“Biology of Behavior” (Nutritional) Questions
Brain Integration Therapy Questions
Website Questions
You have so many articles. Where should I begin?
If you don’t know where to begin and feel overwhelmed with your child’s problems, start off with: “The 4 Learning Gates: Identifying Your Child’s Learning Block”.
Then, to help determine what learning gates might be blocked in your child, read “Identifying & Correcting Blocked Learning Gates”. After that, check out these popular articles:
- “Teaching the Right Brain Child”
- “Dyslexia: How Do I Teach This Child?”
- “Smart Kids Who Hate To Write”
- “The Biology Of Learning & Behavior”
To make the process of searching for articles easier, I assigned keywords to each article and listed these keywords in a column on the right side of the articles section index page. If, for example, you are interested in the subject of allergies, you could read “Ear Infections: Impact On Learning & Behavior” or “Hidden Allergies & Learning” since these two articles are listed as having the keyword of “allergies.”
Identifying & Correcting Blocked Learning Gates Checklist- Where Do I Start?
This comprehensive checklist will walk you through the characteristics we look for when we suspect a child has a blocked learning gate. Below each learning gate, Dianne and I have outlined our recommendations of which products to use to correct the blocked learning gate and bypass the learning difficulties resulting from these blocks. This document is full of information; take your time reading through it.
Identifying & Correcting Your Child’s Processing Problem FULL WORKSHOP
Where Can I Purchase the Writing Eight Sheet Tablet?
Follow this LINK to purchase the Writing Eight Sheet Tablet. This can only be purchased if you are already following the carefully written instructions in the Brain Integration Therapy Program, Smart Kids Who Hate to Write Video, or the Dysgraphia Package. We just want you to be successful with this exercise in the school year that you implement it.
FREE DOWNLOADS & RESOURCES
Brief Instructions for Right Brain Webbing
Sensory Processing Article-Supplement Suggestions
Daily Lesson Plan for the Struggling Reader (Non Reader-3rd grade)
Daily Lesson Plan for the Older Struggling Reader (3rd grade and above)
Daily Lesson Plan for the Struggling Writer/Speller
“Biology of Behavior” (Nutritional) Questions
Over the past ten years, many parents have followed the 3-month nutritional program outlined in the “Biology of Behavior” CD set. There are many wonderful testimonies that we have received over the years from grateful parents who see their unhappy, unfocused, moody, touchy, sensitive , memory impaired child transform into a happy, cooperative, focused, mellow child. This, of course is not always the case. We wish it was. However, the far majority of parents who use this simple nutritional program see benefits. Some are dramatic, while others are just good. However, there are often questions that parents have. The following are some of the questions that I am frequently asked. If you can find a local nutritionist of integrative physician to work with it can also be helpful.
On the bottle of Primadophilus by Nature’s Way (and on almost all the other probiotics I looked at) it says that we need to take it only one time a day. Why do you so strongly recommend to take a capsule 3 times a day in your program?
The theory most prevalent is that it is the amount (often billions) of good bacteria that make the probiotic effective. However, what Dr. Leo Galland, and Dr. William Crook found in their clinical practice working with children who struggled with attention or behavior, is that the very best results were found when giving the probiotic 3 times a day. It was found that it is the amount of TIMES the good bacterial is planted into the gut, during the day that made the biggest difference, not the number of bacterial available. This has been a big breakthrough in the success of the BOB program. In my clinical practice, I have found this to be true over the past 15 years of working with over 2,500 children from across the United States.
As I speak across the country at conventions, parents will often tell me that they used the Primadphilus, or another probiotic, and saw no difference in their child’s behavior, attention, or memory. Upon further questioning I often find out that they did not give the probiotic 3 times a day. Either because the directions on the bottle, or the advice from the health food store operator dissuaded them from following the 3 times a day recommendation. Often the reason given, is because there are so many more “billions” of bacterial in the product. As stated before, it is not the amount of good bacterial that makes the biggest difference, but rather the frequency of ingestion throughout the day.
Another mistake that parents inadvertently make is to give the child a chewable form of Primadophilus or they give the liquid or powder form. In my 15 years of experience with this program I have found that the chewable form, even if given faithfully three times a day does not bring changes in behavior. The liquid has also not brought the results we are looking for. Even the powder, gives us very inconsistent results. So what to do if a child cannot swallow the capsules? It is very easy to open up the capsules and put it into a food three times a day. Parents often use applesauce, yogurt, peanut or almond butter, or if the child only eats about 5 foods, then even in a dab of chocolate frosting can be used.
My husband and I would like to follow the “Biology of Behavior” nutritional program also. Do we take the same amounts?
In our family, the adults and teenagers follow the same 3 month program when memory, distractibility or mood seems a little, “out of order.” We generally do not modify it. If necessary, if an antibiotic has been recently used, we may take 2-3 Primadophilus capsules 3 times a day. However, generally the one tablet of the grapefruitseed extract is fine, taken 3 times a day.
