Educational Concepts

May 20, 1998

Proactive Educational Concepts
768 Buccaneer Lane
Manahawkin, N.J. 08050

Dear Jim,

On behalf of Parents and Professionals of Exceptional Children of Parsippany, I would like to thank you for your wonderful presentation to our group last night. You had a tremendous amount of knowledge and valuable information to share with us and everyone left with some great strategies to use at home. We especially appreciate the fact that you gave us your time so generously and traveled the distance you did to speak to our group. We hope that we can contact you again in the future to share your expertise with us.

Sincerely,
Linda H. Kay
President, PEC

6/4/98

Dear Jim,

It's been a few months since our last visit and I wanted to let you know how things are going. First I'd like to thank you for your follow-up phone calls and new materials you sent.

Rob is doing considerably better, although we know he wasn't the problem to begin with. I have found the program you started us on to be invaluable. The key with Rob as probably with most children was my inability to effectively communicate consistently what was required of him. The fact that he has ADD doesn't help but with sticking to what you taught me, I've been able to help him. We still have our difficult times, it's just, now I know how to deal with them.

Thank You so very much!

In Christ's Love,
Christine Urness

RICHARD & JOANNE BRODY

June 9, 1998

Dear Jim;

This letter comes in the form of a giant THANK YOU. Thank you for putting the pieces of our lives back together again. I feel as if we came to you as a broken piece of delicate China; and, little by little you mended us. NO, maybe we came to you as a lost family and you gave us the road map with directions to come home.

We: my husband, my son and myself, came to you after three years of frustration; built up anger; bitterness; extreme unhappiness and I could go on and on. Basically, in review, Jarrett, our 28 year old son had been working for us, as a builder/apprentice/super, or the last three years. Into the first year we noticed a terrible pattern emerging. There were daily fights with his boss (his father); his father would come home to me (mother; and, coincidentally, office manager of our Building Business), and tell me a "Jarrett story", starting with "do you know what Jarrett did today???" Then, Jarrett would call me and say; "Dad is a monster; Dad doesn't understand me etc.), and I would be in the middle.

When it got to a point that I couldn't stand it any longer, I sought help in the way of a family counselor. This lasted for about 5 months, with each session ending with Jarrett exploding and stomping out of the room. Then, the therapist said to us: "I believe Jarrett has A.D.D.."

I sought a psychiatrist that she recommended. I brought Jarrett there. He asked some basic questions and said he probably has A.D.D. and suggested he start on Ritalin. For about 3 months he would just mail the prescriptions and I felt this was very unprofessional: he would send the prescriptions without even monitoring it. At this point, Jarrett was in extreme denial. The fights continued and I felt trapped between two people I loved. I felt as if we were at a locked door and we needed someone to give us the key. I started reading about A.D.D. and one book I read had a list of support people to contact. I found the name of a psychologist in N.J. who specialized in adult A.D.D. and we started sessions with him. Each visit was worse than the last. Many visits he was late for; some he did not show up at all. True, he received some organizational skills, but basically we were getting no where.

Then the psychologist (himself, having A.D.D.), started a group session: 7 adults with A.D.D. It wasn't until, perhaps the third session that Jarrett came out of denial. But he still managed to miss at least three of the sessions and still the fights between he and his father continued and I was still in the middle. I felt as if every time we took two steps forward, we took one step back.

Feeling helpless, one day, while at G.N.C. I spied a brochure THE ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER CHILD: NEW APPROACH FOR PARENTS TO BRING LASTING HELP. What specifically caught my eye was: "..getting on and of the battlefield". I said, "what the heck". I will give this a try. That is how I found Jim Burns.

The first thing you said was we had to work on re-establishing Jarrett's self-esteem. From the very beginning, I had a positive feeling. You listened. You did not know me, but by the end of our first conversation, I felt as if you had been living with us through our crises. We made a date. In the first session, I felt comfortable that we had finally found someone who could help us. We were a broken family and not only did we need someone to mend us; we needed lifelong mending skills.

And so we began. Some meetings were just with you, Richard and myself; some you met alone with Jarrett. When you felt he was ready, we came together as a family again.

Some sessions were smooth; some very very rough. But through them all, I had a feeling of confidence in your approach. Rather than the high minded approaches of the therapists; yours was a more practical approach: you call yourself a "behaviorist". When my two men would tell you of their miss communications, you would listen and ask pivotal questions to get them thinking in a direction where they could start hearing each other.

LISTEN: that's the first positive attribute I noticed about you. You really listened; not only to what they were saying, but to what they were NOT saying, but feeling.

Then you always seem to be able to come up with succinct suggestions that just made sense. Amongst the many, the most helpful were: "You can't change the other person, but you can start to see the world from the other persons point of view". You used KEY WORDS, and you repeated them until they became part of our language: "Respond instead of react"; "Disability perspective"; "What does it look like when things are working right?"; "Have a well formed outcome"; "keep accounts current". And, I could go on and on.

The bottom line is that you have given us language. I think, at one point, I said to you I fell as if we were speaking an entirely differently language from Jarrett, that we need the key to open the door to communicate with him. You give us that key.

We are well aware that the road ahead is going to be bumpy; but, we have a different perspective now. Jarrett knows his responsibilities (one very important one is that in order to function, he must take his medication); and, well, I guess we, as his parents, always know our responsibility its just that it got more and more difficulty to see it through.

Thank you for being there. Thank you for your common sense. Thank you for your expertise. Thank you for your support. And thank you for us knowing that, if we "go off track", we can count on you. Good luck in your future endeavors.

Respectfully,
Joanne Brody, for the rest of us.