Christina’s Story

Student Name: Christina
Age: 12
Diagnoses: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Dyspraxia

Christina entered Jacob’s Ladder exhibiting primal displays of emotionality, immense social anxiety, and language challenges that prevented social engagement and meaningful exchanges with others.

Based on Christina’s evaluation, including a qEEG brain map, we identified and measured where communication flow was lacking in Christina’s brain (hypo-coherence) or where communication flow was locked and/or overly used (hyper-coherence).

Her individualized model of care was developed to normalize connections between her top 10 hypo-coherent connections and top 10 hyper-coherent connections. Over the span of three years, she engaged in specific activities in The Ladder environment focused on achieving her emotional-behavioral goals:

Goal #1	Goal #2	Goal #3
Implement perspective-taking in social relationships.	Establish a working understanding of perseverative (insistently repetitive) thoughts as related to present-minded thinking.	Develop awareness of mind-body connection during cognitive endeavors in order to maintain homeostasis.

Christina’s individualized plan included learning to self-regulate and self-advocate with proven tools and the development of skills. Working with her teacher in an atmosphere of trust and unconditional positive regard, her behavior was measured daily in relation to his goals. As Christina developed the proper connections between areas in his brain, she experienced tremendous gains in her emotional, behavioral, and communication functioning, as well as significant academic gains.

Then	Now
1. Would often show primal displays of emotionality 2. Immense social anxiety 3. Challenges with language that prohibited social engagement and meaningful exchanges with others	1. Employs self-referencing and perspective-taking to appropriately advocate for needs in the moment 2. Frequently participates in social gatherings and has a large social network 3. Increased complexity of own thoughts, allowing for higher levels of output on academics and production of more complex language