Understanding the Whole Child

To truly understand a child, we must take a top-down approach, viewing them as a complete individual rather than a sum of disconnected parts. Every child is more than a diagnosis, a test score, or an isolated challenge. Yet too often, professionals—whether doctors, therapists, educators, or psychologists—focus on just one piece of the puzzle without seeing how it connects to the whole.

This fragmented approach is much like the classic parable of the three blind men and the elephant, where each man touches a different part of the animal and comes away with a completely different impression. One thinks he’s found a tree trunk, another a snake, another a fan—none of them realizing they are all describing the same elephant. In the same way, when we look at just one aspect of a child’s development without considering the bigger picture, we risk missing their true potential.

Parents, who know their children better than anyone, are often left out of the equation. Yet, they are the experts on their own child and an essential part of any effective intervention. Whether a child has a formal diagnosis or not, each one is unique, complex, and capable of growth beyond expectations—if we take the time to understand them holistically.

The Power of a Top-Down Perspective

One of the first things we teach professionals learning to assess children is to start with the big picture. The first 30 seconds of interaction can often reveal a wealth of insight into a child’s development, personality, and challenges. This top-down approach allows us to quickly identify strengths, pinpoint underlying issues, and develop a roadmap for meaningful progress.

In contrast, starting with individual symptoms or isolated skill sets often leads to a distorted and incomplete understanding of the child. To truly help a child thrive, we must first see who they are as a whole person, then work backward to address the specific areas that need support.

Beyond Labels: Every Child is Unique

Labels can be useful for categorization, but they do not define a child’s potential. Consider:

• Josh, who has a brain injury
• Olivia, diagnosed with Down syndrome
• Jaxon, labeled as being on the autism spectrum
• Lindy, identified with ADHD
• Ryan, considered “typical”
• Lucas, placed in a gifted program

Each of these children is more than their label. They all have complex needs, unique abilities, and untapped potential. When we focus only on the diagnosis, we limit expectations—but when we recognize the whole child, we open the door for extraordinary growth.

Building a Support System for Success

Helping a child reach their full potential requires a coordinated, individualized approach that includes:

• The Child – at the center of the process
• Parents – the true experts on their child’s strengths and needs
• NACD Developmentalist – a trained specialist who designs a customized developmental program based on a holistic assessment
• Family Coach – available nearly seven days a week to provide ongoing support
• The NACD Team – an extended network of specialists with decades of experience and over 3,000 targeted intervention strategies

This team approach ensures that each child receives personalized, strategic input designed to help them develop the skills they need to succeed.

The Truth About Neuroplasticity: No Magic Pills, Just Consistent, Targeted Work

In today’s world, families are bombarded with promises of quick fixes—from supplements to therapies that claim to offer overnight transformations. But the reality is that meaningful change takes time, consistency, and strategic input.

Brain development follows the principles of neuroplasticity—the process by which the brain creates new neural connections and adapts over time. While neuroplasticity offers incredible potential, it does not happen instantly. Real progress requires interventions that follow three critical principles:

1. Frequency – The brain needs repetitive exposure to new information and activities. Ideally, children receive targeted input multiple times per day rather than once or twice per week.
2. Intensity – Learning must be engaging and appropriately challenging to stimulate growth.
3. Duration – Change takes weeks or months, not minutes or days. Sustainable progress requires a long-term commitment.

Unlocking Every Child’s Potential

Every child—regardless of their background, challenges, or strengths—has the potential to exceed expectations when given the right opportunities. The key lies in seeing the whole child, not just their difficulties, and applying customized, targeted strategies that nurture growth at every level.

At NACD, we believe that no child’s future should be predetermined by a label. By focusing on the whole child, working as a team with families, and harnessing the power of neuroplasticity, we help children break barriers, develop skills, and thrive beyond what anyone thought possible.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 39 No. 1 , 2025 ©NACD

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by Bob Doman

Our perception of our children’s potential is limited by what we believe is possible. The opportunities we provide for them reflect that perceived potential, and the opportunities determine the outcomes.

Let me start by getting your attention. I want to introduce you to Ellen, a not-so-typical, “typical” child who just turned 6.  

This list of names Ellen was hearing for the first time and recalling represents her processing and short-term memory; and repeating the names backward represents her working memory, which is exceptional. Ellen’s cognitive function permits her to do amazingly well in everything she does, and she is just getting started.

Ellen’s parents understand neuroplasticity because of what they have seen with her big brother, Coco. Coco is a brilliant ten-year-old who exceeds the perceptions of what the professional world believes could be. However, NACD and Coco‘s parents believe that he has unlimited potential and are providing him with opportunities commensurate with those perceptions. 

Please watch Coco’s demonstration of his working memory. Neither Ellen nor Coco are using memory strategies or tricks; they are using the short-term and working memory that has been developed.

Coco is demonstrating his processing power and working memory. Working memory is now appropriately being called the new IQ. Coco was brain-injured at birth and would be identified as having Cerebral Palsy. However, to his family (who, with NACD’s guidance, is providing all his therapy and education themselves at home), he is their son, Coco. Coco needs no other labels; “Coco” suffices, and he is given the opportunities of a child with unlimited potential. Physically, Coco still has many challenges but has already surpassed traditional expectations and is not stopping.  

Coco’s and Ellen’s parents can see the potential in their children; because they can see it, they are doing everything they can to help them achieve it.

Step 1: Understand that through neuroplasticity, almost anything is possible.

Step 2: Do not be limited by labels & associated baggage.

Step 3: Provide the child opportunities to achieve their unique innate potential.

Note: Coco’s parents read our articles and watched our videos before Coco’s first NACD evaluation and TDI (Targeted Developmental Intervention) Program, which he received just before his second birthday. They understood neuroplasticity and knew that they were responsible for their son’s future and that they needed to be all that they could be. In preparation, they started using our online Simply Smarter program. Both parents developed superior processing and working memory—exceptional parents doing exceptional things. No limits. 

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 38 No. 5, 2024 ©NACD

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What do you remember from last month, last year, a decade ago, or five decades ago? I still have some vivid memories from college over fifty years ago, and none of them have anything to do with what occurred in a classroom.

I take every chance I get to speak with young people graduating from high school or who are attending or have just finished college.These talks help reinforce for me the value of intensity or the results of the lack of it in education.  I ask these young people whose education should be fresh in their minds very simple questions about everything from geography and science to civics and history. I’m no longer surprised when many of these “A” students cannot answer even the most rudimentary questions, the answers to which should be essential to simply functioning in our society. What happened?

All learning involves impacting and changing the brain. The mechanism for this change is neuroplasticity. The world of education has largely ignored the basics of neuroplasticity even though the fundamentals have been known for many decades.

Sadly, the term neuroplasticity has become synonymous with the simple statement – the brain changes.  This is true, the brain constantly changes based on the input it receives and how it is used. But to take advantage of neuroplasticity we must understand and pay attention to the fundamentals of neuroplasticity. The fundamentals are not difficult to understand, but as mentioned, are very rarely employed in education.

Targeted Input

The first fundamental of neuroplasticity is providing the child’s brain with input that is targeted to them. We optimize neuroplasticity when we provide the brain with targeted input. Targeted input simple means that which is significant, relevant, and which specifically fits the individual.  If we try to apply this to a typical classroom we are unfortunately far away from targeted. In a typical classroom of about thirty children, we have thirty individuals, each with their own experiential background, level of related knowledge, their own unique learning and processing abilities, and of course various levels of interest or lack of such in the subject. Classes are often being taught by someone who is merely following a one size fits all set curriculum and who may not have a real interest in the subject themselves.

