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December 2019

I am Anthony’s father, David.

Anthony was a drug baby that we adopted at eight weeks. His birthmother was using meth and barbiturates while he was in utero. Anthony went thru withdrawal symptoms as an infant and the exposure to the drugs left him seriously handicapped, mentally. At about the third grade, we took him to Loma Linda University Medical Center to be tested since we were beginning to see signs of problems in his learning patterns and his development. As a result of their weeks long testing, LLUMC told us that Anthony was unable to use his frontal cortex completely and that his brain was working overtime just to try and do the 3rd grade material. He was diagnosed as borderline deficient and we were told that he would probably never get out of the 5th grade.
We were a bit non plussed by this since we could see that Anthony had some very tangible skills, mostly artistic, and was a very good reader. Thus, we assume the report wasn’t necessarily accurate and proceeded to create for him his own IEP to maximize what we saw as his strengths. During this time, he was enrolled in a private, parochial school and the school allowed us, after some haggling, to customize his education to fit his abilities. We then happened upon a seminar on the internet given by Meryl Lipton from The Rush Institute in Chicago that dealt with non-verbal learning disorders. My wife and I were intrigued since Dr. Lipton’s descriptions seemed to match up quite closely to what we were seeing in Anthony. We reached out to her, and met her, along with Anthony. After an hour or so with him, she indicated the best way for us to proceed was to have him actually tested and diagnosed by a trained professional.
We took Anthony to her referral, John Watkins, in Santa Monica, for extensive testing. Upon completion he told us that Anthony was autistic, and not slight so. The prognosis wasn’t great, but was better than what we experienced at LLUMC.
Also, the research on drug, and especially meth babies, was beginning to emerge. It appears that meth babies tend to mature late and that by their early thirties they may actually be able to live by themselves and cope with life. Anthony was about 11 years old at this point.
We continued with Anthony’s IEP and actually were able to help him to receive his diploma from high school. Math will never be an easy subject for him, but he did well enough to get through high school.
It was at this point that we ran into Patty Carlson and her program. She wanted to work with Anthony and would allow us to monitor the program and report back to her. She sent the manuscripts to us. Anthony took to the program quite quickly and seemed to be very involved and engaged. We didn’t even have to remind him to do the exercises. He was self-driven.

Anthony was not ready to go away for college yet, so he enrolled in the local community college where he mostly ended up taking voice and musical theatre classes, which he excelled at. His entry scores for math were extremely low. However, after months of working with the Piano Logic manuscripts, he was able to pass a winter break math class that year. Anthony will say that Piano Logic helped him with math, but he sees the math progress most especially in the 3D architectural world in which he is currently studying. Simple addition and subtraction are no longer impossible mountains to climb. He seems to have improved in carrying information from one area of the brain to another. From my perspective, I haven’t seen a huge increase in math ability, but I have been totally awed by the talent it unlocked in him musically. Before this program Anthony was unable to read music and his experimenting with music was mostly plinking away at the keys of a piano. However, as he got deeper into the program he became very good at playing musical pieces by ear, at first, and then later learned to read AND write music. He is composing songs, music, and lyrics for his college theatre as well as having one of his works performed and recorded by a Disney production company. This past summer he was hired to play the music for the senior class graduation. He has truly unlocked something special in himself through Piano Logic.
Anthony is in his junior year of college and living on his own two hours from home. He is doing things that we mostly dreamed he would be able to do. He will tell you that the most important thing he took to college with him was his keyboard. He, to this day, returns to the Piano Logic exercises time and time again as he feels they help him to sort things out in his brain. He says that it helps him to think more logically.
We have high hopes that Anthony will be able to continue on with his life as an active and productive member of society, and in no small part, that will be because of the help he got from Patty Carlson and the Piano Logic program.