Ethan's mum, Watford
My son is a bright, sparky, motivated boy and a month off from his 7th Birthday did not warrant the assessment of 5 years 8 months for reading accuracy, and 5 years 3 months for reading comprehension.
From a small child, he had always avoided fine motor skill activities such as drawing and writing and was not drawn to books. It was as if his eyes moved too fast over the pages; with an irateness about him when required to concentrate.
In February 2009, in Year 2 at primary school, it was suggested by his teacher that he should be tested, possibly for Dyslexia. Although on one hand, I had acknowledgement of my suspicions, on the other hand, I knew we were on a hard path that I had no depth of knowledge about. The school undertook his assessments and he was then seen by an educational psychologist who indicated that he had the condition, Auditory Processing Disorder (APD).
We had already taken the route of cursive handwriting tuition by a trained dyslexic teacher which was having amazing results with his writing flow. When I read Usha Patel's APD article in "Families" magazine, it was like reading a profile of my son. We met and she did some simple tests and we came to the conclusion that 'Fast ForWord' would be perfect for him.
The beauty of the programme is that it is 100% reactive to your child's answer/error rate and will then adapt the exercise in response. Working over all the phonic sounds, but then concentrating on the needy areas, in such a way that it works on the long-term and short-term memory skills as well as sound recognition. It is auditory training fine-tuned for your child. Any form of human interaction cannot duplicate the results obtained from this programme. There is nothing comparable to this.
By February 2010, his reading age was 8 years - a month over what was age-appropriate, and his spelling age was 7 years 7 months. Having finished the programme in April 2010, in total over the year, he has increased 5 reading levels and has gone from reading a book with 4 lines of page to tackling Harry Potter!
Usha Patel was totally supportive, explaining her expectations for each module, and helping us hit the goals she believed we could reach.
I am not saying it is an easy route, there was a lot of motivating manipulation and tears but he understood what the results could be and we believed in the programme and what it could do for my son. He has just sat his May assessments - receiving a 2A in writing and 3B in reading - a 20-month increase from last year.
I have no doubt the 'glitches' that my son suffers from have been worked through with the 'Fast ForWord' programme. It has moved him on significantly and there is no worthy alternative.
The results speak for themselves.
Watford Mum