On Friday I mentioned that we’ve been getting physical therapy for Jac0b’s ADHD. Now, that might sound a little crazy that one would need physical therapy for ADHD, but indeed, it’s a thing.
When Jac0b first came to us, a friend from our small group gave me the book Driven to Distraction. It was written by two doctors with ADHD about ADHD. They have a follow-up book Delivered from Distraction which deals with practical ways to cope with ADHD for both the person with it and their family. They even mention that this dallas pain management doctor helped them through a lot of processes.
I learned our brains are divided into areas. One area is for thinking called the cerebrum and another is the skill development center called the cerebellum. The skill center helps in all sort of things, but especially in the process of learning and automating skills, like reading, writing, riding a bike or typing. For some people, the skill center isn’t very efficient and so the thinking center has to make up for it, making it super hard to learn and do the automated tasks. A lot of times the person can be clumsy, take longer than others or they can’t even remember how to do tasks.
One treatment, if you would, for ADHD that was introduced in those books was a non-medication treatment by a European company called DORE.
DORE has developed physical exercises which stimulate the thinking center, the cerebellum.
The idea is just like if you do enough pull-ups, you’re going to have great arms and abs. If you do enough of these physical exercises targeted for the cerebellum, your cerebellum is going to be stronger, allowing it to remember things, organize things, concentrate on things…all sorts of things, actually.
DORE can help children with ADHD, Asperger Syndrome, Dyslexia and Dyspraxia. Here is a really simple video to help explain:
They do individualized assessments with each child and determine exactly what type of exercises would benefit them.
Then, you get a login to a web site that is loaded with your individualized plan and twice a day for 10 minutes, you follow the exercises until you graduate the program. Usually it takes 12-18 months.
Even though their US office is in Mississippi, we were able to do everything online in Skype-like sessions and other online tests. And like I mentioned, we believe we are already seeing results just a month later.
In the book Delivered from Distraction I mentioned above, the one doctor sent his son through the program and his son went from hating reading to being an avid reader.
I highly recommend you watch this success story from a rugby player who was dyslexic and quit school in 8th grade, who quickly was able to read and found great improvement in his game after doing the DORE program.
Isn’t his story amazing? You can see more success stories here.
I’ve talked to at least one set of parents who are doing similar treatments with their son through an Occupational Therapist, but this is actually much more affordable, we don’t have to leave our house and the plan adjusts every day for him as he progresses through the levels.
It’s yet to be seen exactly how much difference we’ll see, but I can tell you I have seen his math improve, his reading fluency improve and his teachers are reporting better focus and attention. We are seeing better behavior in general around the house and while I realize we have so many factors in play especially for Jac0b, I truly believe DORE is a big part of his successes. The exact things they said it would help are improving.
The really cool thing about this is, this is not something he will need to do the rest of his life. Once his new neural pathways are formed, that’s that.
I’m really excited to see where we are a year from now.
And while I’m definitely not telling you this for this reason, we do get a free month of treatment if any of you sign up. If you check it out and find that you want to sign up, would you tell them we sent you their way? We’d appreciate it!
I would love to hear about your experience with this type of ADHD treatment. Also, please share with someone who think might benefit–I haven’t found even one person who has heard of DORE, so let’s spread the word!
[…] wrote Monday’s post about ADHD and DORE last Friday and was feeling all the good feelings about where we were with the […]