Academics and all skills
that are involved in
Reading * Writing * Math * Attention
*
Organization * Memory *
Decision Making * Spatial/Motor Behavior * Reasoning
*
Critical Thinking * Non-Verbal/Social Interpretation * Testing
Performance *
Private School Placement *
or anything that affects the
student's learning life.
More importantly, we provide
excellent Case Management so that you do not have to be an expert on the
disciplines involved in all of these aspects of learning just to be able to prioritize the order that you and your student will spend the precious time, effort and money. We do
that! AND, we have a record of keeping your student's needs at the helm of the decision making over any profit making of our own. (See two links over there to the left: Our Story, and Testimonials.) If we do not provide a service
here, such as talk therapy or psychopharmacology or speech therapy, etc., then we
will refer those allied professionals to you, three at a time. And you can come back for more if the first
three don't pan out.
ATTENTION is the key ingredient to memory
and learning, but not to thinking. Huh!? Yes! The student
might be quite bright (thinking ability), but good performance (grades, tests)
also requires automatic appropriate attention. Attention, or the ability
to ignore non-related stimuli and selectively take in the right stimuli, does
not come automatically for about 15% of the population. It can be a
crippling issue for that group, because to attend appropriately when it doesn't
come naturally, can be exhausting.
Our
didactic school environment creates an exhausting learning experience for that
group, because they have to be vigilantly effortful about simply paying
attention when other students are spending their energy on the content that
will be tested. Because non-automatically attentive students are the
minority, to the other 85% they are judged as lazy or dumb. And, on top of
that... the mass media is misleading with the sound-bite approach to discussing medication. The bottom line is that no two inattentive or disorganized or forgetful learners have the same set of challenges. There are numerous issues that can LOOK like Attention Deficit, when in actuality, the same symptoms are caused by something completely different. Do you know what those some things might be? Do you know how they affect the learning process? We do! (Aren't you glad you came here!?)
ASSESSMENT AND CASE MANAGEMENT: The only
solution in moving towards help for you or your child is in-depth knowledge and objective understanding about the student?s unique learning
profile. That can be accomplished over time as your student works with many types of qualified professionals. But, someone has to gather it into one place (a case manager...Educational Therapist or the parent). Or, it can be acquired by qualified professionals who perform Formal Psychoeducational Assessments (Neuropsychologists, Educational Psychologists) AND help you understand what to do with the findings (BellaMenti does both which allows them to bridge the gap between assessment and remediation). Your student needs a professional who will
teach them how to understand and advocate for their own strengths and weaknesses throughout their
education life. These professionals, as well, should know how to remediate the weaknesses (such as reading and math) with peer reviewed methodologies. The one qualified professional type that can do all of these things in the course of working with your child, are Professional or Board Certified Educational
Therapists, and BellaMenti is that plus a Cognitive Psychologist.
Thinking * Processing * Memory (Cognitive activities). THIS IS BellaMenti's SPECIALTY and these type of activities must be individualized and targeted to fit the academic remediation plan of action. Just as in physical therapy, where we work the
specific muscle and tendons involved for injury remediation, we similarly need
to work the specific set of neurons for our own individual brain.
But, unlike physical therapists, who are employed at every hospital and private
clinic, the qualified practitioners who should determine your specific
brain activities are rare (so far). It's a hot field right now, with no
state licensing or certificates overseeing it, so beware of the snake oil.
And guess what? BellaMenti is qualified. Other Professional or Board Certified Educational Therapists are not likely to be qualified.
Memory is a factor in learning and
performing for all ages. Below average memory adversely affects
performance in every aspect and season of life. Good news!! We can
help every age group, too! (We mean, really help.) The brain's
plasticity ensures the natural ability to provide us all with enough neurons to
train (teach). But, we need to do our tailored and customized
activities to take advantage of that plasticity. Just any old activity we
find in a magazine or off the internet can waste our time, money, energy, and
what's worse; cause us to give up because we do not see results.
- For school age: Memory issues can be confused
with issues of attention deficit, auditory processing, motivation,
intelligence, and ability. Can the student acquire an improved
memory? Yes, yes, yes. (Let that settle, because not many
practitioners can say that. We can.) To do this, we need to
rule out other masking issues to avoid wasting everyone's time, effort,
and money. A cognitive assessment will tell us which direction to
pursue and what to target. (You may already have an
assessment. Good! We can use it!) Then, remediation can begin, and
we aim to successfully mitigate the memory challenges of your son or
daughter (or even, of your self!)
- For middle age: Memory issues drive us nuts! Literally! The right life style
changes can have a huge positive impact on us. EZ?! You bet?cha!
Difficult?! Yup! So...which is it? Both. But,
it needs to be directed with Individual, weekly, prescribed
activity practice. Without that,
you will spend your precious time and effort on an inefficient set of
activities, and sadly improve nothing except patience and stamina.
- For elders: Memory issues can worry us to an
earlier death, literally. What to do? It isn't too late! A
brain is a brain. We feed it right
and exercise it right, neurons grow. No kidding! It gets
stimulated in the right way (Individual, weekly, prescribed activity practice), and then the neurons
connect in the right place. Yup! You will actually FEEL it!
A Word on Anxiety: Why
do we bring it up here?
Nervousness, anxiety, and
any sort of perceived stress will inhibit much of the information that a mind
is trying to and expected to learn. Learning cannot happen in an
environment where the student does not feel emotionally, mentally, and
physically safe. On top of that, they often blame themselves, thereby
creating their own internal threat. Your student's anxiety/stress may be
the largest factor creating a bottleneck in their school performance. If
so, it is critical that it is identified as such (which we do here) and that they
are referred to a qualified professional talk therapist and psychopharmacologist. BellaMenti maintains an extensive referral list so
that you can be ushered into the best of good hands.
=D THE END =D
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