A quick tip for improving reading retention is to read a paragraph, stop, look up and visualize what you just read. http://ping.fm/tHu3N

getting ready to head to So Cal for trainers training with the AMAZING Michael Stevenson.
www.transformdestiny.com
Bee Well. Long live the queen.

coming soon...
NLC Speed Read Made Easy - 2.0
better sound, improved instructions.
http://ping.fm/jI2vf

Q: What's something you can do today to feel really proud of yourself?

Q: What's the most interesting thing you learned today?

We all know the questions, "How was school?" "Did you finish your homework?" why not surprise your child by asking new questions...

2 new residents of the Neuro-Linguistic Learning Center: Brogan a two-year-old, Jacob's Ram and partner, Ester a one-year-old, Jacob's Ewe.

Yes, the bee training continues, but... since I smell like lavender all the time, my wife is starting to think I'm... maybe...

All Bees now safely at the New Learning Center. Busy, busy, busy...
Free Reading Program for children at http://ping.fm/ZRgC1

Here's a funny. My bee colony that swarmed... The swarm decided our attic was a good place to start over. LOL

Busy day bringing our last bee hive to the Learning Center.

this is going in the wrong direction. My bees now stop me at the gate to the property. I'll have to intensify my training. http://ping.fm/7aWyb

Autism and communication

OK, I saw this article on another thread comparing Autism to Cerebral Palsy and I'm going to have to rant a bit... I think it speaks directly to some of the insanity around working with Autism.

First, aside from some outward behaviors resulting from the common feeling of frustration (that anyone could feel for a variety of reasons), there is virtually NOTHING relating Autism to CP. Its like comparing one car that has its motor racing but can't get in gear to another care that is missing three of its tires. The problems, issues and solutions are in different universes, and to say or imply that you can address those two issues using a common approach is, IMHO, absurd!

[Question - Why does the NLC work with ASD children and teens daily but NOT a single CP client in 6 years? Answer - Because the issues are completely separate and our techniques do not offer any benefit to CP clients.

The fact is, I couldn't even get through the evaluation with a single CP client without them being upset and offended because the very approach we find incredibly effective with ASD children is simply annoying to CP children.]

So that's my first issue with the premise of the article.

My second issue with the article is "An SLP can also evaluate your child’s language abilities and develop a treatment plan to improve communication and reduce frustration—and lead to better behavior. For example, your child may benefit from training to improve eye contact, use gestures, or communicate with a picture board or speech generating device..."

Excepting the picture board idea which has some merit, the underlying presumption is that the ASD child is broken and needs a treatment plan so he can learn to communicate like and with "normal" folks.

Why is it that the ASD person is presumed to be wrong? What if we at least consider the possibility that theASD person is already communicating in his own way, perhaps even at a higher level than 'normal' folks and its even MORE FRUSTRATING to the ASD person when people try to make him communicate down to the level of normal folks?

Is that really so hard to believe? Let's take the famous Temple Grandin. I think anyone familiar with her book, "Thinking in pictures" or her movie, would be willing to consider that she had a way of understanding and even communicating with animals that was far beyond any normal person's perception or understanding.

I, myself, have had a way of intuitively understanding the perceptions and communicating with animals my entire life. Today, when I work with ASD clients, a significant portion of my communication with them is non-verbal.

Its almost a cliche that only 7% of communication is in our words. THAT MEANS 93% OF ALL HUMAN COMMUNICATION IS NON-VERBAL. So why would we send a non-verbal thinker/communicator to a SPEECH and LANGUAGE Pathologist who's entire training is to teach people to communicate verbally?

I can't be the only person in the world who sees the absurdity if not insanity of this practice.?

OK, rant over.

Whenever I feed my bees I place a drop of Lavender oil in their food....
Looking for one million new readers: http://ping.fm/EmpT7

Lavender! that's the key to training honey bees...
Free reading program at http://ping.fm/DoQkV

It may sound crazy, but I've been using lavender therapy to train my honeybees. To be cont...
http://ping.fm/wxMHz

Its past time to get beyond labels

Its past time to get beyond these labels, Autism, Auditory Processing Disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder, ADHD, PDD-NOS, etc...

or at least reconsider what they mean. We take 10,000 children and based on an arbitrary distribution of symptoms, we divide these children up into groups. We tend to forget that these groupings DO NOT EXIST! We (the cultural, we) made them up.

This is exactly the reason why my next book is to be titled, "There is no IS Autism. It's like taking a field of Daisies and dividing them up into groups based on the number of leaves facing north, south, east, or west. Yes, we will find numerical patterns, just as we find patterns in children. But what do those patterns mean? Do they really provide any ability to predict (and control) the next group of Daisies?

I'd say no. Simply overlaying an inherently chaotic system with rational methodology or quanitification does not provide any measure of prediction and control despite the illusion that we have measured and analyzed the system.

Its time we acknowledge that simply placing a child into an artificially defined group does not give us any actual ability to predict or control the behavior of the individual child beyond a statistical probability (similarly to knowing the probable location of a quantum particle).

In the model we use at the NLC, there are no discrete groups (ADHD, Dyslexia, APD, SPD, AS, PDD, OCD, ODD, etc.). There is only a continuum from what we like to call Left-Brain (Auditory) Thinkers to Right-Brain (Visual-Spatial) Thinkers. There is also another continuum from Logic/Reason Thinkers to Feeling/Kinesthetic 'thinkers'.

Depending upon where a person falls along the spectrum on these two scales will dramatically effect how they think, feel, behave, communicate, and process information. Coincidentally, the patterns of Auditory vs. Visual and Logic vs. Kinesthetic remarkably coincide with the Meyers-Briggs patterns and the four Greek Temperments.

If you go too far from the center in any direction you will invariably exhibit a growing list of symptoms consistent with one and probably more than one group. The nice thing is that the dual spectrum model has, over the past six years provided the basis for helping a large number of children and teens overcome many of the effects of these challenges. http://www.swish4fish.com

I'm very much liking WizIQ site for our new online campus. Easy and accessible. Free Reading Program... http://ping.fm/9tNUk

Was lax in keeping an eye on one of my hives. They swarmed this week. Now have 1/2 a hive w/ hot, young, new queen. Ooh la la. http://ping.fm/hOsO0

Quick link to our new free reading program on WizIQ.
http://ping.fm/fGt2z - very cool site.

Rant over. Now, what should we do? Land Ocean Restaurant in Folsom burned our daughter with a hot skillet on the child's menu.