In my extensive travels I have many opportunities to observe families and their children. Having done so for many decades now, it is blatantly obvious that many parents today must believe in magic.

Children are not born with some innate understanding of how to act and behave or, if you will, how to be civilized. Many parents fortunately still hold the perspective that their children should learn to behave and function with a level of maturity and respect, but unfortunately it appears that more and more parents believe that it happens by magic.

Parents understand that you must teach kids most everything, from how to wipe their bottoms to how to do math, but you also must teach your children all of the basics of proper manners and behaviors. As big an issue as this is for “typical” children, it is an even greater problem for children with developmental issues. The truth is that most of what we learn is not from what we are taught; it’s what we simply pick up by being present. Many “typical” children, if given good examples, will learn almost like magic how to behave appropriately, from sitting and eating with good table manners, to complying, acknowledging and greeting people, to simple things like using “please” and “thank you.” Unfortunately, little things like opportunities to model appropriate behaviors are now slowly disappearing. Family meals are becoming infrequent events, and when they do occur the object is not to share a “meal” and enjoy a family social event, or even to take the opportunity to help educate; it’s to get the food from the plate to your stomach as quickly as possible. It’s shocking to hear that so many children never even eat at a table. Good parenting is now being defined as having your kids engaged in more out-of-home lessons and activities, so parents are spending less and less time with their children showing them and teaching them how to be civilized, something their peers are very unlikely to demonstrate and teach.

At a recent dinner I was able to observe a family with a son of about ten who has autism and a daughter of about five. The two children got up out of their seats at least twenty times during the meal and roamed around the restaurant, and the boy with autism went from table to table trying to sample everyone’s food. It was obvious from the parents’ response that they did not see this as unacceptable, just inconvenient. On another occasion there was a family having a meal with their son, who appeared to be about eleven or twelve and to have some minor issues. The adults were discussing some significant topics, and the boy would randomly start talking over someone at the table about something totally unrelated to the discussion. This would occur every few minutes, whenever he wanted attention. These interruptions were ignored by the parents, and it was obvious that this was their norm. No instruction, no feedback and no expectations.

As mentioned previously, most of what we learn is from observation. For children with developmental issues, their ability to focus, attend and process is compromised, as is their ability to simply learn through observation. All children need to be taught manners and how to behave, but for children with developmental issues this is extremely important. Inappropriate behaviors in effect label the child as different, special and limited, which in turn limits expectations, which then results in less feedback and instruction and a lack of further development.

Behavior needs to be taught proactively, not reactively. You need to teach appropriate behavior not only through modeling, but through actual instruction. Often simply identifying a single needed behavior and instructing the child prior to beginning the meal is sufficient to change the behavior at that meal, which then provides you with the opportunity to praise them and reinforce the new behavior. The feedback, if any, that most parents give tends to be reactive rather than proactive. They get up and bring the child back to the table, and perhaps even reprimand them, or they might stop during the meal and tell the child that they shouldn’t interrupt. Unfortunately, this often tends to provide the child with attention, which reinforces the negative behavior. Proactive parenting requires identification of a problem or a need and creation of a plan to address it: a targeted plan, delivered with the needed frequency, intensity and duration.

Parents, if you don’t identify developmental and behavioral needs and actively address them, then all that’s left is to cross your fingers and believe in magic. Raise the bar and help your child be all they can be.

If you want help building that plan for your child, join our free Get Started program and talk with our staff at no cost.

The post Do You Believe in Magic? Helping Your Child Learn How to Behave and Function in Society appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

If your child has been diagnosed with apraxia, or you suspect it, here is the most important thing to know: apraxia responds to the right kind of practice, and the people best positioned to provide that practice are not found in a clinic. They are found at your kitchen table.

What Is Childhood Apraxia of Speech?

Childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) is a motor speech disorder. The child’s brain has difficulty planning and coordinating the precise movements of the lips, tongue, and jaw needed to produce speech. It is not a problem with the muscles themselves, and it is not a problem with understanding language. A child with apraxia typically understands far more than they can say.

That gap between what a child understands and what a child can express is one of the defining features of apraxia, and one of the most frustrating for children and parents alike.

Common Signs of Apraxia in Young Children

Apraxia looks different from child to child, but parents often notice some combination of the following:

• Limited babbling as a baby, or a very quiet infancy
• A big gap between what the child understands and what the child can say
• Inconsistent errors: the same word comes out differently from one attempt to the next
• Difficulty with longer words, with sounds dropping out or getting scrambled
• Groping movements of the mouth as the child works to position it for a sound
• Unusual rhythm or stress in speech, with words sounding flat or choppy
• A word or phrase may “pop out” clearly one time, but then is never repeated or used again
• Frustration, meltdowns, or giving up on talking when they cannot make themselves understood

Apraxia or Speech Delay? Why the Difference Matters

A speech delay means a child is developing speech along the typical path, just more slowly. Given time and good input, many late talkers catch up.

Apraxia is different. It is not a slower version of the typical path. It is a breakdown in motor planning, and it does not resolve on its own. “Wait and see” is the one approach that reliably fails with apraxia, because the child is not simply behind. The brain needs specific, repeated practice to build the motor pathways for speech.

This is why early, consistent intervention matters so much. The younger the brain, the more readily it changes. But the brain can change at any age, and it is never too late to start.

Why Frequency Changes Everything

Here is the problem with the standard model of help: motor learning does not happen once or twice a week.

Think about how a child learns to walk, or how anyone learns to play the piano or shoot a free throw. Nobody masters a motor skill by practicing for thirty minutes on Tuesdays. Motor pathways are built through short bursts of practice repeated every single day, hundreds and then thousands of correct repetitions that gradually become automatic.

Speech is the most complex motor activity a human being performs. For a child with apraxia, whose brain struggles to plan those movements, frequency is not a nice-to-have. It is the mechanism. The right input, delivered with sufficient frequency, intensity, and duration, is what drives the brain to build new connections. This is neuroplasticity, and it is the foundation of everything NACD has done for 47+ years.

A weekly session, no matter how skilled the person running it, simply cannot supply the repetitions an apraxic brain needs. What can? A parent.

The Parent Advantage

Parents are with their child every day. Parents know their child’s sounds, moods, motivations, and limits better than anyone on earth. When a parent is trained and equipped to run short, targeted speech practice throughout the day, the child gets what the clinic model cannot deliver: daily frequency, in the child’s own environment, from the person the child most wants to communicate with.

This is the core of NACD’s approach to every child, and it is especially powerful with apraxia. NACD evaluates the whole child, identifies exactly where the breakdown is happening, and then designs a program the family implements at home with coaching and support. The parent becomes the intervention, and the results compound day after day.

