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“The people there really care,” says Kim Whitlock as she speaks about LearningRx, located at 12242 East 116th Street. “They believe in what they are doing and that it can make a difference. It certainly did for Jack.”
Whitlock explains her son’s academic past led them to LearningRx.
“Jack had always experienced some struggles with learning,” she says. “When he was in fifth grade, he was diagnosed as having Attention Deficient Disorder (ADD), but we were not convinced that was all that was going on.
“He attended Heritage Christian High School. It was tough, but he had wonderful teachers there and the extra support they gave Jack made a difference. He did well and got accepted into Purdue University. But at Purdue, it’s a whole different environment — the pace is so much quicker — and he hit a wall. He really struggled his first semester.”
That is when friends told Whitlock about LearningRx.
“Jack started in January and, at the same time, began his second semester at Purdue,” Kim says. “He was taking 12 hours of college classes, but he made the trip home several times a week to attend his training appointments at LearningRx. Usually, students go three times a week, but because of Jack’s situation of living in West Lafayette, LearningRx worked it out with him and helped him be successful at both.
“LearningRx isn’t tutoring, it’s brain training,” Kim adds. “The first thing they did was test Jack.
They found that in certain areas he was great, but there were two areas that were super low and were holding him back. One was called executive functioning, which includes logical reasoning and is needed for learning math. Math is what he had always struggled with. The second area had to do with memory. His short-term memory was great, but his long-term memory was poor. We had always had fits because we thought he didn’t take the time to study enough and would just cram before an exam. Jack knew that when he did study ahead, it didn’t help him because he didn’t retain it. He would have to go back the next day and learn it again — so that’s why he crammed.”
The results have paid off for Jack.
“Jack finished in June and took Calculus over the summer without struggling,” Kim says.”During that time, he built a pergola for us. We saw him doing things we had never seen him do before, like making lists, prioritizing, drawing diagrams, taking measurements and making a timeline.”
Jack agrees that LearningRx has made a world of difference for him.
“LearningRx has upgraded everything in my life,” he says. “When I began cognitive training, my second semester got better. I used to freak out in the middle of a test with anxiety but now I can focus so much better. One of the best outcomes is that I don’t have to take ADD medicine anymore.”
“LearningRx helped us so much, I really want to encourage other people to find them,” Kim adds.
Unlike tutoring, LearningRx treats the underlying reason for learning struggles by targeting and addressing the weak cognitive skills at the root of the problem. LearningRx serves children as young as 5 to adults and has helped more than 120K students change their lives towards a path to success.
Call LearningRx at 317-845-1999 or visit them online at learningrx.com/indianapolis-northeast for more information.