update on HANDLE

Thanks for the update. This is interesting.

Those are great changes in a very short period of time!!

Beth

Ain’t it wonderful how a little bit of HOPE and a plan of action can set a person on the right road…be prepared for setbacks, cuz he’ll need your reassurance on bad days. But I really think you’ve found something that is helping him, and he knows it, deep down where the biggest hurts are!

Was talking to a fellow scouter last night about his suffering as a dyslexic kid…were all the ‘bad boys’ of my youth poor readers?????? I’m starting to think so…and it isn’t surprising! How terrible it is to be a ‘square peg’ and not know why, in a grownup world that thinks YOU are the problem, not the ‘round hole’!

Keep us updated…

Because you pointed me in the direction, I traveled to Milpitas, CA this past weekend for the introductory workshop on HANDLE.

I’ve been reading all the other stuff for years: PACE, FastForward…….. none of it every “grabbed” me. This did. It is a complete system, noninvasive. You won’t have to spend thousands of $$$ on every therapy out there to get half the results.

Now, I just hope they will accept me into the intermediate level training so I can work toward their certification. Put in a good word for me, will ya, please!!!! It is so frustrating doing the best job you can teaching day in and day out and knowing the changes are only “skin deep” and not really fixing the problem.

And, I am even more convinced that we are being sold a bill of goods by our “friends” in D.C. who insist that ALL we need to do is implement a good “reasearch based” reading early and all will be well, dyslexia is really dysteachia and all good children will score at the 50th percentile and higher. BUNK. Yes, good instruction helps, but does not go deep enough into the system to really solve the issues that underpin more severe dyslexia and ADHD, for example, I believe HANDLE gets at these issues.

Keep us posted.

Anitya,

My mom and I were just discussing this—NCLB—and the assumption that all kids can be fixed with good appropriate instruction. I see with my own child that is not the case. We have through other programs than Handle achieved many of the same ends. I think kids who are severely LD, like my child, really need therapy that addresses the underlying deficits.

Beth

What kinds of exercises/activities are used in Handle?

Visit the website at www.thehandle.org

You will find some information there and a few of the exercises.

Oops, that is www.handle.org

Hi Anitya,

How interesting! Good luck with the certification. I’m curious to learn, how does HANDLE compare to DORE? Is anyone here familar with both?

Anitya,

I’m going to the Handle introductory course in Danbury, Ct in May! I’ve been waiting a long time to do this. If anyone else on this board is interested in their training, there’s lots of information on their web site.

I think that Dore and Handle have a lot in common. I liken it to the blind men and the elephant. They both have a part of it but nobody has figured out all of it. On the superficial level, Dore is a for-profit business and Handle is non-profit. It’s harder to get specific information out of the Dore folks (I’ve tried) but I think they have at least got the piece addressing LDs and ADHD. Judith Bluestone and Handle deal with a wide spectrum of neurological problems. Besides LDs, they address stroke, brain injuries, CP, Tourette’s syndrome, autism, etc.

[quote=”LindaW”] Besides LDs, they address stroke, brain injuries, CP, Tourette’s syndrome, autism, etc.[/quote]

It can be a sort of red flag when the provider of a treatment claims it will help with a wide variety of disorders.

Hello all. Anita, I am thrilled to hear your news! It has made my posts worth it and then some! I too have been addressing LD concerns for years and HANDLE grabbed me the same way. Tucker is doing well as I explained in my last post and I see improvment in many areas, especially with the ADHD. His writing is becoming more automatic each week and shows signs of more structure. He is in his 3rd week. As far as red flags go, to me the “proof is in the puddin’ ” and all the areas that HANDLE addresses are neurological in nature so I have little concern that their scope is to wide. I will continue to post regularly and please keep me apprised of how things go for you. Maybe you can answer a question I have. What level of education must you have to become a Handle instructor? I am curious if you need college credentials or can a lowly mom become certified? :wink: Good luck!