Frequency

The second component of neuroplasticity is frequency.  

We grow brain connections when we supply the brain with specific targeted input with sufficient frequency, often enough to produce relatively permanent change. One of the most glaring examples of the lack of frequency in typical education is in math. Only twenty-four percent of high school graduates in the United States are proficient in math. If they had in fact learned and retained what was “taught,” the proficiency rate would theoretically be very high. (The present Common Core math is a failure, as was the “new math” of the sixties from which it is based.) In truth math outcomes have never been good because there is almost never enough review, i.e. frequency. Case in point: the year students take Algebra, their overall math score tends to drop. Why? Not enough use of or review of previously taught processes.  The majority of what is taught in school is never to be seen again after the exam, the exam which is supposed to be an indicator of what was “learned.” Most students, even the good ones, do not approach the content with even the intention of really learning it.  The intention is to pass the exam, because they generally are not interested in or see the relevance of the material to them. If you don’t know the information weeks or months, let alone years, later one might question if it was in fact ever learned. What was the point? 

Duration

Going hand in hand with frequency is the third component of neuroplasticity–duration.  The input needs to come in over time to help grow those connections that change the brain and produce memory. That period of time generally takes us back to frequency, because in one session as we increase duration, we lose intensity. Short and sweet. The less targeted the input, the less the impact on the brain and the greater the duration needed to impact the brain. However, the more targeted the input, the higher the intensity and  the lower the requirement for high frequency and long duration.

Intensity

Intensity, the fourth component of neuroplasticity, is extremely important and the least realized of the fundamentals of neuroplasticity in most schools, classrooms, and even homeschools.  Mentally go back to one of your classrooms, be it from elementary school, middle or high school, and hopefully to a lesser degree college. What did that classroom look like?  Kids half asleep, kids doodling, kids looking out the window, kids listening to what was going on in the hallway, some staring blankly at the teacher, and perhaps a few who were interested in what the teacher was saying and were paying attention. There rarely is much of any intensity. Intensity is student specific, a reflection of how targeted the input is, what you bring to the moment, to the class, to the subject. This brings to mind the paradox of some “learning disabled” children struggling with every subject in school and failing, but who can tell you the name of every major league baseball player and their stats. Often, it’s all about intensity, to what degree what is being taught interests, fits, or targets the student. Is what is being taught targeted to the student? Is what is being taught being presented in a way that involves and excites the student? 

The typical educational, curriculum-based model doesn’t really work, if measured by the time invested by both the school and the student (time which can never be reclaimed) and expense relative to what is actually learned.  Our brains demand something different.

Our brains only learn and change through the mechanism of neuroplasticity. Go back to those long-term memories and think about what they had in common.  The odds are the common component is intensity.  

Where is the student in the equation? 

When instructing parents or other educators, I always address intensity.  Do your best to target the student. Do your best to understand them, know them, interact, and observe them. I even suggest that they imagine a number in the center of the student’s forehead that constantly fluctuates, that rates their intensity on a scale of 1-10. 10 is such high intensity that learning is almost instantaneous; it’s an experience that happens once and you never forget it. The odds are you’re not going to see a 10, but you can shoot for a 9. Bring down the number to 7 or 8 and learning is occurring, but you are going to need a lot of frequency and duration to change that brain. At 5 or 6 the impact on the brain is getting to be marginal at best, and below 5 everyone would be better off taking a nap. This is real, and the truth is we are kidding ourselves and wasting our children’s time and turning them off to learning if we are trying to cram information into a brain that’s not being targeted.

One of the major issues related to focusing on curriculum and largely leaving the child out of the equation is that we miss the fact and the reality that we have the ability to actually change the student. We have the means to make every student smarter. We can develop short-term memory and then build on that foundation and develop working memory, which is now appropriately being called the new IQ. And then the working memory creates executive function, which is the higher-level cognitive function that permits us to control and orchestrate all our cognitive functions and behaviors. But the fact is that “education” ignores the individual to such an extent that these incredibly important fundamentals that affect how well we learn, think, and function in every aspect of our lives are lost. This is a travesty. 

We need to put the child, the student, at the top of the equation, not leave them out of the equation other than to give them a grade that reflects our failure.

There are better ways.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 37 No. 1 , 2024 ©NACD

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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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I will never forget the feeling I had the day when Jack was labelled as autistic, he was five years old and had received a heavy educational input from myself and my supportive family with reading, math and general learning. My husband and I had left our jobs to take our son to “the best” child psychologist in London, primarily because the private school Jack was attending in Andorra had asked us to withdraw him. The schools’ headmistress said that they did not know what was wrong with him, but they did not have the facilities to educate him. This was quite a shock to us because from when he was a baby, I had seen how intelligent he was and I thought the milestones he wasn’t making was a result of him going to a multi-lingual school for the past year, as before he went to school, he was reading well for his age and showed a great memory for stories and I had no reason to believe he had any issues. My husband and I work on Super yachts, myself as a captain and he as a chief engineer. Before we left our jobs for the trip to London, we had had an amazing guest, who was a pioneer in reducing biological age and in practical uses of increasing knowledge of neuroplasticity. We had mentioned to him why we were leaving our jobs and he gave us the following parting words of advice:

1. Do not take the psychologist’s opinion as the only option, because they specialise in only one specific part of the child, which is a result of the problem.
2. Ask about possible effects of other factors, such nutrition and genetics.
3. Read the book “The brain that changes itself” before you make any major decisions. (This was key to us understanding what to look for in the solution which we finally found in NACD).

After a very expensive, one hour evaluation of Jack, the psychologist in London advised us, in no uncertain terms, that I should move to London and put Jack in a school specialising in children with autism (which he was the resident phycologist for), he advised us that Jack would regress and he would be nonverbal by the time he was 8 years old, he would never be very academic, although he was clearly intelligent by nature and if he did manage to have a career as an adult, he was very likely to grow up to be a selfish and self-involved, egotistical adult, who would have little thought for others. He would not be able to do math or learn to play music, as that part of his brain would never function properly.

My whole world fell apart, we asked the psychologist if there could be any links to genetics or diet that could help him, but he shut us down. We left his office feeling completely overwhelmed. How could we have an autistic child, could there be such low expectations of child of whom we had seen had a natural high intelligence level, who was happy and fun to be with and furthermore, what could we do to help him?

Luckily, throughout our training and careers, we have been taught not to mop up the symptoms of a situation but to find the root cause of the problem and to find a solution to fix these problems. My husband instantly identified that we should find somebody who understood how the brain works and how to fix the neurological root cause of Jack’s disability.

After over a year of home schooling and trying different methods to help an autistic child without improvement, I came upon The Listening Programme (developed by NACD), which is a music recording on an iPod, linked to bone conducting headphones, which trains the ears to learn audible frequencies. Within the first month of using TLP, I saw the first real step forward, in what had been over 12 months of intensive and soul-destroying work, one-on-one with speech therapists, occupational therapists and many other experts with no steps forward and so I read all the recommendations that parents had given on TLP’s website, hoping to find like-minded parents that had found the solution we were looking for; luckily, one of the recommendations mentioned NACD. I searched the internet and was so delighted when I realised that their method of working with disabilities was based on fixing the root cause of the problem, through a series of proven exercises, based on an understanding of the ‘plastic brain’, the effects of neurological issues and how they manifest themselves in symptoms. NACD had managed to help a range of children with disabilities of all kinds of different labels as well as “normal” and gifted children.

