And they said it couldn't be done...

 by Sue Cook

Some of you might have been told that what I am about to tell you is not possible. My father told me when my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, that there was no cure, we had to learn to live with it.

We have been told that the brain has a window of optimum development that closes around three years of age. We are told it’s too late or impossible to help our learning disabled child.

So if that were true, how did we learn to drive as an adult? Or learn karate or Tai Chi, or learn to dance, or take exams, or create anything new, or be inventive?

There’s no cure remember, the window of opportunity has closed.

Well someone is wrong, clearly we do learn past three years old, we do create and invent and think and grow and develop.

This is because the brain is plastic; it changes every time we learn something new, nerves grow so that we can remember it, learn it, know it. It’s happening now, in you. As you think about what I am saying, if it’s new.

So how do we take advantage of this plasticity to help our child with dyslexia, or dyspraxia, or ADHD, or Asperger’s or autism or dyscalculia?

Knowledgeable intervention. There has been an explosion of research into the brain in the last 80 and especially the last 20 years. Science has moved on from believing that ‘there is no cure’, to discovering nerve growth factors, and how if different ones are applied either side of a severed rat spine, 30% of movement is regained.

Nerves do grow. The conditions I mentioned are sensory; we can’t read if our vision is not working properly, we can’t balance if our ears and eyes and headrighting reflex is not working properly and together. We can’t function at our best when there is no dominant hemisphere, and the two hemispheres are not sufficiently connected.

Instead we have the conditions I mentioned. The brain learns from movement.
Development is hierarchical. That’s why if a problem occurred in utero, birth or in infancy, developmental stages are stuck there, the child can’t move on.

But they can if we repeat the developmental stages. Go through them again, give the brain another chance to develop as it should have done the first time had nothing gone wrong. And we can do this because the brain is plastic, and we have knowledge.

Ask me about the results, or the parents who bring their children, we are all parents of formerly learning disabled children. Now progressing. Now happier, now functioning as they should, or moving towards that depending how new they are to the programme.

So why should you listen to me? Well, let not those who say it can’t be done get in the way of those doing it, and succeeding.

 Sue Cook specialises on Neuro Developmental Delay. Read more on:
www.brainbuzzz.co.uk

www.anythingspecialneeds.co.uk 

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