Hi,
I’d like to hear some feedback from anyone who has taken their child to The Handle Institute.
I’ve already made the decision to take my 6 year old to see Judith Bluestone… just wanted to hear from others what their experiences were.
I’m also wondering how comprehensive the therapy was and what additional therapies might have been recommended or needed.
I decided to go to The Handle Institute in the hopes that they would give me a good foundation for understanding Dean’s major issues and help me prioritize additional treatments (I know he has vision, auditory and vestibular issues as well as serious sequential processing limitations).
I AGONIZED over the decision because we have limited funds. Dean does not have a diagnosis of any kind other than the school’s testing which gave him a label of “specific learning disability” (whatever that means) and they identified that he has a vision processing problem.
So for now, in lieu of paying thousands of dollars to get a label, I am hoping that Judith can help me understand Dean’s unique neurological inefficiencies so that my money can be directed towards appropriate therapies.
Ideally I would hear from someone who has been to The Handle Institute and also gotten “traditional lables” so they could let me know how accurately Judith’s opinion fit in with other’s opinions.
Dean has clear signs of ADHD, also recently began exhibiting signs of Tuourett’s Syndrome (facial grimmaces and frequent clothing adjustments) and Sensory Integration issues.
Anyway, I look forward to hearing from anyone who has been to (or has knowledge of) The Handle Institute.
Re: Experiences with The Handle Institute
THANKS Tink!
I appreciate your post and it helps to validate my thinking process regarding the best way (for me at least) to get started on the path towards helping Dean.
BTW, I entered The Handle Institute in the search feature of this website and came up with tons of “hits” every time anyone used the word handle i.e. “I hope we can handle it…”
I’ll scan topic headlines but I know often things come up under other topics (I first heard about Handle through this forum but under a different topic).
I’d love to know if anyone could direct me towards the threads that discuss The Handle Institute!
I agree with you that it is important to get down to the very root of the problem. I also am glad to hear that she identified areas that you were not previously aware of.
Thanks again Tink! I’m so glad to hear that Tucker is responding and that you are glad that you made the decision to go to The Handle Institute.
Our Experiences with Handle Institute
My son and I did the Handle Institute program for about six months before he started Kindergarten at age 6. I found the program to be very time consuming, and although we were spending an hour a day on the excercises, and my son was getting better at the excercises, I did not see the improvement transferring into better control of hyperactivity/impulsivity or transferring to his ability to learn academics.
I felt that I kept asking our trainer — not Judith Bluestone — to prioritize the excercises for me and she did not. I also had a third grader who needed lots of Mom time while we were doing Handle, and it just got to be too much.
For us, we have obtained better results through medication, neuropsychological testing to diagnose his NVLD, appropriate teaching strageies for my son’s disability, and behavioral interventions (from the autism literature) to address non-compliance, meltdowns and increase self control.
Not that my son is anywhere near neuro-typical!
Jody
Handle feedback
I think going to Handle for assessment/treatment is a great choice. Before you go, I highly recommend that you read Judith’s new book: The Fabric of Autism: Weaving the Threads into a Cogent Theory. There are enormous portions of the book that are relevant to many types of learning disabilities and challenges.
My son has been following a Handle program for 8 months. We do about 15 minutes of exercises per day. He is an atypical kid: his LDs stem from chronic medical trauma and an incident of cardiac arrest (brain injury) went he was 2.5. We are making progress. No more nightime incontinence; big reduction in impulsive behavior, better mood. Lots of little things, but we’re not done yet.
It takes commitment to follow through on the activities but in the long run it is much more “cost-effective” than weekly OT and other therapies including the wear and tear of dragging your kid all over town. We live far away from Seattle and send and receive monthly videotapes from them. They are always available by phone and email and respond to questions/concerns quickly.
I have taken Handle’s introductory 2-day course which explains the “basics” of Handle’s theory. I am a reading tutor and hope to take their intermediate course as well. So many struggling readers have underlying issues that are holding them back. I hope I can learn Handle interventions to better help them.
Please report back to us on your experience!
Hi there. Actually I have been keeping some people in this forum apprised of my 8 yr. old son, Tucker’s, progress with HANDLE. There are some good previous post by a number of people that took place about a month ago. You might want to go back and take a look. Tucker has no real “label” from anywhere but I agree with the school that he has large memory issues and is ADHD. I found HANDLE on a website and live close to the Seattle clinic and made the decision to take Tucker there. Mainly because I believe that HANDLE is on the right track in addressing issues at the root, rather than trying to remediate the same issues on the surface. I have found the therapy to be very comprehensive and the only extra that was added was they ask me to put Tucker on Omega 3. The concept and the implimentation is very simple and all it really takes is a half hour a day. I too had limited funds and we borrowed the $ to take him. I am very glad we did. Tucker is 6 weeks into the program and although progress is slow, it is there. His handwriting has improved as has his ability to write on “autopilot”. Math is becoming easier and he is able to do a little “mental math” which was non-exsitant before. His teacher indicates that he spends increasing amounts of time focused and seems able to ignore distraction much better. He has started to “think before he acts” in both classroom and social situations. His anger and frustration levels, which were out of control before, seem to have disapated enormously, although this area seems to flunctuate some. I believe that it will stablize with time. HANDLE in and of itself is a therapy. It defines the areas in the brain that are weak, thus causing the issues, and works to gently strengthen them. At the inital visit HANDLE found things that even the school was unaware of.
Developmental vision issues and sensory integration challenges that were playing a large part in Tucker’s struggles. Tucker loves it at the clinic and wants to do the daily exercises. I certainly think that it is an avenue that is worth pursuing.