After an initial interview with an assessor, we were sent an introductory audio file to listen to, where the NACD method was outlined. I was a little overwhelmed hearing about digit spans etc, but intrigued and totally onboard, so a short while later, in September of 2014, with full enthusiasm, we went to Chicago for Jack’s assessment. Ellen Doman completed a one-on-one assessment of Jack in a hotel room office, whilst we sat anxiously in the foyer. She then brought us into the room and explained how she had identified a number of issues including: sensory dysfunction, developmental motor issues and poor auditory sequential processing amongst other developmental problems. She explained that he was ‘stimming’ and told us what this meant, I still remember being on the phone to my mum during the 4-hour drive home, explaining that Jack was watching movies in his head at hundreds of times the speed and getting a dopamine kick from it, and that this was more addictive than morphine and when he was ‘in a world of his own’ he was actually completely immersed in these movies. It took a long time for this to sink in. I was hesitant at first, as it seemed so far-fetched, but over the years, the theory was proven again and again and when Jack was communicating well enough, he explained this in his own words. Ellen also told us where he was in his fine and gross motor skills, specifically linked to where he was neurologically and noted that Jack was using his peripheral vision over his central vision and she explained why this was not good.

Ellen reassured me that there was a lot we could do with Jack to get him back on track and I was very impressed with the systematic and detailed approach. She said that she would send me a program for Jack and to contact them with any questions or concerns, but in the next few days, while she put the program together, we should avoid dairy, reduce sugars and gluten, not watch any movie or TV shows more than once and get as much time reading together, engaged in games and conversation and to go on walks etc as much as possible. We saw a big improvement within two weeks, particularly in Jacks’ responsiveness and use of language, which we later confirmed was due to stopping milk is his diet as he was lactose intolerant (something I did not really believe in before I saw the evidence in Jack). Our journey on a new path had begun.

The First Program

We were somewhat overwhelmed with the first few programs as they were educating us on how to help and improve Jack’s issues. With the whole family completely involved in every step of the way on how to teach and retrain Jack. NACD reset the way we understood education (My mother lives with us and was the primary teacher because I have a demanding job and my Mum is trained in educating young children and so it took her a while to adapt to these new methods). The program made sense as a whole, but we could not quite see the reasons for some of the tasks until a year or so later, but we started working on the basic fundamentals of a properly functioning brain, starting with developmental motor activities, as well as continuing with TLP and implementing many basic sequencing exercises. Ellen explained where Jack was with math (which was a lot lower than we had realised) and how to teach him the meaning and sequence of number and the difference between math facts and math problem solving. We learned how to teach reading with flash cards of the first 1,000 words and the importance of frequency, intensity and duration. Having the training videos online to access whenever we needed a refresher of how to complete a task has been incredibly useful and the simplified approach to teaching math has helped us teach the children in a fun and engaging way.

The program progressed with Jack and was adapted to suit his level of ability rather than his age. We hadn’t realised how far behind he was on basic neurological assessments initially, but over the years, he has caught up substantially and academically, he has overtaken his peers.

One of my most vivid memories from before NACD, was watching a mother with her 7-year-old boy in Barnes and Noble, she was discussing a topic in the Encyclopaedia with him and they were happily engaged in a two-way conversation. My heart sank and my world fell apart as, I thought, I would never have this relationship with my son, as he would be non-verbal, never mind able to hold a conversation, but now Jack is thriving, he is almost fluent in Spanish, has basic Chinese and French, is learning to study independently and is able to take on any chore in the house. Jack has also just published his first book called “Albert and the Karnikans” in the UK, a process that he had a lot of involvement with, (this is one of many stories he has in his creative space at home). Jack enjoys playing the piano and cello, which I will admit was a struggle for the first few years, he has a very high level of vocabulary, actively engages in conversation and discussions (although his is still quite shy in social situations) and last year, at aged 11, he scored at sophomore college level on his math test. Jack loves to read philosophy and history and writes his own computer code to make basic computer games. In his free time, he draws comics and tells and re-enacts stories and plays with his sister for our entertainment. In short, he is thriving.

Our daughter, Charlotte, is now 10 years old. She was an “average child” when she began NACD at 4 years old (we removed her from school when they asked us to take Jack out). Charlotte loves maths and she tested sophomore level math at 9 years old. She scores 12 in her digit spans in person, 9 on Simply Smarter, which makes more advanced learning in STEM subjects and coding more enjoyable and engaging for her. About a year after starting on NACD, Bob and Ellen discovered she had issues related to reading that a psychologist would have labelled as dyslexia and with early intervention we were able to fix this issue with simple methods that we easily implemented into our daily program, she now tests at reading grade 12 and is an avid reader. She is happy, highly capable and is becoming an independent learner who loves history and science. She plays the harp, piano and violin and is almost fluent in Spanish and is learning Chinese and French.

NACD has made us realise that we can all reach our full potential. The methods we have learned and implemented into improving ourselves has had an everlasting positive influence on us as individuals and as a family. We have all developed with Jack and Charlotte in the process of learning the NACD methods, we have a greater understanding of how the brain works, specifically, how we learn, which has led to a great desire to help other families and children who are experiencing the fear and frustration that we had in our lives only six years ago. All of our family have improved in so many ways and as a result of NACD our lives are so much more enriched, we have become better leaders, communicators and able and willing to take on new academic challenges that otherwise may have been daunting.

My mother, who is now 72 years old, is improving her own brain capability and is reaching her own true potential by completing NACD’s, Simply Smarter in her free time. She is learning Spanish and is still teaching both children English and math.

If I could give advice to other parents it would be to trust the incredible knowledge that the team at NACD have from their education, training, years of experience and teamwork which they draw on with great care, when making up a new program which is specifically designed for each child.

Myself and my family will be forever grateful to Bob, Ellen and everyone at NACD for giving my children the chance to realise their true potential and for making us a stronger and happier family, we intend to continue with NACD for the rest of our children’s journey through education.

The NACD Foundation, Volume 34 No.1, 2021 ©NACD

The post Our Journey With NACD appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

For those exploring options and asking questions about NACD Home Education or interest in homeschool for your child, we have collected a list of questions and answers that may help you with your decision making process.

The following is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about our NACD Home Education (Homeschooling) program:

What is NACD Home Education? 

NACD Home Education is a proven, time flexible, efficient, effective, home-based educational program for those choosing to homeschool. 

NACD Home Education is an individualized, dynamic, targeted, and comprehensive developmental/educational program designed to accelerate every child’s rate of development and education. Using the science of neuroplasticity, it is possible to accelerate important aspects of development, cognition, and education in significantly less time per day than traditional school or homeschool. NACD Home Education programs are applicable for children across the developmental spectrum, including those with special needs or learning issues, as well as typical and gifted children. For over 40 years NACD has been a leader in cognitive development and working with the whole child within the context of their family. NACD works proactively with the family, working in unison to help our children develop into successful adults. We have a long history of working with homeschoolers. 

Helpful links

T.H.E. Targeted Home Education: https://www.nacd.org/t-h-e-targeted-home-education/

Targeted Home Education – T.H.E. Way Forward: https://www.nacd.org/targeted-home-education-the-way-forward/

NACD Targeted Home-Based Education: The Vision and the Plan: https://www.nacd.org/nacd-targeted-home-based-education-the-vision-and-the-plan/

Helping your child establish the foundation that will help them become successful adults.

