Ten year old Ross Odell is celebrating a huge triumph of his own this year. The Umhlanga lad recently started the new year as a pupil at a local mainstream school, after years of receiving special remedial education because of his severe dyslexia. It is an achievement that has turned Ross into one of the early success stories of the Dore programme for treatment of learning difficulties.
Mum Karen Odell attributes her son’s success directly to the Dore programme’s unique exercise-based methods, which have seen him juggling bean bags and balancing on wobble boards daily in order to address the root cause of his condition.
Says Karen, “Ross was diagnosed with Dyslexia in 1993 and his difficulties caused a lot of frustration and helplessness for him personally, as well as for the family. We found that his reading fluency and speed were not age-appropriate, and he had major difficulty with spelling.”
Because of his poor progress academically as a Grade 1 pupil at Crawford College La Lucia, Karen made the decision to place her son in Livingstone Primary School, a Morningside institution which caters specifically for children with learning difficulties. He started there in Grade 2, but was eventually put back into Grade 1 because he didn’t seem to be coping. Ross made good progress at Livingstone, and proceeded through to Grade 3 over the next few years. But it was only once he’d worked through the Dore programme for six months from August of last year that Karen felt confident enough to move him back into mainstream education at Crawford College North Coast.
“He is now doing so well academically and we’ve seen him a massive improvement in his schoolwork,” says Karen. “He still struggles a bit with spelling, but he has a few more months left on the Dore programme, so I’m sure that will improve soon enough. He’s also far more confident and outgoing now.”
Karen explains that the family is also considering taking Ross off the daily 20mg Ritalin dosage he has been on since prior to starting the Dore programme. “The initial side effects from the Ritalin were terrible,” she reports. “He would have awful headaches, stomach aches and terrible mood swings, almost depression, if he’d taken it. There was a noticeable difference in his symptoms, but I wasn’t entirely happy about having him on the drug in the first place.”
Both mum and son are quite comfortable with the idea of ceasing his Ritalin intake as they believe that he does not need it any more to cope with day-to-day life. Studies have shown that most patients who complete the Dore programme no longer need to continue their Ritalin treatment. Although its founder and researchers are reluctant to call it a cure, the results worldwide appear to speak for themselves.
The family had also tried the Davis Dyslexia Correction programme, which involves teaching patients how to recognise and control the mental state that leads to distorted and confused perceptions of letters, words and numerals, as well as the ability to think with symbols and words. While Ross did experience an improvement in his symptoms under the Davis treatment, both he and his mum were unhappy that his treatment included regular doses of Ritalin.
Karen Odell was familiar with the devastation and helplessness described by Dore founder, Wynford Dore, when he visited South Africa in 2006, as he explained how his eldest daughter Susie had attempted suicide as a direct result of depression due to her severe dyslexia. The experience, he said, had triggered his life-long quest to offer sufferers like Susie another option.
“Here was this father describing many of the emotions we’d been through as a family,” says Karen. “Ross’s dad has Dyslexia as well, as do one of his uncles, so it really was like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel when we heard Wynford Dore speak about his treatment.”
On most days Ross is quite happy to perform his personalised Dore exercises for five minutes twice a day as is required by those working through the 12 to 18 month programme. “It’s sometimes fun,” he says. “I get to throw bean bags around and play balancing games to help my brain to work properly.”
Karen Odell has nothing but praise for the programme: “In just six months, the Dore programme had already assisted my son in his reading fluency and accuracy. His memory has also improved significantly, and as a result of these factors his self esteem has also improved greatly. The Dore method has been a great relief for both Ross and me.”