In recent years the teaching profession has done a great deal to improve it's ability to teach. That is their job and the better they do it the more our children will learn. However, in spite of great gains in teaching technology our schools still contain many children who perform well below their potential. Having visited many schools and tested children in four different countries we have found that 64% of our children have nervous systems that are functioning inefficiently for learning.

Certainly good teaching is important but so is good learning. Yet, how children learn rarely gets any attention. Imagine what our students could achieve if equal effort were put into both. Students would go through school self confident, self assured, enthusiastic and achieving up to their potential.

From birth to about the age of six the nervous system goes through an important maturing process. If all goes well, by the age of six our nervous system has acquired all the specific learning skills we need to take in, process and respond to information correctly. The efficient, healthy nervous system that matures properly, is capable of concentrating, filtering, prioritizing, sorting, storing and retrieving information in organized and consistent ways. It is capable of reproducing this information with organized language or with skilled motor function such as writing. It provides these and many other important learning functions with split second speed, automatically and without thought. The efficient nervous system somehow survived the pollutants in the air we breathe and in the food we eat. It somehow survived the many hurtles our culture places in our environment such as the use of walkers, playpens, the quality of our diet, poor fitness and too many automobiles. The healthy nervous system even survives the perils of in utero development such as x-rays, certain metabolic problems or even the birth process itself.

The unfortunate child whose nervous system failed to acquire the specific neurological learning tools it needs will never, regardless of the effort, learn and achieve up to the level of their potential. These children slip through the cracks. They are usually given extra work, tutoring and assorted pressure to perform which fails because the information is processed in inefficient ways. They are often labeled as lazy, an underachiever or worse. The frustration these children experience can be considerable and the resultant behavior that develops can easily focus attention off the real problem.

With our current knowledge, we do not know how to change a child's potential. We can not raise it or lower it. It is what it is. However, having potential is not all that is needed to achieve in school. In fact, it may not even be the most important thing. Children need nurturing, health, good opportunities and a good nervous system. The CNR has worked with thousands of parents since 1965 helping them help their children become better learners. People of all ages can benefit regardless of the severity of the learning problem. We have helped children who are classified as learning disabled, children who are falling behind in the regular class, students who are not behind but who should be performing better, college students who want to improve their learning speed and retention ability even doctors and business executives who simply want to function better.

In order to solve this problem, parents must be willing to make dietary adjustments if needed. They must be willing to work with there child in the home from 1/2 hour to 1 hour a day with a training program aimed at sharpening the specific neurological skills their child needs. And, they must be able to bring their child to one of our locations about every three months.

Evaluations allow us to determine general needs and what skills are not functioning property. We then develop and teach a program of specific exercises and activities that are necessary to begin the training process that will start your child on the road to success. Each program is individually planned for each child. Important revisits occur every three months and provide opportunity for evaluating progress and to modify the program as the child improves.

If you are a parent who recognizes the inability of further teaching efforts to provide your child with the results you know should be there, then you may want to look into ways you can help your child become a better learner. Maybe the problem is not the school, the teacher or a lazy child. Perhaps, your child is among the 64% of the children whose nervous system is not allowing them to access or demonstrate their real potential.

If you are interested in sending your child to school better equipped to learn, contact the CNR for information and/or appointments available at our offices in the United States, Spain and Belgium.

Send questions and/or comments to Dr. Unruh at DrUnruh@aol.com

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