I’ve got nothing against Handle, per se, but many disorders that are “neurological” have entirely different causes and respond to entirely different treatments. That’s why we need to be skeptical about any treatment that says it covers a wide range of problems. Parkinson’s is neurological. Traumatic brain injury is neurological. Epilepsy is neurological. None of these conditions is responsive to one all purpose treatment. The problem with “retrain the brain” approaches is that we don’t yet know enough about brain function to know whether we are “retraining” in the right way for particular conditions or even if we are successfully retraining. ADHD and LD are certainly brain conditions, but they are not the same brain condition. It will be fantastic if the treatment works for your child, but it would be terrible if a parent with only so much money to spend opted for an all-purpose treatment without a firm record of success instead of seeking a more proven treatment. For example, if I had a kid with dyslexia, I would not choose Handle first, even though dyslexia clearly is neurological in nature. Instead, I’d be looking to something like Orton Gillingham, which has a clear record of being helpful for many students.

Guest,

I totally agree with you on going with proven reading programs if your child is dyslexic. The problem is some subset of kids with dyslexia’s problems are broader than that and reading therapy alone is not adequate.

My son is like that. We haven’t done Handle but have done other programs that work at retraining the brain. The most notable are Neuronet and Interactive Metronome. My child still does not read like a normal child (tires him out although he is at grade level). But he now can write, remember things, do math, and generally function in a regular classroom. In first grade, his teacher told me he couldn’t seem to learn and if he did manage to learn something, he couldnt do it any other way than the way he did it. His functioning was like a like a child with subnormal intelligence, although he tested with a normal IQ.

Let me tell you one story to illustrate. My son was in special ed math in second grade. The teacher gave him tons of homework—I complained and finally she stopped. She was so mad at me though (long story) that she gave him no homework for the second half of the year. We started Neuronet then. At the end of the year, he had made so much progress, he was put in a regular math classroom for third grade.

Working at a basic sensory level had much more impact on his math skills than two hours of math drills a night. For many kids then, this type of approach is simply more efficient.

Now it won’t teach a child to read. We have had reading tutors as well but a child who is more neurologically organized can learn better.

0Beth

20 years of trying to help my 3 children with mainstream “fixes” has convinced me that a new approach is necessary. I am one of those parents with only so much (none really) money to spend. We are a single income family in large part due to of Tuckers challenges. I borrowed the money for this treatment. The alternative of using pharmasuticals just didn’t sit right with me when there were other areas to explore. In doing my research on HANDLE I was convinced of the legitimacy of what they are doing on a number of fronts and although their success rate is very high, they, like any other remediation have those it doesn’t help. I think we (the LD community), in general are too quick to go with accepted educational practices, that too often have little or no effect in the struggle our children face. Whether this is due to a misguided trust in those who are “supposed to know”, a lack of educating ourselves or just fear of something that is different and may not work I don’t know, but I would urge parents not to dimiss things that are out of the main stream without first taking a long look at possibilities. Change and it’s acceptance in any community usually doesn’t come easily or quickly but in this particular case, the wait and the benefits it can reap for our children may just be worth the wait. Only time, a positive track record and more research will tell. But for me, I’ll take a chance. The way I see it we have nothing (outside of the cost of one trip to a dentist) to loose and a great deal to gain.

I don’t post much about Davis methods on this site cuz I know it will cause a war with some of the professionals (teacher/tutors) for whom I have the greatest respect…but my son is READING FLUENTLY and it is Davis plus Spalding plus LOTS of practice that got him there…Ron Davis, like many others, has developed a program that answers many of the questions posed by SOME of our kids…it seems that HANDLE is similar although I have not personally researched their program.

If a parent like yourself, after careful research, has a GUT reaction to a program, feeling that it would possibly be right for their child, tries it, and has success — that is all I need to hear! Seeing that Anitya is going with this also gives me total confidence — when in doubt, ask a soldier from the front lines what is needed to win the war!