Although curriculum has become almost synonymous with education, it is not. Education is a process by which we teach and develop the whole child. The foundational pieces that are addressed by NACD Home Education include:

• Improving your child’s cognition, including short-term memory, working memory, executive function, and maturity—making them smarter
• Improving your child’s reading
• Teaching them to love reading and turning them into lifelong readers
• Accelerating your child’s math abilities
• Teaching them that math can be easy and to love it
• Helping them learn how to love learning and become independent thinkers and motivated learners
• Providing a functional, comprehensive academic education
• Teaching your child how to be highly capable, be responsible for chores, and to contribute
• Building their self-esteem, confidence, and independence
• Physical and emotional health and wellbeing
• Helping you establish a strong, positive, healthy relationship with your child
• Helping your child discover and pursue their strengths, interests, and passions
• Educating the child in the family’s social, spiritual, and philosophical ideals.

Is NACD a homeschool program?

Yes, NACD is home-based, but not a typical curriculum heavy homeschool program. 

NACD provides a home-based education, administered and implemented by parents, family, and caregivers, that addresses the needs of the whole child within the context of the family and the family’s vision for their child. NACD home-based education does not have a specific curriculum and is not curriculum heavy, but rather curriculum specific, individualized, and targeted. With NACD home-based education your child is not plugged into a specific packaged curriculum, but rather the educational approach and content is built around your child, which among other things permits you to accomplish more in much less time per day.

Helpful links

Who We Help – NACD Homeschool & Home Education: https://www.nacd.org/who-we-help/homeschooling/

Is Home Education the same as homeschool? 

No, NACD Home Education is not the same as homeschool.

Many homeschool programs are simply curriculums. Homeschool programs are often built around specific curriculums much like schools. Your child is plugged into a curriculum whether or not it fits them, just as it is done with typical brick and mortar schools. It is not targeted, not specific, and not time, energy, or outcome specific. NACD Home Education Programs assist the parent in every aspect of the child’s development and education, reaching far beyond curriculum.

Helpful links

How to School Your Child: https://www.nacd.org/how-to-school-your-child/

How long per day does it take to do an NACD Home Education Program?

The time commitments per day are flexible and based on the goals and the family’s available time for implementation.

NACD has been designing home-based programs for forty years and has learned how to accommodate a broad range of needs, circumstance, time, and manpower availability. Because each program is individually designed to fit each child within the context of their family, there is great flexibility. Programs have been designed that take minutes per day, hours per day, or that structure the entire day. Programs can be accomplished by stay-at-home parents or parents who work from home or leave the home part time, or even have full time employment. Home education programs have even been implemented by families not just within their homes, but also within their businesses, offices, or as multi-family teams. NACD works with the families to identify the child’s needs and then explores a range of program options and manpower needs, including getting help from grandparents, siblings, college students, and others. We enjoy being creative.

What are NACD’s goals for the children being home educated with them?

Our goal is to help the family create a vision for their child and help them achieve it.

Success is not just not just being able to read or do math or recall a lot of curriculum, but to develop the whole individual. Sadly, whether a child is attending a brick and mortar school or doing a typical homeschool curriculum, the focus is on the curriculum, most of which is quickly forgotten. Our goal is to work with the family to help and develop the whole individual, including development of super cognitive function, a strong academic foundation, and to turn the child into a lifelong reader and independent lifelong confident learner, to teach responsibility, help them become highly capable and to learn service, and to provide the child with the opportunity to discover and build their talents and passions. 

What this entails is close coordination between the family and NACD—a highly individualized, targeted program. So whether the student and family’s goal is to overcome learning or developmental problems for medical or law school, nuclear physics, liberal arts college, trade school, or maybe building a business of their own, NACD will provide the support and guidance to develop that plan. Success is not defined the same way for everyone, but being able to maintain and sustain an independent and successful adult life is important for everyone. However that is defined, NACD is there to assist the student and the family in achieving that dream.

What curriculum does NACD use? 

NACD does not use a packaged curriculum, but creates an educational program designed to fit each specific child.

For decades education has focused on curriculum—what is being taught, not what is being learned. NACD acknowledges and values our children’s uniqueness and works with the family to provide a comprehensive, targeted education that fits the child and focuses on outcomes. NACD does not use a packaged curriculum and develops each child’s educational plan and approaches so as to teach them as effectively and efficiently as possible. Through targeted education more can be taught in significantly less time per day than is typically done in schools or through typical homeschools.

Helpful links

The Sweet Spot: Optimizing Education & Developmental Intervention: https://www.nacd.org/sweet-spot-optimizing-education-developmental-intervention/ 

NACD Articles About Curriculum: https://www.nacd.org/?s=curriculum

If NACD does not follow a specific curriculum, what education materials do you use?

NACD uses a broad range of educational content.

Providing a targeted, individualized education requires an understanding of the learning strengths and weaknesses of the student, targeting and developing their weak areas while taking advantage of their strengths. This necessitates the use of many different materials and different techniques to teach each subject. In addition we need to target the materials for each subject so as to fit the individual’s specific level and to teach to their academic “sweetspot.” Fortunately, between materials created by NACD and the range of books, programs, and online materials and courses available today, we are able to tailor the curriculum to the child. NACD works to target each child’s program to fit their unique needs. 

Do parents need to purchase additional materials?

Yes, at times parents will need to purchase specific books and materials that are recommended. 

Most educational materials needed are very low cost, but effective materials. With high school level students, specific coursework may be recommended depending upon the needs and function of that particular student, as well as requirements by specific states. It is important to keep in mind that the educational plans are truly individualized so we cannot make broad statements as to what specifically will be needed at each level of education or how the materials are to be used.

Is NACD a school?

NACD is not a school in the traditional sense. 

NACD assists parents in providing a home-based education, addressing the needs of their whole child. This includes cognitive development, nutrition, physical and emotional development, teaching the child how to be highly capable; all while accelerating education and turning them into lifelong readers and learners. Through tri-annual evaluations that are carried out in one of our national or international chapters or via Skype or Zoom and access to daily coaching, NACD can assist any child anywhere on the planet.

Does NACD have a facility where I take my child? 

No.

NACD provides only home-based programs that are designed by NACD and implemented by family and caregivers, in the home environment, under the direction of NACD and with the training and support of NACD staff. 

Does NACD replace going to school? Can my child go to school and NACD?

NACD Home Programs can replace school or work in conjunction with schools.

Every child is unique, every family is unique, and for every family in every area the school opportunities are unique as well. Most of our families do entirely home-based programs. Some children attend school full time and do an NACD program either before or after school or on weekends. And some families do a hybrid program, part time home and part time school. As an example, some of our special needs and typical children as well attend part-time school primarily for the social experience. In some enlightened states, such as Utah, home educated students can participate in any school classes or sports that they wish, so they can go play on the highschool football team or take a physics class. Because every NACD program is individually designed, there are many options.

Does NACD follow the academic guidelines of my state?

Yes.

States and countries all have their specific requirements. NACD works with the family to create a program that meets each state or country’s requirements.

Who actually implements the program with my child? 

NACD staff teach the parents and caregivers how to work with their child and coach them through the process.

NACD home education programs are designed to be implemented primarily by parents and caregivers. For 40 years NACD has successfully trained parents and other non-professionals to implement our programs. Parents primarily work with their child at home each day and receive unlimited support from their NACD coach and NACD Developmentalist. In some cases, the parents are not able to work with their child. College students, nannies, grandparents and other relatives, and older siblings have implemented NACD programs. It does not have to be the parents; however, we do strongly encourage that parents play an active role in managing their child’s programs, ensuring that the activities are being implemented correctly by the person responsible for carrying out the child’s program. 

What does “teaching the parents” mean?

