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December 30, 2006

Helping with Dyslexia

About two weeks back or so, my family and I went to a book launch by a friend of ours, a book about education of children. Nice sceneria, great food.

They are not close friends, even so they live close by, so it doesn't happen that we see them often - may be once or twice in a year, mostly when the children celebrate their birthdays. As mentioned a long time ago, my boy has a very active social life, lol.

What happened was that my wife then met an old school friend of hers and they started to chat .... about children, of course. Along the line, her friend told her that her son is said to by dyslexic. (Dyslexia is defined as "a specific type of learning difficulty where a person of normal intelligence has persistent and significant problems with reading, writing, spelling and, sometimes, mathematics and musical notation. The person may not have difficulties in other areas: many dyslexic people are extremely creative, think laterally and have excellent problem-solving skills. It may be helpful to think of dyslexia as an information processing difficulty" - basically, the child has problems reading or spelling, and turns letters around). It is not "bad" and many great people accelerated with Dyslexia - Einstein is said to have been one, but think of Tom Cruise, Keanu Reeves, Tommy Hilfiger, John F. Kennedy, Richard Branson, Henry Ford, Walt Disney - ha, so many famous souls

My ears then popped up, I looked up from my beer can and said that NLP does not really believe in dyslexia. In turn, her eye opened wide and well, we started to talk.

Apparently, her son, now six years, was said to be a bit slower in kindergarden, slower then other children, and not really able to follow when they were reading. So a teacher told her that he might have some learning disabilities and she should check it with additional tests. She ignored it first, but then realised it as well that her son was not really that fast with learning (talk about inserting a seed of doubt, rite?).

Well, she tested him again, with someone engaged professionally in dyslexia, and of course, the son was diagnosed as dyslexic. Heck, they are professionals, of course, they have to diagnose that then, lor.

I am not usually working with children - it never came to me that this is an area that I can help with Neuro Linguistic Programming or NLP. But I read about it and and heard about it many times, when I was in Australia. So I explained to her that according to NLP, it is just the wrong way of learning things.

See, we have our strategies in doing things - how we do things to achieve a goal. To recall things we have seen or learnt before, it is best to look up left, to Visual Remember, while you learn the material. So learn first, look up left and visualise what you learnt in such way. Or, even better, hold the material you learn up left, when you learn. A bit strenous for the arms, but I promise you it works. I do it to memorise and recall a lot of what I do.

The mother was doubtful but also hopeful. So was I - hehe, she reflected my emotions. I told her that I never had worked with children before, but we could try, or I would find someone for her.

She committed, hoping the best. Eyes are really windows into the soul, and her eyes were open like a book.

Today was the day, and I started to study my material from mid-last week onwards. I was ready, and so was she and her boy.

I first talked to the mother, for about one hour or so. This is important, because she could be part of the problem that causes the boy to have those challenges. I told her that she has to believe in him, has to have faith in him, and never ever show doubt in his abilities.

Then came the boy - full, so really, really full of hope. Eyes wide open and smiling. His mom had told him that I might be able to help him.

I checked his eyes, and if he was able to move his eyes into all directions. I explained to him what I was going to do. I talked to him, for a while, but that was basically to check where his eyes go when he recalls information. In NLP we say that dyslexic children access the wrong channels, so to speak, when they recall words. Now he was still young, so it was not 100% clear - his eyes hadn't found their favourite pathway yet. But it was clear that he didn't very much, if at all, recalled memorised events in visual recall. His eyes went all over, but also into his feelings. And, you cannot learn words or see words, when you access feelings.

We then did the required exercises, with one word first. Holding the word written colourfully on one paper, into his visual recall, and ask him first to see the word in his mind and then to spell it. So he did. Again, and again, over and over. He got faster and faster.

Then backwards. Then backwards again - here, as well, he went faster and faster. Then both forward and backwards with eyes closed.

It worked wonderfully.

His mother's jaw dropped!!!! His eyes beamed!!!!!!

We took another word and another, going through the same and then repeated the procedure. It worked again. His mum was just so happy, and so was he.

He was able to continuously do it, even after we stopped.

It was just wonderful how he transformed magically into the magnificent young boy he was. He was so happy and so was his mother.

This is what is the nice part of coaching with NLP. It is easy, it is fast, and it is magnificent. We might have to repeat a session, just to make sure, but it won't take long. In the end, I explained the mother, what to do, to keep the system up, and him and his brain used to the new way of learning, and in a short while, he will be very "normal!!"

A great day, today!

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You can learn this and other strategies in my NLP course in January/ February 2007.

You can still register for the Certified NLP Practitioner Course in January/ February. Places are still available. Register now by faxing in the registration form available in the brochure.

Or call at 012-287 50 48 to check for more information.

Posted by Andreas at December 30, 2006 07:19 PM

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