Since knowing exactly what to do the exercises are becoming harder and more in detail than before. Donnoven battles in the mornings to do them as he says he is not awake and I have to do school first, so we are have changed the time for a trail period to straight after school and then again in the evening. The exercises must be done at least four hours apart and two hours before bedtime.

The first day at doing them after school has gone pretty good, no complaining or trying to get out of it. The some of the exercises covered in this week are as follows: throwing a bean bag in a small rainbow movement keeping your eyes fixed on the bag without letting it fall and not to move your whole head,running in a big circle and slowly decreasing into a small one to the left then to the right, the last one is walking on the sides, heels and toes of your feet. These exercises were a little hard for him as he complains it hurts his feet too much.

As the week progressed, he seemed to get more into it and but it still hurt his feet. the running in a circle one he got straight away, but the bean bag one was a total no he could not get the rainbow movement and his head moved way too much but he did try his best and that is all I can ask of him.

This week was a pretty good week doing the exercises in the afternoon and early evening, Donno was not as grumpy or rushed to do them. Donnoven has become more involved with these exercises and if I haven’t started straight after lunch he actually comes to call me, so I am quite impressed with his dedication to these exercises.

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This is the first week Donnoven has been on the program, a bit tough trying to get him to understand the exercises, but once i have sort of shown him what to do he tries very hard to accomplish them. He has battled with the balancing the most. He is very eager to do his exercises and makes sure that i do not forget to do them.

The first couple of days I was doing the program a little wrong but Jo was very nice and said its not a major problem as long as some exercises were being done, she explained them carefully to me and made sure i knew what had to happen next before I left. The first few exercises were as follows, Following instructions without jumping ahead with the eye movement board, Jumping,crouching and stretching, the last one is leaning to the front,back and both sides at a 45degree angle. These exercises are to be done in a certain time and way.

We do these exercises in the morning, after breakfast (this is because he complains he is hungry), they take no longer than 10 mins once we have worked out what is needed and how. I normally read before hand so we do not waste time as the mornings are a bit rushed as is. The evenings are a bit more relaxed purely because the exercise are the same as the morning.

Donnoven has really been trying hard and I am impressed that he has not tried to bail out or say “but mommy i don’t want to carry on they are too hard”. Donnoven has really battled with the eye movement exercises, but as the days have gone on the results are looking better.

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Our day started at 5:30am, for once Donnoven was excited, energetic and full of life to get out of bed, he had finished his breakfast and was dressed by 6am, who was this child, on a normal day going to school he would still be getting out of bed thinking about what cereal he wanted or if he should go to the bathroom first. Today was different as he was going to the Dore Center to have his evaluation done with the “Cool” machines.

He had put on his hearing aids and brushed his teeth and hair without being told to do so five or six times. Once we were both ready we jumped in the car at 6:20am to travel to Sandton. Living in Centurion we are with the flow of traffic so it takes up to 2hours to get there.

We arrive at 8am, early for our appointment so I find a garage with good coffee, Donno finds a chocolate, chips and Juice, so of course I say you can have the juice but not the others, as it is only 8am you know, he laughs at me and thinks I am joking. He only lands up with the juice which is an ice tea (surprisingly).

We go into the Dore Center and hand in the forms. Jo meets us and takes us into the room to discuss the questionnaire, Donno is left to run a mock with tennis balls and bean bags, he was told not to touch the big balls but he just cant help it he needs to, whats so special about them that he cant touch them.

We go into another room with a machine that Donno calls the astronaut machine, it is a platform that gradually moves while you have to stay focused on the picture that is on the wall, then to try focus on where the picture is with your eyes closed, while the platform moves, very interesting to watch.

The third room we entered is with a computer and a long straight machine on the wall, Donnoven is asked to sit on a chair as still as possible and to have wires put on his temples and between his eyes, I thought to myself “fat chance of him sitting still”, but he proves me wrong and does so,  we sit inside with the lights off for about 5mins in order for our eyes to adjust and focus on what is around us. The machine starts with a little red light and what has to happen is you have to follow the light without moving your head just your eyes must move, you are not allowed to jump ahead or anything else, except focus on the red light.

We go into the waiting room to have a light snack and some juice, Donnoven and I are on the floor building with Lego blocks, well not me I am just watching him. Jo calls him to do one more exercise but this time I was not allowed to go with. He returned to his building and we sat for a short while, then Kirsty called us to go into her office to talk about what had happened during the course of the day and what the results were, we spoke for a long period of time and everything was explained to us in full detail.

