I used the program with our adopted daughter who has sensory issues alonhg with ADHD. It did not help her at all. We finally began occupational therapy sessions with her. The OT started her on Handwriting Without Tears. That program made a world of difference. Until that point, dd's handwriting was illegible. JMHO, but I would not bother to use Retrain the Brain with another child. For us, it was a waste of money and time. The program is now just sitting on my shelf.

Yippeeee for dd! :hurray: We've been at it for 22 months and still counting.

My dn will be in VT for 2 years in December. The first 7 months were in-office with daily exercises at home. For the remainder of the time, she has done exercises at home with an in-office visit every 3-6 months to check her progress. The severity of dn's symptoms and the fight we have with her to do the exercises has probably played a large role in the time frame. She had weaknesses in eye motor coordination and dexterity, visualization, attention and processing speed, reversal frequency, visualization, stereo vision, exophoria at near point, convergence insufficiency, suppression of the right eye, and tracking below age. At her first eval, it was determined she would need 12 to 36 hrs. of in-office visits and 50-200 hours of VT. I am so burned out with the entire process. :ack2: Gina

Hi Twinmom, We took dn for her QEEg yesterday for neurofeedback. Would you share with me what is happening with your dc? This is our first experience with the therapy, and I am so anxious to learn. Our dn has so many issues - I typed a page and a half list for the therapist. There were just too many to fit on the little space she gave me on the intake form. Gina

You can find Straight Talk 1 & 2 here. I don't know if anyone else sells it or not. http://www.nathhan.com/straight.htm Gina

Would you be an angel and describe it one more time? I missed the last dozen or so times you did it. :Angel_anim: Thanks! Gina

Something that we found beneficial for our dd with our of her issues was to create a chart with arrows. I will ktry to explain. Have about 10 arrows approximately 1/2" high going across the top of the page and 10-15 arrows going down the page in a chart form. I drew mine with a black sharpie. It would look something like this only using arrows rather than letters and dashes: l l - l - - l - l l - l - - l - - l l - l Imagine that each of those lines has an arrow on the end either pointing up, down, right, or left. Then I put this on the fridge with a magnet and had dd stand in front of it. She reads the direction the arrow is pointing out loud and points in the same direction. So if an arrow is pointing to the right, she would say right and at the same time extend her right arm straight out. If the arrow is pointing up, she says up and extends both arms over her head, or if the arrow is pointing down, she extends both arms straight down by her side as she says down. Make sense? You can turn the chart sideways and upside down to change the direction of the arrows so she just does not memorize the moves. After she had mastered the ability to do the above, I had her do the exercise with the metronome. I started her slowly and gradually built up to 60 beats per minute. To make the exercise more complex as her brain adjusted to the exercise, I added in marching in place in beat with the metronome while she was reading and moving her arms. This exercise can also be done with letters the child reverses such as p, q, b, d. Just create a chart with these letters and follow the same steps as above. If the arm of the letter is on the right such as in the letter d, the child says right and extends the right arm up at the same time. If the the arm is down and on the left such as in the letter p, the child says left and points their arm down to the floor as they say left. The chart would look something like the one below. This can even be created in a word processor. It can be turned upside down to keep the child from memorizing the chart so quickly. I also had my dd read the chart from top to bottom and from bottom to top to add variety. p d b q p d d p b b q q p b d This helped tremendously with letter reversals for my then 12 year-old. It took about 6 months of doing the exercise 5 days per week and about 3-4 minutes daily to cement the information into her head. At first, the exercise was extremely difficult, and she became so confused. Now it is a breeze for her. Hope this is helpful for someone.

Thanks for all the input. Gina

The only thing I am familiar with in my area is the Dept. for Rehabilitative Services and they will not accept her until she is ready to transition from high school. They do extensive testing for pycho-neurological and vocational aptitude. As far as what she is good at - I know this sounds horrible - but so help me, I can't find anything she is good at. She's clumsy with her fine motor skills, and her social skills are zilch. I'm just at my wits end. Has anyone here tried crossinology, brain integration therapy, or neurofeedback with EDMR and QEEG? I just cannot accept the fact there is nothing I can do to help her. http://www.crossinology.com/ http://www.brainintegration.org/BrainIntegrationBIT.htm http://virginianeurofeedback.com/emdr.php

We had similar issues with our adopted dd. Her bio mother is also bi-polar. Our doctor put her on Depakote 500 mg. for mood control, and Concerta 54 mg. for ADHD and impulsiveness when she was 11 years old. Last fall, her behavior began to deteriorate and spiral out of control. By Christmas I was ready to exit stage left. The doctor changed her Concerta to 60 mg. of Vyvanse. She was better after that, but no where near where she needed to be. In April the Depakote was increased to 1000 mg. She has been much calmer and easier to manage since then. Don't know if Depakote would work for you, but this has been the correct mix for dd. Good luck in finding what will work for your dc. Gina