In NACD Home Education Programs NACD works with the parents and the family. The family and caregivers under NACD’s guidance and coaching implement the NACD designed program. 

In an NACD home-based program, parents and caregivers are trained to implement the programs that are designed specifically for their child by NACD following an assessment. Parents are given access to their child-specific online portal that contains their child’s assessments, their programs with implementation videos and instructions for parents, and a chronology of videos that are used to communicate with the child’s evaluator, demonstrate program implementation for parental training, and to document specific educational and developmental problems and progress. Parents and caregivers are given daily access to a coach who provides support and who coordinates and provides ongoing communication with other NACD staff.

Helpful links

Parenting 101 – A Child’s Education Begins with Educating the Parents: https://www.nacd.org/parenting-101-a-childs-education-begins-with-educating-the-parents/

Does NACD give any assistance to parents when the child isn’t cooperating with learning?

Absolutely.

We do. Raising children and improving their function is not always an easy task. NACD evaluators and coaches are there to help with issues as they arise, providing support and guidance when and as needed to help resolve and prevent behavioral problems that may impede progress. We will walk you through those tough times and help develop the cognitive and behavioral foundation that helps avoid most behavioral or compliance issues.

Helpful links

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say: https://www.nacd.org/say-what-you-mean-and-mean-what-you-say-part-2-educationbehavior/

Does NACD help when the work is too hard for my child?

Yes, NACD addresses and resolves these issues.

If “schoolwork” is too hard, the material and approach is not targeted to the child. To varying degrees if a child is being plugged into a curriculum, it is not going to be targeted to fit them. We help by working with you to improve your child’s processing and working memory so that they are simply smarter, and we provide assistance to target where they are academically and to accelerate their pace to get them to a point where the work is not difficult. We create education plans that are designed to target your child’s current processing level so that the work is not too hard; plus we write plans that address the issue of motivation as well. This process is most easily accomplished if the child is doing a home-based NACD program, but can also be accomplished, although a slower process, by working around and with an existing school program.

Helpful links

Does School Remediation Result in Success?: https://www.nacd.org/does-school-remediation-result-in-success-2/

Can I use NACD Home Education if my state or intended college requires sports, music, art, or things like hands-on science labs?

Yes.

With a home-based NACD program, you can access many resources and your program can be customized to help you meet virtually any specific requirements.

Does NACD work with preschool kids?

Yes, NACD works with infants and preschool children.

Because an NACD program is developmental and because the foundation established in the first five years of life can both shape a child’s future and avoid most learning and attention issues, the sooner we can start working with a child and a family, the better. 

Helpful links

NACD Preschool: https://www.nacd.org/who-we-help/preschool/ 

When should I send my child to preschool? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8Y63vqyme4

Does NACD work with elementary school children? 

Yes, NACD works with elementary school age children.

NACD believes that targeted developmental and educational support and help is optimal virtually from birth, and therefore provides programs for all children regardless of age. NACD has demonstrated for decades that the early years are incredibly important and that the stronger the foundation, the easier the entire educational experience and the better the educational and life outcomes. Being proactive in the early years (birth through elementary grades) means that the vast majority of learning, attention, and cognitive issues can be avoided. The focus can be on creating excellent learners, lifelong readers, children who love and excel in learning, and who become successful middle, high school and college students, and become successful adults. NACD’s forty plus years of experience has permitted us to follow individuals literally from birth to adult and parenthood. We are proud to be working with many children whose successful parents were on NACD home-based and homeschool programs themselves.

Helpful links

NACD Parent Testimonial: https://www.nacd.org/testimonial-from-the-parent-of-three-nacd-graduates/

Does NACD work with middle school/junior high children?

Yes, NACD works with middle school and jr. high children.

NACD works with children and adults of all ages. Many children come to us in the middle school and jr. high years because of learning, attention, attitude, and behavior issues that are not being addressed by school or homeschool, or simply because parents are aware that their child is not being given the needed opportunities to achieve their potential. These can be challenging years for many children and parents alike, and parents’ daily access to coaches and staff can be the difference between success and failure or mediocrity and excellence. 

What can NACD do for my high school child?

NACD can make a world of difference in the lives of high school children.

Families often start on NACD home-based programs for their high school students because they have discovered that issues identified in elementary school were never actually addressed and remediated and accommodations were doing more harm than good. Many parents at this time realize that their vision for their child has become clouded, and there are questions about where their child is going, their future. Other parents realize that they have high school students who lack a love of reading and learning and have not had an opportunity to explore and develop their own interests and a direction. And other parents realize that their visions for high achievement and success are not being realized through their child’s schooling. High school is not too late. Processing and cognition can still be developed, children can still be taught to be responsible, children can still be turned into active participants, and areas needing remediation can still be taken care of, and there is still time to excel. NACD has worked with countless children who lacked a foundation and a vision for their futures who have learned who they are and put together the pieces to become successful in college and in professions, successful entrepreneurs or whatever their chosen career path, successful whole adults.

Does NACD work with college students?

Yes, NACD works with college students.

Once in college students may discover that they lack the cognitive foundation to compete or excel. Some work way too hard for the results they are achieving, or they are even working hard and failing. NACD’s cognitive programs, including the online Simply Smarter program, can often produce rapid change in cognition and help make a poor student a good student and a good student an excellent student, providing them with the edge they need to excel. In addition many bright children get through K-12 without obvious identified issues, but when they reach college and face much greater challenges both in and out of the classroom, things begin to fall apart. It is not too late.

Helpful links

NACD Articles about College: https://www.nacd.org/?s=college

Will NACD work with my child with dyslexia?

Yes, NACD has worked with thousands of children over the years that were identified as dyslexic.

What we find is that each one of them is unique and needs a very specific program designed to address and eliminate their underlying issues, along with an individualized reading program to accelerate their development in reading. We do not take a “one size fits all” approach with any child and do not see “dyslexia” as a permanent issue. 

Helpful links

Read about NACD’s views on dyslexia here: https://www.nacd.org/dyslexia-what-is-it-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/

NACD Program for Dyslexia: https://www.nacd.org/who-we-help/dyslexia/

My child is in special education. Can they join NACD?

Yes, NACD can work with children who are currently in special education.

Many families, once they discover NACD, often realize that they can do more with NACD’s help at home and pull their children out of school. Others do not have the option of home-based education or homeschool, and NACD works with the family and the school to provide as many opportunities as possible.

NACD has been designing and supervising home-based developmental, therapeutic, and education programs for special needs children for over forty years. Our founder and director, Bob Doman, began his career as a special education teacher in 1969 and by the age of 25 was the Education Director of a large special needs school and the United Cerebral Palsy Organization. In this capacity he was designing and supervising the special education programs and overseeing the speech, physical, and occupational therapy programs. While still in his twenties, Bob was designing home-based programs for special needs children from throughout the United States and in Spain and Israel. Since 1979 when NACD was founded, NACD has been innovative in the development of cognitive, academic, and developmental programs for special needs children. NACD is and has always been home-based, designing targeted programs that often replace not only schools but the need for other therapies as well, teaching and supervising parents and caregivers in the implementation of targeted programs for their special needs children. Part of the foundation of NACD’s success has been an understanding and application of the proven principles of neuroplasticity, acknowledging the importance of very targeted input (NACD utilizes over 3000 specific methods and techniques), frequency (specific input provided often numerous times per day, not once or twice a week), intensity (programs implemented by parents, the people who know the child the best and who are the most vested in seeing them progress), and the importance of being dynamic (constantly changing to remain targeted; NACD provides daily access to coaches and staff). NACD provides home-based, targeted programs designed around the parents’ time and resources for the full range of special needs children, including those on the autism spectrum, Down syndrome, brain injury, cerebral palsy, and many others.