I have many children and a busy household. I don’t know if I can get some supplements into my child 3 times a day. Is just 2 times a day OK, too?
It is true that being able to “catch” a child 3 times a day to give a supplement takes some real effort on the mother’s part. Here are a few methods that other busy moms have employed:
- Make up snack baggies on Sunday night for the whole week. Keep these baggies in the refrigerator for quick retrieval. The lunch baggie can be taken out and put in the middle of the kitchen table, if the visibility will make it easier to take at lunch time. Even though it contains the Primadophilus, it can be out of the refrigerator for the time between breakfast and lunch, and still be OK. You do not have to give the Primadophilus on an empty stomach. My experience is that this is a very hardy bacteria. You can give it with meals, no problem. We don’t have to make this harder than it is!
- Put one of the “more responsible” children in charge of the reminding them when to take the supplements.
- Do the program with only one child first (the one struggling the most) for cost effectiveness and ease of administration.
- If a child does not swallow supplements, put them in some food they will eat, at the beginning of the week. For example, Primadophilus and Paramicrocidin (capsule tasteless Grapefruitseed Extract) can be opened and put into frosting dabs and stored on wax paper in the freezer or frig. The same works well with Liver capsules, if you have a child who will not eat meat.
- Even though it may seem that 2 times a day is better than 1, in reality it is exponentially more difficult to see the fast results we are looking for when doing only 2 times a day. So, for at least the first three weeks, try to do 3 times a day, and then do only 2 if that is all you can get in.
My child is going to camp for 2 weeks. Shall I try to send the supplements with him?
What I do in those cases, is just suspend the supplement program for the length of time the child will be gone. You will just be wasting good supplements, and making the child feel guilty…or worse, “different.” This is not necessary.
Brain Integration Therapy Questions
While I included a collection of some frequently-asked questions within the Brain Integration Therapy Manual and revised them a bit with the 2010 edition, there is the inevitability of unanswered questions. This blog update serves to answer the first batch of these questions.
Brain Integration Therapy Guiding Principles
What ages does Brain Integration Therapy work for?
We can begin midline therapy at any time, but it is recommended to begin if symptoms of a blocked learning gate do not clear up by the age of 7. We use this program with kids, teens, and adults in their 90’s! Midline therapy is powerful!
Can Dyslexia be cured with Brain Integration Therapy?
Many people are under the misconception that we recommend Brain Integration Therapy exclusively for Dyslexia-like symptoms. While, as a special education teacher for years, working with bright, hard-working students (2-9th) who were either diagnosed with Dyslexia, or who were not diagnosed, but were 2-4 years behind in reading despite wonderful interventions, I loved the results of using the powerful midline exercises that eliminated (yes…eliminated) reading and writing reversals, I didn’t rely on Brain Integration Therapy alone to make the necessary 2 year growth in reading in a year. I also used INTENSIVE PHONICS for 20 minutes a day, to teach, or re-teach the reading skills that they needed. Yes, because of the Brain Integration Therapy, they were no longer reading “on/no; was;saw; for;of”, and they were not skipping lines or having their words move on the page as they were reading, they still needed to be taught, or re-taught the specific phonemes and phonics decoding practice, to make that reading growth.
However, our wonderful students who had a severe auditory processing problem, (inherent in dyslexia) could not remember all the phonics “rules” to decode long words. So, I employed color, picture, humor and emotion on the specific phonemes so they could easily remember how to sound out words. I used the Orton-Gillingham program (heavily researched) but added these more “right brain ” elements (color, picture, weird and humor) directly ON the phonemes so that their photographic memory (housed in the right brain) could finally hold on to these decoding units. They loved reading 2 and 3 syllable words in just a few days (no matter what age), using these easy but powerful visual cues. I soon was teaching the other teachers around me this method. The results were always phenomenal when we coupled the Brain Integration Therapy that removes the learning block, along with these Specialized Right Brain Learning Strategies. The other teachers, and especially our Title I and Special Education teachers were thrilled. The Woodcock/Johnson scores reflected this growth at the end of the year testing, or for their annual IEP testing.
Research? There are volumes of research on the benefit of midline therapy to ease the process of learning. This recognition of the body/brain connection in learning has been around for over 50 years. Vision Therapy is based on many midline exercises to get the eyes to work together as a team while reading, Occupational Therapists successfully use midline therapy for their struggling students. There is reason why Brain Balance can charge thousands of dollars for the results they get from midline therapy. In his book Smart But Feeling Dumb, Carl Levinson, MD, a dyslexia expert from New York (he has many other interesting books…especially about the relationship of histamine and dyslexia), Dr. Levinson speaks about the need for this midline therapy to help his students.
Cured? It depends on how you define that word. Since I have been doing this therapy (and specialized teaching strategies…always together), for over 25 years, I now have many of the public school and homeschool students who have used these techniques, correspond with me as young adults. Many, many of them have gone on to college (even getting scholarships in many cases), and several have gone on to get their Master’s Degree in Special Education so they can do the same with their students. What a blessing!
