0:00:05.4 Vickie Bret: Welcome to the Inclusive Education Project. I'm Vickie Brett.

0:00:09.2 Amanda Selogie: I'm Amanda Selogie. We're two civil rights lawyers on a mission to change the conversation about education, civil rights, and modern activism.

0:00:19.5 VB: Each week we're gonna explore new topics which are going to educate and empower others.

0:00:25.8 AS: And give them a platform to enact change in education and level the playing field.

0:00:33.9 VB: Welcome back listeners.

0:00:36.7 AS: Hi everyone.

0:00:36.8 VB: Thank you for joining us. Once again, it's the beginning of the school year and we have a lot of episodes that we hope you enjoy and kind of get you pumped up for what this school year may bring. It's kind of already starting with a bang, and we'll have some of our solo episodes too, where we kind of discuss our current cases. But we kind of wanted to start today with Dr. Connie McReynolds. Thank you so much for coming onto our podcast.

0:01:06.4 Dr. Connie McReynolds: Well, thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

0:01:08.3 VB: We are delighted to have you. You are a licensed psychologist and certified rehabilitation counselor with more than 30 years of experience. So we wanted to kind of have you on so that you can discuss how you got involved working with children and adults who have ADHD or anxiety. How did you, and a plethora of other ones that I'll kind of let you go into. How did that become kind of your jam?

0:01:34.3 DM: Well, I've actually been in rehabilitation counseling. I have to amend it. It's over 35 years now. I had to do the math every day.

0:01:42.2 VB: Oh wow.

0:01:43.7 DM: Time keeps marching on, it seems. And part of that also has been as a rehabilitation psychologist for more than 25 years, I wrote the book solving the ADHD riddle. I was hearkening back to my days of youth when my mother taught second grade for 32 years in the same classroom. And thinking about some of the stories of the children who struggled in her classroom. And then when I moved to California about 16 years ago, I had the opportunity to build an institute and within that build a neurofeedback clinic. Where I began really studying the effects of ADHD, some of the limitations of the traditional interventions of medication and behavioral interventions that didn't seem to be working by parent report. And so it just grew and evolved. And here we are today, almost 16 years later, and I have two clinics here in southern California. I've retired from the university and do this full-time now.

0:02:36.4 VB: Oh, that's wonderful. And I'm sure that as people begin to learn more, and I know it's been a push in the last 15 years to understand ADHD. We have a lot of parents that are shying away from medications because it felt like even 10 years ago, medication was kind of being shoved down their throats. And so I could imagine that you kind of have seen not necessarily an increase in people who are ADHD, it's just more people understanding what ADHD is and what... How would you kind of describe what you do in the clinics?

0:03:15.3 DM: So really what has evolved over these 16 years is a much deeper and much broader perspective of how ADHD affects people, but also the root cause. And when I first started doing this work all those years ago, parents were coming in with kind of the same story. They tried this, they tried that it didn't work. Their child is still not doing well in school, they're struggling, everyone's frustrated. No one knows what to do. And I use an assessment that takes about 25 minutes for us to get at these 37 areas of auditory and visual processing. We use another assessment that looks at memories and sequencing and conceptualization. So all of that takes less than an hour to do. And it gives me amazing information that I can guide parents and teachers on understanding the strengths of this child, but also those areas of weakness in processing.

0:04:04.4 DM: So underneath so many of these diagnostic criteria, and I have had children come in with four or five different, diagnoses of anxiety, duret syndrome, mild autism learning disabilities, oppositional defiant disorder to the list just literally goes on and on. Some children are on a lot of psychotropic medication and nothing seems to be working. So we peel back all those labels and get to the root cause, which are these auditory and visual processing problems. And the beauty of this is when we find it, there's something we can do about it. We can tackle this and resolve it.

0:04:38.6 VB: And I think that that is something that a lot of parents are grateful for. Especially if the parent may have ADHD and aren't diagnosed, right? Or if the parents do not have any type of learning difference, the more information, at least from our perspective and data is so beneficial. And more often than not, when we are in IEP meetings, having to actually really explain what this child's profile is, is a lot of the work that we do. And we're attorneys and so we can kind of get a report that you would do for instance, and we can explain it. But to really be able to, they like to put these types of kiddos into boxes and it's...

0:05:24.9 DM: Oh yeah.

0:05:25.7 VB: And that's what you had said with the behavioral charts and things or plans. You're like, a lot of these don't work and it's based on outdated information and then not completely focused on the individual that's in front of them.