Jo explained all the exercises and what the program is all about and how she wants us to follow the routines.

The team at the Dore Center are wonderful and really know there stuff.

We left to drive back home and Donnoven was talking about all the events that happened and how he felt while doing them.  We arrived home at 2pm. The rest of the day was spent playing with his brother Joshua.

Ananzi Education

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This is a little back round on Donnoven so that you are able to see what has been done to get where we are today.

Donnoven developed normally until he got Malaria at the age of two and half and was in ICU for 5 days on the medication called quinine and we were told due to the strength and quantity given there may be side effects, of course as parents we did not care about the side effects we wanted our child to survive.  There after he was a bit slow in his speech and understanding of words, he spoke very softly and didn’t have much eye contact, he didn’t really partake in games or have many friends, I became a little concerned on his levels compared to his peers so I took him to a speech therapist thinking it was that, the therapist asked have I had his hearing tested, which of course I hadn’t as that was not what i thought was the problem, I had to as this was the procedure to follow.

I took him to the local audiologist, who said he had severe hearing loss mainly in his left ear. So when filling in all the questions, the audiologist spoke to me about the Malaria and what the side effects could be, we did not want to believe the results so we went for a second opinion (which was the same) and then had Donnoven go for the same test but was done while he was under  anesthetic in order to get a 100% accuracy. The results were no different actually worse. We then went back to the audiologist who did one more test and the results were still same. What actually happened is the high pitch follicles (hairs) were burnt due to the medication (side affects).

He got a pair of hearing aids, which he took to immediately, he could hear now, so he was happy, we the parents took some time to get used to them, He received the hearing aids at the age of 4. He has been with an Occupational Therapist and Speech Therapist since. Donnoven has been for many tests regarding his levels of communication, understanding and processing of school information and also his levels of energy.

He has been labeled with ADHD from his teachers, not by Medical Professionals, The only thing that a neurologist has said is that he is border line ADHD, and can suggest medication if the parents are not coping, we the parents will always cope before medication. The ways I have tried to help this calm down is by not allowing Fizzy Juice, No TV or any sugars (try my best) during the school days, Friday is known as our “Sugar, TV Overload Day”

Donnoven has good reading skills and enjoys doing maths whereas handwriting, neatness and completing of tasks is not his strong points. Donnoven has always been a very bad sleeper, and tends to only fall asleep when his eyes can not stay open after fighting it for so long. On a school day Donnoven has to wake up at 6am in order for us to leave the house by 7am and go to bed by 7:30pm to say prayer,have a short discussion and  to end a story either being read or made up by Dad and then sleep time is from 8:30pm the lastest. This does not happen every night he tries to stay awake for longer and longer, he sometimes is still awake at 9:30pm, which really confuses us as his diet does not change we make sure, there is little or no preservatives or added sugars. We have tried many different things to get him to sleep, from music to a light being left on, to allowing a dog to sleep with him, none of them have worked.

Donnoven is not a difficult child, he tries really hard to do his best and not to get into trouble or do silly things, he does how ever tend to use his hearing loss to his advantage, like when he does not want to do something or respond he says afterwards “I didn hear you”, but yet say something that is interesting in the same tone he will respond straight away. He is otherwise a happy, healthy 8(nearly) year old boy.

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At Dore, we understand what makes it easy for people to reach their optimal level of learning and performance. The answer lies within the cerebellum - the skill learning centre of the brain. The process of learning a skill is the major role of the cerebellum. It makes the necessary connections between mental and physical processes so that they become permanently hard wired and happen automatically.

Watch Prof Bellum’s explanation about how the brain makes skills automatic.

Different parts of the skill learning centre help to coordinate different processes. For instance, one part of the cerebellum is responsible for fine movements (handwriting, eye movement etc.) whilst another part controls memory function.

We are all unique - our cerebellum is no different. This explains why we have some specific skills that are highly developed and some not so developed. It has nothing to do with our level of intelligence - we often find people who come to us, despite struggling with reading, writing or attention, have high levels of intelligence, they just aren’t always able to show it.

The Dore Programme of physical and mental exercise fine tunes and hard wires those parts of your skill learning centre so that learning becomes easy and automatic, giving you optimal performance in reading, handwriting, spelling, physical coordination, attention and memory.

So whatever area you’d like to improve, why not get in touch with one of our trained Programme Advisors and get started now?

Call 086 100 3673

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