I can and if it is truly my responsibility, that may be worth an interesting debate) improve processing deficits. Where does education end and therapy start? But, anyway, did it work for your son?

Anitya,

We have only finished week 1 so everything is a bit early to say. I will say this though. We have been doing Neuronet which is a multi-disiplinary program which focuses on the sensory-motor system since January. Without it first, we wouldn’t be seeing the success we are. But then, my son has a particularly difficult set of problems.

My son is doing well. I am impressed. Today he told me the names of the first 10 presidents of the United STates. The method is to use pictures to teach kids to visualize. My son today was able to “run the video” in his mind to see the pictures. I thought this was particularly impressive since, at age 8, he had not even heard of most of the presidents.

I don’t know what the role of academics versus more basic remediation should be in the schools. I will tell you this though. My son has been in resource room for math for the last two years. He doesn’t have dyscalculia (sp??) but his other learning problems impacted his math. He will be in a regular third grade classroom for math. All the progress has been this semester. During this time, he has done no math at home, not even homework (long story). He has done Neuronet, visual exercises (both processing through Critical Thinkings series and eye exercises), and I have explicitly instructed him on directionality (right, left, back, front).

So, it seems to me, that dealing with some of the underlying deficits has a certain efficiency to it.

Beth

Hi Kathy,

It’s an interesting puzzle your son presents, it could be a deficit in what is sometimes called “rapid automatic naming”, which is the ability to rapidly name familiar objects, numbers, letters, colors, etc. It is usually believed to be part of the “executive function” part of the brain, and may have more to do with how the information is organized in the brain, i.e. with getting it back out again, not with the “storage” or memory capacity. It is often believe to be one half of the “double deficit” diagnosis of dyslexia, the other half being auditory processing deficits. Not all tests will pick that up, by the way, so if you want to be sure, perhaps you could ask if they will give him the CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing) which includes tests of both RAN and PA. It’s a new test, just came out in ‘99 but many schools/districts are already using it, and may even be able to get a free copy of it fom the test manufacturer (PRO-ED I believe).

I’m not familiar enough with PACE to comment on it, but I do know of a program called “Brain Builder” which is available on CD, quite inexpensive, and which my son (now 19) has used effectively to strengthen his processing speed and memory (both areas were weak on his WISC). You can find it on the web at advancedbrain.com so you might check into that also.

Good luck and keep up the good work!

Sharon

I’m considering BrainSkills or PACE for my son. I’d prefer to BrainSkills for financial and travel reasons. He does have sensory integration and some fine motor coordination issues in addition to the processing challenges that PACE and BrainSkills address.

My Question is What is Neuronet? Who administers it? Where can I find it?

Thanks

Rosie