Overcoming Learning Disabilities

A parent’s point of view: Why Davis worked for my child.

(By Beth, mother of an 11-year-old dyslexic daughter)

A happy girl smiling as she holds a clay model that was used to help overcome her learning disability.When I was searching for help for my daughter who had been diagnosed as ADD and having a learning disability, I happened on the book The Gift of Dyslexia.

It was the only thing I could find that explained why she was having trouble and how it could be overcome. It was the first time anything made sense - how she could read words like “caterpillar” but she could not figure out the difference between the words "what" and "that". It was also the only thing that explained why one day she could read and the next day (or minute) she couldn't.

Her teachers were skeptical. They weren't sure a week out of school was a good thing for a student who was “already struggling”. I decided that if my daughter was not understanding her school work, missing a week and doing a program to help, couldn’t hurt that much. Her teachers, however, were convinced when she came back reading at grade level, and she no longer needed to take breaks from the classroom to regain her focus.

"The program has helped my daughter and me to understand the truth about her 'learning disability', not as a 'disability' but as dyslexia and dyslexia as a gift."

On the last day of my daughter's program she smiled, held her head high and read from a book she couldn't have gotten through a paragraph of a week before, even with assistance. More importantly, she enjoyed reading it because she understood what she read. The program has helped my daughter and me to understand the truth about her “learning disability”, not as a “disability” but as dyslexia and dyslexia as a gift.

More important for me is that my daughter now enjoys reading, writing and her school. Her confidence is back and when she is confused or doesn’t understand her school work she knows how to help herself, get focused and then get the help she needs. These days the only “chats” I’m having with teachers are about how well she is doing and how much they enjoy her. I would recommend the Davis programs to anybody having learning problems. Carl Nigi is a gifted facilitator with a personal understanding of the benefits. He has an innate ability to relate his clients and make the programs incredibly effective.