0:05:40.4 DM: It's very true. I've consulted on a number of IEP plans here in this region and the one thing that seems to be in common is just a generalized lack of deep understanding about what's working for the child and what isn't. There's a lot of effort that goes into these IEPs without a whole lot of success for some of the children who've come through my clinics. And I'm not disparaging that entire process of course. But I do think that there are children for whom a lot of these school-based assessments are not accurately capturing their abilities, but instead are testing their test taking abilities. And if we have auditory and visual processing problems, if this child can't process the auditory aspect, in other words, there's an auditory memory impairment here. It has nothing to do with hearing or vision and it has nothing to do with cognitive intellectual limitations.

0:06:32.3 DM: This has to do with something quite different, which are auditory and visual processing problems. And if a child has auditory processing problems and say, can't remember what's being said, it's going to be hard to follow those instructions. If there's a visual processing and they're having to interact on the computer, they're having to answer questions or write questions down, we're measuring their ability to perform visually and we're measuring their ability to perform auditorily. And in my experience over these years, that doesn't necessarily get to the crux of what this child is capable of doing. So we end up with children being channeled into intervention programs that they may not benefit from. And then everyone kind of gets into why isn't this working and it isn't working because we have the wrong diagnosis and the wrong treatment involved.

0:07:19.4 VB: And I think we're often missing the critical like analysis between if there are multiple things that are impacting this child's ability to learn or access instruction and how they kind of like interweave together, how one impacts another. And also like the strengths too. Like we sometimes see kids who have great strength in auditory processing, but visual, it's very low or vice versa. And we have these piecemeal standardized tests that we're looking at all by themselves rather than looking at them together and seeing, okay, how can we use the strengths to support the deficits? Or how are these together rather than by themselves impacting this child in this environment? Like that's all so often missing. Do you see that often from like school district assessments?

0:08:10.6 DM: Absolutely. Absolutely. The picture is a little outdated, I would say, based on the way that we can now acquire information and the ease with which I'm able to acquire this in our clinics. Again, less than an hour. We have everything we need regarding how we can work with children on auditory and visual processing. And imagine what that would be like versus these child being put through two or three or four days of evaluations that at some point we just have to ask, is this really the best we can do in figuring out what these children need? I'm not sure I'm asking a lot of those questions these days.

0:08:49.8 VB: One of the things that we often see as well with our ADHD kiddos is that they are smart. And so now the trend is, GATE students are kind of mixed in with the general education population, but the teacher is aware of that and then, or there's accelerated classes. But then if the child has any sort of behavior and behavior such a generalized term, but if they get frustrated or if they're bored, they're punished. Do you often see that? How do you kind of explain some of these mannerisms, if you will, that are just part of the ADHD brain? Does it vary from student to student or are you able to kind of inform IEP teams of the way that the ADHD brain works?

0:09:43.9 DM: Well, based on the assessment that we use, we gather a lot of different data. It does corroborate with some of the school assessments, but we go a lot deeper. So we're looking at a very specified number. There's 37 different areas that we're looking at specifically for auditory, specifically for visual, including fine motor hyperactivity, which is sometimes the hyperactivity not identified through some of these other assessments. We achieve all of that. And with that, then I create recommendations for schools based on these strengths, but really these weaknesses. And with that we can tailor interventions that we do in my clinic specifically to this. And with about 20 hours of the training that we do, we're able to resolve the most, the majority of these challenges and the behaviors go away. Because what the behaviors are happening for a reason. Part of what happens is that we see these behaviors and everyone wants to get rid of the behavior.

0:10:41.8 VB: Yes.

0:10:44.7 DM: And so that's where the medication comes in, the behavioral interventions. My position is what if we decode that behavior to understand what this child is trying to tell us? 'Cause the behaviors are actually clues as to what this child or adult, and I'll say adults as I deal with a lot of adults as well, are struggling within life. And if we can unravel that, which we do, and get to the core or the root of this and tackle these challenges, we resolve this. So I actually did a pilot project in an elementary school here in southern California before the pandemic hit.

0:11:21.1 VB: Oh, okay.

0:11:21.2 DM: And we were able to teach teachers what this meant. Teach administrators how to look at this data. And then by embedding our neurofeedback stations in the school, we minimize the disruption. It was kind of interesting because at first there was some teacher pushback. Like, we have to have this kid in the classroom all the time. It's like, if this child isn't learning, what's 30 minutes out of a day going to do if this child can't process what you're saying? Let's pull this child out two times a week for 30 minutes, do the neurofeedback. And when we did 10 hours of that, by the time that was going on, the teachers were going, can we add an extra session this week?

0:12:00.1 VB: Really?

0:12:01.5 DM: Mm-hmm.

0:12:01.9 VB: Wow.