I'm not familiar with this. Would you please explain or direct me to where I can learn about this? No, she has not started thinking about career even though I have tried to encourage her to do so. She is extremely immature for her age - more like an 8-9 year old mentally. She still sits and plays with Barbies, Polly Pockets, and My Little Ponies. I'm not sure how to get her on track with this. I'm afraid she will leave as soon as she is 18, and she is in no way ready for the real world. Thank you for your response. Gina

The ST released our adopted 14 (soon to be 15) year old dd after 8 months of therapy because she felt her problems were related to cognition. I don't see where much, if any, progress was made. She is still unable to state the main idea or summarize. Dd has expressive language delays and struggles to relate incidents. Lots of time, if you do not already know what she is talking about, it is very difficult to follow her. She hems, haws, and pauses a lot. We have asked her over and over to organize her thoughts before she starts talking, but she has failed to learn to do that. Her IQ is in the 90s range. She's had VT, PT, OT, IM, and ST over the past 4 years. She's still receiving VT after nearly 2 years. She's been diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, SID, ADHD, ODD, vestibular cochlear dysfunction, nonverbal learning disorder, dyspraxia, attachment disorder, hypotonia, and possible FAE (though the mother denies it). When she came to us 4 years ago, she was in the 6th grade in PS doing 2nd grade work. This year she is doing 8th grade CLE language arts, 7th grade CLE math, 7th grade ABeka literature, 5th grade R & S Bible, 7th grade ACE science, and lapbooks for American history. At home we've done Dianne Crafts' BIT, Audiblox, Train the Brain to Pay Attention the Write Way, Brainware Safari, Balametrics, and Brainskills. At this point, I just don't know what else to do. I've struggled so hard to help this child with her fighting me every step of the way. Life is just so difficult. Here at home she is angry and sullen most of the time. With outsiders she is silly, chatty, huggy, and giddy. She is incapable of learning from her mistakes and tends to make the same ones over repeatedly. I feel so overwhelmed and helpless with this child. Should I just give up? Everyone tells me to put her back in PS and be done with trying to teach her. I know they will let her fall back through the cracks. others tell me to just teach her the bare minimum of what the law requires. In our state, that would only be math and language arts. Things seemed better after the IM for a while. She did that for 6 months. Now she is back to being unable to keep time or clap in beat with the music. Should I seek the input from another ST or should I just let it go? Does she need to go back into IM? Any input or suggestions would be appreciated. Gina

We have used the Tape Assisted Reading Program (TARP). Here is one link to give you an overview. Google it to find more sites. http://www.literacyconnections.com/tape-assisted-reading-reading-while-listening

How accurate are these tests? I found this one that is free. I found the link at Kids IQ Test Center and then googled the ISIQ Test to find it. http://www.isiq.com/ My dd, age 14, also lines up her toys. She still plays with her Barbies and Polly Pockets, but they never walk, talk, dance, or go any place. She just dresses them and sits them all down in a row. She has about a dozen dolls and a car, but they never go for a ride. She might sit a Barbie in the car, but all she does is sit. The car never gets pushed down the hall or anything like that. We adopted this child. She came to us 4 years ago with an IQ of 81. When she was first tested in public school way back in 1st or 2nd grade, her IQ was 76. She was tested again after being in our home for 6 months. Her score had risen to 89. She was neglected, and I believe a lot of her problems are related to that neglect. She has more diagnoses than I have fingers and toes, and at times I feel so helpless in trying to help her. Dobela, I can certainly relate to your post. My bio kids could see something once or twice and they had it. This child - I have to go over and over and over the same material. If material I believe she has mastered is not reviewed on a regular basis, she forgets it. This makes it very difficult to move forward as we have to just spend our time reviewing old material. I sometimes wonder if it will ever cement in her head.

Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills: An Activity Workbook You can buy it Amazon.com. I was able to borrow one through interlibrary loan. It has exercises to address visual deficits. Our developmental optometrist did not recommend this book, but it had a lot of the exercises she gave our adopted niece. http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Ocular-Visual-Perceptual-Skills/dp/1556425953/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277133622&sr=8-2

We used IM last year for our adopted niece. She made major strides with the program. She could not keep time to music, could not coordinate her right and left sides together, and had difficulty using gross motor skills. She skipped like a mule - clunk, clunk, clunk. It really helped her tremendously. By being more in touch with her own body, she became more able to regulate herself emotionally. I would highly recommend it to anyone.