Helpful links

NACD program for homeschooling children with special needs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URcjTLPcKd8

NACD Articles about Special Education: https://www.nacd.org/?s=special+education

Does NACD work with adults with special needs?

Yes, NACD has vast experience helping adults with special needs.

NACD has a long history of helping adults with special needs and literally changing their lives. As children, most of those with special needs were provided with an “appropriate” education. Unfortunately, this means that the program was lowered and the expectations limited and opportunities provided based on the perceived potential. The outcomes were self fulfilling prophecies. Expect less, provide less, and get less. Rarely if ever are efforts made to even develop cognition, the foundation of all learning and function. Fortunately, NACD has been developing cognitive function in both children and adults, based on the science of neuroplasticity, for decades and has produced often amazing outcomes. It’s never too late, and unfortunately, as many parents of special needs adults are realizing, they are either doing things to improve their function and abilities or their adult children are regressing. One of our main goals with an adult with special needs is to increase their independence and maturity. The need for help for those with special needs may never be greater than it is for the adult with special needs. 

Does NACD work with babies?

Yes, NACD works with typical babies as well as those with developmental issues.

If NACD could design programs for all babies and have parents and grandparents implement them, we could change the world. Without a doubt what can and should be done before a child ever enters school will impact the rest of their lives more than most anything that can happen in subsequent years. Virtually every hour of targeted input a parent provides a baby forever changes their brains and lives. It is vital that children with special needs are addressed and helped as whole individuals, not as pieces, and that they receive daily intervention, not a session or two a week. Learning and attention problems are referred to as developmental problems because they are mostly the reflections of steps and opportunities having been missed in the first few years of life. LIkewise, smart children are not created in schools and colleges as much as they are created before they ever go to school.

How much does NACD Home Education cost? 

There is a one time initial evaluation fee, followed by a monthly membership fee. 

To view our current fee schedule, please register for our get started process here. NACD.org/get-started. 

Are there any scholarships available for NACD? 

Yes.

NACD has scholarships available to help with the initial fee to join. To learn more about any potential scholarships available, please complete our get started process here: NACD.org/get-started

How do I join the NACD Home Education program?

To begin the process of joining the NACD Home Education program, the parent first goes through the free Get Started (https://www.nacd.org/get-started/) section on our website that helps them understand the philosophy and mechanics of our program. The family then completes and submits a comprehensive application/history of the child. The application is reviewed by NACD staff and is followed up by an interview between a staff member and the parent or parents. The interview is to determine if the family and NACD are a good fit. Following the interview the family will be given a list of any additional information that may be needed. This list varies from child to child and varies depending on whether there will be an in-person evaluation or Skype. Included in the list of requests are specific tests to be completed, as well as records and videos to be uploaded to our Family Portal. 

After everything has been submitted, the child is evaluated by an NACD professional evaluator, and with the aid of the parent, a developmental profile is completed and an overall direction and game plan is agreed upon. The NACD professional evaluator then designs the home education program, which along with the evaluation and profile, is posted on the NACD Family Portal, with written and video training materials for the parent. 

Every family is provided with a coach who is available to assist and guide them. The coach is available to the family Monday-Friday. The coach also acts as the family’s communication link to their evaluator. Within two weeks of starting the program, the parent is requested to video implementation of the various aspects of the child’s program and post them on the Portal for the evaluator’s review, comments, and modifications.

The child’s program is dynamic, and through ongoing communication with the coach and the evaluator and videos, the programs are modified on an ongoing basis as needed.

Every four months the child is re-evaluated and program modifications made.

Is there a question about Home Education or Homeschool that we missed?

Let us know by contacting us at: info@nacd.org or by leaving a question for us using the support chat feature in the lower right corner of your browser window. We are happy to answer any questions you might have!

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, August 2020 ©NACD

The post NACD Homeschool & Home Education FAQ appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

The Simply Smarter® program is built upon the foundation of neuroplasticity, utilizing the science of targeted input, frequency, intensity, and duration.

Targeted

The program constantly modifies itself to keep you right at the sweet spot, the spot that is targeted for you to achieve maximum benefit.

Frequency

To take advantage of neuroplasticity, we need to keep triggering the firing of neurons and reinforcing neural networks. Everyone is encouraged to use the program once or twice a day and preferably four or more days a week.

Intensity

This is an incredibly important piece. The importance of intensity cannot be overstated. How you or your child approach every session is going to determine how much the program impacts, changes, and develops the brain. Just doing it isn’t enough; you must do it with real intensity and with intention. Every activity is very short. It was designed that way so that you could create and maintain maximum attention and intensity for the seconds needed to complete each piece that you are asked to process, to watch, or listen to. Approach every sequence of every activity with the intention of remembering it, of nailing it!

If your children are using the program, sit with them, if you can, and cheer them on. The program has built-in rewards and acknowledgement, but a parent’s power is much greater, and we encourage you to provide very meaningful, big rewards for new high scores or higher digit spans. These changes can be life changing, treat them as such.

We realize that it’s not reasonable for many parents to sit in while their child does Simply Smarter®, so we have built in the means to send email and text alerts so that Mom, Dad, grandparents, coaches, whoever will know when the child did well; and each can provide their own congratulations, making every step forward all that more meaningful. Dad coming home from work and immediately acknowledging Johnny’s new high score or a call from Grandma can be very powerful.

For adults be honest with yourselves. Sitting down with good energy, intensity, and with the intention of knocking it out of the park each time is difficult. You are not only allowed but encouraged to set up your own rewards program—rewards for all new high scores. Set digit span and processing power goals, and when you hit it, reward it. It’s only your life and future that you are changing!

Duration

To change the brain, we need to keep causing those networks of brain cells to keep firing together. The longer we do it, the greater the change. Keep in mind that generally without specific intervention the development of processing, short-term memory and working memory, slows virtually to a halt at about seven years of age, creeps a tiny bit forward from then until we are in our twenties, and then usually begins a slow decline that continues throughout our life unless we target it, address it, and build it!

Simply Smarter® is an invaluable tool that has the potential to change the lives of your children, your parents, and yourselves.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 7, 2020 ©NACD

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These COVID-19 Coronavirus times have certainly turned many of our worlds upside down. We now virtually have a world full of homeschoolers; more parents are at home with their children than at any time in the history of the world. Exceptional times and exceptional circumstances can also result in exceptional opportunities. Many of us are rediscovering and redefining basic things like family, work, school, and our relationship to institutions and society. I would like to talk with you about redefining potential and intellect and how while you are all at home, you have the potential to change the lives of every member of the family.

I would like to share a personal story. I grew up in a family of pioneers in human development. My father, a physician, and my uncle, a physical therapist in the ‘50s, worked with brain injured children and discovered that with the proper stimulation, healthy parts of the brain could learn to carry out the functions of damaged areas of the brain. This was ground breaking work that was originally seen as heretical, but is now after decades universally accepted. Changing perceptions is not an easy task, as I can certainly attest to after fifty years of trying to do it.

When I started studying psychology in the sixties, I had a tremendous advantage over others studying and working in the field. I came to understand that all development was possible through this amazing mechanism called neuroplasticity. If you understood neuroplasticity, development was no longer such a great mystery. The brain changed and developed as a reflection of specific stimulation, not because it just got older. Armed with this understanding, I looked at the brain as dynamic, changing, and most significantly, as changeable.

