Actually I would look on Youtube for "remediating primitive reflexes" rather than a book. I think identifying the retained reflexes is the tricky part. They can be kind of subtle. Robert Melillo has a few books and I've liked all of his that I've read. Melillo downplays creeping and crawling as remediation for them, but Virginia Dil, the woman who does the connections seminars, does not. She emphasizes creeping and crawling but also gives specific exercises for each retained reflex.

I know this is a bit old, but I didn't have time to reply when it came up. I had recently started taking Broccomax after knowing almost nothing about it and I am getting very good results with it. Not for anxiety, but it surprised me to see it come up on this board since I had never heard of it before seeing an ad for it. With any neuro symptoms at all I would investigate gluten free, if not already, then dairy free. When someone makes antibodies to gluten, the brain is a very common site of autoimmune attack. In celiac, which I am not suggesting, but there is a lot of research on it, neurological symptoms are MORE common than gastrointestinal symptoms. Dairy is just an extremely common gluten cross reactor. Supplement wise I would always recommend Magnesium first with anxiety. Then either try to raise GABA or Serotonin or both. A group of herbs that raise GABA is in Gabatone by Apex Energetix. It works quite well. It has lemon balm, Melissa and L-theonine, which are calming. Phenitropic by Biotics Research also works well. To raise Serotonin I use 5-htp. It takes a minimum of 200mg per day for an adult. It is difficult for people to figure the magnesium thing out themselves because most mag sold in stores is not the right kind. It is mag oxide and poorly absorbed. In addition to that, rarely does someone figure out how darn much magnesium it takes to relieve symptoms. I use Magnesium Malate by DFH and it takes 2-4 pills per day with food for most adults to have enough. People just aren't thinking they need that much of one thing. It is just so voluminous of a mineral. The more calcium someone takes, the more it works against magnesium levels too and everyone is so calcium oriented. I don't often find people need calcium supplementation except when pregnant. There aren't enough people knowledgeable about non-drug treatments for anxiety or depression for people to get real help, then they have no other option than to resort to drugs. I think it is good for the drugs to be available, but magnesium alone has 300 known functions in the body and if someone is taking an anti-anxiety drug when they really need magnesium there are potentially 299 other things wrong with them that aren't getting addressed. I don't usually find that anxiety is low magnesium alone, but it makes for a good example of why ONLY knowing the drug option is bad. I have zero judgement of anyone who has resorted to drugs for themselves or their children because they do work and you can't just be curled up in a ball, but if there were no drugs available people would be figuring out the causes and effective non-drug treatments because they do exist. There are compliance issues, especially since drugs can be like one pill a day and supplements can be so many pills. Diet changes can also be hard for people. I also want to note don't ever fall into the "genetic" trap. Yes, things are genetic, but I think drug companies push the idea that something is genetic so the only thing you can do is take a drug. You can't inherit a trait without inheriting the MECHANISM through which that trait expresses itself. You can always interrupt that mechanism. There aren't nearly as many people investigating those mechanisms as those pushing drugs.

http://www.wellconnectedbrain.com/ This seminar is for parents. The instructor is an educator rather than a clinician. I took Dr. Robert Melillo's 7 part course for doctors on ASD, ADHD, and other developmental delays before I took this weekend course. I thought this course was excellent and offered many more exercises for remediating reflexes than Dr. Melillo did. There were many other topics in Melillo's course than retained reflexes so they aren't comparable, but this was only $200 for a weekend seminar. I paid far more than that for the doctor's course. $200 is how much I paid for it at the time. I don't know how much she charges now. She used to only do them in the Virginia Beach and eastern Virginia area, but she is travelling more. This one is in Ponte Verde, Florida. I know she will come to your area if you get enough attendees. I get nothing for recommending this seminar.

I am interested in your CISS too. I bought an add on system and it was a big pain in the behind. It was mostly because I would go as long as a month without printing color and things would dry up in between uses. It was for our office and it was a bit fiddly. I was able to add ink, but no one else was. It would really have been nice to have staff able to do it instead of just me.

I agree with Meet The Letter sounds and Meet The Numbers videos by Preschool Prep. I'd try the Meet The Numbers app too. They don't have a Meet The Letter Sounds app, only Meet the Letters, which go over the letter names, not sounds. We teach letter sounds, not letter names, so we don't use the Meet The Letters video or apps. We teach letter names after they can read. I think it helps them blend to do it this way. That is also a Montessori way of doing things, but that is not why I did it that way. Preschool Prep materials teach left brain skills (pattern recognition) in a right brain way (using pictures). If a child is having trouble with pattern recognition, it could mean some difficulty with left brain skills so i would recommend doing some "cross the midline" types of exercises too, like cross crawling.