For families who want to understand this approach in depth, The NACD Approach walks through it step by step in free, self-paced lessons.

Practicing at Home: The Speech Therapy for Apraxia Apps

To put daily practice directly into parents’ hands, NACD developed a family of four apps out of decades of clinical work with apraxic children. Each app targets a specific stage of speech development, so practice meets the child exactly where they are and builds from there:

• Speech Therapy for Apraxia builds the foundation, developing consistent production of core sounds and simple syllables.
• Speech Therapy for Apraxia: Words moves sounds into functional single words.
• Speech Therapy for Apraxia: 2-Syllables tackles the jump to two-syllable words, where apraxic speech often breaks down.
• Speech Therapy for Apraxia: Ending Sounds targets final consonants, the sounds that make words complete and intelligible.

The apps are designed for short, frequent sessions that a parent and child do together. A few focused minutes, several times a day, is exactly the practice pattern an apraxic brain needs, and it fits inside real family life.

The apps are a powerful tool on their own. They are most powerful as part of an individualized NACD program built around your specific child.

Where to Start

Every child with apraxia is different, which is why NACD does not have a one-size-fits-all apraxia program. We build each program around the individual child, after we understand how that child is functioning across the board.

If you are wondering whether NACD is the right fit for your family, our free Fit Check takes just a few minutes. And when you are ready to take the first step, join our free Get Started program. You will get videos explaining our approach and a free interview with our staff before any cost is involved.

Your child has something to say. Let’s help them say it.

Frequently Asked Questions

The post Childhood Apraxia of Speech: What It Is and How Parents Can Help at Home appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

There is no one way to parent a child. A set of parents can have five kids and have to parent each one slightly differently. However, having worked with many families who have demonstrated some pretty exceptional parenting ability, there are a few concepts that should be shared with other parents. I think we can all agree that we want to develop children who trust their parents. Who feel safe. Who are compliant and do what is asked of them. But more importantly, be able to function independently, be happy, and contribute to society. As parents, we don’t want to feel frustrated, reactive, or have to raise our voice; rather, we want to feel calm, warm, and quietly confident. I hope this article can shed some light on how to teach your young children in a way that reduces frustration and sets them up for success.

While fostering compliance and cooperation in children is always a goal, getting the opportunity to see it expressed so naturally and so consistently across many families that NACD works with is something else entirely. Many of the families I have come to know have been excellent examples of authoritative parents. Authoritative parenting, not to be confused with authoritarian parenting, is widely praised for its effectiveness in balancing warmth, high responsiveness to children, support, as well as discipline and clear boundaries. What these NACD parents have built wasn’t obedience born of fear; it was cooperation born of love, consistency, and a very clear, very simple expectation set from the very beginning.

To start, there are two words that, when spoken cheerfully and consistently by a toddler, signal something profound is happening in that home: “Yes, Mom.”

It sounds simple. It is simple, and that is exactly the point.

At NACD, we have spent decades studying how feedback shapes behavior, development, and a child’s sense of self. What we know is this: children are not born compliant, but they are born responsive. From the earliest months of life, they are reading us, our tone, our energy, our consistency, and learning what the world expects of them. The families who understand this earliest tend to raise children who are the most grounded, most cooperative, and most confident.

The “Yes Mom” approach is one of the most elegantly simple tools we have seen parents use to build exactly that foundation, and it works best when it starts young, as early as the toddler years.

How It Works

A parent gives a simple, clear verbal instruction: “Come here.” “Sit down.” “Put that back.” Immediately after giving the instruction, the parent models the expected response in a warm, pleasant voice: “Say Yes, Mom.” The child is gently guided to repeat it. Not demanded. Not drilled. Modeled and encouraged: joyfully, consistently, and with great warmth. Over time, the child doesn’t just mimic the phrase; they internalize the posture behind it. They learn that responding to a parent’s voice is what you do, and that doing so feels good.

As Bob Doman has noted in NACD’s research on feedback, children do what works, and they do more of what earns them genuine, warm, positive acknowledgment. When a toddler says “Yes, Mom” and is met with a big smile, a squeeze, and enthusiastic praise, that response becomes rewarding. It becomes a habit. And habits, as we know, shape development in ways that last far longer than any single correction ever could.

What makes this approach so powerful is not just the compliance it builds; it’s what compliance communicates to the child. Children who know the expectation, who hear it modeled with warmth rather than frustration, and who consistently meet it don’t feel controlled. They feel safe. They know who is in charge, and that knowledge is deeply reassuring to a young child whose brain is still learning how to navigate the world.

We have seen this play out beautifully in families we work with. Parents who begin this practice early, in the one- and two-year range, report that their children are calmer, more cooperative, and quicker to respond as they grow. These are not rigid, fearful children. They are happy, secure children who have been given something invaluable: a clear picture of what is expected of them, delivered consistently and lovingly by the people they trust most.

What to Do When They Don’t Say Yes, Mom

But what do you do when the child doesn’t say “Yes, Mom,” or doesn’t follow through on the direction at all?

This is where many parents lose ground, and it’s completely understandable. The key is to stay calm, stay warm, and stay in charge.

With a toddler, first, give the instruction again, immediately followed by the modeled “Say Yes, Mom” prompt. Keep your voice steady and pleasant, not frustrated, not louder. Simply repeat it as if success is the only option you can imagine, because for this child, it is.

If they still don’t respond, it’s time to build some momentum with a short series of simple, one-step instructions that you can physically guide your child through. The goal here is not to overpower; it’s to gently remind the child’s body and brain what cooperation feels like, and to string together a few small wins.

In a calm voice with a smile, say “Stand up” and lovingly take your child by the hands and bring them to standing. Then say “Sit down” and gently guide them back down. Keep your energy light and encouraging throughout. This is not a confrontation; it is a reset. Then offer another simple verbal instruction followed by “Say Yes, Mom” and wait to see if they follow it independently. Give one more. If you get a “Yes, Mom,” even a small one, celebrate it warmly and enthusiastically.

Now, circle back to the original direction you gave at the start. Deliver it clearly, prompt “Say Yes, Mom,” and when they follow through, and they will, pour on the praise. Make it a big deal. Let them feel the full reward of having listened, cooperated, and succeeded.

What this sequence does is brilliant in its simplicity. It breaks a moment of resistance without escalating it. It keeps the parent calm and in control. It reminds the child, through movement, through success, and through your warm response, that compliance is not something to resist. It feels good. It earns connection. And it is simply what we do.

