"We fail to recognize that foundational skills are essential to
efficient performance skills."
A Strong Foundation is Essential to Efficient Performance

Most people are familiar with performance skills. These are the daily living, academic, and job related skills we perform every day.

Difficulties in school with reading, math, letter and number recognition and concentration are the most familiar to us along with poor social emotional performance.

What we fail to recognize is that foundational skills are essential to efficient performance skills. Weak foundational skills are clinically defined as "neurological deficits."

Neurological deficits are associated with the following systems:
The Tactile System—The sense of touch.
The Vestibular System—Movement, gravity, balance and space.
Proprioception—The brain’s unconscious sense of where the body is in space.
Kinesthesia—The body’s sense of movement including “muscle memory.”
The Visual System—More than 20/20; visual processing is understanding what we see.
Auditory Skills—The ability to receive, interpret, discriminate, and process what we hear.
Interhemispheric Integration—the ability of the brain to pull from both sides to balance logic with emotion, details with the bigger picture, and achieve optimal proficiency with language and learning at all levels.
Differentiation--The ability of move one body part without the unintential movement of other parts.
Everything we do in life is based to some extent on our ability to process sensory information through the above systems. When messages are received through these systems, they are interpreted and organized by the brain which allows us to understand, learn and respond to our environment.

When foundational neurological systems are not functionally sound, learning and behavorial symptoms result.

Educators, parents and mentors are working hard on improving performance skills. However, the underlying causes of poor academic failure and perplexing behaviors remain hidden beneath the surface and are often misunderstood or overlooked.

First Class Development and Learning Resources

(360) 573-5523
Neurodevelopmental Educational Therapist
Vision Therapist ~ Educator/Tutor
Certified HANDLE® Practitioner
Affiliate of HANDLE® Institute International, LLC
Registered Counselor, WA State

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