Episode 91: Why Smart Kids Struggle – Alex Doman

LD Expert Podcast with Jill Stowell
Why Smart Kids Struggle
Alex Doman

 

Jill Stowell: When you watch your bright child work so hard and still fall behind, it can feel absolutely heartbreaking. You see their potential, you see their curiosity and their kindness, but school feels like climbing up a mountain in flip-flops and you’re left wondering, what am I missing? What else could I possibly do?

 

For so many of our students, what we see on the surface, the reading struggles, the attention issues, the meltdowns after school, the behavior that looks like not trying, it’s only part of the story. Underneath are very real differences in how their brain processes sound, regulates emotion, pays attention, or organizes information. When those underlying systems are working too hard, learning becomes exhausting and kids start to lose faith in themselves long before they’ve run out of potential.

 

Today, we’re going to take a look at how we get to the root of those challenges. We’ll be looking at what’s actually going on in the brain for students with auditory processing challenges, learning and attention issues, anxiety, and executive function struggles, and how we can use the brain’s incredible ability to change to support them in a deep and lasting way.

 

Welcome to the LD Expert Podcast, your place for answers and solutions for dyslexia and learning differences.

 

I’m your host, Jill Stowell, founder and Executive Director of Stowell Learning Centers and author of Take the Stone Out of the Shoe: A Must-Have Guide to Understanding, Supporting, and Correcting Dyslexia, Learning and Attention Challenges.

 

In this episode, I’m sharing a very special conversation with my colleague and friend, Alex Doman, founder of Advanced Brain Technologies and developer of The Listening Program, or TLP, and Vital Neuro.

 

We have used these programs with thousands of students over nearly two decades, and they have been truly life-changing, not only for reading, comprehension, and attention, but also for anxiety, sleep, emotional regulation, and executive function. Alex brings a deep passion for neuroscience, which I love, and a compassionate heart for families we serve, and that combination is rare and powerful.

 

This episode is actually a rebroadcast of a webinar that Alex and his team at Advanced Brain Technologies invited me to be a part of last year. The conversation was so rich and so aligned with what we do at Stowell Learning Center that we wanted to share it with you here on the LD Expert podcast.

 

My hope is that as you listen, you’ll not only understand your child’s struggles in a new way, but you’ll also feel encouraged knowing that there are practical neuroscience-based tools that can make a real difference. Tools that are simple to use, that fit into everyday life, and that truly support the brain at a deep level.

 

We see every day that when families begin this kind of work, things start to change, and we want parents to know that these resources are available right now. Kids don’t grow out of these challenges, but they absolutely can grow through them with the right support in place.

 

I’m so glad we can bring this conversation to you. Here’s my discussion with Alex Doman.

 

Alex Doman: When a student is struggling with focus, reading, behavior, even when they’re bright and getting support, it can be super frustrating. A lot of parents and educators and clinicians supporting them, you know, are often left asking, what am I missing?

 

This is really especially true for our kids that may have been diagnosed with ADHD, dyslexia, auditory processing challenges, anxiety, or on the autism spectrum, just to name a few. And those that haven’t received a diagnosis, but they’re clearly not thriving, and so many of these students are falling through the cracks.

 

Today, we’re going to look beneath the surface. We’re going to look at what’s actually going on in the brain that makes learning harder than it needs to be for some of our students, and what can help create real change for them.

 

I’m honored to welcome Jill Stowell, who is a true leader in this space. Jill’s the founder and Executive Director of Stowell Learning Centers in Southern California, where she and her team have helped thousands of students move beyond learning and attentional challenges.

 

She’s a four-time best-selling author, the creator of The Learning Skills Continuum, has used The Listening Program for nearly 20 years, and was the first provider to integrate Vital Neuro into a learning center setting. Her book, Take the Stone Out of the Shoe, is a powerful, compassionate guide that I recommend highly to every parent and professional.

 

And Jill, I want to thank you for being here.

 

Jill Stowell: Thank you, Alex. I’m really, really looking forward to this conversation. It’s about all the things I love to talk about.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, we’re going to have fun, and we’ve got a great audience, and they’ve really helped shape our discussion today with the questions that they shared during registration. So, Jill, just to kick off, many families come to you feeling stuck, like they do so many of our providers. They’ve often tried everything, right? They believe they’ve tried everything, but their child’s still struggling. Where do you begin in these situations?

 

Jill Stowell: You know, first, I just want to say to parents, you have really good instincts about your children, so chances are whatever you’ve done to help your child has had some impact. But what happens is, often at school or as parents, we’re addressing what we can see. So, we’re addressing the behaviors or the resistance or the reading problem, but there’s something underneath that that hasn’t been addressed.

 

Chances are, just almost always, when a child is struggling, there are lagging, underlying skills that are at the root of the problem. And so, if what you’re doing hasn’t worked, there’s something deeper that needs to be addressed.

