Breakthroughs in Treating Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) & Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA)
If you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, therapist, or caretaker of a child who has been diagnosed with Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA) you surely are familiar with the challenges the child is facing and the challenges you are faced with trying to help him / her.
Since learning is the basis for every child’s future, any learning disability, ADD and ADHA can be devastating. The Anat Baniel Method (ABM) for children is a learning-based method. It works specifically with the brain to create the conditions the brain requires to form new connections and new neural patterns. The method aims at turning the “Learning Switch™” on.
With the ABM many children diagnosed with learning disabilities, ADD and ADHA have improved in remarkable ways. As they become better learners, many of the symptoms disappear. While we have seen clear results with children of all ages, the younger the child, the less work it takes for them to transform out of their limitations. You can read about one example of these dramatic results as published in the January, 2007 issue of Massage and BodyWork Magazine, New Possibilities: A revolutionary approach to helping children with special needs.
“The changes in Isaac in the last 6 months since he has been working with Anat are miraculous. His reading went from 20 words a minute with very poor accuracy on 2nd grade text to 27 words a minute with more than 90% accuracy on 3rd grade text. He is trying things that he never tried before. He picked up a pencil and drew me a picture without being told to, he can use more than one color on a page now, he laughs, he smiles, he learns with ease. Isaac is now spiraling up instead of spiraling down.”
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Michelle Bensky, mother
The Anat Baniel Method for Children (ABM) is scientifically based. The practitioner of this method uses innovative, gentle movement, language and touch techniques to communicate with the brain of the child suffering from Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA) helping it form new neural connections and patterns that quickly take the child beyond their current limitations. As the child becomes a better learner, they calm down. They spontaneously begin to make sense of their world and what goes on around them. Speech, reasoning, reading and writing, emotional and social functioning, thinking and coordination – all improve. While it is a process, the changes begin happening right away and are often quite dramatic.
“Anat's brilliant and bold Method of teaching led me almost immediately to the realization that much of what I had taken for granted as the foundation of rehabilitation medical science was neither scientific nor even logical. Anat (provides the) answer to the question what should replace the old foundation. Her Method is effective where other treatments have not been, and at times almost miraculously effective. It is literally a new paradigm from which to understand human movement, human learning, and ultimately human destiny.”
-Christopher Ryan, M.D., Denver, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
CONTENTS OF THIS PAGE:
Sam's Story
How Does the Anat Baniel Method for Children Work
Steps to Take For Concerned Parents
What Does Success Look Like?
How We Work with Your Child
Sam’s story
When Sam’s parents contacted me the first time, they told me their son had severe learning disabilities. He was also diagnosed with sensory integration disorders and hyperactivity disorder. His reading and writing, they told me, were at a low first grade level. He was slow to develop and didn’t begin standing and walking until after he turned two.
I told the parents that I don’t know how helpful I could be to Sam since he was already 10 years old, but that I would love to try.
The first time I saw Sam as he was walking into my office I immediately realized that he had very limited awareness of his body. When I began working with him it became apparent that he never turned his head or his eyes to the right. When discussing the matter with his parents, they told me that as a baby he couldn’t move his eyes right or left, they seemed frozen in his head. I explained to the parents that Sam, even though he is not blind, could not actually see – make sense – out of any shapes on paper. When I asked Sam to write a word, he scribbled one “letter” on top of the other. He had no idea what to do. He was trying to fake it.
I began at the beginning taking nothing for granted. Through many different movements that I did with Sam, and later Sam did by following my verbal instructions, he learned to feel his spine, his ribs, his lower back. He learned to recognize where the different parts of his body where in space. He learned to distinguish between his right side and his left side. He learned how to move his eyes right and left, up and down. He gradually became able to distinguish between a shape on the right side and on the left side drawn on a piece of paper. Next he was able to discern between a straight and a curvy line, a dot and a circle. These changes happen quite rapidly and they represent a dramatic change in the organization of the brain. Yet it can be quite a challenge for the parents to see the relevance of these initial changes to the desired outcome – for their child to be able to read, write, think clearly and reason.
During Max’s third visit for a series of lessons in California, with me and one of my colleagues, Sam’s parents came in for one of the lessons excited and finally a bit more hopeful – they took Sam to a store where he kept himself interested in the displays and occupied for over 20 minutes. That has never happened before.
Sam loves the work. He expresses feeling taller, stronger, smarter, and better. He is able to read much better. He writes words clearly and in an organized fashion on the page. He is gaining in mathematical thinking and abilities. He stands taller, walks lighter on his feet and he thinks and reasons much faster and more clearly. Max still has a ways to go in order to fully fit with his age group. We now think that he will.
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How Does the Anat Baniel Method for Children
Work with Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA)?
The miraculous process of development we see any healthy child go through is a result of a complex process of differentiation in the brain that allows it to form connections and patterns. All the experiences the child has of her own initial random movements and her kinesthetic experiences coupled with all that is done with her by those caring for her, is used by the brain as information with which it develops and grows. While the baby and young child are completely dependent on his or her caretakers for their survival and well being, those caretakers have very little to do with the actual process of growth and development of the child. That process is done by the child, within the child, on the child’s own timing.