Great responses. I'm not really qualified to answer because I don't exclusively homeschool and my oldest child is 5, however, I feel like what "I" have taught my kids has been phenomenally effective, at least so far. I put "I" in quotes because it isn't really me teaching them. As mentioned by a previous poster, I use games and videos a lot. I am also ridiculously enthusiastic about learning and about them learning stuff. That is just my personality, but I realized after I discovered how much my kids were learning that my intensity was probably a major factor. I feel like enthusiasm is in the category of "intensity" in the frequency, intensity and duration required for neuroplasticity and learning is a manifestation of neuroplasticity. I also realize that not being the main teacher, my 4 and 5 year old go to Montessori, leaves me with extra energy to be enthusiastic, but I tend to be enthusiastic even when I have no energy. I have twin 15 month olds and don't get a lot of sleep.

I loved everything about yahoogroups and hate everything about Facebook except I do get to see pictures of family on Facebook that I wouldn't otherwise see. I can't imagine anyone would think Facebook was better for any information gathering reason. I still can't figure it out.

I thought there might be other people here who had the game and either they or their kids mastered it easily and I would know it is just a very compelling game for people to play who are interested in it. I'm not that interested or good at Geography so it really shocked me to see him get so many right. It used to seem impossible to me to solve Rubics cubes too, but there are lots of people and kids who just kept at it and solve it easily. It isn't that unusual to find them. He's probably too little to know about giftedness. And I can't use the reading thing as a sign anyway since I explicitly set out to teach him very young. I mentioned the reading thing because you have to read pretty well to play stack the countries independently and I didn't want anyone to think that part was An indicator of anything.

Since school has been out my 4 year old has had greater access to an IPad than ever before. This is partly due to my overly distracted parenting, so that's not good. On the upside, he can locate all the countries in Asia, Africa, North America and South America with less than 3 mistakes per continent. I'm wondering if this is super highly unusual or if the game is so reinforcing that any kid would eventually do that or come close. He is a very good reader, but I taught him that so I probably can't attribute that to any unusual ability. It was very, very easy to teach him though. He has only had one week to really master this. Maybe two.

My son liked readingbear.org for blending and there are several leapfrog videos that helped. I have almost every one and I can't remember which have blending featured.

I only buy used books that Amazon lists as "very good" or better from sellers that have 96% or better positive feedback. So far the quality has been consistent.

When I buy multiple used books from the same seller from Amazon, shipping isn't combined. It is still 3.99. Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you for sharing your experience, Heathermomster. I am often not clear in my writing because I only have moments before one of my twins starts climbing me. I listed IM along with remediating reflexes because BrainBalance centers do both separately. They don't attempt to remediate the reflexes WITH the IM. They do exercises for remediating the reflexes similar to what some OTs or PTs do. They do many other things too, but those were some high spots to hit for those who didn't have access to a center. I figured remediating the reflexes just takes a while or maybe needs to be handled in a more "cross training" for lack of a better word, sort of way. The dad of the autistic boy had already been working on the son's reflexes for two years when he told me that they still come back. He'd been through more than one treatment protocol with brainbalance, but this conversation was two years after his first round. His son's improvement was dramatic anyway. The mom, who is an OT, of the two girls had been working on her girls' reflexes for a while too. Maybe a year when she told me they still come back. These are girls who I couldn't tell there were any issues with, but I really trusted the mom that she knew. I just don't think they fit the criteria of any diagnosis at the time. The mom was very happy with her results.

It was two families with a total of three patients, not two patients like I previously posted. They are the only three patients I ever referred there.

One is autistic and the other two have no diagnoses, but the mom is an OT and she knew her two girls had issues. The autistic boy is from a different family. One thing I heard though, is that brainbalance only teaches one remediation for each reflex. I don't know the reasoning behind that, but it sounds limiting.

http://masgutovamethod.com/ I met a mom of a child with autism and PANS recently who told me this method helped her son. I have never heard anything about it and wanted to know if any of you had. This mom is the type who has tried everything and her she utilized PROMPT and liked it. Interesting that she had sent her son to a BrainBalance center and it didn't help at all. I know it doesn't work for everyone, but every person I had been in contact with before meeting her did well with it. I think she heard later that BrainBalance doesn't work for children with PANS. I had never heard of PANS before she told me about it, only PANDAS. When a mom who has tried everything is excited about the results of something for autism I pay close attention.

Brainbeat is the $250 home use version of Interactive Metronome. Not made by the same people. I have heard good things about it from other chiropractors who use it. I am kind of glad I didn't know about it now because I probably wouldn't have time to compare them anyway. I already have an interactive metronome (around $4000) but the Brainbeat game looks like it might be more fun for the kids. I have been recommending to some people who would like to try BrainBalance center who either can't afford it or are too far away from a center to do some food allergy testing, attempt to remediate their kids primitive reflexes, do creeping and crawling and use Brainbeat. I say attempting to remediate the reflexes because the two patients who I referred to BrainBalance were very happy with the results, but we all notice that the primitive reflexes return.

