San Diego Program
Now Enrolling in the Fall Pons Course
September 19 - November 11
The local program is for families who live in San Diego County, and the online option is for those who live too far away to participate at the Brain Highways Center.
Local families may wonder why the online program is not an alternative for them. Simply, nothing compares with doing the program “live.” It’s like choosing between front-row seats at a concert or watching that same show as an HBO special. Sure, if the latter is the only option, then it provides a great way to experience the music. But it’s never going to be the same as being there.
The core program classes, offered at the Brain Highways Center, are for kids ages 3-14. Parents and their children attend hands-on, entertaining weekly classes to improve focus, learning, behavior, coordination, language, and social interactions. New sessions begin every eight weeks.
The San Diego Program FAQs provide more information related class format, fees, registration, and other specifics related to the local program.
Click on each topic to learn more about the core curriculum.
Course Description
It takes two, separate 8-week sessions to present the entire Brain Highways curriculum. The first session focuses on pons development; the second session focuses on midbrain development. Both sessions also include ways to integrate retained primitive reflexes and numerous activities to improve sensory integration and processing.
Basics
There’s a specific order in which the basic neurological movements are presented in the curriculum. Participants do not move on to the next stage of development until they are ready to do so. This ensures that kids (finally) have a chance to lay down neural networks in their natural order of development.
The curriculum also includes opportunities for kids to engage in appropriate school challenges at the same time they’re receiving rich sensory input. This offers new ways for teaching children with Asperger’s, ADD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and other special needs. And guess what happens when we integrate such movements with learning? Kids who were previously known to resist school work are now eager to learn—and they do so with joy and success. Facilitating such experiences at the Brain Highways Center then motivates families to integrate similar sensory input when their kids do homework.
Curriculum Theme
We want parents and their kids to understand the direct relationship between incomplete lower brain development and its effect on behavior, attention, academic performance, coordination, speech, and social interaction. That’s why we provide fun, comprehensible ways for even 3-year-olds to understand this connection.
In fact, teachers and extended family members are often surprised when some of our youngest participants start talking about their pons, midbrain, vestibular system, and proprioceptive system (especially when such adults are unfamiliar with these terms).
Class Format
Classes are grouped by children of similar ages. At each class, staff facilitates different stations whereupon participants engage in new curriculum activities. Classes also present lively demonstrations of concepts, fun games, motivating contests, and opportunities to interact with other families.
Parent-only Classes and Support
We often say that the parents—not the kids—are our true participants. (We’re even known to lightheartedly say that we only allow kids at the Center so that their parents can “practice” on them.) That’s because our primary goal is to help parents become expert facilitators of their child’s brain organization and to learn how to apply this new knowledge to all aspects of life.
Right from the start, parents attend an evening class (without their kids) where they learn the basics of brain organization and how to ensure that their kids have a successful first class. Then, at the beginning of the third week of the session, parents attend a second evening class (again, without their kids) to learn creative Brain Highways techniques that truly make kids want to comply—the first time, every time—even when early brain development is incomplete. (We suspect that you’re shaking your head right now, but these approaches really do work.)
To further assist parents, we provide a wealth of handouts that reiterate and expand on concepts and ideas presented in class. If more support is needed, staff then communicates with parents by phone, email, or in a conference.
At-home Component
Yes, it would be great if early brain development happened just by coming to class . . . but (unfortunately) it does not work that way. To get results, kids in the pons class are required to do a total of 30 minutes of the brain work a day, with that time increasing to 45 minutes in the midbrain session. Such time, however, can be divided and spread over the day.
Sound too challenging to schedule? Then, it’s probably good to know that thousands of prior busy participants have already done so. As part of the curriculum, the staff models lots of ways to integrate the brain work with activities kids already enjoy. We also show families how to combine our at-home component with homework, which then often results in finishing assignments in less time than what it would ordinarily take without such integration.
But most importantly, the temporary time spent reorganizing the brain ultimately frees up an unlimited amount of time in the future. Many of our prior participants readily acknowledge that they used to spend far more than 30 minutes a day dealing with negative behaviors.
Accountability
Participants turn in weekly coupons to verify they’ve completed the at-home component. To note: You really can’t cheat when it comes to brain reorganization. It’s abundantly obvious if the work is not being done, so there is no point in doing the program if there’s no serious commitment to do the at-home component.
We also hold kids accountable for new and improved behaviors once such development is complete. The whole point of building the highways is to bring about new, positive changes.
Drop-in Sessions
In addition to the core classes, participants are encouraged to attend any of our four weekly Drop-ins. Such time offers families more opportunities to use the Center’s apparatus and to develop lower centers of the brain. Since staff leads the games and it’s often more fun to do the work with a group, many families find Drop-ins to be an easy way to complete some of the daily required brain work.
On-going Assessment
When is the reorganization complete? That’s the question everyone wants to know. Our on-going program assessment makes that answer clear to participants.
From the beginning, we keep records of kids’ progress, starting with videoing each participant’s lower brain “baseline.” We then record those results on the child’s on-going assessment sheet.
Throughout the session, staff informally monitors participants’ progress as they watch the kids engage in weekly class activities. At the sixth week of the session, staff once again videotapes the participants doing the brain work and records the latest results on their assessment sheets. Those sheets are then carried over to the midbrain class, as the same process continues (i.e. informal on-going assessment during classes; video assessments on the first and sixth week of the session).
Such on-going informal and more formal assessments provide staff with lots of information. First, there are specific characteristics of each stage of development. While we never identify those distinct features to participants (it would interfere with the natural progression if they were “thinking” about it), the staff knows what to observe.
Second, the staff also knows the order in which those stages naturally evolve, what the last stage looks like, and what basic brain functions, skills, and behaviors are associated with each specific stage of development. When staff confirms that kids have met all of the brain organization criteria, they are done. That means they do not need to continue in any way with the brain work.
Post-grad Parties
If participants’ brain organization is not complete by the end of the midbrain session (and this is often the case as kids begin the program with different levels of development), then they are invited to return to the Brain Highways Center to what we call post-grad parties. We offer these celebrations every two months.
At such times, prior class graduates who are still doing the brain work at home, return to the Brain Highways Center to use the apparatus, be assessed, enjoy treats, and share their new successes. There is no charge for post-grad parties; however, all guests must have completed another 30 hours of the brain work since we last saw them. Such parties not only make it possible for staff to continue to monitor progress, but they also motivate families to finish the work.
