by Laird Doman

At NACD, we love innovation. We’ve embraced cutting-edge neuroscience, data, and technology for decades. But one place we’re drawing a very firm line? Trying to use Artificial Intelligence—especially tools like ChatGPT—to generate or guess what an NACD program might look like.

We recently heard from a family that typed their child’s diagnoses—autism, ADHD, anxiety, and sensory processing disorder—into an AI program and asked for a customized NACD plan. What came back was, quite honestly, laughable: a generalized list of activities like “relaxation techniques,” vague references to “digit spans,” and a canned daily schedule with no relevance to the child’s actual needs.

It was generic. It was inaccurate. And it was absolutely not NACD.

Why This Matters

We work with children whose needs are unique, layered, and evolving. NACD programs are created by human experts, based on:

• A comprehensive evaluation of your child’s neurodevelopmental function
• A deep understanding of what’s working and what’s not
• A focus on intensity, frequency, and duration—specific to your child and your family
• A team (including your coach) that is constantly adjusting, refining, and supporting the program
• Decades of experience with children just like yours—and nothing cookie-cutter about it

AI can’t replicate that. It doesn’t understand your child’s history, their strengths, their challenges, or your goals. It doesn’t know how to adjust techniques in real time, or how to prioritize sensory input vs. cognition vs. academics based on your child’s developmental trajectory.

The Risk of Misinformation

When parents rely on AI-generated advice in an attempt to “preview” or replicate an NACD program, they’re not just getting bad information—they’re being misled. This can:

• Set false expectations
• Cause confusion or disappointment
• Lead to wasted time on strategies that don’t work
• Undermine the trust and process that make NACD programs so effective

The Real Work Starts With You—and With Us

We welcome questions. We want families to come to evaluations prepared with their history, their concerns, and their hopes. But if you want to understand what your child’s NACD program will look like, you need to meet us face to face (or screen to screen). You need real insight, not AI noise.

So if you’ve seen something online, or had ChatGPT give you a “program,” we encourage you to set it aside. We’ll meet your child where they are, not where a computer guesses they might be.

We look forward to showing you what a real, individualized NACD program looks like. Spoiler alert: it’s better than anything a bot can generate

The post Why AI Can’t Create a Real NACD Program appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Quite a few of you know my story and journey with NACD, but for those of you who do not here it is in brief: We started our journey with NACD in December 2008. At the time my son Grant, who was five years old, was completely non-verbal, developmentally delayed, a flight risk, very stimmy, and had behaviors out of control. My husband and I were desperate for change and NACD gave us hope that one day our son might be able to first and foremost communicate with us and secondly live a happy and fulfilling life. I am very pleased to say that through our journey with NACD these hopes have become reality. He is fully conversational, a delightful young man, and living his best life. We continue to push forward and raise the bar on the expectations of him reaching his full potential.

In December of 2021 my dream job came to fruition, working for NACD as a coach, supporting families just like mine. As coach and now well into evaluator training, I have gained a different perspective through working with both evaluators and families. This has caused me to reflect on my personal journey with NACD and through reflection there are some things I wish I had understood more fully earlier on.

I wish I understood then just how important processing activities are as the critical foundation to global development. The background information I brought with me had me convinced I needed to prioritize other activities I felt were more important, like reading and math. These things are of absolute great value and importance, but the reality is the higher the processing is in a child, the easier these subjects will be to learn, and not only to learn, but to retain. Push to build the processing and the academics will fall into place much more easily.

I wish I realized that each activity on my child’s program is put on program with a specific intent and purpose. There are no “fluff” activities on program. Each activity is an important piece in building your child’s brain. Your evaluator has reason and intent behind each activity as to why it plays an important role. If you are unsure what an activity is accomplishing or why it is on your child’s program, ask us! The more you understand your program, the more successful you will be at implementation.