One area of early interest for me was learning and memory. At that time it was just beginning to be understood that there were various components of memory. Memory was being broken down into short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory. The focus was on testing it and looking for correlations between these pieces and how people learned and functioned. At that time and for decades, the worlds of psychology and education did not have a perception that you could actually help develop or change memory; and even today, they are not really working to do that. My perception, based on an understanding of neuroplasticity, was that these components of memory didn’t just pop up as adult abilities, but they developed; and what developed changed; and what changed was changeable. I set out to understand all of these pieces and to find ways to change, develop, and accelerate that development.

Decades later I am proud to say that we have developed a great understanding of all of these foundational pieces that we now lump together and refer to as “processing.” Armed with this knowledge and the tools we have developed, we have helped change many thousands of lives. Improving these pieces of auditory and visual short-term memory and working memory is quite simply making people smarter. From our first software that ran on a Commodore Pet computer with a cassette drive in the early eighties, to the Brain Builder software in the nineties, to the present online Simply Smarter program and many dozens of one-to-one activities, we are working to change lives. From brain damaged individuals to those on the autism spectrum, to those with learning and attention issues, to typical children and adults, we can build all of these foundational pieces of memory that literally have the potential to make everyone smarter.

At NACD we work with “whole children,” designing home based comprehensive programs that address everything from a child’s sleep and behavior to how they walk and do algebra, including innovative comprehensive homeschool/home-based educational programs. But there is something that in one way or another is on every child’s program, and that is processing activities.

We are fortunate that we can work via Skype with any family in the world who has Internet access and give them the tools designed to develop and improve their brains. Today everyone doesn’t need to come to NACD to work on their processing. You can take advantage of this expertise and go online and in about fifteen minutes a day put together the pieces that can help you and your children work to become smarter. The tool that is available to you is our Simply Smarter program, a tool that your children can use all by themselves!

Let me help you understand what this all really is and what it can mean for you and your family.

What is “smart?” Can you define it? Do you think you would like your kids to be smarter? How about you?

You can define “smart,” possibly, but even more so, you probably know it when you see it. Smart has to do with being present, being aware, being able to take in and process a lot of information, being able to manipulate that information, think with complexity, put ideas together, focus, and communicate.

Smart doesn’t necessarily mean knowing that the capitol Nevada is Carson City, or that Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded, or that the First World War ended on November 11, 1918, or what your bile duct does, or that “or” is a conjunction. But smart does mean that you are more likely to find such things interesting and you can learn them more easily than most. Knowing “stuff” doesn’t make you smart. (You are going to actually forget most “stuff” unless you are smart enough to make associations and connections between “stuff” and use it.) And smarter also means that it’s easier to understand and learn everything.

What is the foundation of “smart?”

The foundation of smart is the ability to process and take in a lot of information that you see and hear and to manipulate that information and think.

The more you can process and take in what there is to be heard, the stronger your auditory short-term memory. Your auditory short-term memory provides the fuel for the development of your auditory working memory, which is how many pieces or words you can hold together and manipulate, which equals your complexity of thought, or “smart.” How many pieces of visual information you process from what you see, whether from observation of your world or from reading, relates to your visual short-term memory; and as with auditory processing, your visual short-term memory provides the pieces you use to create your visual working memory and visual-spatial abilities. These fundamental, foundational pieces ultimately determine how much information you take in and use, which translates to how much knowledge you gain and your complexity of thought. All this equals “smart.”

How does processing “smart” develop?

Processing develops primarily from birth to about seven years. The rate and degree it develops is a reflection of the targeted stimulation and opportunities that you receive. In general the more quality one-to-one interaction between a child and an involved adult, the faster and the further it develops. The more enriching the environment, the faster and the further it develops. With specific targeted input designed to build processing skills, processing not only can be accelerated, it can be developed to superior levels.

When does the development of processing abilities stop?

Without specific intervention, the development of processing abilities almost comes to a halt at about seven years of age. From seven into our twenties, it typically develops perhaps another ten to fifteen percent; and after our twenties, without specific intervention it goes into a slow decline. You can continue to learn more, but your ability to do so declines, as does your ability to manipulate the information. As you continue to learn, you can become wiser, but not necessarily smarter, unless you are stretching your processing through complex cognitive activities or actively working to preserve or develop it.

How can you build processing ability and get smarter?

Everyone, from infant to geriatric, with input that is targeted to them, can incrementally build and improve processing ability and get smarter. We at NACD have been developing methodologies and improving processing abilities for the full spectrum of children and adults for over forty years. NACD designs specific processing programs for families who are members of NACD and who wish to utilize comprehensive developmental and educational programs designed so that they can be implemented in the home by parents and caregivers. But as mentioned earlier, NACD also has developed a very comprehensive targeted program for all children five years old and older and for adults up to and including seniors—Simply Smarter.

What is Simply Smarter?

The Simply Smarter program is a dynamic online system that constantly develops and modifies itself, adapting to the individual user to help produce maximum change. Specific activities work progressively to address focus, attention, intensity, auditory and visual short-term and working memory, visualization, conceptualization, and visual-spatial abilities, all of the pieces that help make everyone learn, think, and function better. The program first assesses your baseline and then builds from there, tracking and graphing progress. It has the capability of adjusting from basic levels of a child to levels of incredible function.

What can you do with children under five?

Children at or functioning under five years of age generally need specific one-on-one activities that are designed as part of NACD’s individualized programs. But in addition children from toddlers to five years old can use NACD’s Cognition Coach apps to build processing skills.

How long does it take to get smarter?

With motivation and consistent use, measurable changes can occur in a couple of weeks; and with continued use of Simply Smarter, virtually unlimited improvements are possible. Over the course of the present lockdown, you have the potential to produce a significant change.

Who has used Simply Smarter and what have the results been?

The range of those who have used NACD’s processing activities and Simply Smarter is as broad as the population. NACD’s Simply Smarter and other processing programs have been used by thousands of typical and gifted children and adults, those with learning and attention issues, as well as those with significant developmental issues such as autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome, and brain injuries. Most everyone working on our comprehensive home based programs not only knows about processing, but is actively working on processing every day and understands the correlation between their child’s processing and global function and abilities. We have seen exceptional changes along the path of many thousands of children’s development and are continually heartened as we see their potential being redefined. Processing is a huge key to success and potential.

Please take this opportunity to change your child’s life trajectory. My mission in life has been to help change the perception of potential and to help develop the tools to do it. Today with more parents and children at home than ever before, I see this as a unique chance to change many lives and potentially change the perception of what can be.

To read an incredible testimonial from a couple about Simply Smarter and see what incredible things even a child can do, please read the following article and watch the video.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 33 No. 4, 2020 ©NACD

The post My Greatest Discovery – How to Make Everyone Smarter appeared first on NACD International | The National Association for Child Development.

For many of you school has started and you have discovered that there are not enough minutes let alone hours in the day.

As you try to fit more and more into your day there are two primary things you need to do to maximize your time and produce successful outcomes. You need to prioritize and schedule.

Look at everything you need to do, should do and want to do and prioritize those things. Then look at how much time each takes and determine if each of those things warrant the time dedicated to them. As an example, we have families driving for 30 minutes to an hour each way for some form of “therapy” or “treatment” or “lesson” or “whatever” that when viewed in perspective absolutely doesn’t warrant the time investment. On the other side of the coin, evaluate how important something like processing is to your child and realize how many of those one or two minute high-priority sessions are missed because of these other time investments. Look at the time required and prioritize.