Yes, we need ‘caveat emptor’ for all programs, but when something is low-cost (or at least has a low cost, parent provided alternative such as Davis methods do) and developed by those who KNOW your child’s problem, why not give it a try? Even if cost is higher, provided you are careful, I still say ‘TRY IT’. (i.e. LMB, PACE, etc. — high cost, but high value!)

I realize there is snake oil out there — but there is plenty of stuff on the ‘cutting edge’ that is RIGHT for certain children. All I know is that my child’s school tried one method — Reading Recovery — and then said ‘HE HAS A PROBLEM’, and began making dire predictions about his future.

I ignored them, on the advice of a private-school dyslexia expert, and went with Davis methods (plus Spalding tutoring for the summer after first grade).

The only problem my child had — other than being a ‘less than usual learning style’, not a problem if you know what methods to use — was a group of educators who were ‘STUCK IN THE BOX’.

We went outside the box, and the result is a fifth grader who loves to read and reads at the top of his class…

I often wonder, ‘What if, in my child’s Gr. 1 program, the automatic response to a child who did not learn his sight words was to have him make letters in clay and begin a program such as Spalding, instead of having him sit there, day after day, unable to participate in ‘writing stories’ that he had NO idea how to form the written words for, especially since his verbal skills were at about a 3rd grade level when his written language was at about a 4YO level…’ Maybe we wouldn’t have a HORRIBLE ‘guess speller’ problem that will take us several more years to correct????

We’d have missed alot of hassle and anguish and saved the system a good deal of money, too…Ah, beauracracy, ain’t it lovely?!!! :roll:

[quote=”Elizabeth TO”
If a parent like yourself, after careful research, has a GUT reaction to a program, feeling that it would possibly be right for their child, tries it, and has success — that is all I need to hear!
:[/quote]

Really, though, the problem is that some programs are MARKETED with the specific goal of invoking that “gut feeling” in parents. Handle might turn out to be the greatest thing ever for some particular neurological condition, but there is no way on earth it is going to be the cure for ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, APD, autism, etc. These are not the same conditions and they don’t necessarily share the same causes, even though they may travel in pairs. In fact, it is difficult to say even that kids with the same “label” actually have exactly the same thing going on with them. We are at a stage where we are only beginning to understand how the brain functions or misfunctions. I’ve read some speculation that autism and ADHD are at different ends of the same spectrum, but there doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence that is so. I am leery of any group that offers what it says is an all-purpose treatment for what are quite different disorders and does not offer research showing that it is effective across a broad range of disorders. So long as parents go into it with open eyes, more power to them. For example, I am having my daughter looked at by a vision therapist even though I am well aware that there is little hard evidence that vision issues are an important component of LD or ADHD. Why am I doing this? Because I’ve done lots of other traditional things that have worked well and gotten her out of special ed and doing well in the mainstream but she still has coordination issues. I’m hoping VT will help and I’m willing to spend some $$ as an experiment. But I won’t be spending endless $$ if it doesn’t work and I won’t be denying her more proven treatments and using VT as an alternative.

Guest,

I don’t know what is the cause of your daughter’s coordination issues but my son’s coordination really improved with Interactive Metronome. There is research supporting its use—it started as trying to improve timing in athletes. Only later was it realized that timing was connected to neurological functioning. It is used here on several of the highschool sports teams….and they found improvements in academics as well.

That was only a side benefit. We did it for attention issues, which dramatically improved. His handwriting went from dysfunctional to low normal.
Beth

If you had spent years sitting next to and teaching a variety of students with reading difficulties, you would not be able to agree that vision problems have little to do with dyslexia. We are being fed a bill of goods by the phonics machine in this country.

There are several issues impacting students with dyslexia and the auditory processing component is only one. There is some research supporting input through the visual channels.

HANDLE assesses various systems in the individual and then prescribes activities to strengthen these systems…..often this improves a variety of “disorders” in the process. HANDLE is not about labels.

The founder of HANDLE used to take, for 17 years, two different seizure medications. She has been off both for years since she “fixed” her problem with her program.

