Brian’s progress with Audiblox:
I knew Brian had some learning difficulties when at the end of second grade he still couldn’t recognize all the letters in the alphabet. His reading was probably the beginning of first grade level, he was way behind in his math, and his spelling was terrible. He was still constantly mixing up p, d, b and so on. His words were still a mixture of upper case and lower case letters, he never put spaces between words, and he never used periods. The teacher had him tested at the beginning of the year and again at the end. His scores were lower at the end of the year. He had low self esteem and hated to go to school. When he got home from school he would either start hitting me, hide under his bed, run away and hide outside somewhere or throw away things I had given him or he had given me. I took him out of school to home school him with his brother. All of this behavior stopped when he didn’t have to go to school any more.
The first year of home schooling was the hardest. Whenever I tried to teach him anything, he would turn into a brick wall. He completely shut me out and starred past me like I wasn’t even there. The second year we put him on Adderall for ADD and he was a different child. His comment was that “the words aren’t all mixed up in my head any more.” I was happy because I thought I finally found a solution to our problems. We had a lot of progress that year but he still struggled with reading, spelling and math.
Then, as with John, I started looking for something besides medication to help my boys learn. I came across Audiblox and decided that this is what I needed to do. I wanted to help my boys overcome their learning problems and not just put a temporary bandage on them.
At first Audiblox did not work for Brian. He had a terrible attitude and a child cannot learn with a bad attitude no matter how hard you try to teach. That is the first thing that needs to be taken care of. This took three sessions over a four week period to correct completely. Now if he comes to the table complaining I just tell him to look at me and I smile and don’t say a word until he smiles back. He usually starts chuckling real quick and we continue with Audiblox with no further problems. It’s funny what a smile will do.
We took Brian off Adderall and started him on Audiblox 1 year ago, although we took the summer off. He is doing very well. In sequencing he works on the same sequence all week. He just made it to 70 blocks at 5/5/0. On patterns he made it to 60 blocks in four days. He can read all the list words in Chapter four of the reading book very well, but we are still mostly working on the word cards which he is very fast and fluent with. At first I tried to move on too fast because I thought the boys were doing well enough. Now I understand the importance of continuous review. As far as his regular school work he is doing very well. He understands his assignments and completes them in a very timely manner. Although I have not had him tested I am sure his reading is on grade level. He is also doing very well in math. He now writes complete sentences with spaces between words and most of his words are spelled correctly. I no longer see any signs of ADD in this child. He is ready to go back to public school next year and I am confident that he will do well.
For a mother’s view of Audiblox, this is the hardest thing I have ever done. There are days when I hate it, days when I want to pull my hair out because of it, days when I want to quit. This is not easy. It is hard to do the same thing day after day. I continue because I have seen such tremendous results with my boys. They are worth it.
Kenna
USA