ButterflyEffects.com

People can be taught to read at any age. In recent years, we've seen literacy movements focus on illiterate adults. Now, many of those adults who could not read road signs or menus, let alone textbooks, are proud to call themselves New Readers.

That these adults have learned to read makes for many heartwarming stories, yet if you pull any of those new readers aside, each can tell you a story of  great shame and struggle. For many of them, every moment spent in school was a moment of stress. And while some succeeded at life despite the inability to read, countless others compromised their dreams and lowered their expectations so as to accommodate their disability.

If your preschooler demonstrates any of these genetic or behavioral signs of dyslexia, we encourage you give us a call:

• A history of learning disabilities in the family
• Lack of interest in learning new things
• Not interested in reading or being read to
• Delays in speech development or use of language
• Inability to play well with others
• Prefers to play by him or herself
• Difficulties with learning how to tie shoes
• Difficulties with handling and controlling pens, pencils, crayons
• Inability to differentiate between left and right
• Inability to follow sequential directions
• Poor rote memory
• Inability to learn how to read clocks with hands
• Reluctance to participate or interject in conversations
• Reoccurring ear infections
  

We will come to you home to evaluate your child's academic and intellectual abilities and set up a treatment plant to address or compensate for any of the challenges listed above.

At Butterfly Effects, we want to see every child realize his or her potential.
We believe that almost every child can master reading and even learn to enjoy it. As with most things developmental, early intervention is always the best and easiest course when it comes to reading. Children are most amenable to reading remediation before they enter school. If they have not learned how to read by the end of first grade they are apt to become a little more resistant, but still with the proper intensive intervention they can easily make up needed ground. For most children with reading difficulties, the end of third grade is the critical zone.

While it is not impossible, most research demonstrates that is far more difficult to address a child's learning disabilities after third grade. At that point, the gap between those who and can't is widened greatly. The child's attitude towards education is set and patterns of frustration and failure are ingrained.  Without proper support and help, after the age of nine or ten, the child is likely to expend more energy in trying to escape school than to improve his or her skill levels.

One of the more fascinating things about the young child's brain is that the average toddler has twice as many neural pathways open to him or her than the typical adult.
Right up through adolescence, children possess far more neural pathways than they can accommodate and they are constantly paring them down to those they will most commonly use. How children select the pathways they will employ through life is the subject of much research. What we do know is that these pathways can be consciously impacted with a consistent well planned intervention.

A primary example of this is that of the four year-old boy who is a reluctant reader.
He is a high energy child who never expresses interest in language beyond rudimentary communication. Unlike many children, this child is not interested in being read to and expresses little curiosity about the sounds that make up words and written language. Consequently, his practical language skills tend to lag for lack of practice. Despite exhibiting obvious intelligence, the boy is starting to be identified as speech delayed. This is a situation that can build on itself if the child is left alone, if his parents opt for the wait and see approach.

Ultimately, as the child becomes used to avoiding language, and fails to employ words in a regular progressive fashion, the neural pathways for language use and development will wither and eventually become discarded. Once that happens, he is likely to become a nonreader for life. However, this does not have to be a foregone conclusion.

With the efforts of a trained tutor supported by parental involvement, the child can be taught to associate reading with positive rewards. If the work of learning how to read becomes fun and the boy receives constant encouragement anytime he expands his use of language, he may begin to express a different attitude about reading. Anything is possible if the learning is fun enough.

Maybe the child has a thing for insects or a love of super heroes. If reading becomes a way to connect with his passion, then again the child perceives reading as something positive and the neural pathways involved with written language only grow stronger. Furthermore, if that boy enters first grade ahead of his peers with reading, rather than behind, he will discover he has a leg up and now very proud of his ability, he will probably become a dedicated reader for life.


The warning signs of a reading disability change very little as the child gets older. The older child will still have:

• Poor awareness of sounds and syllables as building blocks of language
  
• Difficulty matching sounds to written letters
• Trouble following sequential directions
• Bad handwriting
• Limited use of vocabulary

Other problems will manifest as the child grows older. He or she will find ways to avoid or ignore assignments involving reading and writing, and may even develop a propensity to lie. It's also likely that the child will develop an overall negative attitude towards school and more often than not develop physical symptoms of stress that further complicate the situation.

At Butterfly Effects, we apply a one-on-one approach to all of our academic and behavioral tutoring.
We will assess your child's status and needs according to his or her age and then, with the input of our senior treatment team, develop an intervention plan to address the need. Typically that intervention plan will be as client directed as possible.

We will match you with an academic/behavior tutor trained in Applied Behavior Analysis who will oversee and provide direct services to your child and family. Always applying a team approach, we will:

• Make referrals as necessary to speech therapy
• Address coordination and motor skills issues with occupational and physical therapy as required
• Address social skill concerns that interfere with learning
• Provide experiential exposure to language and numbers
• Teach age appropriate academic skills including reading, writing, math
• Teach parents how to provide ongoing support
• Promote reading as a daily habit

When you sign up for any services with Butterfly Effects, you will be provided with access to case coordination and ongoing support for as long as we are needed. We have the expertise and desire to help with:

• Insurance and funding
• IEP development and support
• Homeschool support
• Achievement testing
• Case coordination to make sure the child receives needed speech, physical, and / or  occupational therapy, as well as hearing and vision testing

You will also be given access to our state of the art online platform. Accessible 24/7 from any browser, it provides access to:

• Treatment team members
• Progress notes and treatment plans
• Parent training
• Academic programs for students

Always comprehensive in our approach, we will also address any issues that make learning more difficult, including problems with:

• Social skills
• Mental processing
• Numbersense
• Emotional Maturity
• Speech and Language Skills
• Motor skills and coordination

Lagging behind in any of the above skill areas is  a red flag for parents, but not every red flag is considered with equal seriousness.  We are likely to pay much more attention to a child's speech and language deficits than his or her processing delays. We are much likely to expend energy remediating challenging behaviors brought about by emotional maturity rather than on developing appropriate use of social skills. And we will more likely concern ourselves with significant cognitive delays than with whether or not he or she can decode written language.

It's not uncommon to hear stories of children who slip through the cracks for a year or two or even longer despite significant challenges.  Children with Asperger's can be a prime example. Surprisingly enough, the same can be true for children with dyslexia. On talking with adult new readers, most will tell you that early on in grade school they gave up on reading and instead worked at developing strategies to compensate for their inability to read or ones that would remove them from the situation.

At Butterfly Effects, our intervention programs are designed to address barriers to learning based on the impact they will have on a child's future, rather than how disruptive they may prove in the class environment. We approach every child, no matter what the age, looking to determine what factors are impacting his or her  ability to succeed and then look to partner with him or her and find the most enjoyable way to dramatically alter the neural network in favor of reading, writing, and arithmetic.

If you are concerned about your child's relationship with written and/or spoken language, please give us a call. It's never too early to intervene with a developmental issue. Young children don't necessarily need a diagnosis to be eligible for early intervention services.

We want to help every child become school ready before they ever enter a classroom.


Teaching NumberSense
Reading Intervention Programs
Applied Behavior Analysis
School Readiness Program for preschoolers