BIG decision to make.
PACE provider with lots of experience is unavailable until Oct.
I wanted to start my son next week so that he would only have 4 weeks during school. I have 2 options I am considering. My son is 10 and has his greatest deficits in memory and processing speed.
OPTION 1: NEW rookie PACE trainer
Pros - willing to come to my house for sessions (Big + since I have 2 little ones), willing to give reduced price. Exp. PACE provider would be her mentor to answer questions and seems to have confidence in her. PACE more complete program. My son could reap benefits of whole program this year, if it works.
Cons - NO experience with tutoring or teaching other than Sunday School. Only practiced PACE activities with her own teenage children. Can’t start until 1st of August, so we’ll be into Oct. before we finish. I’m used to therapists and tutors with a lot of experience and confidence in what they do. My son is generally very cooperative in tutoring, but I credit that to the skills of his previous tutors. They consider him a puzzle and sometime difficult to communicate with becuase of his weak language skills.
OPTION 2: Do BrainSkills myself
Pros - I can start tomorrow. I work well with my son. BIG BIG difference in cost even with discount. If we decide to do PACE later, BrainSkills cost will be substracted (but for 10-12 weeks, I only want to do once if possible). Probably less stress on family schedule for the rest of the summer, since I won’t have to be coordinating session times with trainer.
Cons - Brainskills program is only a subset of PACE. BrainSkills has 18 activities. PACE has 36 or something.
Is PACE structured enough and so easily administered that I can trust a rookie with my son? I wouldn’t take my son to a first-timer pediatrician or OT. I don’t want him to be the guinea pig. But, I know there are things in PACE which are not in BrainSkills that would help him.
What do I do?
Re: I'd go with the rookie..
Hi Patti,
It has been such a long time since I’ve posted here. I was very interested in your comment to Rosie. My husband and I were trained in PACE last summer and we didn’t end up doing the program because we found our son to have visual processing problems and thought those should be addressed first. He did 5 months of VT this past winter/spring and did improve quite a bit. We thought we would start PACE again later this summer. We also are not sending him back to the local high school because his sophomore year was pretty disastrous. He will finish his high school via correspondence. We also want to take the next couple of years and get him up to speed with his very weak areas of comprehension and vocabulary. I am learning all about VV and want to start soon on that and improving his vocabulary skills. Could you give me any more suggestions as to which programs or activities would be especially beneficial for the older adolescent with these types of difficulties?
Much appreciation,
Debbie
Re: I'd go with the rookie..
Debbie, If you’re thinking of doing V/V yourself you might consider Ideachain—I just posted an inquiry on the Teaching Reading bulletin board and there were some helpful responses. It costs something like $250, making it an extremely inexpensive option relative to V/V administered by a professional. Ideachain is said to be much easier for a parent to implement than V/V.
I wondered what had happened to you...
My heart goes out to you… Here are some ideas… This is a great little site with lots of computer language games on it… http://www.quia.com/pages/havefun.html.
There are some inexpensive high-Interest reading books that you can get at a teachers supply store for $3.00 that he would enjoy and would be fun to VV with. This will help fill in the background knowledge. I think they are made by TS Denison or Instructional Fair. I will e-mail you personally. Good to hear from you and keep in touch..
hugs,
p
Re: I agree with pattim,
and would go with the rookie. PACE provides a great deal more than BrainSkills, and the experience of the trainer isn’t critical. Even without a mentor nearby, she could fully avail herself of the telephone support the company supplies.
Mary
Re: Another suggestion.....
You might find the book “How To Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence” by Carmen and Geoffrey McGuiness useful. It has a lot of really good activities in it for developing vocabulary, verbal relationships, etc. and the book is inexpensive — available at most local bookstores.
Mary
Re: language based ld and PACE
Pattim,
What is about language based LD that prevented your daughter’s visual and auditory gains through PACE to transfer to academics? My son is doing PACE with me now and is making nice gains in the exercises. I see some transfer with visual discrimination (he scored as a five year old in nonverbal logic and he is 8). We’ve finished the fourth week. Guess I am wondering whether the same thing will happen with us. My son has CAPD. He also has immature language development—although the school denies any problems. He gets speech for auditory processing and word retreival problems.
We have done a lot of work on sensory motor level before tackling PACE—FFW, vision therapy, Neuronet (which we are still continuing).
Beth
THANKS! Decided to go with rookie
THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who offered advice about our dilemna with PACE. We decided to go with the new trainer. I had ordered BrainSkills to review. Once I looked at BrainSkills, it gave me greater confidence that the materials were well-designed and structured enough for a new trainer.
The experienced trainer tested my son last week. He scored 2 years behind on about 1/2 of the measures. He scored at age level for visual processing and spelling. Only 1 year behind for Word Attack. And a wopping 5 years behind in Selective Attention. The activity used to test Selective Attention seemed more related to short-term memory than what I typically consider an attention problem. She read a short sentence (wait 5 sec.) then showed a picture card (wait 5 sec.), then asked a question about sentence, [ My son - “I don’t know”], then asked a question about picture, [ My son - “I don’t know.”]
He was cooperative with good eye contact and no fidgeting, but he couldn’t answer but 1-2 of all the test questions.
