PACE progress

As the parent of a child who finished PACE a few months ago, it is fun and encouraging to continue to see new gains. All of a sudden my son has developed a concept of time. He never before really knew without thinking about it that if today is Thursday, then tomorrow is Friday. Yesterday he mentioned that in a couple days it would be Friday. He also suddenly knows that if it’s 8:50, then he has 40 minutes until it’s 9:30. Those sequential processing things were just foreign to him before, and now he does them automatically. Finally, too, he is reading things off trucks we pass, boxes in the grocery store, street signs, etc. I really thought he had grown so used to ignoring words that he would never start seeing them automatically. It’s fun to watch some of these things unfold.

Hi Rosie,

We’re in our 11th week of PACE. We are really focusing on the AP work because it is a major stumbling block for him. I am spending about 1/2 our time on it. It wears him out which means we aren’t making much progress on anything else. But it is worth it. I see his ability to sound out words improving. He isn’t mixing up the order of the sounds anymore and he is successful more times than not now.

I am keeping my son home until 9 to do PACE. You might think about that, if it gets to be too much. I read your post about spelling and jumping though and it seems like you are doing a really great job of integrating PACE and homework.

My son has really improved on DSL. Today he passed 8.2. He is 8 so I am delighted. Not too many weeks ago he was crying that he couldn’t do two things at once.

The memory things have been hard for us too. He still hasn’t passed the first level on MDA or MOA. We are on the 7 levels on the rest.

Beth

Hi all co-PACE participant parents,

I am also stuggling with incorporating homework with the PACE homework (as well as getting him to the sessions). I will have to ask the teacher to see what we can do about him homework for awhile until PACE is over with. Not sure if I can get any kind of repreive.

I too would love to see cross-over benefits into the academics area. I keep questioning myself on if this is the right approach and should we be spending as much time on this. His 5th grade teacher was not very impressed with this program, but she did mention that she will cooperate (to what degree, I don’t know).

I did get a boost two days ago when we had a fantastic homework session on PACE. He passed all his PACE homework, especially the AP area which are his most difficult activities. And on top of that, he had to write an essay for homework on his first day back to school. He has never written so much and his writing was better quality, not just simple sentences. I was so proud of that.

But my bubble burst when we went to the PACE session and didn’t pass any of the activities…and he couldn’t finish all his homework last night. One of the factor could be that he is with a new person on PACE and he could have been alittle nervous.

We are only 3 days into the new school year and I already feel the stress.

gk

Thanks so much for your story. What do you think was the greatest benefit your child received from PACE?

If my son can gain a sense of time and improve his speed on activities, it has been well worth the investment. But, I am also hoping that I will see a marked improvement in this ability to concentrate and maintain his attention.

Also, what did you do after PACE was over?

- Rosie

Thanks for writing. I’m hoping those memory exercises will just “click” for my son one of these days. I predict that I will be working with him on those exercises long after PACE is officially over for us. He just gets stumped with any activities - visual or verbal that requires him to remember more than 4 things, However, I keep reminding him that there are 43 presidents, and he can remember those. He can’t seem to do MAS, MSD, or MSL where there are 4 items.

I’m planning to try NeuroNet after PACE is over and we’ve taken a good long break. I’m hoping it might help with word retreival and maybe memory.

Good Luck to you and your child.

Rosie

We are in our 3rd week back to school. The first 2 weeks of PACE after school were difficult. Our son is adjusting now. I told his teachers that he might need a reduced load of homework. What we decided is that he will just complete whatever homework he can each night — up to 30 minutes worth. After 30 minutes, he stops and I initial it. His teachers would have given him less, but my son insists on having the homework. He does not want to be different.

Good luck with adjusting to school. It takes me a couple of weeks to chill out. We are finally getting there.

Take Care,

Rosie

Hi, Rosie. It’s hard to say what the greaest improvement was. His reading and writing improved markedly. I guess everything else is secondary to that.

Summer began as we finished PACE, so we really took the time off. The only required activities were reading and keyboarding. I bought Slam Dunk, a keyboarding program, and he likes it a lot. I’ve just ordered the Sequential Spelling Program from Avko, and I think we’ll begin that next week.

