Lindamood-Bell

[dyslexia]

As an educator, I admit that I was initially suspicious of the slick marketing materials produced by Lindamood-Bell. They felt like they belonged to a shopping mall, not a school. However, after hearing learning specialists and parents claim that Lindamood-Bell had significantly helped several struggling readers, my husband and I decided to investigate whether it might be a good program for our ten-year-old son.

Our first challenge was the amount of time required to participate in the program. Its success is predicated on intensive immersion-it requires a commitment of four hours, five days a week, until the students’ reading goals are met. I felt uneasy about the demanding nature of the plan and the cynical part of me toyed with option of initially only trying it for two hours before committing to the recommended four hours.

Then I spoke with a friend who had recently tried just that. She cautioned that her son did the "after-school, two-hour" version for several months and made little progress for all his effort. They ultimately ended up committing to the recommended plan of four-hour sessions over the summer and reported that it made a significant difference in his reading abilities. I appreciated her candid warning. There IS a reason that the centers do not endorse the “convenience model”. It’s not nearly as effective.

I was able to get our school to agree to the radical plan of having my son miss school in the morning to go to Lindamood-Bell and return at lunch for the afternoon part of the school day. It was the only way to make it work. Everyone agreed that if he wasn’t reading, the morning wasn’t worth much anyway.

The instruction involves students sitting in cubicles with a scripted instructor for four hours. To help offset the potential monotony, the instructors change every hour. Our son wanted to read so badly, his ambition overrode his hesitation about the set-up. According to him, the instructors varied in quality and general appeal. Every night at dinner, we would get a humorous replay of his rotation through the various personalities and teaching styles.

The bottom line: did it work? Yes, yes, yes. It was a significant experience for our son. Because he has auditory processing and visual memory deficits, he did the LIPS and Seeing Stars programs. Reading will never be easy for him, but it is much easier after Lindamood-Bell. He left with new decoding and spelling strategies that transformed his entire relationship to school. I highly recommend the program if it’s an option.

Oh yes, as much as we would have liked to, we did not do the recommended follow-up lessons at home. It was not realistic for us, but I am sure that they would have provided helpful reinforcement.