Let’s look at how a child’s IQ is tested and how these tests are interpreted.
addition to these therapies, I would
teach this child to use his visual, right
brain memory as his strength, bypassing
the weakness, so that learning would become easy. If a child had a low score for
Processing Speed, I instituted eye tracking exercises to help with his visual processing speed when reading. If the “
coding” score (rapidly copying symbols) was
low in the Processing Speed section of
the test, then I knew this child had some
form of dysgraphia, and I instituted a
midline writing exercise that transferred
the writing and spatial processing to the
child’s Automatic Brain Hemisphere.
These are all correctable areas.
be used also. I chose this one simply because it took little time, allowing me to
do it in the classroom along with teaching the other subjects to my students, and
most importantly did not cost any money
. . . just my time.)
After working with Janet for that year
using the daily midline exercises and
brain trainings, and teaching her to use
her photographic memory for spelling,
reading, and math, she made huge prog-
ress (three years’ growth). But the most
satisfying part was that in the IQ test that
the school psychologist gave her at the
end of the year, she tested with an aver-
age IQ. I will never forget the meeting
with Janet’s parents in which the school
psychologist told the parents that their
daughter was no longer considered a
“slow learner.”
Low IQ and/or Auditory
Processing Problem
One year, in my pull-out Middle School
Resource Room (IEP special education
classroom), I had four sixth-grade students who had previously been in self-contained classrooms for “slow learners”
(think low IQ) for their elementary years.
Now they were entering middle school,
and the parents wanted them to go to
the school in their neighborhood rather
than being bussed to a school that would
have a self-contained classroom. Thus,
those four students came to my Resource
Room for reading, writing, and math,
while being mainstreamed for the other
subjects.
It was my opinion that all four of the
students had severe auditory processing problems. One student in particular
stands out in my mind. Her name was
Janet. She was a lovely, tall, quiet sixth-grader. She had such a severe auditory
processing problem (which was interpreted to be a very low IQ) that when
playing “tag” with the kids in her neighborhood and then closing her eyes to
count she frequently could not count past
18. Now, you can see how this would be
interpreted as a very slow learner, since
this is a skill children acquire in first
grade. However, I saw it as the auditory
sequencing channel being blocked, independent of IQ. This, of course, affected
her reading, math, and writing ability significantly. Viewing this issue as a result of
a “disconnect” between her auditory and
visual brain hemispheres, I did the Brain
Integration Therapy that I had learned.
(Any neurodevelopment therapy could