HANDLE is gentle and noninvasive, it won’t hurt anyone.

I took the beginning training with several women who were there because HANDLE helped their children. Two had children born at 24-25 weeks gestation, who were experiencing significant and severe dissabilities that include mental retardation and more. Another’s child was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and the fourth had an excessively tactilely sensitive child who had obessessive-compulsive issues as well, if I correctly recall. All four had seen marked improvements.

I looked at the HANDLE site and a lot of it looked like various forms of OT.

I know from personal experience that extended repetitions of exercise can greatly improve my coordination (see, I’m typing now, which was impossible until my thirties) and improving coordination and timing has all sorts of positive ramifications in all sorts of other fields — eyes less tired means walking better means improved social contacts because I can look at people and think about talking as well as not frowning, for example.

Yes, I agree, the suggestion that you have a “cure” for a large number of different problems is definitely a red flag. I don’t take the entire message as true. But the site looks good enough that if I can figure how to manage it, I would like to take the training.

Elizabeth, on Davis — well, the idea of forming letters in clay is the one part of their ideas that looked good to me. I have been wondering about something: do you roll the clay into snakes and then bend it into letter forms, or do you just sculpt the letter form from the ground up? Do you form cursive out of a snake, or glue bits and pieces together, or try to sculpt a whole? Or do you just make your own method? This is a serious question on methodology; I had some students in the past who might have made use of this.
A parent doing some Davis letter-formation work with a child will probably *not* do most of the things that make me leery of them: the hard sell; the academically dishonest claims of “proof” that melt away into the distance when you actually look at them; the not-so-subtle encouragement of “I’m right and gifted, you’re stupid” attitudes.
By the way, one thing I noticed over and over with people who claimed success with Davis was “alphabet-soup” spelling, and this is another thing that makes me leery. Read the IDA bulletin boards for some examples. The emphasis on sight reading and speed (his “trigger words”) and the idea of just getting the general gist without pointing at details are methods that lead right in to poor spelling and writing — another issue I have seen with his supposed successes is total disorganization in writing even a paragraph.
If you want to improve spelling, it’s never too late. Work with any system that relates sounds to letter patterns and stress strictly left-to-right scanning and writing. Slow but sure, ten minutes a day, first simple and then gradually more complex, lots of practice on each new concept, is the way to go.

Thanks for the info Anita. When I take Tucker at the end of the month I will ask them about it. :D

I am always grateful to hear updates about progress children have made with various therapies. I did check out HANDLE and unfortunately, there is noone close to us. Her article about brain injury was right on and I wish had seen it many months ago. My son sustained a brain injury in an accident two years ago. He also had a learning challenge prior to the accident that we were just about to explore. After he was released from the hospital, the medical community offered PT, OT & speech and said wait and see….Fat chance.

The school said he didn’t qualify for any of the above. The one thing the diagnostician did say to me was, “well there’s the medical model and the educational model” and sent me in a postive search to see if any of the programs offered privately to children with learning challenges would be effective for my son. The major difficulty was finding any thing other than ancecdotal evidence (no real studies) to show if these things would help my child. So, yes research and use your gut level. For the most part, it’s all you’ve got.

I don’t count on the school for anything. He is pretty much there for social reasons. They provided incredible support for us after the accident and they all know and adore my son. Even when I’ve tried to talk to people at the school about the things that have helped him - they’re not interested. My brother had a severe learning challenge and for years my mother fought with the school. I decided to use my energy differently.

I’ve made a few mistakes but for the most part gotten some success with each of the things we’ve tried. IM, for example, there was only one tiny story about someone with a brain injury on their website. It took him 6 sessions to even be able to do the 15 sessions but he got over a year’s improvement in visual motor and perceptual skills. It translated into faster handwriting and better attention.

Anyway, there are things out there to help and it’s get to have this forum for support and information.

