Is your child having problems in school? Does he/she have difficulty listening, following directions, or doing homework? He/she may fight frustration every day and may even have been called lazy, unmotivated, or “a student at risk.”
If this has been said about your child, the real problem may not be a lack of motivation or proper instruction. Rather, he/she may lack sufficient processing skills. In other words, your child may be able to see or hear information, but cannot identify, interpret, comprehend, remember, or stay on task.
If you have a struggling student in your family, call us. The expertise of skilled professionals is required to identify and treat learning difficulties such as these. Our Processing and Cognitive Enhancement (PACE) program is an intense, proven training method that strengthens underlying cognitive skills. We train the entire learning system to function properly. See our results and the PACE Advisory Board.
How does a processing problem affect a child?
Children want to be successful in school. They want to be liked and accepted. Naturally, they cannot understand why learning is so difficult for them when it isn’t for their classmates. They feel that something is wrong with them, and it’s not getting better. To a struggling child, this is devastating. Most parents are at a loss as to what to do. They have examined all ordinary physical and social reasons for his behaviour.
What the struggling student often really needs is a program like PACE. PACE will uncover the processing skills that are not sufficient for proper learning, and will train and strengthen them so that they are properly developed. Without these skills, it will be almost impossible for an individual to learn and succeed even with extensive tutoring. Children who lack processing skills tend to avoid their schoolwork because it is difficult, discouraging, and frustrating. It’s safe to predict that a child like this is already a potential dropout.
Could your child be at risk?
PACE can identify and successfully treat learning problems that are often reflected in the following behaviours:
Is unable to sit still
Cannot stay on task for any length of time and is easily distracted
Avoids work that seems complicated or hard
Has difficulty comprehending and remembering
Has problems sounding out words
Does written work very slowly
Often fails to complete a task
Has difficulty copying material
Constantly looks up and down
Often needs instructions repeated
Has troubles reading and spelling
Makes reversals: confuses “was” and “saw” or “b” and “d”
Is disorganized and frustrated when studying
Makes frequent “careless” errors
PACE may be the very answer you seek
If your child exhibits one or more of these behaviours, call today to schedule a screening to evaluate your child’s cognitive processing skills. It could be the most important phone call you will make during his or her school years.
What is the PACE strategy?
First, an evaluation helps us determine if there are deficiencies in a child’s processing skills. If a problem exists, a training program will be developed to meet that child’s individual needs. Once enrolled in PACE, a child will work on specific goals with a professional trainer who will conduct carefully sequenced activities, strengthening weak areas to bring the learning system up to par. The training is designed to achieve maximum results in the shortest period of time.
PACE Develops:
Auditory Processing: to process sounds. Helps one hear the difference, order, and number of sounds in words faster; basic skill needed to learn to read and spell; helps with speech defects.
Auditory Discrimination: to hear differences in sounds such as loudness, pitch, duration, and phoneme.
Auditory Segmenting: to break apart words into separate sounds.
Auditory Blending: to blend individual sounds to form words.
Auditory Analysis: to determine the number, sequence, and which sounds are within a word.
Auditory-Visual Association: to be able to link a sound with an image.
Comprehension: to understand words and concepts.
Divided Attention: to attend to and handle two or more tasks at one time such as taking notes while listening and carrying totals while adding the next column. Required for handling tasks quickly or tasks with complexity.
Logic and Reasoning: to reason, plan, and think.
Long-Term Memory: to retrieve past information.
Math Computations: to do math calculations such as adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
Processing Speed: the speed at which the brain processes information. Makes reading faster and less tiring; makes one more aware of his or her surrounding environment; helps with sports such as basketball, football, and soccer and with activities such as driving.
Saccadic Fixation: to move the eyes accurately and quickly from one point to another.
Selective Attention: to stay on task even when distraction is present.
Sensory-Motor Integration: to have the sensory skills work well with the motor skills — such as with eye-hand coordination.
Sequential Processing: to process chunks of information that are received one after another.
Simultaneous Processing: to process chunks of information that are received all at once.
Sustained Attention: to be able to stay on task.
Visual Processing: to process and make use of visual images. Helps one create mental pictures faster and more vividly; helps one understand and “see” word math problems and read maps; improves reading comprehension skills.
Visual Discrimination: to see differences in size, colour, shape, distance, and orientation of objects.
Visual Manipulation: to flip, rotate, move, change colour, etc. of objects and images in one’s mind.
Visualization: to create mental images or pictures.
Visual Span: helps one see more and wider in a single look. Improves side vision. Enables faster reading and better, faster decisions in sports.
Working Memory: to retain information while processing or using it.
This video shows you PACE in action. (Note: Unfortunately, on the initial procedures you can’t see the chart. It is a stroop test… where colored words are printed in different colors i.e. red blue green yellow … we’re working on it. Also realize that this young man is 17 years old and has already finished PACE; we do not expect your 9-year-old to achieve these levels.)
THE TIME TO ACT IS NOW!
Call today to set up an appointment for a screening. Any uncorrected learning problems can have long-term consequences. When diagnosed early, PACE can significantly improve and often alleviate the problem entirely.
Can you afford to pass up this opportunity to help your child? Call today!