I don’t expect for PACE to impact my son’s expressive and receptive language skills dramatically. And in recent years, despite his severe language delay when he was young, his oral language skills sound almost age level. We saw a marked improvement in his conversation abilities after FastForward. During FastForward, the one game he NEVER improved upon was the Memory Game even after literally thousands of trials measured by the computer. His language skills are functional, he just doesn’t add as much detail in to his stories or questions as other kids his age. Word retrieval is the big issue with his oral language. I am hoping that the skill building with memory may help his struggles with word retreival. It concerns me to hear that PACE did not transfer to academics for some folks.
My son will continue tutoring with his Academic Language Therapist at school this Fall. Although, I am going to request that she focus on written skills, grammar, and reading comphrehension for higher order thinking skills. I know PACE won’t fix all of my son’s challenges. Once, he’s completed PACE by the end of Sept. we are going to test for vision therapy for some mild tracking problems, and may look in to some nutritional solutions to help with attention. We took him off dexedrine last April, because we began to see some side effects. His neurologist suggested 3 new types of medications for trials. But, he emphasized that he viewed medication was only 20% of the treatment plan to consider. Cognitive Therapy and OT are our son’s greatest needs. If our son is still struggling with Attention at school, we might consider a trial of meds. But, I’m pretty gun shy about them at this point. It would have to make a BIG BIG difference for me to justify using them again. But, I have to just try one thing at a time in order to know which interventions are working. We’re trying PACE first.
THANKS AGAIN EVERYONE!!! I’ll keep you posted on our progress.
I’m starting to look for an OT who can work with our son on Saturday so that his school week is not overloaded. I have two other young children 5 and 2 who keep me busy and need their fair share of Mom’s attention too. I’m frankly relieved to choose the PACE approach over BrainSkills so that the load on training not solely on my shoulders. I think as long as the new trainer is positive and sweet to my son, she will likely suceed with him.
I am concerned once my son gets past the “easy levels” with PACE he will plateau. She will have a harder time moving him to the next level. We may get the experienced trainer to come coach her for a session or two if that happens.
My greatest relief is that my husband bought in to the idea and the money involved. I am going to try to aks our neurologist to write a prescription for 4 months of Cog. Therapy 3x/week and try to file for some reimbursement. I’m not holding my breath, but I might get lucky.
Re: I'd go with the rookie..
THANKS for your advice.
Could you tell me more about your daughter’s experience with PACE. Where did you see improvement with visual and auditory processing? Was is just on the post tests? or could you see it in her behavior?
Re: Have you looked at NeuroNet and Balametrics?
NeuroNet website is http://www.neuroacoustics.com. Balametrics website is http://www.balametrics.com.
I have seen Balametrics help two different children with slow processing speed. It is very compatible with PACE. A friend of mine who trained in PACE and takes a few outside clients said that Balametrics has made a tremendous difference with her current student (the first she has tried it with). Now she has him do many of his PACE exercises while on the balance board. She said that even *he* notices the improvement.
Balametrics is quite easy to do at home, apart from incorporating it into PACE — you can just spend 10 or 20 minutes a day with it. It improved the processing speed of a 13yo I was working with last year, and his mother did only the balance board and bean bags for 10 minutes a day (there are other components to the program that can be used, but it takes up some space).
NeuroNet incorporates Balametrics as part of its therapy. NN is about the only therapy I have seen that says it can sometimes improve retrieval problems.
Mary
Re: language based ld and PACE
Can you tell me more about Neuronet? Are you providing? How did you get the program, etc.? My dd is currently doing PACE, IM and Play Therapy, plus a reading program. I am interested in Neuonet and also something called Balametrics, if anybody knows anything about these programs.
Re: THANKS! Decided to go with rookie
Please keep us posted on your son’s progress. My dd also has severe language problems and is doing PACE. I am also concerned about pushing to the next level once she makes it to a certain point. The main improvement I have seen that has transferred over academically is the timed drilling of blends. Keep us posted on insurance reimbursement as well. We were able to get major medical coverage for vision therapy which is a tremendous help.
Re: Neuronet
We live in Ft Lauderdale area where the developer is located. I actually found out about the program on this bulletin board though. There are other people certified and she also does people long distance.
The program incorporated elements of ballametrics in it. I think you can find Ballametrics by doing a search on the web.
For us, it has been a wonderful program. We have seen substantial gains in auditory processing, vestibular functioning, and fine motor control. It is providing a foundation for learning.
Re: language based ld and PACE
My 8 year old has L.D. I’m familiar with a lot of techniques to help him however I have never heard of PACE. Can anyone enlighten me?
Thanks, Mary
Re: Processing and Cognitive Enhancement
Basically, it’s a 12-week program that trains multiple cognitive skills. The child spends an hour 3 times a week with a PACE tutor, and spends an equal amount of time at home working with an adult on homework exercises. It has an excellent track record but, because it’s expensive, it’s always a good idea to make sure that any deficits in sensory level development (e.g., problems requiring OT, vision therapy, sound therapies, etc.) have been addressed as much as possible first. Cognitive skills build on sensory level development, and underlie academic learning.
Website is http://www.learninginfo.com
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do PACE activities, it is lots of drill with a metronome. Some kids find the metronome very irritating. I have been trained in PACE. I was a rookie when I started working with kids at the learning center. I had training but I learned more on the job and the kid I worked with made gains even with my inexperience. I am not familiar with BrainSkills. One word of caution though..if your child has language based LD’s, i.e., expressive and receptive language, vocabulary, comprehension and writing… PACE will not meet those needs. My daughter’s Auditory and Visual Memory went up but it did not transfer over to academics.