Journey on Dore

Hi, today is Friday April 6, 2007. I am writing this blog so that I can look back from time to time and see how far we have come.

My seven year old daughter, Paige, began the Dore program two weeks ago. We are hoping that the program will stimulate her cerebellum to increase the number of neural pathways that run through it so that she will be able to read with ease and pleasure, understand the work she has at school and find it easier to learn, be able to focus, gain coordination and balance as well as maturity and increased social skills.

We adopted Paige from Vietnam when she was 4 months old. Everything was very normal other than the fact that she was a very fussy baby and toddler until she was about 2 and a half. She was very slow to develop speech, had some Early Childhood Intervention and was found to be within normal range by about 3.

All along she has been a sweet child (other than being that fussy baby!), compassionate and well behaved( also beautiful!) There are however, things that concerned us besides the slow speech. It has always seemed difficult for her to learn new things. She tends to be the last child to learn stuff....to tie shoes, to ride a bike, to read, to learn the dance steps, to memorize rhymes or our phone number. I have wondered all along if she is just a late bloomer or she was going to come out with true learning disabilites. At times I even thought that maybe she was not very smart. And then she would do something to prove me wrong, like help me find my way in the car when I got lost or tell me where I could find potting soil when I thought I had to cross town or various other things like that.

Kindergarten went fine and so did the first half of first grade other than her deplorable handwriting. But after Christmas break the teacher started to have concerns about her. She was not progressing well, was becoming frustrated and overwhelmed with the work and not getting anything done, sometimes spending long periods of time in the bathroom.

Around this time we began taking her to a reading tutor, she was beginning to get pulled out of class for math help and staying late once a week for handwriting tutoring. After the second week with the reading tutor she suggested we have Paige privately tested for learning disabilities, particularly dyslexia. (She was not doing poorly enough on standardized tests to warrant testing at school yet. Rather than wait, we decided to do the private testing.)

Around this time we also heard about Dore and other programs that help to develop the cerebellum so that a person can actually reach their potential. We began the private testing with the psychologist in February and the Dore program after the last test day....on March 21st, 2007. We meet with the psychologist tomorrow for the results of her testing and then with the school on Monday in hopes that she may be able to receive special support there.

Though they tell you to expect to see subtle changes after being on the Dore program several weeks (and expect to finish in 12 to 18 months) we are already noticing changes and so is she! She seems a bit more coordinated, has been able to hit a whiffle ball with a bat, skip, and ride two scooters at once all the way home from school! She has been reading in a one-word-at-a-time style until lately. About a week into the program she started to read with some honest to goodness fluency. The other big reading change is that she normally starts out fine with the book her teacher sends home and then about half way through, starts to get tired, wiggly and has trouble with the words....as if the book just got a lot harder. This past week, she was able to read her books all the way through without pooping out! Not to mention the tantrums we had been having with homework have stopped. She now sits down and gets it done. No big deal. It has been amazing!

Her classroom teacher has not mentioned any changes but the handwriting tutor, who had not seen Paige in a few weeks, pulled me aside and said "her handwriting is beautiful, she was totally focused and really cared about how it looked. I felt like she was a completely different child! What are you doing with her?!"

She has been a trooper with her twice daily exercises and I think she feels it is already paying off. Yesterday she said, "Mom, I think the Dore is helping me." I think she is right!