0:12:03.5 DM: For this child, because it changed their perspective. It changed their understanding of what was going on with this child. It changed how they interacted differently now in the school. And the administrators, we had gathered data with them afterwards. They had fewer behavioral interventions. The kids were not in their office as often. The teachers were happier, parents were happier. People were communicating better because everyone was on the same page to understand what this child needed. It was amazing.

0:12:30.8 VB: What a concept. I wish that long-term goal of getting there was on the forefront of more team members' mind when they start the assessment process. And I think you hit the nail on the head at the beginning when you said that it's like such an outdated process on how we assess and how we look at assessments. And it does very much feel, I mean, 'cause we go through so many assessments, so many IEPs because of all of our clients that we often see it as we're just checking the boxes. We're just getting through it. We're going through the motions. And certainly for someone who is someone new in the field, like a young school psychologist, a few years experience, who is like basically getting on the job training from someone who's been doing it, turning it out every year already. Like it's, this is how we've always done things and we're not questioning how could we be doing things differently to better support these kids?

0:13:26.6 DM: Well, it's interesting you mentioned a school psychologist because when I was doing this pilot project, it was actually the school psychologist who was well integrated into this elementary school system who pitched the idea to her administration. And she had come to me, someone had directed her to me when I was still at the university. And she came in and I showed her what we were doing. She goes, you can get all of this in 20 minutes She said, it takes me four or five days to do this. I said, yeah. This is better data. I can work with this and teachers can work with this. I said I know we can do this. And so she pitched it. We got in, we did the presentation to the school board, to the administrators, met with the teachers, showed them what this was. There was some resistance at first because who am I? They don't know me. But I brought in the data, I brought in the graphs.

0:14:13.9 VB: People just, people don't like change. It's so annoying.

0:14:19.4 DM: It stretches us. Yes.

0:14:21.1 VB: Yeah. But it stretches us. But if what you are doing is not working, why wouldn't you try to welcome someone? And like you said, I didn't mean to cut you off, but you were saying that you brought the data, you brought the graphs, you brought the charts and I assume that kind of helped them really turn around.

0:14:38.2 DM: It really did because I brought an example of a child with auditory processing and showed them the graph and the intent of what this information meant to them. And I said, this is what's happening. If you have a child who's acting in certain ways, you can kind of tell if they're losing interest, they're drifting off, they can't get back on task after you've spoken. They may have this going on. And imagine if you knew that about this child and so you, for this child could switch over to visual cueing for this child and that child did better and their frustration and yours went down, would that be helpful? And it's like, well, that's kind of a no brainer. Yes.

0:15:13.3 VB: Right.

0:15:13.4 AS: Yeah.

0:15:16.8 DM: Yes.

0:15:18.5 VB: That is so funny. As attorneys, we know the law, but we get to have guests like you on so that they can kind of broaden our horizon in the way that we speak about things. And one of the things that you had said was behavior being a clue and being able to kind of see the function of the behavior at times for a child. How were you able to communicate? I know that you had said the school psychologist had come to you. Was that the person that kind of led the charge in getting you to work with that particular school? Or was it a district or was it just a particular school?

0:15:53.5 DM: It was a particular school within a district.

0:15:56.3 VB: Okay. Within a district. Okay. Yeah. And so the leadership there kind of recognized or was able to get feedback from their school psychologists and give it a go. Have you been able to kind of spread that program to other schools or that was just kind of like a one in a million thing that you've realized happened?

0:16:14.4 DM: Well, that was a big goal of mine that I had had for 10 years. So once we accomplished that, then we have had other folks, other school districts, contractors to do this.

0:16:23.6 VB: Wonderful.

0:16:25.5 DM: In some cases they just cover the costs and the children come to our clinics if they're closer to our clinics. In some cases we've embedded the units again in the school and we assign one of their technician clinicians to go in and do, we're there twice a week. And so we do 30-minute sessions and we try and work around the school system and the schedules and such as much as we can. And parents are so appreciative of this. So it's an embedded process and for a little bit of investment. Of course there's some, but imagine we're able to keep a child out of special education. And we know in California, I was looking at the stats recently and I think somewhere in the ballpark of about $27,000 a year for a child to be in special education versus $9,000 to be in general ed. And what if some of the children that we've channeled into special education could benefit from this? And with a smaller, much smaller investment around maybe 5,000, I'm just off the top of my head here, we could actually get rid of the problems permanently. Is that a viable solution for schools and do people see value in both helping the child and reducing the financial situation here, at least in California, if not across the nation? It seems to me it's good sense. Everyone wins with that.

