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Q. What makes Lionheart special?
Lionheart has a special approach to children.. This approach is to look at the
child's individual profile, the child's strengths and challenges and develop a
unique program that fits the child. Lionheart recognizes that every child, even
with the same diagnosis, is very different. The favorable staff to student ratio
allows us to develop an individualized program, to evaluate each child throughout
the year and modify the program as needed. Lionheart stresses the importance of
addressing the sensory underpinnings of a child's developmental difficulties. We
look at the pyramid of development, and work on gaps that may exist, to enable each
child to consolidate for learning the foundation needed to move forward. Lionheart
utilizes the relationship-based model of Dr. Stanley Greenspan as its foundation.
This model recognizes that affect is the motivating factor for a child's desire to
interact, communicate, think and learn. The staff is trained in knowing what is
developmentally appropriate, as well as what motivates a child to learn. Our
commitment is to work closely with the parents and other professionals to meet each
child's needs.
Q. How do you address the development of skills?
At Lionheart we work hard on the development of basic academic skills, particularly
word recognition, writing and computation. At the same time we pay close attention to
developing children's conceptual capacities. From the beginning we address the need for
children to comprehend what they read. We help them learn to make inferences and conclusions
based on what they read. For example, a child is able to read, only when he can answer
questions that reflect back to the inferences made within the context of the reading material
and not just within the written script. Lionheart emphasizes the 'thinking' portion of skill
development. We address math concepts in the same manner. It is not sufficient that a child
can count, add, subtract and do math problems, children need to generalize what they know to
other areas and really understand what those numbers mean.
Social development is also emphasized at Lionheart. Teachers and therapists
address social needs throughout every day and provide opportunities for interaction and
engagement. Teachers and therapists model opportunities for social development and help
children navigate social situations. Built into the program are special activities that
allow children to practice their skills outside of the classroom in carefully selected
community based settings.
Q. How does Lionheart provide opportunities for social interaction?
Lionheart provides an intensive and highly specialized program for children in a
small group. Social development is a priority at Lionheart. All programs and parents
have the same long-term goals for social interaction. We all want our children to have
warm relationships with peers. It is our experience that children make the best progress
by interacting with other children in very small groups in carefully planned settings.
For many children with social and communication challenges large groups have too much
sensory input and can be too overwhelming to be useful. It is very difficult to abstract
the social information needed from rapidly changing interactive settings. With this in
mind we structure interactions between pairs of children and very small groups in a
supportive setting facilitated by skilled adults. As children are ready we provide
successively more challenging and complex interactive experiences.
Q. Should my child continue to go to private therapy?
Although our program is very intensive and covers many areas of development,
some children need to continue private therapy. This of course depends on the child
and is completely up to the discretion of the parents and private therapists involved.
We work closely with private therapists as needed and are available to discuss your
child's comprehensive program with them.
Q. How is Lionheart funded?
Private tuition and contributions solely support the operating expenses of Lionheart.
This is supplemented by fundraising and volunteer time from parents, board members and
other individuals.
The cost of the program is directly correlated with the highly skilled professionals
at Lionheart and the low staff to student ratio. Lionheart staff are experts in
development, who have years of extensive experience and training across many diverse
educational settings, who have love and compassion for children that learn differently,
and who have made the commitment to the children at Lionheart. This type of alternative
to education for children is not available outside of Lionheart. We have surveyed other
programs across the country with similar ratios and model programs and found tuition ranges
from $25,000 to $50,000.
Q. What is the importance of the Friday program?
The Friday program is an opportunity for the children to work on the sensory
integration issues that are the underpinnings of the challenges that these children face.
The types of activities in the Friday program have proven to be vital therapeutic
interventions in recent years, swimming, horseback riding, hiking. It also sets a
different stage to practice intentional social communicative skills as an extension
of the week.
Q. What population of children does Lionheart serve?
Lionheart serves a diverse set of children. To benefit from Lionheart children
need to have verbal skills and be able to work in small groups. We look at the functional
developmental levels of each child rather than their diagnosis. These areas include
auditory or visual processing, language or speech, fine and/or gross motor planning,
self-regulation and relatedness. Again, we support a team approach for each child and
family, using a model that conceptualizes functional developmental deficits and strengths
and constructs individually oriented strategies based on knowledge from each of the
disciplines that work with development (Greenspan & Wieder, Chapter 4 in the ICDL Clinical
Practice Guidelines).
Q. What do you consider when looking at a child's individual profile?
We look at each child's unique differences and how we can help work through
specific challenges that the child faces. We also put a lot of emphasis on how involved the
family is and what they have done to help overcome obstacles. Although we offer a
comprehensive program, we want parents to continue working with their child at home and
realize that Lionheart is a collaborative effort to help your child be successful.
Q. What does it mean the program is Relationship-based?
Many years of research and observation support the idea that the most effective way
to teach children analytic reasoning or thinking is through opportunities that have more
"emotional experience". Observations suggest that emotional interactions play a far more
critical role in intellectual functioning. Emotions are actually the internal architects,
conductors or organizers of our minds. They tell us how and what to think, what to say
and when to say it, and what to do. We "know" things through our emotional interactions
and then apply that knowledge to the cognitive world. The ability to understand another
person's feelings and care about how he or she feels can only arise out of a series of
nurturing interactions. Even academic and cognitive concepts in math are based on early
emotional experiences. "A lot" or "a little" has certain emotion driven interpretations.
The use of grammar is largely innate and only needs some very general types of social
stimulation to get going is based part on very specific emotional interactions. We can
best help our children develop tools for mastery by continually offering them nurturing
emotional interactions. (Dr. Stanley Greenspan, Building Healthy Minds, p.8-11.)
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