ToddD
The Swimming Pool Tips Guy

For a well-reasoned video from Oxford Professor Dorothy Bishop on ‘evaluating alternative solutions for dyslexia’ (in which she uses Dore as her prime example), please see here:

www.dystalk.com/talks/60-evaluating-alternative-solutions-for-dyslexia

Very interested in any feedback anyone has – positive or negative of course.

email address: coreydestiny05@yahoo.co.uk

THANKS!

I have Asperger’s Syndrome (dx’ed as adult) and ADHD (dx’ed at school) and I go regularly to a support group for people with Asperger’s in Warrington (WAspS). These once brought someone down from a company called Irlen’s that deals with these “blue tinted glasses”. They aren’t actually blue tinted they have to do an assesment to see which are the best colour for each child to use. When I was there the lady went through with overlays to test me and when she got to a green/blue one I was suprised that the text seemed to be magnified (I actually asked her if she’d magnified the text). She said it’s not magnified but people with Irlen’s seem to notice that when the correct colour is found the text appears to be magnified (obviously there must be something there as I’d said first about it being magnified before she said about this). The only problem with this is that the NHS refuse to acknowledge Irlen’s as a genuine medical condition (kind of like it took them 40 years to acknowledge that Asperger’s existed and now they’re trying to run around like headless chickens trying to get everyone who was misdiagnosed, diagnosed properly, now they’ve screwed up peoples lives, so they don’t get their asses sued for misdiagnosis and refusing to believe what America realised 40 years ago, and their also doing the same trick with Adult ADHD (the only problem is they can get away with this because people with ADHD have such a short attention span that by the time their banging on the door of the Dr. asking for diagnosis and writing loads of letters to get dx’ed they’ve got bored of trying to get a dx and their attention has gone to something else).

I also wonder however, if there is a placebo affect in the first stages, as you are so desperate for it to work, that anything your child does is attributed to the programme. Are people still convinced of a clear benefit after a year? I know I wasnt after a couple of months.

Of course the people who run the course will say that the lack of results in our case is because we havent completed the whole year, I would be sceptical in saying that ‘what is going to happen at the end of one year? Some sudden transformation?’ If this really works then surely gradual progress would be apparent?

What has worked? A friend told me of a very gifted man in complimentary therapies. Although a little sceptical, some tinctures and a bit of cranial manipulation and my son has made great strides in his concentration. Appointments every 2 months (total appointments will be 3 or 4) are free, cost of tinctures/tablets under £40 (and they last the 2 months) a tiny fraction of what the dore programme has cost me and results came very quickly and are very noticeable! Good luck to all those parents out there trying to find the best way to support your children.

I started to read relatively late, and went from barely reading at all to reading unusually well for my age within less than one week. I’m glad that your son has learned to ride a bike so quickly, but that may not have been down to Dore.

People can change in interesting – often surprising – ways. For obvious reasons, kids often develop more quickly than adults. This can happen completely without interventions such as Dore.

If Dore is prepared to submit to a double blind assessment of the process and the treatment is found to be useful then there’s more fluff to put on the cover of the sales materials = a win for Dore. Even if his top secret proprietary treatment tools are revealed he’ll still make a fortune selling books. Any reluctance to take part in a real scientific study just stinks of snake oil.

I am a mother of a 15yr old boy who has been on the Dore rogramme. I did not have a bad experience with a salesman we had a really mild manner gentleman, but having said that a friend of mine did have a bad experience of a really pushy saleman which did put her off signing up. I rang the centre myself and complained as i did not agree with this. I felt they had let her down by employing this kind of salesman. Because I cannot praise the programme enough. It took about 2mths for things to start changing after that it was up hill all the way. Hes been on the programme for 13th now and done exceptionally well. To those people who have been through the Breakthrough programme and it worked, WELL DONE, really, because I know how hard it must have been at times to get your child to do the exercises. As a parent what ever method works for your child that great. For me I feel we might not have been so successful if we did not have the 6-8 weeks assessment at the Dore Centre and someone at the end of the phone. We worked towards each assessment to measure improvements . This was our insentive. The exercises are also changed after each assessment depending on the results, whether you try the Breakthrough programme or the Dore programme you have to do the exercise religiously, do not miss an exercise unless really ill, and never just because little joey is having a tantrum or the stoppy teenager can not be botherd. Just remember to take a deep breath and keep saying to yourself Im the Parent Im the Parent. Then get them done. The rewards are fantastic.

Wouldn’t it be great if all the agencies worked together and there were no egos.

Would you feel ripped off if yor 11 year old daughter had followed the Dore programme for 11 monhs, been quantatively assessed every 8 weeks and exhibited noticeable improvements in concentration, confidence, sleeping and co-ordination? Not to mention the improved reading and sequencing skills. By the time these exercises are proved to benefit a certain proportion of people and be generally available at lower cost/free, my daughter would have struggled through junior and secondary school.

How much is a Gym membership? Music lessons? Stagecoach? After school clubs? Tutors? Schooltrips? Learning aids?

Had the Dore programme not had such a promising outcome, I would still not be a disgruntled customer. There were no outlandish promises and we had our expectations managed throughout.

I would love to see qualatitive results published and definitive proof but at the end of the day, seeing is believing.

I’d like to have waited and chosen a proven (beyond doubt) treatment, but life’s about making choices and taking risks.

Not only that – how about actually linking the testing on the programme to the problems which are supposedly being treated – not to the ability to balance on a rig or track a dot on a screen?

Since taking my daughter off the programme, I have been corresponding with other disgruntled people who have been through the course. For the reasons above, the guarantee is not worth the paper it is written on. The point here is that everybody involved has a vested interest in the treatment being a success – not least the parents. It seems to me that this is one of the main reasons that the treatment is so expensive: if you are paying that much you really want it to work (I know I did!) and in true emperor’s new clothes style, nobody wants to admit they have been had.

Those who have had positive outcomes should be pushing just as hard as those with negatives for full accountability. If they believe it works for some but not for others then why? A treatment can only be improved by refining it against new data – it’s selfish to simply say “it worked for me so leave it alone”. It’s arrogant to say “the people it didn’t work for didn’t try hard enough”. Has anybody actually tried doing the whole programme without the regular tests and ‘counselling’ sessions (I use the term loosely)? – oh I’m sorry you can’t because they won’t let you have the exercises unless you come to the tests. What about spending 10 minutes twice a day for nine months meditating, playing computer games or praying? We found that the morning session made us all calmer as we got ready for school, this might in turn have improved concentration during the day – do I put this down to cerebellar development? Could be. Could be divine intervention.

In short: if there is something there then they owe it to the world to establish it beyond reasonable doubt; if there isn’t then they should admit it and stop ripping people off.