0:17:37.8 AS: It makes sense to us. And I mean we always talk about looking at more long-term solutions rather than just putting a bandaid on something. Which is often what a lot of these accommodations do. And I don't think that it's widely understood that that can happen for a number of kids. I mean we've talked a lot on this podcast about the brain and how we really can change the brain and there's a lot that we can do there. But the science, I mean it's there, but I don't think it's as well known by the general public or the general population. And even like some educators of like, just because a child has a deficit or something that's impacting their learning when they're six or seven doesn't mean it has to always be that way.

0:18:24.8 DM: Exactly. And that's really the key for why I wrote my book. And within the book I actually go into the neuroplasticity so that people can understand what this is. So when we use neurofeedback, which is EEG biofeedback, we're capitalizing on the repetition, which is how the brain learns everything. So we capitalize on that. We have the children repeat these training programs typically about 20 times and then come back and rerun those assessments to measure progress. So we're evidence-based. And that's a bit different than some of the other programs is that we are totally evidence-based and we are gathering information from the parents and from the child themselves and adults as well. I can tell you spouses sometimes are quite relieved after we work with the spouse. They're going, Oh my gosh. They can remember the grocery list when I call them when they're on the way home.

0:19:15.7 VB: Well, yeah. I mean that's why I mentioned, the better, not necessarily advocates, but the parent that's able to recognize, oh these are the same types of struggles that I had as a kid and this is what helped me, are those parents that were identified when they were a child and they may not receive the same benefit that they're going to provide to their child. Yeah, but it is something that they're able to kind of help advocate for for sure.

0:19:44.0 DM: Well, it is, and I think the one thing that we all probably have in common is that we want to see these children succeed and if we can implement a better mousetrap for this, why not do it? If we can look at this as a mechanism that's going to save, wear and tear on the system, wear and tear on the teacher, the parents and the child and it's completely doable. Why not give this a go? Why not make some efforts to set up some programs and let this transpire in this state and really address these very demanding situations that we are in. The literacy rate as we know has just fallen so precipitously in the past few years that we're really facing some really critical times with these factors. And we know that if children are not reading on level by the end of third grade when they move to fourth grade, they have to read to learn. And this is where we start seeing a lot of 10, 11 and 12-year-olds showing up in my clinic with parents saying they did okay in elementary school and now we're in middle school, everything's falling apart. We assess and find, lo and behold, guess what? We've got auditory and visual processing problems and this assessment is going to tell parents exactly what's going on. We dial down in and then the good news, I said, it's kind of good news, bad news, bad news is we found it. Good news is we found it. And the other good news is there's something we're gonna do about it starting tomorrow.

0:21:15.7 VB: Yeah.

0:21:16.8 AS: Yeah, absolutely.

0:21:17.6 DM: This what's going to happen here. So we have to find it to be able to work with this. And the good news is there's something to do. We can resolve this. And I just kind of wanna bust this myth about ADHD not being solvable because it is solvable in today's world.

0:21:31.2 VB: It's something that people I don't think can grasp. Especially because they even with the last 30 years of research of about the brain, like you were saying with it being plastic and being able to change it, it's not fringe science. I don't think it ever was, but...

0:21:46.3 DM: No.

0:21:47.7 VB: That's why we enjoy having people like yourself so that you with your expertise can say, there are ways that we can help and, so Dr. McReynolds, if people wanted to reach out to you, how can they reach out to you?

0:22:01.2 DM: You can reach me through my website, which is my name. It's www.conniemcreynolds. I'll spell it out for your listeners, which is C-O-N-N-I-E-M-C-R-E-Y-N-O-L-D s.com. And on there I actually have a free brief assessment that people can download to just start the process to see, okay, do I have this? Does my child have this? And then if you sign up for my newsletter, and I promise not to fill up your email with excessive newsletters. But if you do that, you can download the first three chapters of my book for free. That will kind of get you in the ball game to look at this. And in the book, chapters on auditory and visual processing have extensive, a checklist attached to them. I've also included tips for parents for both auditory and visual processing and teachers for auditory and visual processing. And so you can get that all on the website. The link for the book, it's on Amazon, you can get that there and there's a contact form and I do free consults of about 15 to 20 minutes for people. Just send me a brief email through that contact form and I'll schedule either a phone or a Zoom call with you just to see if we can answer some questions and if there's something that we may be able to do to help you or your child.

0:23:12.4 VB: Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time and for the work that you do. We appreciate you.

0:23:19.5 DM: Well thank you so much for having me on your show today.

0:23:23.6 AS: For our listeners. We will talk to you next week.

0:23:25.2 VB: Bye-bye.