I wish I embraced the concept of pushing chores, responsibility, and self-help skills earlier on. I had my children learn chores, but I did not quite fully understand the bigger picture of what is accomplished through having a mindset of increasing the list of things my children can do. When it comes to chores it isn’t so much about what kids can do but more about what is happening through the act of doing chores. Chores build confidence and independence in kids. The more confident and independent kids are, the more intrinsic motivation they have to not only take on learning new things but are not intimidated doing hard things. Confident children have a “can do” mindset and this mindset overflows into academics as well. When this happens, they aren’t intimidated by working a tough math problem or learning something new, but instead they readily take on the challenge and with joy! There is another big piece of development that occurs through building the list of things a child can do, and this is maturity. Maturity comes with doing things for oneself and through doing things for others. We are raising highly capable adults. Highly capable adults are confident, independent, and mature. Keep raising the bar on the things your child can do!

Lastly, what I would tell my younger self when first starting our journey with NACD: Know your child’s program thoroughly. Watch the video tutorials and read the handouts from time to time, not just when you get a new program. You will learn something new every time you do. Ask questions if you are unsure about any activities or if something just doesn’t make sense to you. Take time to educate yourself by reading Bob’s articles in the newsletters and watching his YouTube videos. There is so much to be learned and the more you know, the better you will be at implementing program. Your time and efforts working with your child will be more efficient and your greatest work will be right before you, your amazing and unique child well on his way to reaching his full potential!

The post Reflections From an NACD Mom & Coach appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

by Bob Doman

Many parents of special needs children, as well as children with attention and learning related problems, mistakenly believe their children are receiving a good, real opportunity for development and education from the schools. With rare exception neither public nor private schools are equipped to provide these children with a real opportunity. What does opportunity look like, and how do we help the children realize their innate potential?

A sad reality is that the typically perceived potential for all our children, and particularly our special needs children, is not truly based on their innate potential, but rather it is defined by the very limited opportunities provided by public schools, and most private schools, and the outcomes they produce.

Opportunity Defines Potential and Determines Outcomes

The range of individual function in a typical or special needs classroom is tremendous. In a typical classroom the reading, math, and other educational levels range in years, not months; but everyone is generally placed in the same curriculum and at the same spot in the curriculum. The instruction is based on the month and year of where the class is in the curriculum. In addition to the huge range of educational levels in the classroom, the level of individual processing abilities (short-term and working memory levels, the ability to process and understand the information) varies tremendously, as do the individuals’ actual knowledge base, and learning strengths and weaknesses. Our children are all unique; and the more targeted their education is to their specific needs, the more effective.

The greater the developmental and learning challenges, the greater the variability of function, the more specific their requirements, and the greater the need for targeted intervention– “targeted” as in designed for the individual child and administered one to one.

How does the public education system determine potential and define opportunity?

Perceived potential defines what is determined to be appropriate educational and therapeutic opportunity, as defined by the public educational system. The potential is based on expectations and prognosis, while the prognosis is based on the past failures. The past failures in turn are the reflection of the realities of limited opportunity, the result of budget restraints and previous outcomes.

The Reality of School Aides

If your child is “fortunate” they are provided with a 1:1 aide. Parents generally mistakenly believe that the aide is providing a targeted program designed for your child. This is rarely the case. Often the aide assists your child in walking through a dumbed down version of the school curriculum or a version of the “special” curriculum. Aides generally assist and prompt the child through whatever is deemed appropriate work, rather than providing targeted teaching. They are not teachers and are not expected to be. They aid, as in assist, which often impairs rather than facilitates real education and often results in prompt dependency.

Physical, Speech, and Occupational Therapy

Many parents believe that their children who need specific therapies need to attend school so that they can receive the therapy they need. The reality is that one or two twenty to thirty minute sessions of “therapy” per week is not enough to produce significant change and certainly does not define a real opportunity. Very few school therapists would really define what they are providing as adequate. But, once again, outcomes predict potential and thus determine what is considered an appropriate opportunity. Sadly, the same criteria has been used by insurance companies to define appropriate opportunity, and thus limit how much therapy they will cover. Fortunately, most children with developmental issues do not need rehabilitation therapy; they need developmental opportunities that generally do not require a therapist.

