NICK

Nick came to Success Pointe with a variety of challenges.  He was having academic, emotional, and behavioral difficulties.  His entire school experience up to 3rd grade had been one of difficulty and negativity.  He often got in trouble at school; did things that made the other kids mad at him, and had difficulty doing his work.  He also had incredibly low self-esteem and would easily go into melt-down and shut down.  And even though he was only eight years-old, he was on 7 different medications — two for ADHD, a sleep medication to counteract the side-effects of the ADHD, an adult anti-depressant, an adult anti-anxiety, an adult high blood pressure medication, and an adult-anti-psychotic.

The day after he was put on the anti-psychotic, Nick WENT psychotic.  He began screaming and hollering irrational things, was sobbing that he wanted to die, and was sure everyone and everything was out to get him.  I called his mother and told her that unfortunately, as scary as it sounded, this was not uncommon behavior for us to see with kids who were on these kinds of meds.  She immediately took him to the doctor and told him that she wanted her son off the medications.  Under doctor supervision, his medications were slowly reduced.  In the meantime, his mom began following the guidelines I had given her for addressing the chemical and physical contributors to both his ADHD and emotional and behavioral issues.  I also gave her some behavioral guidelines.  After following the guidelines I gave her, combined with what we were implementing at Success Pointe, a great change came for Nick.

He soon got to the point where his day wasn’t filled with melt-downs and shut-downs.  His ability to do his academic work increased, his social skills improved, and his self-esteem shot up.

ALLISON

Previous to attending Success Pointe, Allison was in a residential treatment center.  Her parents were told that she had frontal lobe damage, and they shouldn’t expect much from her.  When she arrived at Success Pointe, she had the attitude that she wasn’t capable of doing anything, and she had developed a host of “escape” tactics to get out of doing any academic work.  She would either flop her head on the table, or her entire body on the floor.  She was continuously asking to go home.  And she would say she couldn’t do it, and would play dumb.

Her instructor at Success Pointe began by sitting next to her and walking her through her work, one line at a time.  We only gave Allison small amounts of work, and placed it at a level where she could experience success, then we would let her do fun things sandwiched between her work.  The teacher then moved to having Allison do one line at a time by herself, while the teacher was still sitting there.  The teacher continued the “scaffolding” of academic challenges.  At the end of the year, the students did research on a country, created a poster, and did an oral presentation of the country.  All the parents were invited for the event.  When Allison stood to give the oral presentation of the research she had done, and the report that she had written on her own, accompanied with a beautiful poster she had independently done, her parents stood there with tears in their eyes.  Here was the girl, who wasn’t supposed to be able to do anything, presenting a well-done project.