I'm mentioning this here because the Preschool Prep materials look a lot like Diane Craft materials. They turn the letters, numbers, shapes, words, etc... into pictures and they tell a story with them. Those words are having sooo much fun in the videos! They aren't described as "right brain" learning materials, but I think they are. I also think they would be good for learning differences is because their books have very bold type with very large words. I think this is incredibly important and strangely hard to find. Some remedial reading methods are based largely on the concept that the words need to be very, very large, Doman methods, for example. The age these materials are designed for might be too young to even know if there is a learning challenge, but if you have an older child with an issue, it might be a way to "head off some trouble at the pass" to use these with younger, undiagnosed children. I do not know how an older child would take these, since they are designed for baby and preschool age. I used them with DS5 and DS4. I was poised for reading difficulty with my oldest who was adopted from foster care and had known drug use from both bio parents. I also knew his bio mom, although intelligent, had extreme reading difficulty. He also had LOTS of neurological red flags although not severe. (prolonged fisting as a baby, thought to be deaf in one ear, night terrors, many retained primitive reflexes, sensitivity to loud sounds, couldn't regulate the volume of his voice, still put everything in his mouth until around age 5. All of this resolved and he is a great reader, but I used early methods that I knew would help if a child had learning challenges. Preschool Prep was one of them.

Preshool Prep http://www.preschoolprepco.com/ is continuing their cyber monday sale with $50% off everything. I don't know for how long. I LOVE their materials. Their DVDs are really effective and will massively cut down on your teaching to read efforts later. Their numbers, sight words, letter sounds, digraphs and blends DVDs are the most helpful. I liked their colors and shapes dvds, but they learn their colors and shapes so fast anyway, if you are limiting screen time, they might not be worth spending screen time on them. I like their DVDs, their lift the flap books, board books and flashcards. They have coloring books and workbooks but my kids don't like to color and I never have them do workbooks so I don't know if they like them or not. Workbooks seem too "seat worky" to me for the littles, but I know some kids like them. I have all of their book sets also. I used the sight words books with my kids, but didn't buy the digraphs, blends and letter sounds books until after my kids could read. I don't think they were out yet then. They still like to read them though. I think it is a relief to them that the words and letters are so BIG and BOLD. When they were first learning to read that is so important and almost impossible to find books with the words really large on the page. I had most of their materials before they came out with their math facts products so I ordered some of them with this sale. Another tip if you are limiting screen time is to see if you can get their DVDs from the library. They learn the material so fast from the DVDs that they don't have to watch them much. Then you can buy the books from Preschool Prep for them to practice.

I wondered these things about Latin. I was surprised how long I lurked on this board and still didn't know WHY to do Latin, other than the fact that my mother told me to. She is dead now so I can't ask her why. Brillkids Little Reader, which I have loved for English as a first language, has Arabic, which I haven't used. Our nanny speaks Arabic as a first language and I still don't have the guts for it. My trick to doing Brillkids is to start it young enough that the child is still in a highchair and show it to them while they are eating. I could not be more enthusiastic about Brillkids.

I never hear much about Preschool Prep on this board but they have my favorite early education materials. I didn't post this on the preschool board because much of their material covers things that kindergardeners and older kids are doing too, like sight words, blends, digraphs and math facts. The style of presentation is probably directed to a younger audience, but the math facts materials didn't come out until my oldest was 5 and he seems to like them fine. If I didn't already own them I would buy all of their DVDs except Meet the Letters (since I don't teach letter sounds until after they can read, only letter sounds), all of their flashcards and books except their workbooks and coloring books. My kids aren't into any workbooks or coloring books. They loved their lift the flap books and sight word books. They didn't have the blends, digraphs or letter sounds books until after my boys could read, but I bought them anyway and they still like them. Their flashcards are some of my favorite flashcards, but I am a very flashcard oriented person. I loved them as I was learning and all of my children like them too. Their materials are in the style of the Diane Craft materials, right brain oriented, although they are just appealing to any child, at least to my four. http://www.preschoolprepco.com/

Ten Commandments, I second Liberty's Kids, The following are more educational than entertainment but my 5 year old likes them as much as anything entertaining: Rock n learn: earth science, life science, human body. I think we have almost every Rock n Learn DVD. Mathtacular. Math Facts by Preschool Prep. Once he was done watching all of the Wildkratts episodes that were free with Amazon prime there is a season of zoobumafoo for free too, which is an earlier Kratts brothers show. I know I didn't spell that correctly. They also like the "Make Me Genius" channel on YouTube. I am surprised my kids like this so much because it is so calm and mild and it looks like they wouldn't, "the DVD read and share bible."

Deanna I knew it would rain down. I just have balls and don't care what people think of me. I did consider answering privately but I thought someone else might want to know too. Not that I would expect any one else to be brave enough to admit it. Do you think it is ironic that in a question about reading that no one actually read your question? I take that back. Mama geek read it.

The original poster said she felt she had heard plenty from the "reading readiness" crowd and wanted to hear from people who feel any child is ready. I would not withold exposure to the auditory expression of language (speech) until a child showed signs of readiness OR the visual representation of language (written words).

I was very impressed with the former travel agent mom on many levels. I do think she was very intelligent and I learned a lot from her. Mostly I loved how she took being a mother and educator so seriously and how she would look into any way she thought could be more effective at teaching her children. There are many moms like that on this forum and I learn a lot here too. Julia