Neuroplasticity

All individual development reflects and is the result of neuroplasticity, the process by which the brain changes in response to stimulation. The foundation of neuroplasticity is targeted input delivered with frequency, intensity, and duration.

Targeted input refers to specific input, specific as to the child; and because every child is different, the program needs to be designed around a comprehensive understanding of the whole child. All children are complex; and the more specific issues the child has, the more complex they are, as are their needs.

Labels

When schools started providing “special” services for special needs children and those with attention and learning challenges, the need existed for them to have administrative labels, so as to classify the children. The labels and classifications served as a means for the system to lower expectations and an excuse for the system to fail. One hundred or one hundred thousand children labeled as dyslexic or as having attention deficit, as an example, are all different and are categorized and stigmatized by a symptomatic label. They don’t have a disease, let alone an incurable disease; and they are all different. If they are all perceived as the same, then their needs are perceived to be the same, and their opportunities dictated by the expected outcomes. All the children with these labels are unique and complex, as are all labeled children, each with a multitude of different significant pieces that need to be understood and addressed if they are to be given a real opportunity to achieve their unique potential.

The Whole Child

You cannot successfully address a piece of a child without a comprehensive understanding of the whole child.

Who are the world’s greatest authorities on a specific child? The parents.

It is impossible to understand a child and provide a child with a real opportunity without the parents being in charge, the parents who know the whole child and who are ultimately responsible for the future adult. A dysfunctional 30-year-old child is not going to be living with their old teacher, or school principal, or therapist; they are going to be living with their parents or in some form of institution

What is the whole child? To understand the whole child, you must know and understand their history from birth to today– their birth history, their medical history, their developmental history, their educational history, their social and behavioral history. Who they are today is a reflection of their entire history and much more, including: any and all neurological/structural and physical issues, their sleep, their diet, current medical issues, behavior issues, social function, how they are on days when they don’t feel well or didn’t sleep well, what their relationship is with their parents, siblings, grandparents, extended family, friends, with their church or other organizations, what is fun, how do they engage themselves, how much screen time do they have, how is their vision, their hearing, their auditory and visual processing, short-term and working memory, do they have any executive function, exactly what do they know and understand, what are they afraid of, what do they like, what do they hate and on and on and on. All of these factors and many more need to be part of the consideration as to what they, these unique children who have never existed before on the planet and never will again, need. How do we target them?

How do you look at a label and determine what is appropriate for any child? You simply cannot define potential nor adequately work with a piece of a child without understanding the whole child.

Public education may pay some lip service to parents, but parents are generally perceived as the people the school sends the child home to at the end of the school day.

Reactive vs Proactive

Schools apply a reactive management strategy to the child’s development and education, meaning that the goals and thus the applications are not based on a long-term vision of what can be based on appropriate opportunity, but what is based on limited opportunity. Examples range from a perspective that the child really doesn’t have the potential to be functional in reading and math, therefore the “reading and math” programs provided aren’t really expected to produce a long-term result of someone who can actually read and understand math. If the perception is that a five-year-old really isn’t going to be able to speak and use language, then augmentative communication is the reactive approach. If the perception is that the child will never be an independent walker, then the reactive approach is not aimed at that goal, but rather life in a wheelchair or possibly a walker.

To work with a child proactively means that you are doing things today understanding and anticipating the long-term effects. What is seen as potential dictates the steps needed to achieve it and to work proactively, not reactively.

Shared Vision and Goals

Everyone involved with a child needs to share a common vision and goals. The primary voice in determining the vision and goals needs to be that of the parents. Parents can be assisted in this process with the help of those who have worked with and through families and their whole children for many decades.

