personal experiences of learning Rx, PACE, MTC, Brainskills

We did PACE without much effect. In hindsight, we should have done listening therapy and IM first. We did them afterwards. PACE is a primarily cognitive program and my son’s disabilities are primarily at the sensory motor level. He also was only 8 and the program was probably too hard for him, although I was reassured by PACE people that was not the case.

I know people who have had very good experiences with PACe, which is why we did it. MTC is a follow up reading program which is very sound, but we never did. It is a tremendous amount of drill and focuses on becoming automatic on sounds and parts of words.

Brainskills is a home based program which contains less of the motor/sensory exercises than PACE.

Beth

The company started out with PACE, which is a provider-based cognitive skills training program.

BrainSkills is the home version of PACE. The developers pulled out about one-third of the PACE exercises, focusing on those that could be reasonably done by parents at home without training (except for the video instruction included in the kit).

LearningRx is the franchised version of PACE. It had to be set up as a separate company from the original to satisy franchising laws. In areas where a LearningRx franchise is set up, no new PACE trainers are certified. Also, the PACE program now stays static while any innovations or improvements are made to the LearningRx program. The idea is to gradually move away from individual providers to a totally franchised program.

I am a PACE provider, have put a few children through the program, and have talked to other providers who have put many more children through the program.

The exercises begin at about an 8yo level of function. When PACE is used as an educational enhancement, it can work for children younger than 8. However, it is mostly used for LD children, and in these cases I consider 8yo to be about the minimum age for it. I consider it even more suitable for 9yo and up, including teens.

My experience has been that children with severe problems tend not to gain as much with PACE. My worst gain was with a child who had severe SID (in spite of much occupational therapy) and an IQ of about 70. In contrast, I have seen quite spectacular gains with the type of child who seems intelligent but struggles with academics.

When considering a full range of remediation, PACE would be the second to the last step (right before academic remediation). PACE works best when all sensory level problems (vision, hearing, vestibular system and motor development, sensory integration) have been addressed. PACE works intensively on developing a wide range of cognitive skills, but these cognitive skills all require a sensory foundation. This is why PACE works best for children who have a reasonably sound sensory foundation. Also, a higher IQ allows for greater generalization of gains — meaning the child is able to transfer gains made in the exercises to tasks in real life that require similar skills.

Nancy

That was the best explaination I have seen so far of the different programs. Thank you

So, the Lift Off program through a Learning Rx center would start at 4 1/2 or 6? (website says 6, I think, but the closest center told be 4 1/2 over the phone)

What about the Directed, Pro, and Partner. They are different level of involvement of the center vs parent doing things at home with the Think Rx pogram (new version of PACE) , correct?
Doing Read Rx is the same as doing PACE and MTC together, but with newer versions?

Please, if others have personal experience I would LOVE to hear about it. I admit, it comes across like a great concept when reading the learning Rx website, but becomes questionable as to the true results of the program (other than results mentioned on the website) are hard to find. In searching for parent discussion of the program, I only found may websites with similar products (brainskills, PACE, MTC, a $39 Gibson Cognitive test you can order etc) or advertisements placed by the company. No reviews of the program, no parent discussions (until I searched the forums here)

I am asking for serveral different reasons
1- my mother (a special ed resource teacher) asked me what I knew of the program (nothing at the time)

2- future use with my son (3 yr old - many health issues that have caused loss of skills and most likely future diagnoses of CAPD, ADD/ADHD, artic. and expressive speech delay, etc) So I am interested in different remediations that would be best done before hand, planning ahead. He is very smart, but has obstacles for learning (verbal directions, willingness to follow directions, fine motor control)

3- general knowledge for myself and for discussing with other parents that I believe would be very interested. Most I know only do OT, PT, ST or whatever the school district is wanting to do, most don’t venture out to even know other programs exist.

All of the programs you mention are newer and specific to the LearningRx centers. As a provider, I only have access to PACE, BrainSkills, and MTC and have not seen or used the newer materials.

As for the different levels of participation, I’m sure that is to allow for a wide range of parents. There are wealthy parents who are willing to pay for others to do all of the exercises with their child. There are less wealthy parents who can afford the program only if they take on the hours of practice themselves. One is not better than the other; it is largely a matter of finances and parent interest.

This site is probably the best for finding posts from parents. I have seen some really excellent posts by parents on Yahoo groups, but the Yahoo search engine no longer works, so it’s impossible to find those posts. I haven’t had any luck with Google either, especially since “pace” is such a common word. The most I can suggest is joining some of the Yahoo lists and asking on them. There were a couple of people on the ReadNOW list who had put a child through PACE, but I don’t know if they still post there.

My sense is that there used to be a lot more posts about PACE than in the last year or so. I don’t know if that is due to the economy (less money to spend on educational programs), or parents are less likely to share experiences online (perhaps lack of time or interest), or ……… Even this website seems to have slowed down a lot from what it was a couple of years ago.

Nancy

One more suggestion. You might want to consider working at a LearningRx franchise in order to learn more about the programs. That might not be feasible for you, but it would be one of the fastest ways to get the kind of information you are looking for — especially for the newer programs you mentioned, which have less of a track record. PACE has been around for more than 10 years now, so there is a much larger pool of families who have gone through it than with the programs that have been available for only a couple of years.

Nancy

I put my son who was 7 at the time, through an earlier version of PACE. He was a bright child, very slow to focus, slow homework skills, an A student at the time. I am a teacher and I could see how some of his skills were going to interfere with his learning later on. He experienced good success, particularly in the area of attention and focus. He also learned how to read in English in that 3 month period. He was attending a French language school in Ontario and had not yet been introduced to reading English phonemes. After PACE, his reading just took off in both languages. Homework time was much less of a struggle and became much less time consuming and frustrating. I loved the visual processing skills development, since he had trouble with eye teaming. I still use some of the tools for memorization with him, as well as some of my tutoring students.
As a result of this, I too decided to become a PACE provider. I have a variety of students with differents needs and all of them have shown improvements in their academic life after a few months on the program. You must decide where your priorities lie with each child and find the program that will best suit their needs.Hope this answers your questions!