 

Alex Doman: So, when these parents are coming to you, and I fully agree, parents are better at this, I think they realize, they know their child better than anyone knows their child. And, you know, when they’re walking in your door, what’s the starting point?

 

Jill Stowell: Well, for us, we want to hear what it is that the parent is seeing. Often, just as the parent describes what they see, we’re starting to put together the pieces of what the underlying skills are that aren’t supporting the student well enough. But then we also do what we call a functional academic and learning skills assessment.

 

So, usually parents are coming because their child is struggling academically or with attention. So, maybe they have a reading problem or math problem. So, of course, we’re going to explore the academics and not just to see what the test scores are, but to look and see what does it look like when the child is trying to do that kind of task, because that gives us a lot of clues about what compensations they’re using, how they’re managing, and what’s missing.

 

And then we look at underlying processing and neurodevelopmental skills, because those are really the skills that allow us to function well academically or socially. So, things like memory, attention, auditory and visual processing, body control, things like that. So, we have to look at those underlying skills as well as what the parent sees, what the academics look like, and determine what’s getting in the way, what skills aren’t supporting them well enough.

 

Alex Doman: You know, having had the privilege of working with you through our work at Advanced Brain Technologies, and you’re incorporating our programs, and having been to your centers, I’ve been able to see this firsthand. And what I share with the audience is that you are looking deep, and you are looking wide, and you’re really trying to take that whole child perspective. So, it’s a very comprehensive approach that you’re taking.

 

And I think as we all look at our work, if we’re a clinician or as a parent, we need to look at that bigger picture of that individual, not just discrete parts of them, right? Because it’s the some of these parts that really lead to the greater whole of the challenges that we’re often seeing.

 

So, as you look at a lot of the kids that are coming through your doors, you work with a lot of really, really bright, smart kids. What are some of the common misconceptions about why these smart kids fall behind? You know, they’re bright, they’re smart, they have the intellect, but they’re still not getting it, and they’re not thriving academically.

 

Jill Stowell: Right. So, because they are smart, and you can see that in other aspects of their life, often when it comes to school, you know, it looks like they’re lazy, or unmotivated, or they don’t care, or school’s not their thing, or they’re not interested, or maybe they have a bad teacher. I mean, there’s a lot of things that, you know, that just simply aren’t true.

 

Kids do care. And whatever you’re seeing, chances are, that’s just, that’s a coping mechanism. You know, if they look lazy, they probably can’t do the work, or it’s so taxing that they just finally just kind of start to give up. So, yeah, it looks like they don’t care, but that’s not it at all.

 

And often, teachers, I mean, teachers are really important in a child’s life, and yeah, there are some things that some teachers do that aren’t the best approach. But in general, this is also not a teacher problem. It’s a skills problem.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah. And also, I mean, it can be a motivation problem, and in some cases, based on student interest, right? We engage, we attend to things that we find interesting, engaging, motivating. So, you can see these moments where kids are super engaged in certain subjects, and others, they currently turn off. So, how much do you think just their interest in the subject, and how we’re presenting information impacts our child’s engagement?

 

Jill Stowell: You know, that definitely has an impact. We all tune in better for things that are really interesting to us, or really important to us. But that is not the whole picture. And kids do not want to fail, and so kids are not choosing to not do well in school. There is something getting in the way.

 

And when you have to work excessively hard on something, eventually, it becomes really hard to motivate yourself to do that, or to maintain your attention for a long period of time to do that thing. I mean, that’s true for all of us.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, for sure. You know, can you think of a student that you’ve worked with? I mean, there’s been so many, but does one stand out whose real struggle was much deeper than maybe what you were seeing at the surface level? I think maybe just that example might be helpful for those joining us.

 

Jill Stowell: So, the student that pops into my mind is Michael. His mom actually just called me like three weeks ago. I hadn’t heard from her in years, and she called me, and it was so amazing.

 

So, Michael was 13 when he started with us, and he was really smart. He was really nice. But he didn’t have friends, and he was literally failing every class. And he was in a private school so, if he didn’t bring his grades up, he was going to be kicked out of the school. And mom was a high school administrator, so she felt terrible not being able to help him.

 

So, when the school looked at this kid, it was like, “Well, he’s failing. He’s not… He’s smart. He’s not giving the effort he needs to… He’s not going to be able to continue here.” But the truth was that Michael had a really significant auditory processing problem, and so in conversations, he would end up saying the wrong thing or saying something someone else just said.

 

And in class, you know, he just wasn’t getting the information. So he’d try to take notes, and they were terrible. He would, you know, again say the wrong thing. He wouldn’t hear the due dates. And it really, really impacted his comprehension. And we ended up doing auditory stimulation and training with him, which we used TLP and active auditory training and then emphasized comprehension.