Hang in there—I really do think you will see good improvements. I’m working with a 13 year old right now who has made remarkable gains in concentration.

Connie

My son did PACE last school year and it wasn’t easy but we did it. My son also wanted to do ALL his homework like “the rest of the kids”. To help this, I asked the teacher if we could work ahead the weekend before, on things he would be doing that next week. He worked ahead on his spelling notebook so that he could get other homework done during the spelling work time. We also read ahead on the other subject the weekend before. This really helped to smooth the homework load over the whole week rather than having tons a couple of days.

I love to hear about everyone’s progress with PACE. Keep posting.

Donna

Hi Beth,

I came up with an idea to help my son improve with MSL and MSD. I am going to try it this weekend. My son just can’t seem to do any of the cards with 4 items. So, I created some modified cards on PowerPoint which have a colored square around the number. I am going to teach him to first memorize the pattern on the card. For example… the digits or letters on the card might be in the shape of a “L”. I put the number 4 on all the colored squares. He just has to remember where to place the blanks and the number 4. Once he has learned the patterns, I’ve got more cards which still use the colored squares to highlight the pattern, but which have different numbers like the regular cards. I went ahead and made cards for 5 & 6 digits too using the colored square. We will also practice with the regular cards each time too.

If you’d like me to send you a copy of the PowerPoint file, respond by email. I haven’t tried it with him yet. But, I am hoping we can get him over the hump. He is trying to memorize all 9 in sequence instead of creating a “picture” of the card as he studies it. Just like visualization spelling helped him, I think this approach will help him too. Once he has learned the patterns, he can look at a card, see the pattern, then just quickly store the numbers.

It’s worth a try. Thanks for your post.

Rosie

I know I’ve posted this before, but we found from our Brainbuilder/NACD days that it’s very common to ‘plateau’ on a level. We haven’t started PACE yet, so I’m not familiar with the different exercises, but it appears that they have the same basis - increase the amount of sequential information you can take in and process at a given time?

Couple tips I learned with Brainbuilder (we did intensively for over 9mo.), is that sound therapy seemed to help her progress. We were doing TLP concurrently and every time she finished a TLP session (which took a couple months) she would jump a level. It just seemed strange that this happenend EVERY time - she did 3 TLP rounds during the timeperiod. (I was so convinced of the benefit, that I just paid another $1000 on an 8 session Tomatis booster before starting PACE this fall!)

I also learned that you need to vary the intensity- they can get burned out on doing it the same way and no progress. Short sessions, multiple times a day with lots of expression/intensity/reward system works best. The other trick that seemed to help us with Brainbuilder was just listening to the numbers one level higher - no pressure on trying to actually remember them. Just get use to hearing it or seeing it. I don’t know if that can be transferred into the PACE exercises or not.

At end of 9mo. we were at a level 7 (started at a 3/4 - so that’s about 3 to 4 years improvement). I would not say she was a solid 7, but could do them a good portion of time. She had plateau’ed on level 5 for quite a while- that was the hardest level to move from. Level 6 to Level 7 was not quite as hard, but I also had learned some of my tricks mentioned above. She was even getting 8’s on occaison.

I recently tested her on BB before we were scheduled to go back and do a Tomatis ‘booster’(it had been a year and half since we stopped BB). She was at a solid 5 - but really couldn’t do any level 6’s correct. We meant to practice every day, but that didn’t/hasn’t happened. I did have her do it again last week (out of curiosity - we are almost done with her Tomatis sessions) and she got level 6’s without even having practiced any- wasn’t solid, but got a good half of them the 1st time and the rest after couple tries. Reinforces my theory and observations I had during BB and TLP. We have also seen her reading improve - she is not making nearly as many mistakes. We saw this right after her first sound session and it has continued to improve. I attribute this to somehow being able to focus and pay attention better.

Her Dr. who does the Tomatis is focusing this session on the language ‘tones’. It’s suppose to be really working that left brain/language center. Another therapy I need to be doing that I think would reinforce alot is Language Wise - alas - who has time to do all this? We want to do PACE this next month too.

Thanks for all the PACE updates!

