Our RPM journey started in January 2014 when we attended a six-day workshop with Erika Anderson from ACE Teaching & Consulting. Prior to that, I had already read all of Soma’s books, had watched the videos available on the HALO website, and had started doing RPM with my son Ethan on my own. However, nothing had prepared me for what I was to witness during this workshop. Ethan was very accurate with pointing at paper choices and Erika quickly moved from two to three and even four paper choices. Ethan was able to select the correct answers in math and science and also discussed stories. On day three of the workshop Erika even tried the 3-stencils and this is when Ethan had his first open ended answer. My husband and I were all in tears and simply blown away as we witnessed for the first time that our son was smart and had so much wisdom hidden inside him. He was able to share his biggest fear of cars, and explained to Erika why he had a meltdown.
I was so inspired by what I witnessed that I was determined, as never before in my life, to learn and improve myself even further and to be able to teach and communicate with my son as Erika was able to. After the workshop, for the first 2-3 months, I was consulting with her every week and was sending her short videos of me and Ethan in order to receive feedback from her. I want to emphasize that, in my experience, it’s very important to be consulting with an RPM provider in the beginning, so as to not get discouraged if things don’t go as expected. In our case, when Ethan was doing RPM with me, he would select either only the right paper choice or only the left. He needed synthesizing and Erika was able to help me with that, as well as with other challenges that later arose. Ever since, we have attended workshops with Soma, Lenae Crandall and of course with Erika Anderson again. Each time I learned more and improved my techniques as all these three practitioners have so much to share and also have so much experience with any type of behavior!
Ethan has made incredible improvements since then. He is now able to type on a keyboard, hand-write independently and say the letters and words when spelling.
When I look back, I feel that one of the biggest reasons RPM has made such a dramatic change in our lives is because we presumed competence and started exposing Ethan to age-appropriate books. From there on, he quickly caught up with academics and now he is taught grade-level academics. He is motivated to learn and he can express his thoughts and opinions and dreams. ...His behavior has significantly improved thanks to that and now he has his own voice and can let me know why he is frustrated or what he wants. For instance, he has been able to share where he wants to go on vacation, where and how to celebrate his birthday, etc., all these things that were even unthinkable to dream of prior to RPM.
Please view Ethan’s blog where I have shared some of his writings.
I was so inspired by what I witnessed that I was determined, as never before in my life, to learn and improve myself even further and to be able to teach and communicate with my son as Erika was able to. After the workshop, for the first 2-3 months, I was consulting with her every week and was sending her short videos of me and Ethan in order to receive feedback from her. I want to emphasize that, in my experience, it’s very important to be consulting with an RPM provider in the beginning, so as to not get discouraged if things don’t go as expected. In our case, when Ethan was doing RPM with me, he would select either only the right paper choice or only the left. He needed synthesizing and Erika was able to help me with that, as well as with other challenges that later arose. Ever since, we have attended workshops with Soma, Lenae Crandall and of course with Erika Anderson again. Each time I learned more and improved my techniques as all these three practitioners have so much to share and also have so much experience with any type of behavior!
Ethan has made incredible improvements since then. He is now able to type on a keyboard, hand-write independently and say the letters and words when spelling.
When I look back, I feel that one of the biggest reasons RPM has made such a dramatic change in our lives is because we presumed competence and started exposing Ethan to age-appropriate books. From there on, he quickly caught up with academics and now he is taught grade-level academics. He is motivated to learn and he can express his thoughts and opinions and dreams. ...His behavior has significantly improved thanks to that and now he has his own voice and can let me know why he is frustrated or what he wants. For instance, he has been able to share where he wants to go on vacation, where and how to celebrate his birthday, etc., all these things that were even unthinkable to dream of prior to RPM.
Please view Ethan’s blog where I have shared some of his writings.
