Boost Your Self-Esteem with Brain Training

February is International Boost Your Self-Esteem Month, and for parents looking for ways to build their student’s confidence, we have a suggestion: personal brain training.

What is personal brain training, and how can it boost self-esteem?

To better understand personal brain training, it helps to get an overview of cognitive skills.

Cognitive skills are the tools we use to learn, read, memorize, and perform. Together, they take incoming information and move it into a bank of knowledge, which we use at work, school, and in daily life. These skills include processing speed, logic & reasoning, visual and auditory processing, attention, and memory. If even one of these skills performs lower, the rest can be affected.

Most learning struggles are because one or more cognitive skills are lower than the rest, which also helps explain why even intelligent kids can have learning challenges. Just imagine a brilliant girl whose memory prevents her from recalling information for a quiz. Or a bright boy with slower processing speed than his peers, requiring his teachers to accommodate him by providing longer test-taking times.

When students come to a LearningRx personal brain training center, we start with a Brain Skills Assessment. It only takes about an hour, and the results give everyone a better idea of which cognitive skills are strong and which could use a boost.

Using these results, we create an individualized program consisting of game-like mental exercises that are challenging but fun. Each client pairs up with a personal brain trainer who works with them throughout the program.

As cognitive skills get stronger, learning becomes faster and easier. In addition, one of the most common pieces of feedback we hear is that the student’s confidence soars!

What’s the difference between personal brain training and tutoring?

Suppose you’ve tried tutoring but didn’t get the results you hoped. Tutoring and personal brain training are different methods for addressing other learning challenges.

Tutoring can help re-teach educational material. It’s typically beneficial for specific subject matters and helpful when a student misses a chunk of school due to an extended illness or injury.

However, personal brain training helps address the root cause of learning struggles by targeting and training cognitive skills. Again, when these brain skills are strong, learning is faster and easier in ANY subject.

Not sure if your student needs tutoring or personal brain training? One question to ask is, “Is my student struggling in only one subject or multiple subjects?” If the answer is the latter, personal brain training may be your best option.

How might learning struggles manifest if cognitive skills are not as strong?

You may already be able to narrow down some of the ways weak cognitive skills manifest in your student’s performance at school, with homework, or even with behaviors at home and in extracurricular activities and sports.

Although this list is by no means complete, it does offer a glimpse into some of the more common problems we see when particular cognitive skills aren’t up to par:

• Attention (Sustained): Sustained attention enables you to stay focused and on task for a sustained period. Lower sustained attention skills often manifest in lots of unfinished projects or jumping from task to task.

• Attention (Selective): Selective attention enables you to stay focused and on task despite distractions. Someone with weak selective attention often appears easily distracted.

• Attention (Divided): Divided attention enables you to remember information while doing two things simultaneously. When divided attention is weak, the person often has difficulty multitasking and makes frequent mistakes.

• Auditory Processing: Auditory processing enables you to analyze, blend, and segment sounds. Students with weak auditory processing often struggle with reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension.

• Logic & Reasoning: Together, logic & reasoning enable you to reason, form ideas, and solve problems. When these skills are weak, you may often hear the student saying, “I don’t get this,” or asking, “What do I do next?” They may express feelings of being overwhelmed or “stuck.”

• Memory (Long-term): Long-term memory enables you to recall information stored in the past. People with long-term memory issues may forget names, perform poorly on tests, or forget things they used to know.

• Memory (Working): Working memory enables you to hang on to information while using it. (Think “Carry the one” in math problems.) Students with sub-par working memory skills may have to reread the directions in the middle of a project. Or they may forget what was just said in a conversation or have difficulty following multi-step directions.

• Processing Speed: Fast processing speed enables you to perform tasks quickly and accurately. Students with a slower processing speed may need longer to take tests or complete homework.

• Visual Processing: Visual processing enables you to think in visual images. If this skill isn’t strong, you may have difficulty understanding what you’ve just read (comprehension), remembering what you read, following directions, reading maps, or doing word problems in math.

How do I get started with personal brain training?

Visit www.LearningRx.com and find the center nearest to you. Then call to schedule a Brain Skills Assessment. The assessment results will provide you with valuable insights to help you decide on the next steps. There’s no obligation to sign up for a personal brain training program.

If your student suffers from low self-esteem due to poor grades, constant struggles to keep up, or the stigma of labels, consider enrolling them in personal brain training. By unlocking their full potential, you’ll give them a boost of confidence and the solid cognitive skills they need to excel in school and in life!

About LearningRx® 

LearningRx, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the largest one-on-one brain training company in the world. Their training programs are delivered through more than 200 locations in North America and in 48 countries around the globe (as BrainRx®). LearningRx has helped more than 100,000 individuals and families sharpen their cognitive skills to help them think faster, learn easier, and perform better. In addition to their in-Center training programs that partner every client with a personal brain trainer to keep clients engaged, accountable, and on-task—a key advantage over digital brain games—the company also offers online training through real-time videoconferencing. This virtual delivery method allows clients to train from the comfort of their own home while still receiving the benefits of one-on-one brain training with a personal brain trainer. LearningRx’s pioneering methods have been used in clinical settings for over 35 years and have been subjected to peer-review in more than a dozen scientific journals. To learn more visit https://www.learningrx.com