Oooo! thanks for all the great tips. I don’t know anything about BrainBuilder,Tomatis, or Language-Wise. A long time ago an audiologist had recommended AIT to us. It was right at the same time FastForward came out. So we opted to try FastForward. I’ve never really understood the philosophy behind the sound therapy. My son does not have trouble with sound-symbol associations in reading. But, he is distracted easily by sound. He tested normal for hearing high and low tones and pitches. But, he scored extremely low 3% on separating foreground and background noises at the time. Three years later, he scored in a normal range. Although, both times he scored low on competing sounds. I frankly don’t know what to make of all that data. We tried a very expensive new Easy Listener that fit in his ear like a hearing aid. It was a bust. It distracted him more when it would give out static sounds. $1800 down the tube. Maybe, down the round he will find it useful when he is more mature and able to ignore the occassional static sound.

Is Tomatis similar to AIT? What sparked you to try this therapy? That is wonderful about the results you are seeing with your daughter. I wonder what the connection with sound therapy and memory is? I saw a picture today which shows that the auditory area of the brain is surrounded by areas for memory. Hmmm.

Tell me more about BrainBuilder or Language-Wise if you have a chance. Thanks again for all the good info.

Rosie

Oooo! thanks for all the great tips. I don’t know anything about BrainBuilder,Tomatis, or Language-Wise. A long time ago an audiologist had recommended AIT to us. It was right at the same time FastForward came out. So we opted to try FastForward. I’ve never really understood the philosophy behind the sound therapy. My son does not have trouble with sound-symbol associations in reading. But, he is distracted easily by sound. He tested normal for hearing high and low tones and pitches. But, he scored extremely low 3% on separating foreground and background noises at the time. Three years later, he scored in a normal range. Although, both times he scored low on competing sounds. I frankly don’t know what to make of all that data. We tried a very expensive new Easy Listener that fit in his ear like a hearing aid. It was a bust. It distracted him more when it would give out static sounds. $1800 down the tube. Maybe, down the round he will find it useful when he is more mature and able to ignore the occassional static sound.

Is Tomatis similar to AIT? What sparked you to try this therapy? That is wonderful about the results you are seeing with your daughter. I wonder what the connection with sound therapy and memory is? I saw a picture today which shows that the auditory area of the brain is surrounded by areas for memory. Hmmm.

Tell me more about BrainBuilder or Language-Wise if you have a chance. Thanks again for all the good info.

Rosie

Tomatis is very similar to AIT - AIT is a kind of derivative of Tomatis. I discovered Tomatis on the internet when we first started this ‘journey’ and found there was a center in my city. I went to a seminar to understand it better and we’ve been clients ever since. Dr. Tomatis- a famous ENT in France - discovered that certain frequencies of sound help stimulate the brain. If you look at a brain map of a dyslexic child or an ADD child (also people with compulsive disorders and depression), you’ll see certain parts of the brain asleep and other parts overactive. The sound basically ‘wakes’ up (creates new neuropathways) to these centers that are asleep. Trained Tomatis clinics can actually isolate these frequencies so that they address either balance/coordination/motor (vistibular functions), language, and then high frequencies hit the creative part of brain. There is a good book titled - When Listening Comes Alive - that really explains alot about what Tomatis addresses.

My dd does have sound/symbol problems and she also has CAPD. The sound therapy has not cured either one of these. What we noticed is that it has made learning much easier for our daughter and has lessoned some of her sound sensitivitiness. She seems to be much more alert and awake.

Brainbuilder is a program developed by Advanced Brain Technologies www.advancedbrain.com - ABT is affiliated with NACD (National Academy for Child Development) - they also developed The Listening Program, which is another sound therapy program derived from Tomatis. (The Dr. who runs our clinic helped them develop TLP- that’s how we got linked to NACD too). Brainbuilder specifically addresses short term memory - is suppose to increase your digit span and that’s how you ‘practice’. It’s a $60 computer program. NACD has a very strong philosophy that they see a direct link between a person’s digit span and their overall function. They are one of few organizations that address this area.

Language Wise is the program by the McGinnus’s who developed the Reading Reflex/Phonographix program. The Book is called How to Increase your Verbal Intelligence. It’s fairly cheap and easy for a parent to follow.

Let me know if you have any other questions.