Over the last few months, I've had people find my blog as they're investigating Anna Buck's Neuro-Developmental Delay Therapy that we've had my son in since last January. I had meant to blog regularly about his progress, but it appears I haven't written much (if anything) about it since shortly after we started. So I thought I'd update with some of the changes we've noticed in him since beginning:

• Reading: Before starting NDD therapy, he had a hard time reading anything more complex than a simple picture book with a few sentences on each page, even after months of Vision Therapy. However, last summer he became interested in novels written for his age level (he's 10 1/2) and started reading books like The Lightning Thief. His eyes still tire after 4 or 5 pages, but it's a huge step over a short period of time.
• Clumsiness: Many friends have told me they noticed he's much more aware of his body and a lot less clumsy than before. He's obviously much more aware of his body, and much of that change shows in drawings of people - he started drawing pictures of people with features like ears and hair and the occasional neck.
• Panic/Anger: He was always the kind of child who would fly into a panic or get overly angry over small things - losing something, getting surprised, things not going as expected. Wow, he is so much more calm as the "startle" reflex has inhibited over the last several months. If he loses something, he will just look for it and persist until he finds it instead of screaming in frustration and impatiently expecting me to look for it.
• Hyperactivity: Much of this has decreased, but I'm beginning to notice a pattern that couldn't have been obvious when he acted hyper and impulsive all the time. Now it appears to be related to his diet, and we're making some small changes (agave nectar as a substitute for sugar, for example) and considering more significant changes (like significantly reducing carbohydrates in his diet).

We still have a way to go, but it's so exciting to see the changes in him. And we started taking my daughter to see Anna as well. She didn't have as many of the obvious reflex problems that her brother had, but she has had auditory processing and brain integration difficulties that have really interfered with her reading ability and memory. Since she started in September, she is beginning to read much better than before. She has another 3 weeks of "Listening Fitness Therapy," after which the auditory processing problem should be pretty much resolved. Perhaps I'll remember to update about that when she's done!