Throughout Mara’s life, we have used a neural development program as her primary form of therapy. We did have some traditional therapy as well, but I was not excited about the therapists’ expectations of what Mara could achieve, nor the results that the therapies provided.
That is not to say that we have not had some excellent advice from some excellent professional therapists along the way, including some of the amazing experts featured in this website. But in our experience, the traditional therapies provided for children with Down syndrome were lacking some important elements.
Along the way, I have shared little tips and tricks that were particularly compelling as we saw results: the crawling track, neck exercises, the importance of crawling, and core exercises. And as a result, I received a lot of questions as to the program that we used. But up until now I was purposefully limited about what I shared.
It took me this long to share this information for one main reason: I needed proof. In order to confidently say that neuro-development is a much better approach to help a child with down syndrome, I needed to see the results myself. While I was hopeful that a neuro-development program would be great for Mara, I needed to see the results before I could be certain.
Today, almost two years after starting the program we do daily with Mara, I can assure you that it is a much better approach when it comes to development for children. And not just children with Down syndrome. This applies includes the neuro-typical children as well – Lennox also follows this program.
I found this approach before I was pregnant to Mara. Or better said, it found me. Three years ago, I met a woman at a park who hear Lennox speaking. She asked ask if I knew about a book called “How To Teach Your Baby How To Read”. I had never heard of it, but found it interesting and wrote the name and author down.
When I got pregnant with Mara, Lennox was two. I thought it would be good to introduce him to reading prior to having my second child. Obviously, time would be a bigger issue as a mom of two and I wanted to get a head start. Reading that book introduced me to the magnificent work of Glenn Doman.
Glenn Doman was a physical therapist who founded The Institutes of the Achievement of Human Development. You can read more about his work and The Institutes here. Basically, Glenn Doman concluded that society had missed the point by “treating” symptoms when it came to physical and cognitive delays. He reasoned that what needed to be treated was the cause. The cause being found in the brain.
I spent Mara’s pregnancy reading all books by Glenn Doman. Once Mara was born, I went to The Institutes and took the “What to Do About Your Brain Injured Child” class. The course – which costs about $2500 – is a super intensive course that lasts eight days, with ten hours a day of training. After that course, there are opportunities to take more focused lectures that are more specific to particular topics; like nutrition, physical activity, etc.
The eight day class teaches you how to be your child’s therapist by putting together a VERY intense program. I want to be very clear when I say this: the program is HARD. It is particularly hard during the first year (if you start with a newborn, as I did), because you have to do most of the physical work yourself since your baby is not yet ready to move their body themselves. However, it was incredibly rewarding to see the amazing results and I would do it all over again without hesitation.
The program is broken down in smaller programs that you work on ALL-DAY-LONG:
Physical Program: The Physical Program changes as the child accomplishes goals. There are many unique physical training and therapy exercises that do not seem intuitive, but once you have done them and seen the results it makes a lot of sense. To read more about the physical programs for children under one read “How Smart Is Your Baby”. For kids over the age of one and for older kids read “Fit Baby, Smart Baby, Your Baby”.
Intellectual Program: The Intellectual Program focuses on teaching your child skills and a base of knowledge. This includes how to read and how to do math. It also helps you build an intelligence program that focuses on teaching your child about their favorite subjects (or the family’s if your child is too young to tell you) in great detail. We are currently working on types of plants, types of butterflies and world flags. Next to come: US Presidents, types of snakes, and instruments.
Nutrition Program: The Nutrition Program teaches you how to feed your child in order to help them thrive. The focus is helping the, overcome the potential challenges that a genetic condition like Down syndrome, or in the case of Glenn Doman’s original research, a brain injury, may cause. As with any other human, nutrition is very important for excellent cognitive and physical function. For any child, but particularly a child with Down syndrome, nutrition can have a major impact on both physical and intellectual development. After doing the program, we decided to get rid of gluten and dairy in my kids’ diet. You can read more about this in this post.
For those of you that have followed her progression, I think you will agree that Mara’s progress has been great to see. We work hard on our programs, but we have a lot of fun, too. And thanks to the neuro-development program that we developed based on the Glenn Doman books and the course at the Institutes, we really work effectively. And I believe that it has made a great deal of difference.
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