Learning Disabilities

A learning disorder is a significant discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement in listening, thinking, speaking, reading, writing, or mathematics. Deficits in any area of information processing can manifest in a variety of specific learning disabilities. It is not unusual for an individual to have more than one of these difficulties.

Learning differences and disorders may result in emotional and social difficulties--lowered self-esteem, depression, frustration, anger. Untreated learning disabilities frequently result in juvenile delinquency and inability to find and keep employment. LD frequently presents together with other conditions such as Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette’s Syndrome, Bipolar Disorder.

Generally, educators have tried to treat learning disabilities through various methods of remedial education, additional exposure to the material and creating individual accommodations that play to the individual’s strengths and decrease reliance on the individual’s weaknesses. Most commonly learning disorders are considered to present life long challenges for individuals.

The HANDLE^® Perspective

The brain and nervous system are in a constant state of adaptation to environmental stimuli
(neuroplasticity) and new connections within the brain can be made throughout the lifespan so learning challenges can be overcome over time given gentle, repeated and organized stimulation. HANDLE practitioners also offer ideas for accommodations, alterations in the way tasks are presented that allow students to learn, but we view them as a short-term strategies for relieving stress to weak systems.

Common Patterns

Each Learning Disorder and each individual have unique aspects. Yet, observable patterns of dysfunction in subsystems required to support learning provide guidance in how to resolve the disability by enhancing brain function.

HANDLE clinicians determine such factors as:

• Distractions due to visual, auditory or tactile irregularities
• Vestibular inadequacy to support muscle tone, visual tracking and linguistic/phonetic awareness simultaneously
• Irregular interhemispheric integration interfering with auditory-visual integration, parts-to-whole configuration
• Light sensitivity and visual-motor dysfunctions that cause irregular visual/visual-motor feedback and such

Individual Differences

Each person who demonstrates learning differences and disorders is an individual, with unique life and developmental experiences. For this reason it is important to learn each person's functional patterns and to design program that speak to the individual needs.

HANDLE^® Treatment

Depending upon the complexity or severity of the presenting concerns, a HANDLE Screening and short HANDLE program may be effective in addressing client’s needs. For others a full evaluation and HANDLE program is necessary.

In children and adults alike, the nervous systems respond to repeated movement patterns and proper nutrition by altering their neuro-physiological responses, organizing mental processing, and changing the very structure of the brain. HANDLE relies on the fact that the nervous system is intended to adapt continually throughout the lifespan.

Through Gentle Enhancement of weak functions and providing proper nourishment to strengthen the nervous system, weak aspects of the nervous system can be permanently strengthened. Each program is customized for effective application in the client's home or other supportive setting. The program usually requires less than a half hour daily to complete, doesn't have to be done all at once, or even in a certain order.

Results that may be seen include:

• Improved ability to sustain attention
• More efficient visual function
• Increased sense of security in sitting or standing or transitions
• Decreased sensory overload
• Decreased irritability, frustration
• Increased self confidence and self esteem
• Easier multi-tracking and information processing

What Clients Say

“We brought our daughter to HANDLE because we were concerned with her lack of organizational skills, her reading and some motor skills problems. When reading aloud, she lost her place and seemed not to pay attention to the text. Everything she did was in slow motion: she spoke slowly, she moved slowly. All of that is changing, and in only two months. Her reading problem is gone. She moves and talks faster. Her grades have all come up (she is getting A’s and B’s).”

~S. Hatch