As NACD’s research on feedback consistently shows, children do what works. When following through earns them genuine joy and praise from the person they love most, following through becomes the pattern. And patterns, built early and reinforced warmly, become the foundation of who a child is.

The goal is never robotic compliance. The goal is a child who hears your voice and responds, not because they fear what happens if they don’t, but because they have been taught from the very beginning that responding to Mom is simply what we do in this family, and it feels good to do it.

Start young. Keep it warm. Be consistent. Say “Yes, Mom” together, and mean it.

Consistency Across the Family

One of the most common reasons this approach loses its power is inconsistency at home. If Mom holds the expectation warmly and firmly, but Dad lets it slide, or Grandma swoops in and overrides the direction with a laugh and a cookie, the child receives a very different message: this only applies sometimes, with some people. And children, as we know, are remarkably skilled at reading exactly where the boundaries are and where they aren’t.

For the “Yes Mom” approach to truly shape a child’s behavior and sense of security, every adult in the home needs to be on the same page. That means Dad follows through with the same calm, warm expectation. “Yes, Dad” carries the same weight. It means grandparents, as much as they love to indulge, understand that stepping around the expectation isn’t a kindness; it’s a confusion. It means that when Grandpa is watching the kids for the afternoon, the same sequence applies: clear instruction, modeled response, gentle follow-through, and warm praise.

This doesn’t require rigidity or a household of rules. It simply requires that the adults who love this child agree on one thing: that responding to a loving direction from a trusted adult is the expectation, every time, with everyone. When that consistency is in place, the child doesn’t have to test every person in every situation to figure out what is expected. They already know. And that knowledge, that the world around them is predictable and safe, is one of the greatest gifts a family can give a young child.

Talk to your partner. Share this approach with grandparents. Make it a family commitment, not just a Mom thing. The more unified the adults around your child are, the faster and more deeply this foundation will take hold.

How This Grows with Your Child

Parents sometimes wonder whether an approach rooted in toddlerhood has any relevance once their child hits elementary school, the preteen years, or beyond. The answer is a resounding yes, though the way it looks naturally evolves.

The child who learned at age two that responding to a parent’s direction is simply what we do in this family doesn’t forget that lesson at ten. What was once “Yes, Mom” spoken out loud becomes something quieter and more internalized: a posture of respect, a habit of cooperation, a reflex of responsiveness that shows up not just in the home but in the classroom, on the sports field, and in every relationship that child has with a trusted adult.

By the elementary years, the expectation shifts from verbal acknowledgment to reliable follow-through. You may not need your eight-year-old to say “Yes, Mom” out loud every time, but you absolutely should expect them to make eye contact, acknowledge the direction, and act on it. If that habit was built early, it will be there. If it wasn’t, it’s not too late, but it will require more intentional effort to establish.

As children move into the preteen and teen years, this foundation becomes arguably more important than ever. These are the years when outside influences compete loudly for your child’s attention and allegiance. Peers, social media, and the natural developmental pull toward independence all create noise. The child who grew up in a home where parental authority was consistent, warm, and clearly established is far better equipped to navigate that noise. They have an internal compass that was set early, one that says the adults who love me are worth listening to.

This does not mean teenagers should be blindly obedient. It means they have been raised to respect direction, to respond before they resist, and to trust that the adults in their lives are on their side. That trust was built one “Yes, Mom” at a time, starting in the toddler years, and it pays dividends that last a lifetime.

The goal was never a compliant toddler. The goal was always a grounded, respectful, capable young person who knows how to respond to the people who love them most. Start early, stay consistent, and trust the process.

If you want help building consistency and cooperation into your child’s daily life, join our free Get Started program and talk with our staff at no cost.

For more on how feedback shapes behavior and development, explore NACD’s Feedback series at nacd.org.

The post Yes Mom: Teaching Your Toddler Cooperation from the Very Beginning appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

So when a child is suddenly off, the first move is not panic. Look for a common cause, address what you find, and give it a little time. But there is a rarer pattern that looks different. A child who goes from baseline to severe, life-disrupting symptoms almost overnight: intense new obsessions and compulsions, refusing to eat, rage, wetting the bed after years of dryness, losing handwriting skills she has had for years, or suddenly unable to leave a parent’s side. If no common cause explains it, and if the symptoms hold on for more than a week or so instead of fading, that pattern deserves a closer look.

That pattern has two names: PANS and PANDAS. They are dramatic, they are frightening, and the medical world is still working out what causes them. At NACD we have worked with children and young adults affected by these conditions, and we have watched families navigate this situation, sometimes well and sometimes at enormous financial and emotional cost. What follows is what these conditions are, what to do first, and how to protect your child and your family along the way.

What Are PANS and PANDAS?

PANDAS stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal infections. It was first described in 1998 by researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health. In PANDAS, a child develops sudden, severe OCD symptoms and/or tics following a strep infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever.

PANS stands for Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome. It is the broader umbrella term, defined in 2012, and PANDAS is considered a subset of it. PANS describes the same abrupt onset of severe OCD or dramatic food restriction, along with at least two other symptoms such as intense anxiety, emotional swings, rage or irritability, behavioral regression, a sudden drop in school performance, sensory or motor changes, sleep problems, or urinary changes. Unlike PANDAS, PANS does not require a strep infection. Reported triggers include mycoplasma, influenza, sinus infections, COVID-19, Epstein-Barr virus, and sometimes no identifiable infection at all.

The proposed explanation is that the immune system, activated by an infection, mistakenly attacks the child’s own brain, producing inflammation in the basal ganglia, a region deep in the brain that helps regulate movement, emotion, and behavior. Medicine already accepts that this can happen. Rheumatic fever, in which strep antibodies attack the heart, and Sydenham chorea, in which they affect the brain and produce involuntary movements, are long-established examples of the same mechanism.

Why Doctors Disagree

Parents researching these conditions quickly discover that doctors disagree about them, and the reason is worth understanding. There is no blood test or brain scan that confirms PANS or PANDAS. The diagnosis rests entirely on the child’s history, which makes some physicians cautious. Research studies on treatment are small and their results are mixed.

Both sides agree on this much: children with this abrupt, dramatic onset pattern are real, and they are suffering. The disagreement is about mechanism and treatment, not about whether your child’s overnight change actually happened. If a physician dismisses the pattern entirely, or if a clinic tells you they can diagnose it with certainty from a single lab panel, both should give you pause. The practical steps below hold up no matter where the science eventually lands.

