Personal Stories
Peter's Story
My child was born in 1969. I held him in my arms and all I wanted was to be able to love and nurture him and watch him grow into the fine man that he is today.
My son was a bright boy who had a great memory as a little chap, and it was obvious that 'he would do well'. He worked at an above average level until the end of Year 2 and then, inexplicably, by the end of Year 3 his reports started to change. By Year 4 he was below average. How could that be? His spelling and reading in particular had deteriorated.
Finally in 1979 my son's (and my own) frustration levels were rising. I found a private elocution teacher but fairly quickly she informed me that he was poorly coordinated. At that stage I didn't even know what coordination was, let alone that it could be the reason he was having difficulty with his reading and spelling.
Our next step was to begin a trampolining and fine motor skills program, based on a colleague's success with High School students (who had had problems with reading and spelling). Our doctor also referred us to a neurologist in Perth for an assessment and a CAT scan. The neurologist related our son's problem to the vacuum extraction that he had experienced during birth.
Next came an assessment by a guidance officer at the school, and the results were confusing, as they suggested that he had slightly above average IQ, and that 'poor teaching', not 'brain damage' was the cause of our son's problems.
When I next saw the doctor he asked what the Guidance Officer had said; after I told him he replied "What! Well he's your child. What are you going to do about it?" I look back now and realise that as a parent I had not really accepted ownership of my child's problem and was allowing others to make decisions for me; I was expecting them to solve my child's problem. After all, weren't they the experts?
My son's schoolwork and self-esteem continued to plummet and his level of frustration increased. One night, during Year 7 he was trying to do his homework, and was becoming more and more frustrated; he sat on the floor beside his bed and said "Why am I dumb?"
I replied "You are not dumb. You just have a problem and I am going to find out what I have to do to fix it." It was then I realised that I had to make the decisions and I had to wear the consequences of any decisions I made, be they right or wrong, and if wrong, I had to continue until I found the answer.
We then went to a naturopath to check out diet, and an optician to determine eye dominance. The naturopath told me that the dark brown colour in my children's eyes were the toxins in his system. After eighteen months of changing to a diet based on 1/3 acid, 2/3 alkaline, my child's eyes were light brown and we had not had to make any more visits to the doctor.
A full assessment with a new teacher revealed that my son had to concentrate so hard when writing that his pressure on the pencil went through 5 sheets of paper. His eye dominance showed that he was right-eyed for distance, but he alternated eyes when reading and writing.
At this stage my son's classroom teacher informed me that although he was 18 months behind in his schoolwork, he was actually average for the class.
We then started a program that attempts to sort and clear the pathways from the lower level through to the higher levels of the brain. This includes the evolutionary movement levels and stimulation of all 7 senses, culminating in dominant sidedness linked with the dominant hemisphere. This was aided by trampoline sequencing, which sorts out comprehension and memory.
We started the program with 100 homolateral flip-flop movements a day and gradually built up to 600. Once he was proficient at this he followed with the same number of cross lateral flip flops, tummy crawls, creeping on hands and knees, and pointing to the opposite foot when walking. This went over a 15 month period combined with eye exercises and a monkey bar exercise (thumbs under the bar). He also attended a chiropractor and had a small amount of tutoring.
In Year 8 our son was put into a remedial class for English. My husband and I were called in to speak to the Guidance Officer at the High School. She told us that our son had an emotional problem. She thought it best to see him regularly, at his discretion. We agreed. I informed her about the movement program we were doing. She felt that it was probably a waste of time and could be causing unnecessary stress.
He refused to see the counsellor after a short period of time.
By the end of Year 8 our boy was at the top of the basic class for English and Maths. In Year 9 he went to the top of intermediate English and Elementary Maths. In Year 10 he finished the year with an advance pass in English and was top of his Maths class. This was 'the proof of the pudding'.
He left school, became a chef, travelled the world for 11 months and came back to Australia and went into hotel management training. He now manages a large city hotel.
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