A Better Way: Plan B

Home/Family Based Whole Child Comprehensive Programs

NACD (National Association for Child Development) has for over forty years been at the forefront of redefining opportunity and potential and has developed a toolbox of over 3000 specific techniques that can provide targeted intervention within the home and applied by parents, siblings, and caregivers. NACD focuses on providing individualized, home-based programs to children with special needs, those with learning and attention issues, as well as “typical” children, optimizing opportunity, changing perceptions and outcomes. This approach offers several advantages over public schools:

1. Individualized attention: NACD programs are tailored to the specific needs of each unique child, rather than labeling and plugging the child into an “appropriate” curriculum.
2. Home-based programs: NACD programs are best done at home five days per week. Each comprehensive targeted program maximizes neuroplasticity through short, intense activities that can be provided many times a day, rather than a couple of times per week.
3. Flexible scheduling: Parents can choose when to work with their child, which allows for schedules that work best for the family. It also provides the opportunity for targeted social interaction outside of the school walls. It’s not the quantity of time that a child spends in the company of other children, it is the quality and structure of the time. The reality is often whether or not a child can survive the social world of schools, not if they have learned how to appropriately interact and have developed positive social skills and lives.
4. Holistic approach: The NACD program focuses on the whole child, not just their academic needs, by addressing health and nutrition, motor skills, cognitive skills, speech, social and emotional development, behavior and much more–the whole child, and the whole child within the context of the family. NACD is constantly developing, exploring, and assessing new methods and treatments, bringing state of the art information and resources to bear on the child’s issues and needs.
5. Targeted input, delivered with the needed frequency, intensity, and duration by the people who know and care the most defines a new opportunity and changes outcomes.
6. Tri-annual evaluations and ongoing support, coaching, and interaction help keep everyone on target, working effectively and efficiently, and moving together to achieve the vision.

Learn more about how the NACD Program helps parents homeschool children with special needs:

      Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 36 No. 3, 2023 ©NACD

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We all have the tendency to get stuck in many patterns and ruts that can make it very difficult for us to achieve our potential as individuals, parents, and as families. When we take time to assess what and how we are doing, we can usually come up with a list of things we acknowledge that we could do better. 

There have been many things said and written about good intentions, mostly related to our failure to execute them. But every positive step forward begins with the intention to do it. Intention needs to be followed up with execution; and execution requires a plan and commitment.

I would like to suggest that although we may often lack the commitment to change and do things for ourselves, we love and care enough about our families and children that we create a plan that structures us into regular assessment of how and what we are doing and creates the intention to improve it, followed by a plan, commitment and execution. What we do today, tomorrow, and going forward matters. Every day and in every way, what we do impacts our families’ and our children’s futures. Let’s identify the ruts we are stuck in and the proactive things we need to be doing to move forward in an organized, structured way to make positive lasting changes. 

Patterns are habits, and habits are not easy to change because we are good at them, and they generally require no thought. Changing habits and patterns requires commitment and a plan. I suggest a plan for parents who wish to really do something with their children that can truly improve all their lives. To this end I would like to propose a Family Reset Challenge. 

The goal of the Family Reset Challenge is to help parents create an ongoing mechanism for family/child development and progress.

I want you to imagine something incredibly simple, something that would generally take less than thirty minutes per week and very possibly as little as ten minutes per week. Something that could improve your lives as individuals, your relationship with your spouse, and the lives and futures of your children.

What I am suggesting is that parents make the commitment and accept the challenge to have a scheduled targeted weekly meeting. Single parents need to schedule this special time as well. Prior to meeting together, I suggest that you take time individually to think about what you could, should, and would change that would benefit your family. Following what could be as short as a five-minute meeting with yourself, meet with your spouse, and when appropriate, with your children as well. Share your thoughts, evaluate where you are, where you want to be going, and create a plan– a plan built around the realities of what is needed to break old habits or create new ones. 

To create a new habit pattern generally takes 30-60 days, so for our challenges I am suggesting that from the get-go you make a one-to-two-month commitment. See it as an investment in your family’s future.

Challenge number one is to make the commitment to the weekly meetings, then in those meetings make the joint decision to create new 30-60 day challenges with the intention of creating ongoing new life changing habits and patterns. 

I have created a list of possible challenges to give you some ideas, but the challenges you create need to be the ones that fit your family and circumstances. 