 

And Michael, his grades started to go up, and he got to stay in his school. He made friends, which was really important because he was a teenager. And as a senior in high school, he was the president of his high school. And his mom shared with me when I talked to her just a couple weeks ago. She said, “You know, he was one of 60 students in the country as a senior in high school who got early acceptance to Brown Medical School as a senior in high school.”

 

Amazing, you know, all that potential was there, but he couldn’t access it, and he just looked like a kid who wasn’t trying hard enough. And by the way, he is now an anesthesiologist.

 

Alex Doman: Wow. It was in him, and you know, Jill kind of maybe what an incredible success. Contrast that with if you hadn’t worked with Michael, what would you have expected may be his trajectory?

 

Jill Stowell: You know, that’s really an interesting question because at the same time that Michael came for assessment, there was another Michael who came for assessment who was 13. He was dyslexic, and he did not get help. His mom continued to call me over the next few years, and the last time I talked to her, she called me and she said, “Michael just got picked up for shoplifting, and when I asked him why he did that, he said, at least it’s something I’m good at.”

 

So, you know, there’s all kinds of potential in kids, and if it isn’t able to come out, these smart kids are going to find something to do. And it doesn’t always mean they’re going to go, you know, to shoplifting or something like that, but are they really going to reach the potential and be able to do the things that they dream of?

 

Alex Doman: Yeah.

 

Jill Stowell: Yeah.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, I’ve had conversations with, you know, my father who’s been in this field now over 50 years himself, and you know, he’ll look at some kids that are very bright when they’re very young and say, “Either they’re going to run this country or they’re going to end up in prison.”

 

And not a commentary on our current political environment by any means, but just the fact that really bright individuals will find a way and something to do that can be incredibly positive or go completely the wrong direction. And you brought something up, Jill, that for me is always so hard, is that parents will call a provider, they’ll call us at ABT to get information. They become convinced it’s going to help their child, and they don’t move forward.

 

And sometimes it is years later, and that child is farther behind, and now there’s enough pain to take action. And I just, for those that are with us, know that sooner we get started with these interventions, and we start doing this work and get to the root cause, the more your child is going to thrive.

 

And I just can’t emphasize that anymore. It’s heartbreaking when we see the stories of the other Michael, you know, they just didn’t have a belief in themselves, so they found something they could be successful with.

 

You know, maybe to switch a little bit, you know, one of the most memorable ideas that I take away from your book, Take the Stone Out of the Shoe, is that students don’t need to be taught how to limp more gracefully. They need us to take the stone out of their shoe, and I love that analogy.

 

And the tool that you use to do that, it’s a model you’ve developed over the decades of your work, is something called the Learning Skills Continuum. I’d like to bring up a visual, if that’s okay. And if you could walk us through how this works, you know, what it reveals, and why it’s been so powerful for the families and those professionals that you also train and support. So I’m going to go ahead and bring that up for you now, Jill, and maybe you can just walk us through that.

 

Jill Stowell: Okay. So we look at learning kind of like a ladder. We call it a continuum because it builds. But if you think of a ladder, at the top of the ladder are academic skills, school skills, social skills, things that kids and eventually we all need to be able to do in our lives are up at the top of the ladder. That’s where we want to function, and we want to function optimally up there.

 

But just like a ladder that has rungs, there are underlying skills that support being able to work comfortably at the top of the ladder. So if you think about a time where you have been on a ladder, maybe you’re changing a light bulb or something like that, and if any of those rungs on your ladder are wobbly or unstable, well then, a lot of your mental energy and attention is going to be diverted from the task that you’re trying to do because you don’t want to fall off that ladder.

 

Well, that is exactly what happens to our students who have weak underlying skills. So they’re expected to work at the top of the ladder at school. They’re expected to listen, to take notes, to read, to do their assignments, to follow through with things.

 

But as they’re trying to do that, they’re battling with some weak skills or trying to compensate for some weak skills underneath, like unstable rungs on the ladder. And so, of course, their attention is diverted, is divided. It impacts their memory and just gets in the way of them working as easily and comfortably as they have the potential to work.

 

So if you look at this ladder, down at the very bottom, we have core learning skills. And core learning skills are really our body awareness and control. That’s, you know, from infancy, we’re born with reflexes that kind of get us moving in the first months of life. And then those reflexes integrate so that as higher levels of control take over in the brain.

 

But if some of the reflexes don’t integrate, if the connections aren’t made at that really foundational body level, then that’s going to impact our attention, our regulation, our ability to settle and feel secure. It impacts visual skills. So that’s the core learning level. All learning starts with movement. And that’s that level.

 

And then the next level up on the continuum is a little higher in the brain. It’s processing skills. And those are things like memory, attention focus, auditory processing, which isn’t how your ear is hearing, but it’s how the brain is perceiving the information that comes in through the ears.

