When I first met Tom he was a very unhappy child. At 11 years of age he couldn’t understand the world around him, remember what he was told or had seen, do maths, think in language, understand social relationships or do maths. In short – he was failing primary school. Yet he was a clever child who was trying hard at school and who genuinely cared about other people.
At our first meeting, Tom had a meltdown. He tore information from the walls. He shouted ‘I want to go to normal school. I hate you.’ He was heart-breakingly distressed.
We managed to assess him over several sessions and found that he had some pretty strong functions and some pretty weak ones too. This is a chart that shows what his cognitive strengths were:
After a few months of exercises, Tom had brought his ability to concentrate and understand the world up to an average level. I’ve highlighted the names of the functions we exercised and after 18 months his cognitive chart looked like this:
Tom achieved his first C, ever, in primary school, has transitioned to mainstream high school and smiles. So do his teachers and his mum.
