Murphy Family Testimonial

The Murphy Family’s experience with NACD has come at three major crossroads in our life. The first was when our oldest son was 18 years old and sustained a traumatic brain injury and shattered pelvis in a car accident. Two years later, we sought out NACD again when I (Kara) was completely overwhelmed by all the different learning challenges and exceptionalities that we were facing with our homeschooled children. I’m not sure, but I think we may set a record when we started “doing program” with seven children all at the same time. Our third major experience with NACD was when we found out that the baby I was carrying had spina bifida, a birth defect that affects the spine in a similar way to a spinal cord injury. Patrick’s lesion level was quite high, and the prognosis was that he would likely never walk, move or have sensation below his waist, he would not be able to urinate on his own, and he would be unable to control his bowels for his whole life.

On the first two major challenges, I can report that our experience with NACD was a complete success. Our son, Rich, made a full recovery within a year of his accident, an outcome that is unheard of for people with a TBI. Within two years of starting the six boys and one girl “on program,” all of the children were performing at, and mostly above, grade level in all subjects. Two are still in high school, but the rest graduated on time or ahead of schedule. Three are married, have children, and two own their own (or are part-owners of) businesses. 

Patrick is seven years old and his story is still being written. He started crawling and pulling up to standing when he was eight months old. He can currently stand for up to 30 minutes independently and takes up to 10 steps on his own. He has control of his bowels and is able to catheterize himself into a toilet. Patrick’s strength is constantly improving, and we have hope that he will get to the point that he will be able to walk independently.

We were devastated when a state trooper showed up on our doorstep on February 6, 2013 to report that on his way to a men’s morning prayer meeting our 18-year-old son slid on black ice, lost control of his car, and smashed into a tree. He was flown by helicopter to a bigger hospital in the next city. Steve arrived at the hospital first and had to confirm Rich‘s identity. He was rushed into surgery where a portion of his skull was removed to allow for the swelling that comes from a traumatic brain injury. We spent eight days in the ICU not sure if Rich was going to make it or not. Once he was stable, he was moved by ambulance to another hospital, where an orthopedic surgeon put a steel rod through his pelvis. While he was recovering from that surgery, we got a call from a family who had gone through a similar thing and had seen our prayer request on our church’s email loop. Knowing that we were homeschoolers and very committed to providing as much therapy at home as we could, they thought we should know about NACD. We are so grateful that that family reached out. We were still in the hospital when we talked to Bob Doman for the first time. He helped us to create a strategy to get Rich transported back to our home instead of being sent to a facility where he would receive one hour of therapy a day and spend the rest of his day staring at blank walls. 

Sixteen days after his accident, Rich came home. Because Rich was not able to stand or walk and at that point we had to transport him via ambulance, our first evaluation was over video conferencing. I still remember that very first program we received. I remember looking at the frequency and duration columns and thinking that the frequency referred to how many times per week an activity needed to be done. Surprise! That was how many times per day the activity needed to be done. At that stage of our life, we had 10 children at home, six of them we were homeschooling. “Doing program” was a big change. I (Kara) couldn’t implement all of it on my own alone. Other family members got involved and some of Rich‘s friends even helped him with program activities. Six months after starting his program, Rich was almost one hundred percent recovered. This is astonishing compared to most statistics about people who suffer from a TBI. 

We continued “doing program” with Rich for another six months and then he went back to working full-time and pursuing his life goals. He is now married, the father of seven, and part owner of a construction business. 

It was about a year later when I was in a crisis. Overwhelmed with seven children ages 16 to 4, all homeschooling, most struggling with academics, and feeling like we have been dealing with the same problems over and over without any long-term solutions. There was some overlap of problems between the children, but by far the worst challenge was our eight-year-old who I would later find out was what we call “stimmy.” For an entire year I tried to teach him to read using the “best” method and program available. We were still on lesson three. He showed zero comprehension. It was in the middle of the night and I was crying out to the Lord for some kind of solution when he brought to mind some of the activities that we had done with Rich after his accident. I wondered if NACD could help us. As I looked into it, it became very clear that NACD would not only help our eight-year-old, but it would be very beneficial for all the children. Some of the challenges that we have dealt with include what would have been labeled auditory processing disorders, dyslexia, hyper mobility, and eye tracking disorders. Each child’s particular mix of these was individual, but there was a lot of overlap between them. 

That’s when we may have set a record for the most children to begin NACD at the same time. We took an entire day of evaluations just for our family—Matthew, Harrison, Jonathan, Jackson, Gabriel, Josiah, and Maggie. 

At our first evaluation, I was convinced that we had wasted our money. Miss Ellen sat and talked to each of the children, gave them a couple of simple academic placement tests, and had them perform a series of activities. After all, I had given my children lots of placement tests. And what were those simple little activities supposed to tell her? The answer was—everything! I think I sat with an open mouth while Ellen gave in-depth insight into each of our children’s personalities and challenges. She was able to explain why the methods and programs that I was using were not the best for each child. And for the first time since beginning homeschooling, she offered answers to the problems that had plagued us. 

This time when I received our first programs, I knew that the frequency number meant how many times per day. I believe I spent the first three days after receiving the kids’ programs wondering, “how in the world are we going to get all this done?” How would we have survived without the practical suggestions of our NACD coach, BJ?

The first thing we did was pair older and younger children together. The two oldest and our adult daughter, Elizabeth, who was still at home, paired up with the three youngest and the fellows in the middle got me. Of course, I had to train the older three how to do the activities with the younger ones, and some of their activities I chose to do myself, but I believe that helping their younger siblings prepared them to be good parents in the future. I made checklists, put them on clipboards, and inspected what had been accomplished every day and every week. We went from being a “relaxed homeschool” family to being a very structured homeschool family. It was a big cultural shift. But it worked. One of the children went up four grade levels in reading in the first three months. We finally understood what was going on with our eight-year-old and we had strategies to use to address the underlying problems and, more importantly, to fix them. 

That’s one of the things that sets NACD apart from most “special needs” programs. The goal of NACD is to fix underlying problems rather than to teach strategies to accommodate problems. 

We had just gotten to the point that we felt like we might be able to back off a little from “doing program” so intensively all the time when, at the 20-week ultrasound, we found out that our new baby would be born with spina bifida. Spina bifida is a neural tube defect, and Patrick would be born with an already damaged spinal cord. His first surgery was 16 hours after he was born, his second when he was three weeks old. 

From the time we found out about Patrick’s diagnosis, we were in close contact with Ellen and Bob. As soon as Patrick recovered from surgery, we began program with him. Patrick’s program implementation is still a whole-family affair. His older brothers do most of the physical pieces with him. (Ironically, Patrick thinks that his “program” is only the physical activities that he does with his brothers. He doesn’t realize that all the sequencing, reading, math, and unit studies are part of his program, too.) 

When Patrick was two and a half, his little sister joined the family and became the tenth Murphy child (of twelve) to become an NACD kid. Truthfully, the earlier you start NACD with your little ones, the more fun it is. They learn so quickly and it is easy to accelerate their learning which makes learning even more fun. Our NACD programs also prevent certain problems from occurring and catch things earlier, which is a huge benefit in addressing issues. 

NACD has benefited our family in innumerable ways. After thirty years of homeschooling and our many years in the homeschooling community, we can’t recommend it highly enough.