The Hallmark Sign: Speed

The single most important feature that separates PANS and PANDAS from ordinary childhood OCD, anxiety, or tics is speed of onset. Typical OCD develops gradually over months. PANS arrives like a light switch. If your child went from baseline to severe symptoms within days, especially following an illness in your child or anyone in your household, that history matters enormously. Speed alone is not the whole picture, though. Rule out the ordinary explanations first, and let persistence be your second filter: a rough stretch that fades within days is normal life with a young child, while severe symptoms that hold on past a week with no identifiable cause are what should send you to the physician. Write it down while it is fresh: what changed, when it changed, what you ruled out, and what infections came before it. That timeline will be the most valuable diagnostic tool you own.

Typical OCD or anxiety builds over months. PANS and PANDAS arrive in days.

What to Do First

The best first steps are not exotic, and most of them cost very little.

• Document the timeline. Onset date, symptoms, and any recent illnesses in the child or family members.
• See your physician and ask for strep testing. Request a throat culture even if your child has no sore throat, because silent strep infections happen. It is also reasonable to have household members screened, since strep circulates within families.
• Treat any infection that is found. In many reported cases, properly treating a documented infection produces significant improvement, sometimes quickly.
• Address the behavior directly, as a family. The best-studied behavioral approach to OCD symptoms is exposure-based work: gradually facing fears rather than avoiding them, and gently stopping the household from accommodating compulsions and rituals, because accommodation feels kind in the moment but feeds the fire. Some families pursue this with a therapist trained in exposure and response prevention (ERP). But the principles themselves, structure, consistency, and parents leading the work at home, are things families can carry out every single day, and daily beats weekly. Behavioral work helps regardless of what caused the symptoms and should not wait while the medical picture gets sorted out.
• Keep anti-inflammatory and immune treatments physician-guided. For milder cases, doctors sometimes use anti-inflammatory medication or a short course of steroids. For severe cases, some physicians use IVIG, which stands for intravenous immunoglobulin. IVIG is an infusion of antibodies collected from thousands of healthy blood donors, given through an IV over several hours, usually across multiple sessions. The goal is to calm and rebalance an immune system that appears to be attacking the child’s own brain. It is a real medical treatment used for a number of immune conditions, but for PANS and PANDAS specifically the research results are mixed, insurance rarely covers it for this diagnosis, and out-of-pocket costs commonly run into the tens of thousands of dollars. If IVIG is being considered, it belongs at an established specialty program with experienced physicians, not at a clinic selling treatment packages.
• Support the body the brain lives in. An inflamed brain does not need more inflammation coming from the plate. Reducing wheat and sugar, two of the biggest inflammatory drivers in the modern diet, is a practical starting point for most families. Adding probiotic and fermented foods supports the gut, where a large share of the immune system actually lives. Build overall metabolic health with real food, omega-3s, quality sleep, movement, and lower stress. These steps are inexpensive, low risk, and compatible with any medical plan. They will not cure a severe case on their own, but immune regulation and brain function are downstream of metabolic health, and a brain heals better in a healthy body.

Protecting Your Family Financially

Families facing these conditions are frightened, exhausted, and searching, which makes them a target. There is an entire industry ready to sell unvalidated lab panels, open-ended antibiotic protocols, months-long detox programs, and treatment packages costing tens of thousands of dollars, often all from the same clinic that performs the testing, interprets the testing, and defines success.

Before spending significant money on any treatment, ask the provider five questions:

• What published evidence supports this treatment for this condition?
• What is the total cost, and what will insurance cover?
• What is the defined endpoint, and how long until we know whether it worked?
• How exactly will we measure improvement?
• Do you profit from the tests you order and the products you recommend?

A good provider welcomes these questions. A provider who resents them has answered them. As a rule of thumb: spend freely on things that are cheap and low risk, spend carefully on things with mixed evidence and a clear endpoint, and be very wary of open-ended programs with no defined finish line.

Where NACD Fits

If you are an NACD family and you are seeing sudden changes in your child, contact your coach immediately. Do not wait for your next scheduled follow-up. Your coach can help you organize what you are seeing, compare it against your child’s documented baseline, and get that information into your physician’s hands quickly. Speed matters with these conditions, and you already have people who know your child.

NACD does not diagnose or treat PANS or PANDAS. Those decisions belong with your physician. But for more than 47 years our work has been built on knowing each child as an individual, and that matters a great deal here.

A condition with no lab test is diagnosed on history and observed change. Because we evaluate children three times a year and track function in detail, our records often show exactly when a child’s abilities dropped and when they returned. For a family sitting in a doctor’s office trying to explain what happened, that documentation is worth a great deal.

This is also why we ask families to tell us about illnesses, fevers, and infections. What looks like a minor detail in the moment can turn out to be the missing piece.

We also help families keep moving forward. A child in a flare is not a child whose potential has changed, and flare behavior is not willfulness. We adjust each child’s program to match current capacity, protect the fundamentals, and rebuild as the child recovers. The brain that has been through an inflammatory episode is still a brain that responds to the right input at the right intensity.

Recovery is also a rebuilding process. Flares take a real toll on attention, processing, and working memory, and those functions respond to targeted, consistent work. Tools like our Simply Smarter app, built on NACD’s decades of work developing processing and working memory, give families a structured way to rebuild cognitive function at home, a few minutes at a time, at whatever intensity the child can handle right now.

Treating the whole child, and never confusing a child with a label or an episode, has been the heart of NACD’s philosophy since 1979. That does not change with this diagnosis. If anything, it matters more.

If your child is struggling and you are not yet an NACD family, join our free Get Started program to learn how an individualized program works and talk with our staff at no cost.

Frequently Asked Questions

This article is for educational purposes and is not medical advice. Diagnosis and treatment decisions should always be made with your child’s physician. If you are concerned about sudden changes in your child, contact your doctor promptly, and know that NACD is here to support your child’s development every step of the way.

The post PANS and PANDAS: What Every Parent Should Know When a Child Changes Overnight appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

By Amanda Schlegel

Hello! My name is Amanda Schlegel and my son, Milo, has a KCNH1 genetic mutation. Milo was born in April 2020, and we had no idea he had this mutation. He slept a LOT as a baby and was not very responsive or smiley (as most babies are). He would wake up very drowsy and slow, dropping his head and looking half asleep. It often took him a few minutes to fully wake up. By around 8-9 months he wasn’t able to sit up as he should and was labeled with “failure to thrive,” so we started investigating why. Long story short, we eventually learned of his mutation. We were given basically no direct resources or support other than it’s a “rare disease.” My internet searches felt futile. No discoveries were similar to Milo. He is on the more mild end of the impact of this mutation. I felt like we were basically all alone, pioneers, with most likely any similar cases not reported. I was almost offended our neurologist didn’t get more involved or seem to care, if he was essentially 1 in a million as they told us. But we just pushed on. He had horrible eczema and constipation around his first birthday. To combat that I sought the help of a nutrition expert and determined he needed to go gluten and egg free. Ever since, he’s had no problems there.

