Your child does not need a diagnosis to begin the program. The program is designed to help those with any diagnosis or symptoms related to ADHD, autism spectrum, reading or learning delays, speech difficulties, expressive language challenges, sensory processing disorder, emotional regulation, ODD, anxiety and more. The research is irrefutable that the sooner children get the help they need–the better the results. Either way a diagnosis is irrelevant to the brain-body approach especially since many children often don’t meet all the criteria of a diagnosis and still struggle significantly with learning, reading or behaviour. Instead of labelling, the brain-body approach screens for underlying factors that contribute to learning and behaviour struggles such as nutrition, skipped milestones and poor brain organization.

Because this approach is not medical–the program is not covered under insurance policies. However, Registered Holistic Nutritionists are covered under several insurance companies so the portion of the program that involves nutritional consults may be covered. Although there are no guarantees, some parents are able to submit the receipts because they receive funding from the government for a child with an official diagnosis.

The brain-body approach looks beyond the limitations of labels and one-size-fits-all therapies. This program seeks to uncover and correct the root cause of why your child is struggling–and there’s almost always more than one! An individualized approach which integrates various therapies helps parents to achieve real solutions in nurturing their child’s full potential. Once the assessment is complete and imbalances and deficiencies are identified, a customized plan that combines multiple therapies to address your child’s unique needs is developed. This assessment and plan looks at your child as a whole–rather than from a perspective of a label or a diagnosis. The brain-body approach is based on the most recent knowledge and research in educational therapy and functional medicine. Targeted nutrition and learning therapies are the starting point in transforming many of the common childhood disorders that are rising in epidemic proportions among children today.

Many current therapies just look at learning or behaviour difficulties through one angle. By just looking at nutrition, or just looking at sensory-motor development there will likely be results, but they will not be as transformative as an approach that screens from multiple angles. My education and background in both educational and corrective therapies and functional holistic nutrition enables me to see the whole picture and put all of these solutions together into one simple, easy-to-follow program that can have life changing results with as little effort as twenty minutes a day.

Educational therapy is focused on correcting underlying learning or behaviour glitches so that your child can actually overcome limitations and experience real success.  Educational therapists are trained in how the brain learns, where and why learning or behaviour challenges originate and how to help promote changes in brain organization, memory, reading, learning ability and overall processing. The problem with many reading and learning programs is that they do not address or resolve the underlying reasons for learning difficulties or behaviour challenges.

Traditional remedial learning and reading programs like tutoring often teach around the problem and create strategies to manage a disorder rather than correcting the source of the problem. Unfortunately, remedial learning may at times cause more damage by re-enforcing “˜faulty’ connections. The answer to improving your child’s abilities is not always “˜more practice’. Certainly practice makes perfect when the right connections are in place. Rigorous, rote learning may not only strengthen the wrong connections but it often leads to mental exhaustion, lack of motivation and even potential failure.

Educational therapists assess and screen where the weaknesses and underlying problems reside so that the correct therapies can be applied to create strong corrections. When the right connections are in place learning takes place more naturally and confidence and motivation soars. Tutoring is focused on extra practice and homework and can help to improve grade levels but tutoring benefits are short-term. Tutors are not trained in therapies that help to improve the way the brain processes, retains and stores information.

Yes. Connections in the brain are made strong throughout the six month program. As long as healthy nutrition, regular movement, and cognitive stimulation that is typically a part of every child’s daily life, is occurring, then the brain will not only maintain healthy connections but will continue to create new ones through ongoing learning and stimulation. When I follow-up with parents long after their child has completed the program, they often tell me their child is continuing to improve academically and socially. When the right connections are in place, the brain can’t help but continue to build and grow!

Reading therapy is different from tutoring or standard reading programs because it identifies why your child’s brain, eyes and auditory system is not processing sounds, symbols and phonics in the same way as children who learn to read without challenge as well why your child may have poor reading comprehension. Once the underlying factors are identified such as eye instabilities, weak auditory processing, poor core development then corrective therapies are applied so that your child can learn to read fluently without years of ongoing tutoring, accommodations and other tools to manage a disorder. Reading therapy is more focused on correction and then re-enforcement rather than practicing in a way that likely won’t work for your child because it hasn’t worked in the past.