 

Visual processing, same thing, not your vision, but how the brain perceives and works with information that comes in through the eyes. Processing speed, language processing, all of those kinds of things are at that next level up on the continuum.

 

And then we have executive function, which are high-level thinking skills that help us to self-manage. So the skills that help us to problem solve and make decisions and evaluate our behavior and make adjustments, things like that.

 

So all of those things are supporting skills. And if a child is struggling, if an adult is struggling, chances are there are some weak rungs there on their ladder. And so that’s, in our functional assessment, that’s what we’re looking for. What are those skills for that individual that are not supporting them well enough that need to be developed?

 

Alex Doman: You know, Jill, it’s interesting. I’m kind of chuckling to myself because your model very, very much complements what my family has done for so many decades with the neurodevelopmental profile.

 

Jill Stowell: Right.

 

Alex Doman: And what you’re discussing is how human development happens, right?

 

Jill Stowell: Right. Right.

 

Alex Doman: And what are the precursors for every rung on the ladder, which are brain regions, right? So we build the brain from the bottom up, starting with movement. And if we have a point of neurodevelopment that was interrupted for one reason or another or didn’t take place, then that’s going to create a foundational issue lower that’s going to present itself higher because those skills aren’t present.

 

So in your evaluation, in your approach, I know how we do it, how do you determine where the student is on your continuum?

 

Jill Stowell: So that really does happen through our interview with the parent, history, and our evaluation. You know, something you said made me think about a little guy who, I think he was eight when he came, and he really was really struggling with reading and math and all the school skills.

 

But this was a little boy who had, he had been in the NICU and he’d had several surgeries, for like the first six months of his life he had been immobile. He hadn’t been able to move really. And interestingly, we created a plan for him that included core learning skills, because that was really critical to put that movement foundation in there. But we also had a plan to work with the reading skills.

 

Well, as soon as those lower-level body skills integrated and came together for him, everything else came together for him. So, it’s very interesting how, you know, sometimes there are, there are glitches or skills that need to be developed at multiple levels. And sometimes, you know, they just can’t access the higher-level skills because of a lower foundational issue.

 

Alex Doman: And I think it’s important here, you know, for everybody, and I think for the clinicians with us, it will be obvious, but for the parents is what we’re dealing with is brain plasticity. The brain’s malleable, it’s changeable throughout our lifespan.

 

I actually just got a report from a provider working with a client with a sleep issue and she’s a hundred years old. She’s had this big, big sleep issue. She has been working with Vital Neuro and she’s sleeping through the night now. And it’s proof again, that our brain is always plastic. It’s always responsive. So what you’re really doing is you are using an evaluative approach to functionally look at neurological organization.

 

Jill Stowell: Right.

 

Alex Doman: And you are developing a plan to harness brain plasticity in training the brain how to do these things. So these higher-level skills can emerge.

 

Jill Stowell: Yup.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah. Yeah. So it’s exciting. You know, how does this model really help you clarify the next steps? You know, often there’s a lot of pieces, right, that need to be put into place. So how do you kind of take that approach and take out the guesswork and inform that program?

 

Jill Stowell: So we want to work as efficiently as we can with students. I think probably everybody in the world would benefit from doing training, bottom up and just tuning up their brain. But that’s really time consuming.

 

And so we want to be able to, in our evaluation target, you know, what’s the highest level that we could start? Where do we think, based on the information that we’ve gathered on that continuum, where is the breakdown happening? And it might be at the core learning level, but it might be a processing skills, often it is.

 

And so we look at what are all the areas that we need to develop and we sequence them based on the continuum. And, you know, I know that parents are really concerned about academics and grades and school. I mean, that’s where kids live. And so if I can combine the academics and the underlying skills work, which we usually are able to do with our auditory training, I absolutely want to do that.

 

But I also sometimes know, “Oh, if this foundation isn’t in here, we’re just going to spin our wheels if we work higher.” So that continuum is really important to us in our thinking as we create a child’s plan and the steps in it.

 

Alex Doman: You know, I think a lot of, a lot of parents struggle with where to begin and where to go. And they often, you know, if they have the means, they will go to tutoring if their kids are struggling. And in the schools, they’ll try to navigate the 504 IEP process and go through the accommodations challenge.

 

But we know that these strategies can fall short when these foundational skills kind of aren’t in place. So do you have any thoughts, comments, advice to parents that are going that direction and how that might be guided forward?

 

Jill Stowell: So I always encourage parents, especially when they’re dealing with the schools, you want to take the support that schools are going to give you. You want your child to be noticed and you want them to be supported. But you just have to realize where they’re working.

 

So even special education, you know, and any kinds of supports at school, the 504 plan, the accommodations, the goal of those is to help kids function in the curriculum at school.