We focused a lot on what went into his body with a very strict diet, avoiding food dyes and limiting processed foods as well. I also focused on quality supplements: cod liver oil, a multivitamin, and a probiotic. Beyond that I am more than grateful God brought us to that nutrition counselor because she also connected me with another mom who utilized an amazing program called NACD (National Association for Child Development). “Brain trainers” is the easiest way for me to describe them. We knew Milo was behind developmentally and I wanted to do what I could to help him catch up. Beyond cognitive ability, he was also limited with his physical development because he had hypotonia. A local resource took us to get ankle/foot orthotics to support his incredibly loose ankles. But my gut thought was, why? As a trained strength and conditioning coach, it made no sense to me to do that. How would his ability to stabilize his joints improve with a band aid? NACD matched my thinking. When we got started it felt like a great fit right away. We were on the same page, a different one than standard therapists. We were working more from a function and root cause standpoint, rather than generic cover ups or blanket protocols. Through a variety of home exercises, my NACD coach and Developmentalist trained me to work with Milo, and he gained the strength and ability to walk, run, jump, climb, etc. with no AFOs over the first couple of years. The coaches continue to guide me through more than physical development. It is full-child. We work on language, speech, and importantly, cognitive development through a wide variety of tasks. It is an ongoing process. I never do it perfectly, and we continue to work on his overall growth and development. This fall I will be homeschooling him with their guidance as a kindergartner.

He is one of the most joyful, friendly little people you could ever meet. He is such a light to those around him, and he is often well known. Even at a 5-day family camp a state away from home last summer, nearly everyone knew who Milo was because he cheers and claps loudly during worship and encourages others, and he loves chatting with people (even when it doesn’t always make sense!). His two older siblings adore him, and their friends and teammates all know him well as he cheers them on from the sideline, and now from the dugout, as he worked himself into the bat boy position for 8U softball and 10U baseball. He does a great job, but he just gets distracted sometimes because he has to cheer on the last batter before running to the dugout with their bat.

I firmly believe the guidance from NACD has made a MASSIVE impact on his development, and I HIGHLY suggest checking them out for anyone at truly any level. They work with literally anyone of any ability or age. They never function off labels or testing, or put you in a box. Your child is your child, and they work with you where your child is to help them improve with whatever they need most. I wholeheartedly believe they can help anyone advance. The impact on Milo and our family is enormous. We are a very active family, and as Milo grows up he fits right in. He is able to join us for day-long softball tournaments; he attended half-day preschool for 2 years, leaving the staff disappointed he wasn’t coming back for Kindergarten. We can travel, participate in sports/activities, with no issues. Milo gets along great! He is dying to play his first T-Ball game soon. It has also been a joy and so heartwarming to see our coach and Developmentalist share in his victories and enjoy the process alongside us. It is hard to know exactly where Milo would be without NACD. It could be a very different story. That is why I’m so thankful NACD is part of his.

Curious whether NACD could help your child? Join our free Get Started program to learn how individualized programs work.

The post Milo’s Story: Thriving with a KCNH1 Mutation appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Children are about twice as sensitive to evening light as the adults who bought the bulbs. The bulbs were sold on energy savings. The cost shows up in your child.

Over roughly a decade, the light in nearly every American home was replaced. Federal efficiency standards effectively ended the sale of standard incandescent bulbs in August 2023, and LEDs took over. The energy math was real. What was never on the ledger is what that light does inside a child’s nervous system in the hours before bed.

If your child fights sleep, wakes at night, or melts down every afternoon, the light in your family room is one of the few causes you can change this week for about forty dollars. Here is why it matters and exactly what to do.

Light is a hormonal signal, and children get twice the dose

Cells in the back of the eye do one job: they measure blue wavelength light and report the time of day to the brain. Lots of blue means noon. Amber light with little blue, like fire or an old incandescent filament, means evening. That signal controls melatonin, the hormone that tells every system in the body that night has begun.

White LEDs are built on a blue diode. Even a warm looking soft white bulb carries a spike of blue underneath the coating. Your eye reads cozy. Your brain’s clock reads midday.

Children take the hit far harder than adults. A child’s lens is optically clear, so more than 65 percent of blue light reaches the retina, compared with about 20 percent by the mid twenties. Their pupils are larger. The numbers that follow are why this article exists.

Two details deserve attention. In young children, dim light suppressed melatonin nearly as much as bright light, so turning the lights down does not solve it. And the suppression outlasts the light, so a perfect bedtime routine cannot undo the hour that came before it.

Why this lands hardest on the hyperactive child

Sleep and attention are not loosely related. They are causally linked, and the link has been tested. In a randomized BMJ trial of 244 children with ADHD, families received nothing but two consultations on sleep and a follow up call. ADHD symptom severity improved at three and six months, moderate to severe sleep problems dropped from 56 percent to 30 percent, and a third to half of the benefit ran specifically through better sleep. For scale, the improvement in ADHD symptoms was roughly a third to half the size of the effect stimulant medications typically produce in clinical trials. Two conversations about sleep, no prescription, no side effects, and a meaningful fraction of what the medication delivers. A separate crossover study restricted adolescents with ADHD to 6.5 hours of sleep for a week, and parents reported more inattention and oppositional behavior. Same kids, different sleep.

The chain is short. Evening light suppresses melatonin. Children are twice as sensitive. Suppressed melatonin delays and shortens sleep. Short sleep worsens attention and regulation, most in the children with the least margin. LEDs do not cause ADHD, but for a child already working with a narrow margin, the family room lighting taxes it every single night.

There is a second issue specific to LEDs: flicker. Cheap LED drivers pulse the light 120 times per second. You cannot see it, but the visual system processes it. The engineering body IEEE published a formal standard on the health risks, listing headaches, eyestrain, reduced task performance, distraction, and increased autistic behaviors in children. Flicker is a solved problem that costs a little more per bulb, and nothing on the package tells you which bulbs have it.

Yes, light is an endocrine disruptor

You have probably heard the term endocrine disruptor applied to chemicals like BPA, things that get into the body and interfere with hormones. Wrong evening light does the same thing to a child’s hormones, it just gets in through the eyes instead of the mouth. Nothing leaches out of the bulb. The light itself is the exposure: it enters the eye, shuts down melatonin, and disturbs the timing that other hormones, like the stress hormone cortisol, are built around. That is why researchers formally classify artificial light at night as an environmental endocrine disruptor.

