Why I do the work I do

When my son was seven, it became clear that something wasn’t quite right with his reading and writing. He was bright, curious, and endlessly resourceful — so resourceful, in fact, that he managed to mask just how hard he was working to keep up. It took time to persuade the school that he was struggling, and longer still to reach the point where he was assessed.

The result came back quickly and firmly: he was very dyslexic.

The school’s response was well-meaning but limited. They told me that someone would read and write for him when needed. But there were no strategies beyond “more of the same” — the same work that left him so depleted that he fell asleep for an hour every afternoon after school. By Thursday each week he was exhausted, and more often than not, I kept him at home on Fridays simply to let him recover.

Around that time, someone mentioned INPP and reflex integration to me. It wasn’t a strong recommendation — just a gentle suggestion that I might like to look into it. So I did. I spent six months reading everything I could find about reflexes and the different approaches available. In the end, I chose INPP. The programme’s simplicity mattered: five minutes a day. Other methods required up to thirty minutes twice a day, and my son was already stretched thin just coping with everyday school life. Five minutes felt achievable.

We went to see Karen Beveridge in Edinburgh. I was honestly shocked by the cost, but I went anyway. She was the first person who seemed to genuinely understand why my bright-as-a-button little boy found schoolwork so overwhelming.

She asked a few simple questions:
Had he struggled to learn to ride a bike? (Yes.)
Could he swim? (Yes — but only underwater.)

These details meant something to her. To me, they were just quirks. To her, they were part of a pattern. And for the first time, someone offered us hope.

We left that assessment with one single exercise. I remember thinking it was ridiculous — impossible that something so small could matter. But we did it anyway.

Within days, subtle changes began to appear. Nothing dramatic, but gentle shifts: less anxiety, a little more ease in himself, fewer battles over the smallest things.

A few months later, after returning to school following a holiday, the school phoned me. They wanted to tell me that he had written his first full page — and that his reading had improved noticeably. From that moment onwards, he simply gathered strength.

Today, he loves reading — even the big, fat books he once believed he would never be able to manage.

He is now in the fourth year of his university degree, doing incredibly well.

All of that began with a chance conversation. A quiet suggestion that gave us hope. And it led us here.

I completed my INPP training twelve years ago and have been practising ever since. Every family I meet reminds me of how close we came to missing this ourselves. How easily a child can slip through the gaps — not because they aren’t trying, but because they are trying too hard.

I often think about the cost. Not the cost of the programme — but the cost of not offering this kind of support. What would it have meant for him to carry that struggle all the way through school? Suddenly the fee we paid feels very small, and I would pay it ten times over if I had known what it would do for him.

Not everyone has results as dramatic, of course. But life can be easier for almost everyone when primitive reflexes are properly integrated. And when I see a child begin to relax into themselves — to find their footing in a world that once felt too demanding — I’m reminded exactly why I do this work.