 

And that’s important. They are in school, they need support there. But you have to understand that that is not actually getting underneath the problem and really correcting or developing those underlying lagging skills.

 

And so that's why we so often see kids sitting in special education all the way through school or in tutoring all the way through school, because they need the support in order to do it, because they haven't developed the skills to truly do it on their own.

 

And so what our goal is, and I know yours too, Alex, is there's so much potential, and we just want them to be able to access it and become the independent learners, you know, that they have the potential to be.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, thank you, Jill. You know, I think that background is incredibly helpful. And I want to maybe shift a little bit to some of the tools that are supporting the brain at these deeper levels.

 

You know, we talked a bit about the listening program and vital neural, and I'll just help explain those a little bit, kind of set the stage. And then let's maybe dive into how you're applying these tools as part of what you're doing, they support what you've built.

 

So for those that are new to these programs, the listening programs and neuroscience-based music listening method, that is training the brain to process sound and much more helps with self-regulation with attention, with memory, emotional balance, and learning.

 

You know, logistics of it are quite straightforward, it's easy to do. You're generally looking at 15 minutes a day, for some clients, 30 minutes a day, five days a week. They wear headphones, they listen to music that's been specially recorded, produced, designed to actually train the brain following the same developmental progression that Jill has described.

 

And we train across frequency zones, starting with the foundational areas of sensory motor movement with low frequency sound, moving to higher level skills of communication with mid frequency sound, and then to cortical function, high cortex function, executive function, in learning with higher frequency sound, and then balance it with a full auditory spectrum.

 

It's a progressive program. So every time we do a TLP session, it's preparing us for the next session. And the beautiful thing about it is all the individual has to do, whether it's a very young child or an adult or any age in between, is put on the headphones and listen.

 

It doesn't require any output. All they have to do is listen. It can be quietly engaged for a young child coloring, playing with blocks, playing simple games. We don't want to do screens necessarily, but really, it's designed to fit into someone's everyday lifestyle, to fit into a learning center environment for use at home, for use in a classroom. So, incredibly versatile.

 

So as Jill shares how they apply the listening program, that gives you some context for it. It can be done through an online model, where you simply get a subscription to the listening program online, or you can actually have an iPad with a whole host of programs that are designed to best support the individual that's going to be using that program preloaded.

 

And Vital Neuro, which we'll also speak about, is a mobile EEG-based neural feedback system. It involves wearing a headphone that reads brainwave activity in real time. And when we're doing Vital Neuro, the brainwaves are being read, and to see what the current state of the brain is.

 

Is the brain attentive or distracted? Is it stressed? Are we relaxed? So where are we in this moment? And by reading that brain activity in real time, we understand where that individual is.

 

And then when using the program, you have the ability to train different brain functions from sleep as a pre-sleep ritual, meditation for deep relaxation, or meditation practice relaxation to reduce stress response, focus for focus and flow state, or optimization for executive function skills.

 

So what the system does is reads the brainwave activity. You select a goal area that you want to work on. Sessions are from five to 30 minutes, like the listening program. We'd recommend about 15 minutes a day or more if you can, five days a week to use the system. But it has what's called a patented system of neuro-responsive music.

 

We know that we all respond to music. The unique thing about Vital Neuro is that music responds to us. The composition changes in response to our brain activity. So as the brain reaches the goal of the frequency band that it should be in for where we want that individual to be in that moment, it gets rewarded.

 

So this whole reward network cycle is engaged with personalized music. There's visuals for some of the protocols for those that want to engage with the visuals. So it gives real-time feedback for that brain training.

 

So we can change brain state in real time in the moment. And then again, as we use it over time, like the listening program, take advantage of brain plasticity to create permanent lasting change with those programs.

 

Jill, you have, I couldn't begin to count how many kids you've done TLP with and Vital Neuro with now. So you may be starting with the listening program. You've used this for nearly 20 years with your students.

 

Why is this such an important part of your foundational work?

 

Jill Stowell: So I have to say, believe it or not, Alex, you were the person who introduced me to auditory stimulation back in 2000 or 1999, I think. And it has been just an incredible piece of our program for all those years.

 

Virtually every student that we see, with very, very few exceptions, TLP is recommended as a part of their program because it supports all levels of the continuum and it really supports everything we're doing.

 

And I want to talk a little bit more about the frequencies because the brain can process this wide range of frequencies. Some of them we're not even aware of, but they impact our system and our functioning. And so those low frequencies, we call them the body sounds. They are grounding and centering, and regulating, and organizing.

 

And so when we're doing core learning skills, the low frequency work in TLP is supporting all of what we're doing with trying to integrate reflexes and settle the system and organize the body for attention and body control.

 

So we feel like that's a really important piece of it. We know that the exercises that we're doing are really impactful. As soon as we put that low frequency training in there, it just boosts up everything that we're doing. So it's really important.