This is taken seriously at the highest levels. The World Health Organization’s cancer agency rates night shift work, which scrambles the body’s light and dark schedule, as probably carcinogenic to humans. France’s national health agency officially recommends warm bulbs below 3000K at home and specifically warns against children’s evening exposure to blue rich LED light. American parents have simply never been told.

For perspective: the famous Southampton food dye trial found that artificial colors increased hyperactivity in children, and that finding changed how a generation of parents shops. The measured effect was small. Meanwhile the light fixture over the dinner table is cutting a preschooler’s primary circadian hormone by 70 to 99 percent, three hours a night, every night. We read every ingredient label and have never once audited what falls on our children’s eyes.

The most powerful fix is free: real sunlight, morning and evening

Before you buy anything, understand that the bulbs are only half the problem. The other half is that our children get too little of the light they were built for. The body does not judge evening light in isolation. It judges contrast. A child who gets bright natural light all day is far more resistant to evening disruption than a child who went from a dim classroom to a dim house to a bright screen.

The gap is enormous. Indoor lighting measures a few hundred lux. Outside, even under full cloud cover or tree shade, light measures in the thousands to tens of thousands. A window cuts most of it. There is no bulb, no app, and no supplement that substitutes for going outside.

Morning light is the anchor, and it pays out all day. Within an hour of waking, get your child outside for 10 to 30 minutes. Breakfast on the porch, walking to the bus stop instead of driving, ten minutes in the yard before school. Morning light sets the body clock, and nearly everything a parent cares about hangs off that clock. Tonight’s melatonin release is scheduled by this morning’s light, so kids fall asleep easier and sleep deeper. Morning light triggers the healthy morning rise in cortisol that produces natural alertness, which means easier wake ups and a sharper first half of the school day instead of a foggy one. Bright daylight also drives serotonin activity, the brain chemistry behind steady mood, which is one reason mood dips in dark winters and why light is used to treat it. Appetite, energy, and emotional regulation all run on the same clock. One habit, ten minutes, and it compounds every day.

Evening light closes the day and protects the eyes. The low, amber light near sunset is the signal every generation before ours ended the day with, and twenty minutes outside after dinner tells the body the day is wrapping up. It doubles as movement, which itself deepens sleep, and as unstructured time together, which most families are short on. It also carries a benefit most parents have never heard: outdoor daylight is the best proven protection against childhood nearsightedness, which now affects nearly half of kids in some parts of the world. Adding 40 to 80 minutes of outdoor time per school day cut new cases of myopia by 25 to 50 percent in randomized school trials. The same daily walk that settles bedtime is protecting your child’s vision.

Pull natural light into the places your family actually spends the day. At home, open the blinds fully every morning, move homework and play toward windows, and eat breakfast in the brightest spot in the house. At school, ask whether your child can be seated near a window, and advocate for outdoor recess staying outdoors, since recess is many children’s only real light exposure of the day. At the office, the same biology applies to you: take a call walking outside, eat lunch outdoors, claim the desk near the window. Parents who fix their own light sleep better, and the whole household’s rhythm improves together.

Then fix the bulbs

• Start with the two rooms that matter most: wherever the family sits after dinner, and your child’s bedroom. That is usually six to ten bulbs. Replace the rest of the house gradually as bulbs burn out.
• After dinner, turn off the ceiling lights. Overhead light is the geometry of noon. Use two or three lamps at or below eye level instead. This costs nothing.
• Buy by the numbers on the box: 2700K or lower (2200K amber for the last hour before bed), CRI 90 or higher, labeled flicker free, and dimmable on a compatible dimmer.
• Test for flicker yourself. Point your phone’s slow motion camera at any lit bulb for two seconds. Rolling dark bands mean flicker. A steady image means a decent driver. Test what you already own before buying anything.
• Use up any incandescent bulbs you still have in the evening lamps. They no longer sell for general lighting in the US, but the ones in your garage are the best evening light in the house. Note that Edison style filament bulbs on store shelves are LEDs in costume, so test them like any other.
• Night lights should be red or amber and near the floor. Cover the blue standby lights on electronics in the bedroom. And be honest about screens: a tablet at close range is a bigger blue dose than any ceiling fixture. Warm mode on, and off before wind down begins.

What this means for your family

LEDs solved a real energy problem. Nobody was measuring what they did to children, so that never entered the decision to put them in every home in the country. The savings are real and they are small. The cost lands in places no one tracked: how long it takes your child to fall asleep, how the afternoon goes, how much patience your child has left by dinner.

Changing your lighting will not resolve a significant attention or behavior problem by itself, and no one should promise you otherwise. What it does is remove one obstacle that has been working against your child every evening, and it is one of the few obstacles you can remove yourself this week without a waiting list or a prescription. NACD has spent more than 47 years working with families on the daily inputs at home, because that is where change actually happens. Light is one of the most overlooked inputs there is.

The post What LED Lights Are Doing to Your Child’s Sleep, Attention, and Behavior appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

The Rosilios have been an NACD family since Liran was one year old. Liran has Down syndrome. This powerful essay, written by her older brother Eytan, shares the impact Liran has had on his life. – Sara Erling

Essay

By Eytan Rosilio

Just a day after my younger sister was born, a woman working at the hospital approached my father. “Do you want to put her up for adoption?”

My sister, Liran, was born with Down syndrome. I was 4 years old at the time and didn’t understand what this meant. She would take longer to develop, learning to walk, talk and grow later than most girls her age. All I knew was that I had become a big brother, and I was ecstatic.

Liran is 13 now, and she’s the most affectionate and supportive sister I could have ever asked for. She idolizes me, always trying to imitate everything I do. She has helped me discover so much about myself, more than anyone could’ve ever imagined.

Growing up with Liran has often been a challenge. Strangers stare, make assumptions, and judge her. Some kids tease or bully her simply because she is different. When my sister and I are in public, people will sometimes gaze at her with awful facial expressions. As a result, Liran struggles to make friends and is often not accepted by others. As her older brother, it pains me to witness this happening to her, and I wish I could shield her from it all. Somehow, Liran doesn’t let people’s cruel words or judgments affect her, and she persists, demonstrating her strength and mindset.