Schools are currently overwhelmed with special needs students and insufficient funding, resources, and staff. Reading therapy is very individualized as there are multiple reasons for reading difficulties that requires one-on-one screening, assessments and therapies that the regular classroom teacher simply does not have time for and so is not trained in.

Indications there may be a reading disorder are:

• Confusion between left and right, difficulty learning to tie shoes
• Clumsy, uncoordinated, poor handwriting but may be very precise in other instances
• Doesn’t recognize rhyming patterns like cat, mat, sat or difficulty learning nursery rhymes
• Mixes up words that sound alike such as meaning to say specificand says pacific instead or mispronounces words such aminal instead of animal or says pasghetti instead of spaghetti
• Complains letters, numbers and other symbols on page moves or blurs.
• May be able to read a word correctly or even a paragraph at first and then be unable to read the same word correctly in the next paragraph.
• Mispronounces familiar words
• Makes mistakes when reading that is totally different from the words on the page. May say cat instead of kitten because they use the context of an illustration of a cat.
• Has a hard time understanding that words can be broken down into smaller units
• Can read a text several times and has little comprehension of storyline or meaning.
• May not connect letters with their sounds, such as the letter b with the “b” sound
• Reading is slow and laborious compared to peers
• Lacks reading strategies to sound out new words because they possess a phonemic deficit and lack understanding of phonemic rules
• Writing has repetitions, doubles, omission of words and poor hand-writing
• Spelling is based on the way words sound (phonetically) rather than correct spelling
• Difficulty spelling simple words like cat, map, nap
• May be hyperactive, highly imaginative and often lost in daydreams
• Frequently uses filler words likestuff and thing when speaking, has speech difficulties or mumbles a lot

Reading Rockstar incorporates the most widely researched methods for corrective reading. These methods are recognized and supported by internationally known leader in the science of how the brain reads and changes, and director at the Yale Centre for Learning, Dr. Sally Shaywitz, author of “Overcoming Dyslexia”. The therapies used in Reading Rockstar are also researched and supported by experts such as Dr. Phyllis Books, author or Reversing Dyslexia as well as Dr. Norman Doidge, international New York Times Best Selling author of The Brain that Changes Itself.

Reading Rockstar incorporates the Orton-Gillingham method, brain integration therapy, vision therapy (eye tracking, teaming and saccadic eye movement exercises), exercises that stimulate the auditory center in the brain, as well as primitive reflex integration. These exercises are used by Educational Therapists, Reading Therapists, Occupational Therapists and many other professionals in the field of learning and education. Reading Rockstar goes far beyond ‘extra practice’ and instead seeks to identify and correct the underlying and unique reason why your child is struggling with reading. One of the reading therapies that is used, the Cellfield Reading Intervention, has several studies to support its success with even cases of severe dyslexia. See below for more details.

• A peer-reviewed study, published in the Australian Journal of Learning Disabilities 2005, showed that Cellfield achieved key skill learning rates up to 40 times faster than a normal child. This is unprecedented.
• In 2009 Professor Coltheart from the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, supported the position that Cellfield outcome gains, were not augmented by test/retest effects, (given the two-week time interval between the before and after assessments), or by regressions towards the mean, (a statistical tendency for very low scores to improve the second time without any intervention). Coltheart’s closing comments: “There is clear statistical evidence that the Cellfield treatment improved these children’s ability to read”.
• In 2009, a study of Cellfield’s efficacy was performed at the University of Tasmania. Twelve children, all screened as being dyslexic (according to the Dyslexia Screening Test (DST) by Fawcett and Nicholson) participated. The research team recorded neural activity during reading, using Event Related Potentials (ERP) methods.  Before Cellfield, none of the children showed the left hemisphere activity typical of reading.  Seven children performed the Cellfield dyslexia treatment and five in the placebo group played a computer game. Both groups then had three weeks of regular schooling. The Cellfield group showed a 33% drop in their DST dyslexic risk index compared to the placebo group which dropped by only 10%.  ERP results indicated neural changes only within the Cellfield group, which shifted activity from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere “suggesting, at least neurally, a partial return to language processing which more closely resembles that of normal readers”.