Symptoms

Recognise these symptoms?

You daydream…you’re moody…you’re clumsy… things seem to take you longer than expected…you have difficulty riding a bike…you find it difficult expressing your emotions…you live in a world of your own. These are just some of the many symptoms we encounter everyday in children and adults who come to Dore. At whatever age they all share a difficulty in performing many everyday tasks. Not to mention a general lack of confidence and self-belief.

In one way or another, the people we help all seem to struggle with reading and writing, concentration, coordination, social skills or a combination of them all. You may know, these symptoms are associated with the conditions dyslexia, ADHD, dyspraxia and Asperger’s syndrome, but at Dore we don’t use labels, because in most cases, many of the symptoms overlap. Instead, we let the individual's difficulties determine the solution, as we tailor our exercises to suit each and every individual on our Programme.

Confidence

Before we explain many of the signs we associate with learning difficulties, one common thing they all share is low self-esteem. The reason is simple - although the people who come to us have huge potential and often above average intelligence, they find it difficult to demonstrate their true abilities.

Understandably, through social pressures, they often become withdrawn, recessive and are made to feel ‘different’, which, as they grow older, can manifest into all kinds of problems. Apart from enabling people to learn to overcome their difficulties and fulfil their ambitions, Dore’s mission is to increase people’s confidence and improve their feelings of inadequacy. Self-belief is a powerful tool in transforming your future. So, as your skills grow on the Dore Programme, we know from experience that you’ll start to feel better about yourself. With new-found confidence, you’ll want to try new things, join in more and simply get on with life!

Reading, writing and spelling

The expectation that reading, writing and spelling should be something everyone can master has only been with us for a century or so. Historically, 90% of people were perfectly happy to live without literacy. So our brains have never really developed a neurological system that allows us to acquire reading skills that easily.

Fortunately, most of us manage to adapt and are able to learn how to read and write. However around 10% of us aren’t so lucky. If you’re one of them, you know what it’s like…you guess at words…letters blur or move around on the page… you swap letters around…you track each word with your finger…you write as little as possible. You do anything to avoid embarrassing situations that involve opening a book or putting pen to paper.

The good news is that the Dore Programme, through exercise, should certainly improve your brain’s literacy skills, which will start to make everything else in your life that much easier – from being more self-assured to achieving more at work or school.

Concentration

Poor concentration affects all kinds of people. The symptoms are hard to ignore - rather than focus on the matter in hand, you regularly daydream and drift away to escape from whatever you’re doing. You’re easily distracted and avoid tasks that require a lot of thought or focus. Instead you’ve a ‘grasshopper mind’, jumping from one thing to another. Often your memory is unreliable, as is your sense of time and inability to organise yourself properly.

No problem, Dore will help you focus, improve your attention span and enable you achieve so much more. After a little while on our Programme, you’ll find that you can stick at tasks for longer without getting distracted. Your tendency to be impulsive or hyperactive will improve, as will your ability to think more clearly and logically.

Coordination

When you’ve got problems with coordination and balance, some people might accuse you of not being ‘together’. You can understand that – you probably aren’t too good at catching, throwing or kicking a ball; you might not be able to ride a bike or drive a car and you’re all fingers and thumbs when it comes to performing everyday tasks. You might be clumsy too, tripping up, often knocking things over or breaking them.

That’s why Dore monitors your physical abilities carefully and gives you exercises that will improve the way you co-ordinate your movements. Over the course of the Programme, you will see a change, not immediately, but gradually, as those irritating ‘little things’ that blight your day no longer spoil your life.