What’s the Bottom Line? Since parents and teachers can use the Brain Integration Therapy in 15 minutes a day for under $60, I see no downside. There are other places that use these methods also, if a parent wants to outsource this very helpful method. Does Brain Integration Therapy stand alone as a successful treatment for Dyslexia? Not in my experience. I always coupled it with Right Brain Phonics Intensive practice, and a spelling strategy that developed my student’s photographic memory for spelling of the words that were not phonemic, or when they couldn’t remember the spelling “rules”. They have a fabulous photographic memory that can always help them in a pinch!
God is good. He provides so many ways to help our children.
I work have a three day school week plan with my kids where they go to an enrichment program on Fridays and take Mondays off. Should I do the daily exercises on Tuesday and Wednesday and the Brain Training on Friday?
The daily exercises should be done four days a week (preferably Monday through Thursday) in the morning. After your kids have learned the exercises, they should not take more than 20 minutes to complete. Brain Training can be done on any of the other days that aren’t occupied by the daily exercises. This plan, of course, does include time off for summer, Christmas, vacations, etc, but the success rate of Brain Integration Therapy was measured off daily exercises four times a week with a weekly Brain Training session, preferably on Fridays.
Do you have to do Brain Training on Fridays as suggested in the Brain Integration Therapy Manual and “Lesson Plans for the Struggling Learner” or can we move this to Friday to accommodate a busy Friday schedule?
You can absolutely do the once per-week brain training session on Saturday instead of Friday.
Should I pre-test my children before we start Brain Integration Therapy?
While it is not essential, I highly recommend pre-testing your children so that you can measure your results throughout the year. Nothing formal is necessary.
After hearing you give your “Identifying and Correcting Blocked Learning Gates” seminar I went to your website to find information about writing reversals. It says to use the Writing Eight Exercise that can be found in the Brain Integration Therapy Manual. I couldn’t get the website to go to the manual and when I looked at online stores the manual was not available. What do I do?
Because of the complexity of the Writing Eight Exercise, I do not offer online instructions for it. The Brain Integration Therapy Manual is available for purchase directly from Child Diagnostics at http://stores.diannecraft.org. To purchase, go to the store, click on “books,” click on “Brain Integration Therapy Manual,” then click “add to cart.”
The manual says to start with visual exercises, then writing exercises, then auditory exercises. Is there a reason for doing them in this order?
I have two children that have processing problems and I want to work them through Brain Integration Therapy together. However, they do not need to work on all of the same things. Is it alright if I work with both children together in the areas that overlap?
Because the Brain Training sessions are done on a one-by-one basis, each child will have his or her own schedule. The children can participate together during the daily exercises even if they don’t necessarily need to do those specific exercises (it won’t hurt them).
The daily exercises and Brain Training sessions appear to be the same things. What differentiates a “Brain Training Session” and an “exercise?”
The daily exercises are components that we will use to construct the Brain Training session at the end of the week. While they will not produce any growth with your child when done individually, they stimulate connections in the brain and keep the neuropathways open during the week, which is an essential building block for what we are going to during the Brain Training session.
Brain Training sessions are done only once a week. They are a collection of multiple exercises from the daily exercises but there is a step called the hemispheric integration process that allows them to promote connectivity between the left and right brain by giving the brain a challenge such as reading or eye tracking. This is the step that is surrounded by a gray box in the Brain Integration Therapy Manual (2010 Edition). These steps tell the brain to send the information to both hemispheres for permanent storage.
For more information on the hemispheric integration process, refer to chapter 5.3 “How to Use This Guide” in the Brain Integration Therapy Manual (2010 Edition). For more information about what activities are included in the hemispheric integration process, refer to the step-by-step Brain Training instructions in the manual. Remember: they are the steps that have a thick gray border around them (in previous editions of the Brain Integration Therapy Manual, the hemispheric integration process steps were bordered by a thin black line instead).
Store Questions
Why was my Primadophilus warm when I received it?
A: When Primadophilus is shipped, it is packed with two freezer packets. By the time you receive it, the packets will not be frozen and the package will be room temperature. It is impossible to keep packages cold for the entire length of the trip. However, since it has started out frozen and been kept very cold the majority of the trip, in our experience, and the experience of hundreds of other families, the Primadophilus remains a very powerful probiotic.
Please be advised that we do not give refunds for packages that ‘feel warm’ when they are received. We pack the best we can upfront, but cannot be responsible for individual mailing routes. Just a side note: the Primadophilus has worked fine for our families even when it ‘felt warm’ (which very likely was just room temperature).
What is your return policy?
Items that are not candidates for return/refunds are: “Brain Integration Therapy Manual” (all editions), “Right Brain Phonics Reading Book,” and all products classified as vitamins in the vitamins section of the store.
All DVDs, CDs, and Multiplication Cards must be unopened and in their original plastic wrapping in order to qualify for refund. If they have been opened, a return will not be accepted.
More Dianne Craft store FAQs are available here.
