Hi Beth,
Can you share some specifics of your experience with this program for me? (Our sons have similar integration difficulties.)
For example, how long did it take before you noticed improvements, how long did you do the program, how many times a week and for how long; did you hit any stumbling blocks?
I guess I need a lifeline at this point because I am feeling a tad discouraged. (I remember feeling the same way early on with Interactive Metronome.)
Since April 20, we have been doing a combination of NeuroNet/Pace in a pgm. designed by our audiologist, whom we see monthly, as she is 4 1/2 hours away. (She has had good success with combining these programs, she says.) There has been some progress in some areas (reading speed) but overall it’s far from meteoric as of yet.
This program is a struggle for him, and he is up and down like a yo yo. For example, the odd day he’ll breeze through Jumping Jacks, but mostly he flops his way through it, complaining all the way, and tanks midway. The stepping sequence exercise is another tough one.
Because I think attention issues are part of the package I’m beginning a two week trial of Adderall on the weekend. (He does say that the 2 aforementioned exercises help him with concentration - whether that’s a perceived effect or he’s just figured out that that’s the rub with those two I’m not sure; I think the latter. I heard him exclaim the other day, “If I could just concentrate during math….!”
Is your son on medication? If so, what do you make of the statement on the Neuronet website that, “Patients on medication may make significant progress using NeuroNet. However individual patient outcomes are less predictable.” I know you saw great gains from NeuroNet.
My son hates this program, probably because it hits him hard where he’s weakest. It is definitely a hard sell. We do 1/2 hour of each component per day and the thought of continuing through the summer has him grumbling. With adolescence approaching, I’m keen to fit in all the heavy duty therapy programs I can. Next comes math and typing programs and probably Avko Sequential Spelling.
Did you decide on Seeing Stars? How is it going?
We are too far from a Lindamood clinic, and I’m not sure that’s one I can tackle on my own. My son gets perfect scores on spelling tests (except on his French spelling tests) but spells phonetically otherwise.
Thank you for your help.
Jan
Re: Beth, need advice on Neuronet
Jan,
I managed to log in today so you can respond privately, if you want.
I started to see results after 6 weeks. It isn’t any miracle cure. I actually saw many more changes, much faster with IM. But NN is broader and has allowed us to tackle many more areas than IM can.
We actually started doing NN three years ago. Then it was a 1/2 hour program. We have taken breaks for other therapies and a few breaks just to have breaks. The past year or so we have deliberately limited the exercises to what can be done in 10 minutes or less.
We generally have done the exercises 6 x a week. We have really been very religious about it (just don’t ask me about how good I am at keeping records)!
And some of it really depends on your kid. Last summer our therapist told us that we could do headstands that would help address remaining vestibular issues which she thought were the core issue with my son’s skipping while reading. She said, based on her experience with other kids, that we’d see a major breakthrough in six weeks. We had been through vision therapy with moderate results, had seen a second vision therapist who concurred that more vision therapy was not the answer. Anyway, just now, almost a year later, am I seeing the kind of results she spoke of. (we had incorporated another exercise in the meantime when he stalled out making progress on the headstands). We had another jump about six months ago but just this week he practically stopped skipping altogether and his reading sound amazingly “normal”. He had always run his sentences together.
I have signed him up for four weeks of four hours a day of Seeing stars for this summer. He tested in the 25% for visual memory for letters, above 50% for decoding type skills, but only in the 35% or so for RAN and phonological memory. His comprension with structured questions is above average but generally inferential skills are weak (we may do V and V next summer). I decided that with relatively weak auditory skills, even after much therapy, that he needed stronger visual skills to compensate. I must admit with the recent jump in fluency that I have wondered about spending the money. But, upon reflection, I realized that I know that most of the processing underlying reading is low average and that I have better chance of getting the ability to visualize letters stronger than the other skills (which are much improved over where we started but still not average.)
We had many times where the exercises were tough and the resistance was high. If you don’t see an exercise being mastered in 2 weeks, I would talk to your therapist. It may need modification. And if you are having trouble after a week, you might ask anyway if there is a way to make it easier, since he is being resistant. It is the experience of mastery that has kept my son going. I truly credit NN for my son’s positive self esteem. Even when he was being beat down in school, he could suceed at NN.
Beth
Re: Beth, need advice on Neuronet
I forgot the attention question. No, my son is not on medication. Our therapist has discouraged us, because she doesn’t think he has a truly ADHD profile, although he was diagnosed by a neurologist. And she has told us that medication limits what she can do, although for some kids it is necessary to get them functioning. I think his inattentiveness is a combination of processing and ADHD myself. We saw a big jump in attention after IM which let us avoid medication. The remaining attention issues have improved as his processing has improved. He still does some classic inattentive stuff, which is why I think it is a combination issue.
I have not eliminated using medication some time in the future but for now, he is doing OK without it. I certainly wouldn’t do it only so your son can do the exercises. The exercises will help his attention.
Beth
Beth
Just re-read my post…when I said I’d seen nothing meteoric yet in terms of progress, I meant to say nothing meteoric with the exercises themselves (in terms of moving up the scale of difficulty) not meteoric effects, though, of course, reading speed, which I identified as a gain, is not something insignificant. I guess my point is I am not so naive as to think there is a magic bullet that will have a meteoric impact!