This post is going to be long, long, long - you know I’m opinionated and can’t stay off my soapbox . It has always bothered me that Davis is so ‘not accepted’ on this site, and I appreciate (will grab!) a chance to talk about it. Wish I had more time! But my best advice to anyone is to READ THE BOOK ‘The Gift of Dyslexia’ by Ron Davis with Eldon Braun. It is not expensive, and can be found in the local library here – I guarantee it is worth reading, if you skip the parts that get your ‘dander’ up, Victoria! You are too good a tutor, and too intelligent, to get this second hand – I DO believe you will find kids for whom some of this will WORK. I don’t want to corrupt your understanding with my second-hand quickie reporting, so I hope you will check it out some day.

I have been SO sorry that you have had a bad impression of Davis methods. But from your post, we essentially AGREE – he has SOME puzzle pieces for SOME learners, but not all. This is a weakness in the ‘personal experience’ type programs, IMO. I have the greatest respect for Ron Davis, and I believe his methods have value – but they are not a cure-all. Davis DOES have plenty of value to add to a literacy tutor’s toolbox, and so I rest on that. Handle may also have this weakness – as ‘Guest’ said, the symptoms of ADHD, dyslexia, etc. do NOT necessarily stem from the same cause. BUT – maybe when they DO, this is why the method works for some, as Handle appears to work for Tink’s darling boy, whom I know has struggled TERRIBLY!!!!!

The clay letters is one of the primary methods we used — recommended first by a TA (semi-retired and WAY experienced) who worked this method with my son in spring of gr 1 and then continued by the wonderful Mrs. M who got him “really reading’ with Spalding — she told me READ THE BOOK. She also had every other ‘dyslexia expert’ tool – had her 12YO daughter write letters on his back, etc – she knew it all, and this was PART of her lexicon.

Clay work is done with ‘snakes’ and you start by working to make your letters match an alphabet ‘line’ in a large (for Lcase, 2 inches high or so, 3 for Ucase), clear font (ariel) with no fussy bits. I can’t remember any instructions about cursive — I’ll try to check up and post a note, but I don’t THINK it is mentioned.

The method of letter formation is somewhat left to the learner — but mostly to chop and form from the snakes they have rolled to match the letter examples given, which are on two ‘alphabet lines’ separated for UC and LC. The ‘teacher’ works alongside, making their own version. I believe this is to build comfort and trust, and probably also stems from the fact that this method was developed for work with adults. It is important to let the learner do it ‘themselves’ and not make judgements about quality/perfection. The work should continue until the learner is satisfied that their letters ‘match’ – again, it is stressed that the learner should be self-directed. When THEY are satisfied – they are done, not when the teacher is.

The ‘trigger words’ are not sight reading – quite the opposite, and this is one of the areas where I think Ron Davis has hit upon an essential truth about WHY some people have problems with reading and language. Understand, once again, that he doesn’t have ALL the truth, or the END ALL BE ALL truth – just a big key which all ‘literacy activists’ must continue to explore as they help those who struggle with oral AND written language. He does believe that dyslexics do best as ‘whole word’ readers – my son does, since he could read fluently when he could barely write, his expressive spelling was so poor, but I have NO experience to judge this so will not go there. I know it took Spalding to get my son ‘started’ as a reader – so I can’t judge a full program.

Ron’s premise is that the ‘trigger words’ are troublesome because ‘RON DAVIS type dyslexics’ (lets call them that, and we both know I mean!) are essentially ‘picture thinkers’ who see the world from a visual-spatial standpoint. Too long to discuss this fully here – we could go on and on and on. I BELIEVE this – I saw my son, suffering in grade one, and could not understand WHY he could recognize ‘elephant’ before ‘and’ or ‘the’.

