Please tell me what you think about NeuroLinks

amother

Linen

Fri, Jan 01 2016, 3:23 pm

It takes forever. We started chanukah last year, took off in the summer but were still not finished. Its intense because it's every single day for an hour, by now I feel really bad for my son ( 10 yrs old). Basically he comes home from school, eats supper, one hour for neurolinks . He almost doesn't have any free time. If you can do it in school hours then thats different, my son didnt want.
So im doing it for processing faster,it might have helped- could also be one year older, his brains matured a little.
I also did it for spelling (visual memory), it did not help my son at all.Even though I was fascinated with the activities of how its gonna help visual memory, I really gave it hope. don't know, he still doesn't get basics of spelling.
And the other thing I wanted it for was reading. Still the same as before,they claim reading is the last thing they work on and didn't get up to there yet.
The only reason im still doing it is because I finished paying and im still hoping and praying his reading skills are gonna improve. this is my experience, It might be more helpful for a child with adhd. Its so hard to say, every child is so different. Ask them for references.
Good luck on your decision.

seeker

Sat, Jan 02 2016, 8:45 pm

Spelling involves a lot more than visual memory. A LOT. Were there other reasons you were concerned about visual memory?

Also, I sure hope you have been addressing the reading from other angles as well. Anyone who tells you to wait over a year before starting to work on a reading problem is incredibly irresponsible because they lose a lot of ground just by waiting. If they say to go ahead with reading specialists meanwhile but after finishing the physio neuro whatnot it will all come much easier, that I could hear. But waiting over a year and hoping and praying.., not saying you should give this up but please at least get your backup plan stared...

amother

Turquoise

Mon, Jan 25 2016, 11:51 am

Seeker, I think you need to know a bit more about the Neurolinks Program before making blanket statements. I just posted a reply on the "Neurolinks or Fastforward" conversation. You can go check it out there. But just to tell you about the Reading issue.. My son was 10 when we started the Neurolinks program.He had almost zero skill of Reading and Spelling. What was explained to me by Yehudis of Neurolinks is that my son was extremely poor in visual memory. Therefore, even though he had technically caught on to the rules of Reading it was extremely challenging for him to read because his brain wasn't recognizing words. he needed to decode each and every single word as if its the first time hes seeing it. a child with poor focusing does not have the ability to stay on task that long and do that. throughout the program we did "nothing" for Reading, if you can call it that! because they were building up his visual memory. and true to their word, the last few week of the program they did their specialized reading program and in a matter of a few weeks his reading jumped up to grade level in Hebrew and English!

debsey

Mon, Jan 25 2016, 5:17 pm

amother wrote:

debsey, I wasn't able to help my child for free. Let alone I couldn't help him with spending thousands on tutoring and whatnot. bh we got to this..

My point is that much of what NeuroLinks does is not new. You can buy all the BrainGym books and do similar exercises at home for free. There is no proof that these exercises work, other than lots of "testimonials" as well as various colored "amothers" posting here. You may be genuine, I don't know - I certainly don't want to cause more pain to a mother who is trying actively to help her kid.
But it is irresponsible to take money from people for an unproven treatment, when there are more demonstrably effective paths.
I get it - what they sell, most of all, is HOPE. And when your kid is suffering, you need some hope. But for every testimonial of effectiveness, there are testimonials of people who shelled out money and didn't see much effect. When there is research on the program, published in a peer reviewed reputable journal, then it would be OK to charge for it. Right now, there's no proof, there's no regulatory board (since the "therapists" are not licensed in any intervention program) and there's no oversight. And yes, I have looked into NeuroLinks.

amother

Turquoise

Mon, Jan 25 2016, 7:58 pm

Bh my child was helped so your comments didn't hurt me. But I was thinking that you might have hurt some parents there in your reply in the other conversation by making it appear as if "desperate" parents are somehow at fault. yes, many parents are desperate. From your comment, I assume you have never felt that desperation. Thank hashem for it and please don't knock down mothers that have been at that stage and did all they could for their child. I am glad I had the "desperation" to try something that according to your words "doesn't have proof that its affective". to me what matters is real life results over published journals. I tried the conventional therapies before doing neurolinks and got nowhere. for your info, I met up with many parents every week in the waiting room that had similar stories to me.

debsey

Mon, Jan 25 2016, 10:06 pm

amother wrote:

I am a parent of a special needs child, and I am well aware of how many people there are out there who will take advantage of our pain. I'm not saying NeuroLinks does or does not, but I know the desperation that causes people to shell out money they can't afford for unproven treatments! The truth hurts sometimes, but if it saves someone from allocating their therapy budget on something that isn't proven and first trying proven methods, then that is only a good thing. And btw - published journals aggregate "real life results" so we know that a treatment is actually effective, and not just due to other factors, like maturation, chance, better teaching, or even a placebo effect.
If you are indeed a parent, and not someone who is paid to shill, I hope you have hatzlacha. But any other parent reading this - who is as desperate as I have been in the past - needs to know how to evaluate the claims of ANY treatment.