PerDev for Adults
Improving Personal Performance
Learning differences can pose as much of a challenge for adults as they do for children. Although some adults with learning issues develop coping mechanisms to accommodate these barriers, just as many are plagued by perceptual gaps whose origins lie in early childhood, but whose effects manifest themselves in problems with general living skills, job performance, and often, anxiety.
At PerDev, we work with individuals experiencing a broad range of problems in their work and daily lives, including:
- Organizational Difficulties
- Motivational Problems
- Inability to Complete Tasks
- Chronic Procrastination
- Attention Disorders
- Time Management Problems
- Social/Emotional Difficulties
The Mind-Body Connection
The body is our first teacher. It teaches us math. It teaches one to one correspondence, amount, equality, symmetry, weight, length, fractions, spatial and quantitative concepts. It is our first physics teacher. It teaches us about gravity, force, cause and effect, light and sound.
It gives us many of our first words, and it is our first sense of self. Our experiences and achievements accumulate in our bodies, as we learn the interconnectedness of what we sense and how we influence our physical surroundings.
Body awareness and perceptual motor development play a critical role in the foundation for learning at all levels. It's not just about degrees of coordination and motor mastery but about routes to developing higher order thinking and being a learner in all subject areas. This is especially true during the early stages of acquiring new skills.
Getting to the Root of the Problem
Many performance difficulties experienced by adults originate in early perceptual development, including areas of body awareness, motor development and visual and auditory processing.
One way of thinking about developmental issues is in the idea of the "missed appointment:" The concept that at a very early age there is a moment when a child is meant to develop a key perceptual ability as a result of a personal learning experience. When that "appointment" is missed, the child, and subsequently the adult, is left with a perceptual gap that hinders typical learning and development.
An Integrated Process
PerDev uses a therapeutic hands-on, integrated approach grounded in accepted developmental theory. Our goal is to identify perceptual gaps and to create new opportunities for the child to internalize essential perceptual experiences missed in early childhood. Our work is play. It is play that provides practice in problem solving, concentration and communication. An individualized program of specially sequenced games, puzzles and activities increases awareness and fosters growth. This guided practice gives repeated mediated experience with the essential connection of mind and body, thought and action.