From a young age, I noticed her rare ability to view the world through a different lens. She savors every little moment and is always grateful for what she has. The most positive person I know, she smiles through everything. When someone is upset, Liran offers comfort and always manages to bring a smile to their face. Judging others by their backgrounds or appearances is something she never does. She has shown me how to truly value every moment. I’ve realized that happiness isn’t about what you own but how you approach each day. Her ability to find light in every situation has become my guide for how to live my life.

Liran’s influence has changed the way I see the world and the way I treat others. I strive to make the most of every day and live it to the fullest. I’ve learned not to judge people based on first impressions and to try to give everyone a chance. Growing up with Liran also inspired me to volunteer with programs like Yachad NJ and Friendship Circle, where I support kids and families who feel unseen. I organize activities, give genuine friendship, and simply offer a listening ear, small actions that can make a big difference. I want to be there for them, just as I have always been for my sister. This experience continues to teach me different skills, such as patience, kindness, and recognizing the significance of creating an inclusive community.

Liran is my biggest fan, and she motivates me to become greater every day. Her unwavering belief in me has shaped the way I pursue my passions. Seeing her cheer on the sidelines drives me to perform better at my soccer matches. She loves listening to me DJ, and she listens to my tracks on repeat. Her dancing pushes me to be the most creative and hardworking music producer I can be. I was blessed with a sibling who will support me no matter what, a rare gift I will never take for granted.

Spending my childhood with Liran reshaped my personality and taught me many essential lessons. She opened my eyes to notice finer details, cherish simple joys, embrace differences, and approach others with empathy. People don’t realize that if they weren’t instantly judging Liran’s differences, they could learn meaningful lessons from her. She may view me as her role model, but the truth is, she is mine. My family won the lottery; she isn’t a burden—but a gift from God.

Author bio

Eytan Rosilio is a senior at The Frisch School from New Milford, New Jersey. He is passionate about soccer and music and runs his own entertainment business. Through his deep involvement with Yachad NJ and The Friendship Circle, he is committed to creating meaningful connections and building a more inclusive community.

Attribution

Originally published in The Jewish Link, Issue #621, March 5, 2026. Shared with permission from the Rosilio family.

The post A Gift From Hashem: Growing Up With a Sister With Down Syndrome appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

The quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but it actually came from novelist Rita Mae Brown. I must admit I liked it better when I thought it was Einstein’s, but coming from a novelist doesn’t make it any less true. And nowhere is it more true than in education.

Look at a 1971 Cadillac, the top-of-the-line American car of its day and compare it to a self-driving Tesla. The development and change have been more than dramatic. As an old Star Trek fan, I notice the same thing watching reruns: in many ways we’ve already surpassed what those writers could even imagine. Captain Kirk used a flip phone.

Almost everything has changed dramatically over the last fifty years, with one glaring exception: education. I can think of nothing that has progressed slower. Long-term trends in educational outcomes show a graph that is virtually a straight line from 1971 to today.

Why Education Is Stuck

There are many contributing factors. A few of the biggest:

• Self-perpetuating training. Most professors in college departments of education are themselves graduates of the very programs they now teach, preserving the same practices decade after decade.
• Questionable curriculum and resistance to choice. There are little real competition and little willingness to let parents choose what works.
• Lack of parental involvement. Many homes have effectively been removed from the educational equation.
• Homework that does more harm than good. Schools try to make up for ineffective use of the six hours a child is in class by sending more work home, often with negative results.
• Teach, test, forget. Material is taught, tested once, and for the most part never revisited, so it never truly enters long-term memory.

One Size Fits No One

But high on my list as to why progress has been so minimal is that our schools are still focused on set curricula, one-size-fits-all education. What is taught is grade or class dependent, not student dependent. In any classroom, at any grade level, there can easily be a disparity of two, three, or even more years in students’ academic levels, with similar differences in their processing levels. A child’s processing level determines how much of what they hear, read, or see they can actually take in, understand, and assimilate.

What Targeted Education Looks Like

At NACD, we see every day what targeted education can do: education tailored to the individual. Targeted education means teaching the child at their level in each subject, tailoring instruction to the child’s processing level, leveraging the principles of neuroplasticity, and providing targeted input with sufficient frequency, intensity, and duration until the information moves into long-term memory and is associated with other things the child has learned. Developing processing abilities changes the whole picture and the child’s future.

Parents, You Don’t Have to Wait

Changing a system that doesn’t really want to change is going to take a long time. But parents, you don’t have to wait. Consider taking charge: if possible, bring your kids home and provide them with a targeted, tailored education. It can accelerate your child’s learning, turn them into active learners and readers, and yes, make them smarter.

If you’d like to learn how NACD can help you build an individualized program for your child, visit nacd.org or contact us directly. The system may not change in time. Your child doesn’t have to wait.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 40 No. 1 , 2026 ©NACD

The post Preventing Educational Insanity: Why One-Size-Fits-All Is Failing Our Kids  appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

This is a question we hear from many parents. Some children have poor reading skills both in identifying words and comprehending the text, but many children are good readers, meaning good at word identification and able to read quickly, but lack comprehension. So, let’s look at what’s going on and how NACD addresses those issues and can help prevent those issues from developing. 

Reading comprehension can be broken down into two types of comprehension. There is a type needed to understand how one sentence links to another sentence. The sentences may link because pronouns were used in the second sentence to replace the proper nouns or common nouns in the first sentence. They may be linked by the relationship of two actions or two objects being identified. For example, Tommy woke up. He knew he needed to hurry. The relationship between these actions implies that Tommy is waking up in his bed and has someplace he needs to go, perhaps school. Another example would be: Tommy got his sneakers on quickly. Then he grabbed his basketball. As we read these sentences, our understanding of the vocabulary and the relationship of these words to each other starts to give us a construct for what may happen next. 

What happens when there is a word that is not understood in the sentence? Tommy awakened. He was anxious about being on time. Is there a construct of what is happening if you don’t understand a word in the first sentence? No, there is not. Let’s look at the next example. Tommy put on his galoshes as fast as he could. Then he grabbed his poncho.  Do we assume that a child will have a construct of what is happening here? Without an understanding of those key nouns, we can assume that they do not. 

So, we can see that receptive vocabulary and the relationship between words is important for that immediate “internal” comprehension of a text. 

What impacts on comprehension of a larger text? Working Memory is needed to provide a framework and hold the pieces so that a larger text, more than a few sentences, can be understood and recalled. If the text or story contains vocabulary largely understood by the child, then it is the working memory that is going to build the larger construct to hold and keep sorted all the information, sequentially and in a way that permits recall and understanding. A strong working memory is able to establish and hold the big picture while aligning the details of the narrative sequentially.