 

Then the mid-range frequencies are really the language sounds. Most of our speech sounds are in the mid-range. If you can imagine, let's say your brain couldn't process the S sound. Well, now think about what it would sound like to listen and you're not ever hearing the S sound in words because you're not processing that frequency.

 

Well then, yeah, you're getting a lot of the information, but it's not real clear. It's not always accurate. And so many students who struggle with learning actually have a language-based learning challenge or learning disability.

 

And that, so working with getting the brain to process all of the frequencies in that communication language mid-range zone is really important because now the brain can hear the sounds. Now the sounds are going to make sense for reading and spelling, for better articulation and communication, for comprehension.

 

It's a huge part of what we do. We do auditory stimulation and training, which uses TLP as a passive listening to stimulate the brain to be able to process the sounds. And then we do an active auditory training where now that the brain can process those sounds, we want to get those frequencies into the voice so that the voice then becomes the ongoing stimulus for the auditory system.

 

And in that process, we're developing reading, language processing, comprehension, articulation, intonation, all kinds of things that are critical for learning and communication. And then the high frequency sounds are really like our energizers.

 

Yes, they stimulate executive function, those high-level skills, and provide the energy to our brain for motivation and getting going with things and keeping going and being confident and keeping up our energy for learning.

 

So because of how TLP is constructed and all that frequency training, it supports every single thing we're doing. And it's getting, it's stimulating the brain in a way that we can't do just with movement or words or really, really good teaching.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, that's a great explanation, Jill. And it has me think of relationship of the listening program and Vital Neuro because they're both frequency-based. So the listening program is working with that range of frequencies that we can process auditorily from 20 to 20,000 hertz.

 

And we know there's a broader spectrum of frequency that we feel so that when we use the waves, air and bone conduction system, that we're actually getting that vibratory input through the body to get a deepening effect. So we're dealing with, say, this range of frequency. But below that range of frequency is the frequency of the brainwaves.

 

And Vital Neuro is training the brainwave frequencies. And with sleep, meditation, relax, that lower, the low, low foundational slower waveforms, then with focus, the mid-range frequencies, and then with optimize the higher.

 

So we're dealing with the brainwave frequencies with Vital Neuro, then these audible higher spectrum frequencies from low, mid to high with TLP. So now we have this great complement of these together.

 

And I'm interested, you know, when you're using Vital Neuro in the center, I know you're using TLP, you recommend it to all your students. What are you looking for with Vital Neuro when you bring that in and recommend it?

 

Jill Stowell: So usually, especially when we first started, we were looking for a tool to help students with anxiety and to help students with attention. Those were the two pieces.

 

And we work on those things in other ways in the center. But Vital Neuro is an amazing tool. It's easy. And it's, you know, it doesn't take a lot of time. It's enjoyable. I do it almost every day myself. And so it's a really good tool for helping students who feel a lot of anxiety and agitation. And it's also really good for helping kids get into a calm, focused state.

 

I really, I really love using this tool with students when we're working on executive function and higher level attention. Because we use it kind of as a whole, we start out thinking about what do I, getting the student to think about, what do I really want?

 

This is really great with teenagers and adults. What do I want to have happen in my life? I want to be more focused. I want to be able to start something and really focus on it for 45 minutes instead of feeling like I have to pop out of my chair every five or 10 minutes.

 

So thinking about what goal they have, and then selecting, you know, what am I going to use? Am I going to use relax or focus or optimize?

 

And so kind of working together, create a goal, think about what, how I'm going to use this tool, and then notice what are the results. And I think that is so powerful when we start to really think about, you know, our metacognition, think about our thinking and our learning and what it feels like, wow, I felt really motivated today.

 

Okay, what does that feel like? Because you want to be able to access that anytime. Or, I felt really relaxed. Great. How do you access that when you're in the middle of challenges at work or at school?

 

So what I love about that tool is it's giving us a way to really intentionally think about our brain state, and then Vital makes it easy to train the brain to get into that state.

 

Alex Doman: Beautiful. You know, this comes up a lot for us, Jill. So I just love your perspective. I know how we approach it. But when a family is deciding, well, do I do the listening program? Do I do Vital Neuro? Or do I pair them together in this time? Or a clinician, right, a practitioner is making those recommendations for a client. What advice do you give them?

 

Just maybe, you know, a quick takeaway, you know, that gives them a framework, perhaps to work from.

 

Jill Stowell: So, you know, both tools, I seriously will say that all brains would benefit from using both tools every day. But we have to be realistic, what will we actually do?

 

And so if I see that there's an auditory issue in there that really, you know, if I, I think it depends, but if we need to really go after that auditory processing for the purpose of reading or comprehension or communication, I'm going to use TLP.

 

If, you know, I think I was sharing with you recently that we're going to be starting a distance learning client, a college student, the auditory skills seem to be in place, but he's very concerned about anxiety and attention.

