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Well you know as you get a little older you sort of start to forget the details like whether
or not your wife said to pick up the milk on you way home or from work.
And yeah, then you go to the basement then you stand there and have to stare and wonder
why you came down there.
Yeah.
It happens all the time.
Well instead of just dealing with it training your brain may be the answer. We've shown
you how the LearningRx program can work for kids but one New Prague family says it also
helped mom and TCL producer Kelli Hanson is going to show us how.
Nick and Morgan Swanson are years apart in school but they share one thing academically
- remembering what they learned.
I love reading it's just I couldn't read the book. I get frustrated if I got stuck on a
word.
I would have issues remembering to turn in assignments due assignments even if I wrote
them down I would like forget to look in my planner.
Mom Deb had heard about the LearningRx program from family and decided her kids should give
it a try.
Morgan - she wasn't failing in school, she was getting along okay but it seemed she has
to work so hard.
And she had watched Nick struggled for years.
Had taken him through tutoring programs, I brought lots of home programs and worked with
him and they would help a little bit but it seemed like it was not connecting for him.
The two started the program here at the Savage location last summer.
I thought it was going to be like school but when I got here it was like, oh, this is actually
kind of fun.
Morgan knew she had a memory issue writing essays after reading a book and remembering
math formulas wasn't easy.
I could not remember anything that teachers would say.
But after a few months of brain training...
I used to be so nervous about high school I though oh my gosh I would like I'm going
to fail, oh my gosh I'm going to have to go to several classes with everybody else and
turned out like I can do this. Sure, I'm still a little bit nervous but I know I can do it
though.
One of the things, I think it's just confidence. I mean she knows now that she is smart and
she can do this things.
Red....green...oh...a little off for you there...yellow
Let's do one more try from the top.
Now I am starting to read bigger books, chapter books and starting to get until a hundred.
I am starting to love reading, it's just getting really fun for me. My favorite book would
be Judy Bloom 4th grade nothing.
We spend more of our time focused on student age, you know children. But this I mean our
brain has incredible plasticity that at any age our underlying skills can improve.
When it comes to our brains the old adage, "use it or loose it" holds true. When Deb
saw how the program had helped her kids, she got involved, too.
I would do some of the program here, some online at home which was really nice balance
for me.
Deb says she no longer feels like her mind is slipping and the fog has lifted.
We went through one of the programs where I was read fifteen words in a short amount
of time and I was able just to remember them. And so from doing that, that's something a
skill that I learned to use like when I'm going to the grocery store.
These skills are as they help academics but they are the skills that make up our IQ and
they are actually more important as we get into our careers to be able to get deadlines,
and remember things, problem solved, just process. And that's why what we do is effective.
It's never too late to learn and help your body, your brain change and get better and
improve.
So Rich Freider is here, he is a LearningRx Executive Director to talk a little more about
this. So we know that the children, it gets into the summer time months right now. A lot
of what they learned during the school year just kind of go pfffft goes right down the
door.
Yeah, there's the dynamic called the summer slide which isn't a valley fair, right, which
isn't a good thing.
This is so alarming.
Oh yeah, I mean like 25% of the reading skills are lost over the summer. Basically about
a third of the knowledge they learned from the previous school year is lost and so it
makes going back to school in the fall really difficult. However you know with what we do
you can completely change that where kids are not losing ability they are actually significantly
increasing ability so the school's a lot easier in the fall.
So do you think even if you're kids maybe haven't gone to LearningRx in the fall or
during the school year the summer might be a good time for them to just focus on some
learning.
Yeah, summer is the perfect time and there's two examples like I can think of. One, I had
a meeting with a teacher in this morning where her daughter was tested in the fall on the
7th percentile in reading in map testing and I just met with her and now she's meeting
expectations.
Wow.
So you know, third grade, when she's going to be third grade next year it's going to
be so much easier. We have a student last summer who went to the University of North
Dakota and he went, he did pretty well in high school, went to college for his first
year and really struggled. GPA of 1.7, went through the program over the summer and reported
back now 4.0. I mean it's a huge change. It's because we are getting to the root cause of
any of those learning struggles and the summer is the perfect time because kids aren't as
busy, right? But you can really set them up for success because, you know the downside
is next year, whether you're on 2nd grade, 5th grade, senior high school the next school
year is a harder year. And so you can really equip them to be successful as they get on
tougher school grades.
Well, I presume we'd like people to get involved in your guys' program but even if someone
is home maybe doesn't have the means to get involved in the program like yours I'm sure
there are still things that you can do as a parent to try and keep the child's brain.
Yeah, I mean one of the most obvious should be reading. You know it's amazing a lot of
times the kids are involved in reading during the school year and then they kind of stop,
you know just because they are not in the environment anymore. So just continue to read
over the summer would at least help them maintain. You're not going to see a big increase in
reading skill but at least it helps it maintain those skills.
So as far as the confidence factor goes, I mean that's what I'm always so struck by when
we see some of these stories about these kids I just think that that confidence in school
and believing that you're smart has to be the most empowering thing that you can give
to your child.
Absolutely. You see huge changes. I mean you've heard it in that segment with Morgan, you
know who she wasn't sure if she can handle high school and she's a really bright girl
and there were just some skills that needed to be strengthened. And going through the
program itself is really fun, as you've heard, but it builds a lot of confidence and now
she's going into high school feeling really confident. Her brother Nick, you know, struggles
with reading and he's doing great now and he loves to read. What a transformation and
that's the type of thing that we can do.
And that's what parents of a young girl going into high school want to hear that she has
confidence because then she can accomplish anything.
Yeah and the downside is if you're not confident, if your esteem is not strong then that can
manifest in a lot of negative behavior.
Well Rich thank you so much, we appreciate great stories and I love that the mom got
involved, too, when you can always do something to train your brain. You can call the number
on your screen and mention Twin Cities Live, you will get half off in the initial assessment.
And to find a LearningRx near you we've posted more information on our website twincitieslive.com.
And we want to thank LearningRx for sponsoring our show.
"Tutoring Woodbury"
http://www.LearningRx.com/wodbury/