There is one more factor that impacts on comprehension in addition to vocabulary and working memory and that is sustained attention to language. If there is a break in attention to meaning as the individual is reading due to the habit of reading too quickly or due to the habit of disengaging from language too rapidly, comprehension is quickly lost. If this happens to adults or older students, they will typically realize and go back and re-read the portion that they missed. With children and some adults, however, this is not the case. So, we need a strong habit of sustaining attention to language established by strong short-term auditory memory.

Let’s look at these pieces as they relate to how NACD addresses neurological development in order. We work early on to develop a strong understanding of receptive language and word meanings and functions. We work early and continuously on building strong short-term and working memory auditorily as well as visually. We have diverse activities to address sustained and accurate auditory attention. We read to children and use audiobooks because studies have supported that listening comprehension and reading comprehension use the same neurological mechanisms. We use conceptual memory activities to work the mechanisms needed to group random words logically and to see new associations between seemingly random words. 

Reading comprehension is not just a matter of the right reading materials, the right workbook or curriculum. Reading comprehension is based on the very neurological functions that we address with our programs.

The following research article among many others, supports the findings of NACD over the decades that we have been working with children and adults on these issues.

Nicola Kate Currie, Kate Cain, Children’s inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 137, 2015, Pages 57-75.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 40 No. 1 , 2026 ©NACD

The post What Causes Poor Reading Comprehension & How Do We Fix It?   appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already tried ABA therapy. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. And somewhere along the way, a quiet voice started asking: Is this actually working?

You’re not alone. And you’re not wrong for asking.

The Problem Isn’t You. It’s the Model.

Here’s what we’re hearing from parents right now:

“Currently we aren’t seeing much progress, so I’m looking into other therapeutic support models.”

“We had to switch therapists. I like to say we fired them. It just wasn’t the right fit.”

“The constant turnover makes it very difficult for him to get acclimated.”

These aren’t outliers. A recent analysis of parent conversations across major online communities found that 68% of parents who question ABA aren’t anti-therapy. They’re frustrated with compliance-focused therapy that doesn’t honor who their child actually is.

And they’re right to be frustrated.

Why ABA Doesn’t Work

ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) is built on a simple premise: reinforce desired behaviors, reduce undesired ones. On paper, it sounds reasonable. In practice, it misses the point entirely.

It treats symptoms, not the whole child. A child who struggles with transitions isn’t just exhibiting a “behavior to extinguish.” They may have sensory processing differences, working memory challenges, or anxiety rooted in unpredictability. Targeting the behavior without addressing the underlying neurodevelopment is like putting a bandage on a broken bone.

It doesn’t happen often enough (or it happens too much, in the wrong way). Many families receive in-home ABA services 40 hours a week. That sounds intensive. But here’s the problem: those 40 hours are often spent on compliance training and behavior management, not neurodevelopment. And let’s be honest. For exhausted parents, having someone in the home for 40 hours a week is attractive even when progress stalls. It becomes free help. Free babysitting. That’s not therapy. Meanwhile, the brain doesn’t change from this kind of exposure. Neuroplasticity requires the right kind of input, delivered with frequency and intensity, in the environment where the child actually lives. Skills learned through compliance drills often don’t transfer because they were never built on a foundation of real development.

Staff turnover destroys any progress. The ABA industry has a well-documented retention crisis. Therapists leave. New ones arrive. Your child has to start over, again and again, with people who don’t know them. One parent described her adult son (6’5″, nonverbal) who hasn’t had consistent therapy “for YEARS” because of this revolving door.

It labels behaviors without understanding them. Because ABA doesn’t look at or understand the whole child, behaviors like collecting things, lining up items, or deep interest in specific topics are automatically labeled as “stims” to reduce. But that may or may not be true. Some of these behaviors are developmentally appropriate. Some are meaningful ways your child engages with the world. You can only determine what a specific behavior actually is by looking at and understanding the whole child. ABA doesn’t do that. So it treats everything the same way, regardless of what’s actually going on.

The Research Confirms What Parents Already Know

For years, ABA was the default recommendation because it was the most studied. But newer research confirms what frustrated parents have been saying all along:

A 2018 study found that ABA participants were 86% more likely to meet criteria for PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) than autistic people not exposed to ABA. To be clear: PTSD is the same condition we see in combat veterans and trauma survivors. The fact that a childhood therapy is associated with this level of psychological harm should stop every parent in their tracks.

Academic peer reviews have called for significant reform of ABA-based interventions.

Major publications (including STAT News and The 74 Million) have investigated whether ABA may be doing more harm than good.

Meanwhile, insurance remains the gatekeeper. Many parents stay in ABA not because it’s working, but because it’s the only covered option. That’s not a therapeutic choice. It’s a financial trap.

What Actually Changes the Brain

At NACD, we’ve spent 45 years developing a different approach. One built on how neurodevelopment actually works.

Parents are the intervention. Not therapists who rotate out every few months. You. The person who knows your child best, who sees them every day, who has the most to gain from their success. We train and coach parents to implement targeted activities at home. Not once a week, but daily. That’s how you get the frequency and intensity the brain needs to change.

We see the whole child. Not a collection of behaviors to manage, but a complete human being with interconnected challenges and strengths. Our evaluators look at sensory processing, motor development, cognition, language, behavior, what they eat, how they sleep, how they play. Because none of it exists in isolation. You can’t fix one piece without understanding how it connects to everything else.

1,000+ techniques, individualized to your child. There’s no one-size-fits-all protocol. Every child gets a program built specifically for them, drawing from a toolbox we’ve developed over four decades. And that program evolves. We re-evaluate quarterly and adjust based on what’s working.

Your child’s interests are assets, not problems. We don’t suppress what makes your child unique. We build on it. Those “obsessive” interests? They’re often the key to unlocking engagement, motivation, and learning.

You’re Not Starting Over. You’re Moving Forward.

If you’ve been in ABA and it’s not working, you haven’t failed. You’ve learned something important: your child needs something different.

The brain can change. Every child has unlimited potential. And parents are the most powerful change agents in a child’s life.

That’s not hope. That’s neuroscience. And it’s been our foundation for 45 years.

Many of these children also show strong avoidance behavior when tasks feel overwhelming, which is often a sign of underlying anxiety rather than defiance.

About the Author: Laird Doman is the COO of NACD International (nacd.org), a neurodevelopmental organization that has served over 30,000 families since 1979. NACD was founded by his father, Bob Doman, who continues to lead the organization’s methodology development.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 40 No. 1 , 2026 ©NACD

The post When ABA Therapy Isn’t Working: A Different Path Forward appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.