 

And so for him, he's very busy, I'm not going to be able to get him to do two things every day on his own. But Vital, I think is going to be an incredible tool for him. So we chose that because we felt like he would, it would meet the need, and he would be able to do it.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, yeah. And maybe one more thing I would just add is if there are, you know, if there are sensory processing issues that more foundational, I'm always going to want to begin with a listening program, and then ladder with Vital Neuro. But often, Vital Neuro works great for those kids to get them present and ready to listen.

 

Jill Stowell: Yes.

 

Alex Doman: So you need to be working with these tools yourself, in your family. And then, you know, I've seen so much creativity, and they give you just the flexibility to do all sorts of things. So really helpful to have your perspective with so many individuals and with all your teachers in your learning centers, right, doing this every day.

 

You've been incredible teachers to us, Jill, I just want to say about how to apply the tools we've created in the listening program, and also with Vital Neuro because it is practitioners such as yourself, you're sharing your experiments and your experience that broaden the aperture of application and the creativity with how these tools can be applied.

 

So, thank you for continuing to be part of that feedback loop that helps us get better at what we're doing.

 

Boy, time is flying. So I'm going to, before we get into a couple of questions from our group, Jill, what continues to give you hope in this work? What keeps you coming back decade after decade to help these students?

 

Jill Stowell: Yeah, it is the changes that we see in real life for families. You know, I had a family say to me, their son was dyslexic, we started working with him and a couple of months later. The mom said, everyone in the family is talking to each other differently.

 

That's amazing. When we can make an impact, that's going to make life easier for everyone.

 

I really wanted to share something, and I know we're running out of time, I'll be quick with this, but…

 

Alex Doman: You're good. Please take your time.

 

Jill Stowell: We have a student, which you and I talked about several times, because, her name is Adeline. She was a senior in high school when we started working with her. She's a remote student. And she has APD, auditory processing disorder. She knew that she was diagnosed when she was eight.

 

And so she became a real advocate for it. She has her own Instagram channel where she educates the public, kids and teens, and educators about APD. But it was really, really impacting her whole life.

 

And so we started her on TLP, which she did religiously, and auditory stimulation and training. So our active auditory training and processing skills training. So we worked for about a year together. But she started in March, and she always was sharing with me what changes she was seeing in herself, which was amazing.

 

And so on Thanksgiving, she emailed me. So she started in March. So in November that year, she emailed me and she said…

 

“Today was Thanksgiving. It's the beginning of the major holidays, which means noise and a lot of it. Honestly, I very much disliked the last six months of the year. Too many holidays, too much noise, too much input equals exhaustion. I went into today thinking I was going to take several noise breaks.

 

My family hosted 32 people for Thanksgiving. That's a lot of people and conversations and listening. Like, wow. However, I didn't take a single noise break.

 

Looking back, I've come so far. This would not have been possible without training, understanding how my body and mind works. It's just cool to look back on all the progress I've made.

 

You guys, progress is real and absolutely possible. It takes freaking hard work, but it's always there.”

 

That's why I keep doing this for the changes in real life that kids and families get to experience.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah. We are, it's incredibly energizing, Jill, when you and other providers involve us in your individual client story. That's what keeps us going. And it's been a blast to just kind of watch her process and now to see her be brave enough and have the vulnerability to share her experiences and then to now take this to the next step to help others. It's just how it should be, right? It's full circle.

 

Do you happen to know her Instagram handle, Jill? I know someone has asked for it. I'm sure everyone's pretty curious. I'm not remembering off the–

 

Jill Stowell: Oh. Not of the top of my head. I'm so sorry, but we’re–

 

Alex Doman: Here's what we'll do. We will get it, Jill, after and when we share the webinar recording in the next few days, we'll include that Instagram handle, everybody, so you can follow and engage with her account. So we'll follow up with you, Jill, and get that.

 

We have had a lot of great questions that shaped our conversation today, again, from registrations and so many that have come in. So I'd like to try to bring in a couple that may have the broadest application to everyone with us.

 

And I just want to share a lot of your questions are so good, and we want to be able to answer them. So if we didn't answer a specific question, please schedule a consultation with us at ABT.

 

Let us help you. We don't want your questions to go unanswered, and some of the questions you've asked require some questions from us to get some more context and to be able to have the time to be thoughtful in response to what you're asking, because it's really important to us that we do this right for you.

 

One question has come up, Jill, and I'm going to ask you to answer this, and it's, how do you explain to parents that TLP isn't a one-time fixes everything forever? It needs to be used due to the fact the brain's constantly changing due to circumstances.

 

So really, the context of how we can be using the listening program with a specific goal in mind, achieve that goal, but we may need to come back to it. Could maybe speak to that just from your experience?