Ron says this is because a picture thinker has no ‘memory picture’ for ‘and’ or ‘the’, whereas coming to a picture for ‘elephant’ is quite easy, and since his ‘type’ of dyslexic is also a ‘whole word’ reader in many cases, ‘elephant’ is easily remembered and therefore readable – but ‘the’ is not. So, as the child DOES struggle (usually in a whole language classroom, as it is my belief that some of this is CAUSED by inappropriate/ineffective methods!) they manage to pick up some sight words, but stumble and halt over the ‘dolch’ words, word for which most of us picture the written WORD, which they are unable to ‘learn’ fully because they cannot develop a mental picture to help them learn the word. Ron’s theory is that the inability to read these words ‘triggers’ or causes ‘disorientation’ which causes the child to stop perceiving correctly. I don’t go here – not qualified to judge, and we don’t have days to discuss this! Again, read the book and discard/ignore or file for rumination what doesn’t fit your sense and sensibility!

My son did not do this, but the clay work for ‘trigger words’ goes further if you follow a Davis program entirely – they use a good dictionary to look up the meaning of EACH trigger word (basically, the dolch list! plus any word that the person repeatedly cannot recognize – learners are trained to recognize their own disorientation symptoms very quickly) and model a personal meaning for each definition in clay. My son did not require this – in fact, would not sit still for it, and since he is verbally very advanced, I assume he does NOT have the problem with the language per se, but only with the visual representation. Here, Spalding and MUCH practice of ‘assisted’ oral reading with a mother at hand to help him NOT ‘disorient’ but ‘decode’ and keep going, got him reading fluently, and his 5th grade teacher says he is top of his class.

Other methods we used speak to the ‘directionality’ that must come from developmental vision problems – reading was as saw or mixing up the letters in a word and being unable to decode it – (In my kid, seems to have naturally resolved with age/as reading fluency increased, although he still has some transposition/reversal problems in his writing). This helped too – USING his finger to underline the word and then spell it while ‘decoding’ (Davis calls this ‘sweep, sweep, spell’) helped him to recognize words that were ‘unguessable’ in 2nd/first half of 3rd grade, given that he had only a basic grasp of orthographic patterns. Even ‘spell reading’ helped – he spelled the word aloud and often this helped him ‘get’ it.

You are sure right about spelling, and only time limits our progress. We are doing ‘AVKO’ this summer, but we continue to battle the weekly Gr. 5 list, and though he only gets 40% correct, I continue to see improvement in his expressive spelling, which is almost perfectly ‘phonetic’ given his still incomplete grasp of the various spelling patterns – he picked ‘one’ for each sound early on, (too, bloo, groo, shoo, noo) and has resisted learning the others – but my one sister and several cousins were spellers of this sort, and all of them ‘had enough’ to pass as literate adults by the end of their formal education – we will not stop. Good old tried and true, chunking, visual memory work, oral memory work – work that works…repetition!

Elizabeth,

I found your post quite interesting. It seems to me that what Ron Davis is getting at is at least somewhat related to Seeing Stars—getting kids to visualize letters. The lack of visualization of letters is underlying the inability to do common sight words that you can’t visualize in pictures.

And the doing in clay seems to me to help provide a visual representation of letters that bears similarities to LMB’s air writing.

And his stuff on directionality is in a number of other programs I’ve seen including PACE and Audioblox.

So he may be a bit ideological about his approach but it seems to me that his approach has some elements in common with other people’s work. )

There is a group here that has built on Davis methods and I have talked to them several times. My son hasn’t had the good visualization skills in general—the thinking of the elephant that you mention—so he has never fit their model so I have been reluctant to spend the money on the therapy.

And there probably are some children for whom this approach would be enough but they aren’t classic dyslexics, it seems to me.

I think Davis methods have been bashed because he doesn’t put much stock in decoding. It seems to me that you have combined his insights with a good decoding program to get the results you have.

I do think there is something to visualization of letters—my son is weak at it and the spelling and automaticity aren’t quite there yet. The LMB people recognize this too.

Beth

Elizabeth —
Yes, we DO basically agree, and I certainly do not want to start an argument with you! You have taken a positive and pragmatic approach with your child, finding out what works and putting in the hard work to make it succeed. More power to you.