Once you have established your priorities, sit down and put together your daily schedule. Prioritize and enter the things at the top of your list first, then work your way down. If you can’t fit in the lower priority items, it probably is not a great loss.

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, September 2019 ©NACD

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To be proactive is to anticipate, prepare, and intervene based on a long-term vision and perspective. When anticipating the future, you react accordingly before it actually happens.

To be reactive is to respond to a situation, rather than creating or controlling it.

How does this relate to what we do with our children? What we do in the short term affects the long term; and that myopic/short-sighted intervention can have a negative impact on outcomes.

One contributing cause is lack of a vision, lack of hope, and a willingness to accept a short-term possible solution. Another underlying issue is that most teachers and therapists are not involved for the long term and are not aware of the long-term results or consequences of their interventions. The third contributing factor is a lack of awareness and knowledge of the whole child. When looking only at pieces, one cannot perceive, acknowledge, utilize, or evaluate the impact on the gestalt of the individual.

Armed with decades of experience working with tens of thousands of “Whole Children”, it is relatively easy for us at NACD to look at your children and to be proactive. Being proactive requires looking at a child’s strengths and talents. In addition we must look at weaknesses and issues, determine what pieces we need to put together or issues we need to resolve, in what order, and in what priority to produce a good ultimate outcome. One of the benefits of working with “Whole Children,” working with the full spectrum of children, and working with individuals (often for decades) is that we have the benefit of experience and perspective.

Working with “Whole Children”

I have spoken at length about the importance of working with “Whole Children.” Working with “Whole Children” simply means we are working with all aspects of the child from their health, sleep, sensory function, social function, behavior, speech, language, fine and gross motor function, cognition, and academic development to their attitude, self image, etc. I don’t know if it is possible to be truly proactive without working with the whole child. Most children have disconnected individuals addressing various aspects of their lives, coming and going; and the more issues a child has, generally the more people there are working reactively, not proactively, with them. Working “reactively” means they are reacting to what is perceived as an immediate issue or need, without an historic or long range, long-term vision.

In discussing all of the people who can be involved with your child, you are tempted to associate them all somehow, to call them a team or an army, suggesting that they are somehow a cohesive unit working together. The reality is that they are individuals working with pieces, more often than not in virtual isolation. Such individuals are often working reactively, not proactively. They are working with their one piece generally in virtual isolation and establishing their piece as their priority and generally from a perspective that they are only going to be involved for a relatively short period of time. Working with children for only a few months, or even years, does not permit one to gain a long-term perspective and to understand the implications of what is in reality short-term, reactive intervention.

Proactive Intervention

To help clarify what it means to be proactive, it is best to look at the antonyms or words that are essentially the opposite of proactive. Those words include such things as myopic or short-sighted or improvident. Another way to look at this is to say we are being reactive as opposed to proactive.

Reactive Intervention

If we are being reactive, we are reacting to problems; if we are being proactive we are looking forward, into the future, so as to prepare for the future. As parents with limited experience, it’s often difficult to be proactive. It’s difficult to be proactive if you have not had the experience and knowledge to know the degree to which what is happening today, or not happening today, is going to influence tomorrow, next week, next year, and the future. Sadly, many therapists and educators do not work with individuals over long periods, as in decades, to understand what issues can be created by working perhaps hard, but not working from a long-term, proactive perspective.

Some common examples of being reactive rather than proactive would include things like teaching young children with Down syndrome to sign. (link to Signing contra-indicated for DS) The perception is that Johnny isn’t talking and is frustrated, so let’s give him a means of communication that he can use soon–signing. Looking at the short-term results, which may be the child being able to communicate a few basic needs and being perhaps less frustrated, reinforces the use of signing. But if looked at long-term and proactively, we discover that we have had a negative impact on the child’s ultimate ability to communicate verbally, and even more significantly, have had a negative impact on the development of the child’s auditory processing, with resulting adverse affects on the child’s cognition and global maturity. Reactive intervention is not the best intervention.

One of the more glaring areas where we often see disastrous effects of reactive intervention is in the area of mobility and walking. We sometimes have children come to us who never developed the neurodevelopmental or the structural foundation that can ultimately produce a child who is a functional walker. Being proactive, we know that we have to follow a typical sequence of development, which among other things, requires the neurological, tactile, proprioceptive, and structure pieces of the child going through the necessary developmental stages before working on standing and walking. Children in walkers who had been “helped” to stand before they had the strength and structure to do it themselves, or do it properly, and then “assisted” to walk using various apparatuses to hold them up so they could move their legs, usually end up not being able to walk independently. Often they have created structural issues that even numerous surgical interventions cannot properly address. Children you see walking with walkers or braces and crutches almost always end up in wheelchairs. Yes, the goal is walking; but can we achieve it by circumventing the foundational pieces?

An example of a reactive approach in education is encouraging children to write before they neuro-developmentally are ready. Sixty or seventy years ago, it was not uncommon to make left-handed children in kindergarten and first grade, at five or six years of age, write with their right hands. This practice was stopped because interfering with the natural development of handedness resulted in a plethora of neurological and even emotional problems. Today this isn’t happening; but today we have preschool education, which is even creating more problems by making children write before they developmentally have even firmly established a dominant hand. A child may be leaning toward the right hand, for example, at three or four, and if encouraged to write with the right hand, establish a skill set for writing with the right hand. Ultimately such a child may turn out to be left-handed. Because the skill set for this specific function was established, the child will tend to continue to write with the right hand and is generally encouraged to continue to write with the right hand, resulting in all of the issues that were created 60 years ago, including poor handwriting.

The Reality of Education

The reality of education in general is that the very structure and organization of school as we generally know it almost defines reactive intervention. Education is generally perceived from the short-term perspective of needing to get specific curriculum material into a child’s brain, whether or not the material is targeted to the specific child’s present knowledge base, to their level of processing and understanding, let alone their interests. The net result of reactive education is very often poor outcomes, children often learning to dislike or “hate” school, which becomes synonymous with hating learning; and often because of the abnormal environment of narrow competition, leaving the system with a damaged self-image and lacking a perspective of who they are and what they can be. Proactively it’s not difficult to understand that at the foundation of education we should have the goal of teaching the child to love learning and to make them feel that they are smart and can learn. Is anyone shocked to hear that children do well learning things they love and struggle with what they hate? If the goal of education is to produce adults who are actually educated, who become not just lifelong readers, but life long learners with the confidence to pursue their hopes and dreams, then the system needs to be re-evaluated and made proactive not reactive.

Educational & Therapeutic Perceptions

There are numerous examples in educational and therapeutic intervention that demonstrate the negative aspects of reactive intervention. The problem is ubiquitous, and it doesn’t seem to be changing anytime soon. Proactive intervention implores us to look at the child from a long-term perspective and with a vision and a plan to produce better outcomes. If existing outcomes are perceived as actual reflections of an individual’s potential, there is no motivation for change.

Perception of potential is a reflection of one’s experience. I recall a colleague correcting me many decades ago when I referred to someone as having twenty years of experience. He told me that the reality was that they had a year of experience twenty times, not twenty years of experience. I have been extremely disappointed to see how incredibly slow change in traditional education and therapeutic intervention has been. But doing the same reactive things year after year and producing the same limited results has not stoked change, but has reinforced the perspective of limited potential, and has encouraged many educators and therapists to keep doing the same things, producing the same inevitable outcomes.

Proactive intervention is stimulated by a need to do things better and to improve outcomes, all of which is perpetuated by a vision of what can be and what should be.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 5, 2019 ©NACD

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