 

Jill Stowell: Okay. So our brain is dynamic, and depending on what our circumstances are, how we're feeling, if we're sick, if we're tired, if we're stressed, we're going to be functioning more or less optimally. And our auditory system is a part of that, our energy is a part of that.

 

So when we use TLP for students, we really have some specific goals in mind. Often it is related to reading or writing or comprehension, communication, something like that.

 

So TLP is helping the brain be ready, open the door for the instruction that we are going to give them, and be ready to accept that and benefit from it. And so once those skills are in place, once the child can read, they can read, and they're not going to lose that.

 

And so you might think, okay, well now we're done with the learning center, they're doing fine in school, great, we don't need to listen anymore. And maybe you don't, but it depends on the system.

 

And I do kind of have an example here. I mean, some of our students, they're just doing great, and they go on and do well, and maybe they never pick up their listening again. But others, they really find that they need that ongoing support, or things kind of, you know, it's kind of like, ah, I'm not feeling, I don't know, I'm just a little down, I'm not feeling that motivated.

 

The listening can support that with those high frequencies. So it's a tool that if you really think about how you're using it, it's a tool you can always bring back.

 

And I've done that for myself. I don't actually listen every day. I do vital pretty much every day. But there are times when I say, I need to get my listening out. Because I just know, you know, I need the boost, I need the support. So it's a great tool.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah. And you know, having, you know, been involved in the development of both the listening program and Vital Neuro, I've done thousands of hours with both programs. With that base, I have periods that I take breaks, then I revisit it.

 

Right now, I'm revisiting the listening program, and in time and in playing with that, after really focused work with Vital Neuro, and it's, I'm getting more from it again, rediscovering it.

 

And then some days I'm stacking them together. And because I know the tools, I know exactly what I need when, right. So I've got the option to go to either one.

 

Jill Stowell: Yeah, it's really interesting. If you think about it, there are some people that can manage in their life pretty well with an okay diet, and they can manage fine. But as soon as an additional stressor or something else comes along, now they're not feeling well, and they need to take care of themselves better.

 

Well, but other people, their system is very fragile, and they can't afford to have just an okay diet, they need to have a really good diet. Well, that's kind of the same with listening. There are some people, and I've had some people say to this to me, you know, I'm a listener for life, because this supports me in a way that nothing else does.

 

And so you just have to be aware for yourself and your child. You know, if you've got kind of a fragile system, put that support in there, keep it going all the time. If you've got a super strong system, great, bring it back as needed.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, beautiful. You know, somebody asked, can it be used with adults, we're a couple of examples, we use this as adults, but just to give some age span expectations for the programs. The listening program has been used to our knowledge successfully, meaningfully as young as nine months of age with an infant.

 

In fact, this was a young child that had had bilateral strokes at a very young age, and was a very important part of her rehabilitation. So if we can get headphones on, in some capacity, we can start TLP. And we go again, throughout the lifespan with Vital Neuro, generally about age six and older would be appropriate in terms of sensor contact and neurodevelopmental progression.

 

And again, through the lifespan as the example I gave of this literally 100-year-old woman in a senior living facility that's sleeping better now as a result of the work that she's doing.

 

I wish we had hours, Jill. We don't. I just want to thank you for the incredible depth, the clarity that you've brought to our conversation today.

 

To everyone that's with us, thank you for joining us. We hope you're walking away with a clear understanding of why some of our smart kids are struggling and how real change begins when we get to the roots and address the underlying cause.

 

If this conversation resonated with you, I certainly hope did, we really highly recommend Jill's book. Again, the title is Take the Stone Out of the Shoe.

 

Where do we get the book, Jill?

 

Jill Stowell: Well, it's available at Amazon. I also wanted to share, we do have a lot of free resources for parents about auditory processing and many, many other things. If they go to our website, stowellcenter.com/newsletter, we don't flood your inbox, we do send out two newsletters a month that have tools and helpful things for parents. But it gives you, going there gives you access to the portal for parents and educators, free resources, all kinds of stuff. So including my other book, At Wit's End, you can get a free copy there.

 

Alex Doman: Yeah, Jill, thank you. That's incredibly generous.

 

And for parents that are in the Southern California area, if you want to explore working with Jill and her team, you can find a Stowell Center near you.

 

And for the majority of you that will be out of that area, they do have an extensive remote program offering. And for professionals interested in operating a learning center, learning from her extensive work and model, they do do consulting and help learning centers as well. So something for you to explore.

 

So again, to contact Jill and follow her work, stowellcenter.com, there's two L's in Stowell. To learn more about the listening program or Vital Neuro to get started or to schedule a consultation with one of our team members, give us a call at 1-801-622-5676.

 

You can also email [email protected] and visit us at advancedbrain.com, follow on Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

And everyone, thank you again for being with us. And Jill, thank you once again, and everyone make it a great day. Take care.