One small thing I think you misunderstand, and this is almost certainly one thing still holding up your child’s progress: “whole-word” reading IS sight reading, and sight reading IS whole-word reading. That’s the definition of the term.
Either you look at the separate parts of a word or you don’t.
If you look at the separate letters and break up the syllables, you are using some version of phonics (there are many many versions, some much more efficient than others, but let’s not digress for now.) If you look at the whole word and try to make a picture of the letters in your mind and match it to a memorized word bank, that is the *definiton* of sight reading.
One of the issues I have with Davis (not you!!) is that he merrily re-defines words/phrases to mean what he wants them to mean; sorry, but history and the majority use the words the way I list above, and he can’t re-make the language nor change the facts.

This kind of matching words visually to a memorized bank, whatever you feel like calling it, has three grave problems:
(1) The more words you learn, the slower you get. A little kid in the first level who has memorized fifty words can “read” through the pre-primer apparently fluently, and only hesitates a bit to look up a word mentally because the sentences are predictable and the list is so short. By Grade 4 level with a couple of thousand memory words, the memory banks are overflowing and it takes a long, long time to go through them to find the one you want.
(2) The more words you learn, the less accurate you get. If the only word you know that starts with r is “run”, well, you’re 100% right. But when you know four hundred words that start with r, and some of them are awfully similar in shape like “run” and “ran” and “ram” and “raw” and “row” and “rum” and … , you start to make wild guesses.
(3) Looking at words as a whole is actually something that humans cannot do physiologically; we focus on a small area and shift our eyes very very quickly to many new places in “fixations”. A person trying to “look at the whole word” is actually running his eyes all over and around it.
The left-to-right and top-to-bottom scanning we use in reading is NOT automatic or natural, it is a highly-trained skill. If you drop the directionality to “look at the whole word” you will actually fixate on various letters here and there and everywhere, up and down and right and left. So, people who read like this have a vague memory that they saw this letter in the word *somewhere*, they know not where (beginning and ending tend to be more stable because of the white contrast, but middles are all over) and they don’t know if the stick came before the ball or vice versa since they were sliding both directions, and was it w-a-s or s-a-w? — and voila, “alphabet-soup” style spelling and reversals.

So we have a system which has been in the forefront of teaching in North America for over fifty years so it is really, really well tested; a system that is known for spelling being extremely difficult and having to be learned separately instead of as a regular part of the reading; a system where it is well known that a large number of kids get worse over the elementary years instead of better, and many have to be re-taught.
And Davis re-packages the same-old same-old, calls it by a different name and puts some psychobabble and jargon on top. Sorry, there’s some old English saying about dressing up a pig but it’s still a pig under the fine clothes, can’t remember it exactly but that is what’s going on here.
I am not criticizing *you*!!
The work you did with your child was obviously successful and certainly the best you could do for him. The work with letters and the phonics that you did certainly helped him towards independence. A *lot* of people memorize sight-word lists as well, and while I personally think it’s not the best use of time because it’s inconsistent and because you have to go back over and re-do the spelling anyway, it’s still better to spend the time learning some reading than learning none.

OK, now you have to go back over and re-learn the spelling, that’s where you are now.
If you change approaches a little bit and learn each new reading word from now on left-to-right absolutely and noting the spelling *as* you learn the word, sure it will slow you down temporarily, but will speed you up a *lot* after a few months as you don’t have to go over and re-learn every word three, four, ten times. Omitting the stops and backtracks in reading also slowly but surely increases speed (slow down a bit at first to enter the expressway, then accelerate) and it really helps comprehension.
For troublesome repeated-error words in both reading and spelling, go over them phonetically left-to-right, sound out, and note any irregularities and note *which* vowel pattern (reed versus read, etcetera). Each time a common word is missed, re-analyze it. One motivation to get more accurate is to get so sick of going back over the same little words. Be patient and take the time and it does work slowly but surely.

