Different ways of knowing, different ways of growing

​A Chance To Grow provides a wide range of services designed to help people at all levels of ability reach their optimal growth. Our focus on brain function affords us the opportunity to offer many approaches that are designed to complement each other and improve quality of life. One family has been with ACTG since its beginnings, and their journey with us – beginning with Boost-Up, the program that is the basis for most of our programming, to clinical services, to PCA services. Their story provides insight into the impact of everything we do.

Michelle Schutt first brought her son Scott, who has serious developmental delays, to Boost-Up when he was 11 years old. Doctors had been unable to tell her what was causing his delays, and their prognosis for him was bleak. She heard about Boost-Up from a friend. “I’m the kind of parent who thinks ‘okay, he is what he is’ but if I can find something to help him that’s not intrusive, okay.” While Scott participated in the program, she availed herself of the resources in our Kretsch Library, named for a family whose son had serious head injuries and who devoted their lives to finding research that could help him. Her reading taught Michelle that there were alternatives to the Special Education teachers who she felt were “not helpful” for her son. “My understanding is that they don’t have much training in brain-based approaches.” After observing its benefits, she became a Boost-Up teacher.

Scott

When ACTG began to explore the use of neurofeedback, a brain-training approach, Michelle was excited, and before long, she launched what became our Neurotechnology Program. ​

What is Neurotechnology?
Neurofeedback and Audio-Visual Entrainment are two holistic brain-training programs offered at ACTG that are designed to balance a person’s brain-waves to help regulate emotions or behaviors. Used regularly, a person can re-train their brain to overcome a variety of health problems, including poor sleep, memory, focus or hyperactivity.

Michelle’s grandchildren Michael (born in 1994), and Kyrie (born in 2003) also had a genetic disorder that caused significant delays. Her daughter (their mom) was working full time. “I knew ACTG so I said I think they’ll pay grandma to be a PCA, so they did.” She has been Mike and Kyrie’s PCA ever since, helping them manage self-care and other tasks. In addition to being a PCA for her grandsons, she serves as a support person for her son Scott, now in his 40s, checking in with him twice a day, taking him on Sunday walks, shopping, and to appointments. 

Scott and Michael

What are Home-Based Services?
Many families require additional help in order to care for a loved one with special needs. We provide in-home Personal Care Assistants (PCA) to children and adults living with physical, mental, emotional or behavioral needs. PCAs assist with routine tasks of daily living, including dressing, bathing, hygiene, eating, transportation, and related household tasks, to help those in need of care become as independent as possible.

Michelle has made sure that her son and grandchildren participated in everything ACTG had to offer them. “Scott had auditory therapy, vision therapy and speech/language therapy here. Mike and Kyrie too, and also OT. And Summer Boost-Up.” She also made sure they got a lot of neurofeedback. “I think it built more brain pathways. All the things ACTG does is trying to encourage brain pathways, Neurofeedback was one way to try that.”
 
Scott, Michael and Kyrie will always have challenges, but the therapies received thanks to Clinical Services, Home-Based Services and Neurotechnology have had a substantial impact. Scott initially was very slow in speech, and while he still has trouble, his ability to pick up vocabulary increased. Michael, who was visually impaired at birth, has improved, thanks to the stimuli provided in vision therapy. Both Michael and Kyrie thrived in good school programs and continue to learn. ACTG helped all three build the foundation for continued growth. “You say ‘developmental delays’ but I say ‘delay.’  Because they are still making strides,” says Michelle.
 
Because of her experiences providing Boost-Up, Neurofeedback and PCA services for her family, Michelle does not think about them in terms of their limitations. “If you have a child with a disability, you have to use their strengths.” She notes, “It’s just a matter of standing back and giving them room to be who they are. Talk to them, give them the opportunity, that’s really important to them. Respect different ways of knowing, give them the opportunity to learn.”
 
When he was in school, “Scott was so curious about so many things that I could never get anybody to understand. He couldn’t read the stuff, he couldn’t take the test, but he learned. He learns by listening. He had all these difficulties with our traditional ways of getting information. For example, he can look at a number, he can’t tell you the name of that number, but if I were to put a 5 and a 3 on the paper, he couldn’t write the 8, but if I put 7,8,9 underneath, he could circle the 8, he knew the concept. It’s the same with letters. Now he is a fount of information, he learned to get himself around the Internet without being able to read and write. Now he’s reading better than he ever has.” 
 
Like Scott, Mike and Kyrie keep on growing and learning, albeit in nontraditional ways. They love sports and have participated in Special Olympics, honing their skills with hours of practice. Kyrie, now 18, is still in a project-based school that allows him to explore his natural interests at his own pace, and where he can stay through transition. Mike, now 27, is interested in cooking. As with Scott, he knows a lot, but is less communicative than Kyrie. “His receptive information is much more than his expressive,” says Michelle.
 
Thanks to ACTG’s Clinical and Neurofeedback Services, all three have continued to make gains, and thanks to our PCA services, they have been able to do so with the love and support of those who know them best, exploring the world around them and enriching the lives of everyone around them. ​​