Challenge Options: 

• Commitment to schedule an implement a weekly parent meeting
• Commitment to dedicate 5 minutes per day thinking proactively as to how you can help your spouse and each of your children 
• Commitment to have a weekly family outing/field trip
• Commitment to a daily family walk or indoor physical activity
• Commitment to not have your children eat any meals alone 
• Commitment to have at least one whole family meal per day
• Commitment to eliminate dairy from the family diet
• Commitment to eliminate sugar from family diet 
• Commitment to eliminate gluten from the family diet
• Commitment to actively teach, schedule, and build the list of your children’s chores and responsibilities
• Commitment to read to your child daily
• Commitment to give each of your children 4 positive comments to every negative
• Commitment to be consistent with feedback and consequences
• Commitment for parents to improve their function by using Simply Smarter
• Commitment to creating very specific holidays from electronics
• NACD Family specific challenges
  • Commitment to do x percent of your child’s program 5 days a week
  • Commitment of each parent to assume responsibility for specific program activities
  • Commitment for parents to read an NACD article or watch an NACD video with discussion weekly
  • Commitment from a sibling(s) to assume responsibility for one or more specific program activities

Do you care enough to accept the first challenge of a weekly meeting? After you succeed in the first challenge, the next is easier; and it just keeps getting easier as you create a new pattern of accountability and acceptance and learn that if you have the intention to make changes and improvement, you are up to the challenge to make it be.

I would encourage families to comment on the challenge concept and to share their challenge experiences and the challenges they have created.

This first challenge of a weekly meeting to assess, evaluate and proactively improve your family is very possibly the best investment of time you will ever make, less than 30 minutes per week, that is 1/336 of your week that has the potential to change everyone’s lives for the better. 

It’s tough to find a better investment and is worth the commitment.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 35 No.4, 2022 ©NACD

The post Family Reset Challenge appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

Free with your NACD membership

NACD Math was designed not only to teach children how to do math, but also to help them learn that math is easy, that they are good at math, and to enjoy it.

NACD Math is now made available online for our NACD clients through the NACD Family Portal. The new updated NACD Math replaces Modular Math, as well as supplemental math books.

Lyn Waldeck and Sara Erling, along with John McCallum, have been working for the last two years to bring together the pieces of NACD Math. NACD Math is targeted for the special needs population, particularly for those children with Down syndrome, those on the autism spectrum, and children with learning disabilities who have historically had difficulty with math. The program has also been used with great success for typical children to establish initial math concepts and to teach them math processes from initial number and quantity concepts through sixth grade computation.

NACD Math has a long history of development and has been used with thousands of children internationally.

Math education for special needs children has been an issue, except for those who have been using Bob Doman’s Modular Math program. The reason our program has been so effective is that it is built around how children learn, whether they are on the spectrum, have Down syndrome, or simply are young. Historically math instruction requires a lot of words. A lot of words are not something any of these children process or understand well. Our math program is very visual and teaches the child just one step at a time; and it is designed to avoid the need for, or dependency on, prompts.

NACD Math has been designed so that virtually anyone can teach it. The program incorporates video step-by-step instruction, so the teacher, parent, or even a sibling can watch a short video and then replicate/teach the simple steps. Each math computational process builds on the previous processes, creating simple transitions from one process to the next.

NACD Math has permitted many hundreds of children with Down syndrome to start learning math even before their typical peers and often to stay ahead of them for many years. With the solid NACD Math foundation, children with DS have been able to move into algebra and higher math. To say that NACD Math has been helpful for this population is a gross understatement; it has been a game changer. NACD Math builds a math foundation and understanding that has permitted special needs children to advance into higher math and has established a foundation for typical children that gets them off to a running start and puts them way ahead of their peers.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 31 No. 10, 2018 ©NACD

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To Get Started with the NACD Program,
please visit our NACD Get Started page

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Three Sets of Concepts

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Video Instructions for the Parent or Instructor

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Handouts with Examples of Each Concept

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To Get Started with the NACD Program,
please visit our NACD Get Started page

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