When a child suffers from Learning Disabilities, ADD or ADHA, it is a manifestation that the spontaneous process of differentiation and formation of new patterns in the brain is interfered with and the child is unable to organize their minds and bodies to perform successfully different tasks. Most therapy approaches attempt to make the child do what it should be doing according to his or her age and expected developmental stage. However, as many frustrated parents and hard working therapists have experienced first hand, trying to make a child speak, relate emotionally, understand what is going on, or perform motor skills when they cannot do it, normally produces little of the desired outcomes and often upsets the child and leaves her/him feeling bad and wrong about themselves and even more irritable and confused. That happens because the brain of the child is unable to transform the stimulation it is receiving into information that it can use to organize itself and create new patterns and solutions.
With the ABM the focus is very different. Rather than try to fix the problem directly by focusing on the limitations of the child, the focus is shifted to where the solutions actually lie – with the brain. The ABM focuses on helping the brain of the child suffering from with Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA) do its job better. It helps the brain right itself and regain its ability to powerfully and consistently create new neural patterns that bring about successful solutions. We apply gentle techniques that directly communicate with the nervous system of the child through, primarily, movement, enhanced awareness, verbal communication, and non-verbal kinesthetic experiences.
With the ABM the brain of the child with Learning Disabilities, ADD or ADHA regains its ability to function in a healthy way. It is very important to understand that it is only when we create the conditions for the child’s brain to function in a healthy, high quality way that that child can overcome limitations in ways that are often astounding and inspiring.
Click to read parent's stories about how the ABM worked for their child.
Or, watch Anat Baniel working with 3 children in our online video library .
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Steps to Take For Concerned Parents
If you have been told that your child has LD, ADD or ADHD, or if your parental instincts are telling you something is not quite right with your child – (often parents know “something is not quite right” long before a medical diagnosis is given) - it is of utter importance that your child gets seen by a physician and that you seek help for your child as soon as possible.
Early intervention can make a very big difference in the kind of outcome the child can get. Here are some steps you can take to explore whether the ABM is something you want for your child:
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What Does Success with the child suffering from Learning Disabilities, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHA) Look Like?
- The child shows some progress/change within the first few ABM lessons or therapy sessions. Otherwise it means that the child is not learning.
- The child should feel safe, comfortable and happy in their sessions. Crying and resistance should be the exception. True learning is a pleasurable and satisfying experience. Acquiring a better organization of movement, thinking and feeling is an empowering and wonderful experience for the child.
- On-going learning, improvement and maturation. In any growth process, there will be fluctuations in the rate of change. However, over a period of any few weeks, certainly months, as the child is receiving therapy, or ABM lessons, there should be clear learning, change and improvement.
- At home the child begins to spontaneously do on their own, without encouragement, what she/he was doing in the session. It may take a few sessions for that to happen with any newly acquired skill. If not, most likely the child is not learning and needs to be placed where they will be learning and improving.
- In between sessions, you should be able to see some additional spontaneous improvements beyond what was accomplished in the ABM lessons or therapy sessions.
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How We Work With Your Child to Overcome Devolpmental Disorders and Challenges
We will not be asking your child to do what he or she cannot do because our assumption is that if the child could do it, they would. We instead discover what patterns the child’s brain has not been able to form and create the conditions that allow the child’s brain to do its job better and better. If he perseveres we will not try to force him to stop. Instead we will engage the child in a process he needs in order to begin learning. Through that process your child’s brain will form new neural patterns that were missing due to their illness or injury. Once enough of these missing elements are in place, your child will spontaneously begin doing what he or she couldn’t do before.
In the beginning we like to work with your child in a concentrated manner. That gives your child the opportunity to benefit from the ABM as fully as possible, and for you to be able to assess the usefulness of the method for your child. Initially we like to give the lessons in clusters of between 5-10 lessons in one week. The frequency of the clusters is every two – eight weeks, depending on your child’s situation. Occasionally a child might get two lessons in one day, in the morning and afternoon. Ms Baniel has discovered that in this concentrated process children can very quickly transform into effective learners and experience important changes in their ability to move, perceive, understand, initiate, think, relate to their surroundings, and make sense of what is happening to them.
Within 3-5 lessons it is usually clear whether the child is benefiting from the lessons. If both the parents and the Anat Baniel Method for Children practitioner feel it is worthwhile to continue, than a lesson plan for the child is created. The first session is scheduled for one hour. Consecutive sessions are scheduled for 45 minutes.
As your child progresses, we adjust your child’s program. Usually the frequency and number of lessons go down. You will be asked to temporarily stop other treatment modalities unless they are medically required. We will also ask that you do not place the child in positions that he/she cannot get into or out of on their own. Very often we request halting the use of orthotics, standers etc, at least initially.
We have a team of ABM practitioners that can work with your child. When you bring your child to the Anat Baniel Center you can choose to work with any of the teachers, or we can help place you with a teacher. When Anat Baniel works with a child often times she gives the child some of the lessons in the lesson-cluster and one of her team teachers gives the rest of the lessons in that cluster..If you bring your child to Anat from out of town, she will try to help you find a local practitioner for your child to work with in between visits to her center.
To discuss your child's situation, or to make an appointment, please Contact Us.
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