As far as Davis, I *have* read his website, and the “academic” posts on the net, and the testimonials of people who have been through the Davis centers, and thanks, that’s quite enough.
Several of the people who have been through the Davis centers have verbally abused me and other people on the web.
Davis’s tame “academic” who posts irrelevant and misleading references has also been extremely insulting.
***I do not think at all that you have anything to do with this!***
But a company (profit-making) that markets itself with half-truths and misleading claims and by attempting to denigrate anyone who doesn’t buy into their program is not a company that I will have anything more to do with. And I will point out the misleading claims when they get posted again.
And they *will* get posted again; as soon as “Davis” appears in a title on this website, employees come on the site here and try to tell us that they have all the answers and the rest of us are just stupid peasants. They aren’t here yet because this title is HANDLE, but they’ll show up soon enough if you post the new title. Want to try it?

I think it is time our educational system takes a good look at alternative programs out there and realizes that each has its place with a certain type of student. I have not seen a “cure-all” program. Let’s accept though that a program may work with a student and use it. As a parent it would be a risk I would be willing to take. I would much rather try to do something at the root of the difficulty than spending years on trying to cover it.

Yes, and there is plenty of research to direct us to effective programs so that we don’t waste time with ones that are worthless.

Janis

[quote=”Janis”]Yes, and there is plenty of research to direct us to effective programs so that we don’t waste time with ones that are worthless.

Janis[/quote]

Exactly right! Any program worth considering will have some research to back it. If all you get is stories about particular individuals who are said to improve after trying the program, you’ve really got absolutely nothing. Look for some real research done under proper scientific protocols. If there is none, you might want to think twice before spending time and money on a program.

Actually, I’m willing to listen to anecdotal evidence, but like all anecdotal reports everywhere in life, it has to be taken with a large grain of salt and very careful use of your sense of smell. Be extra alert for anything fishy with anecdotes.

As, for example, do they all have the same tone and vocabulary and appear as if all written by the same person? Do they all claim miracles? Do they all put down other approaches and epecially put down scientific research? Do they make claims that are contrary to proven medical fact? Do they claim wonderful new discoveries that are secrets owned only by the director? Do they claim that things are instant and effort-free? Once you smell one of these fish, that *still* does not prove anyone is wrong — some real researchers are cranks too — but it should make you tread very very cautiously, and be especially careful about large amounts of money with no refund available.

One problem with theories that aren’t in the mainstream is that it is hard to get the scientific backup and you do sound like a crank. Trying to preach the need for phonics in reading instruction thirty years ago put me well on the wrong side of the fence. So don’t ban a program because it’s experimental, but do be cautious with safety and money.

I am midway through the imtermediate training as I type. This training emphasizes the Handle Screening. This has been developed in the last year. Certified screeners can administer this tool (20-30 minutes), which screens for obvious issues. Also, the certified trainer has a toolbox of about 20 activities, all of which work to strengthen various systems in the body. This would be very appropriate for use in schools, particularly at the K-5 or 6 level in kindergartens and in resource programs. This would also offer good basis for adaptive P.E. activities.

HANDLE does not cure everything from autism to athlete’s foot, it works to strengthen the underlying systems. Curiously there are a finite number of underlying systems that connect, directly and indirectly, to numerous skills and functions we perform.

The overall idea of Handle is not new, but the approach emphasizes gentle enhancement. Handle is attentive to the needs and the comfort level of the client. Many of the activities are fun and no one is ever pushed to continue an activity once a state change has taken place (stress had built up and the individual begins to shut down, you know, what we do to our LD students all day long in schools!).

I continue to hear from parents who have seen dramatic improvements in their children on Handle. Many folks here, as also true in the elementary training, are parents who are believers.

I am in a good situation to implement the screening device and “prescribe” some activities for some of my students.

The program is 10 days in length and the advanced program is 2 weeks. At the conclusion of the advanced program one can become a Handle intern This means the individual will complete a take home test, complete ten full evals. and follow-ups, and present a community information night on Handle.

I am enjoying the program and the interesting people who are here.