A lot of folks, particularly in the USA, have a hard time describing where in the world Romania is or are able to tell you much of anything about Romania (which unfortunately speaks to our educational system); but ask about Transylvania and everyone’s interest perks up and they conjure up visions of Dracula.

This last month I spent almost two weeks in the mountains of Transylvania with about 200 of our NACD family members from five different countries. We were practically under the shadow of Bran Castle, or what is widely known as Dracula’s castle.

This event was made possible through the efforts of many folks, but particularly little Tudor’s mom, Andreea Dumitru, and Teodora Pop, our NACD Romanian Coordinator.

Andreea’s efforts resulted in the advertising company Blitz TV sponsoring the event and arranging for free rooms and breakfasts for all of the families at the Cheile Gradistei Resort. Without this help many of the families would not have been able to participate.

There were two primary reasons for orchestrating the Transylvania Experience. The first was to provide a venue for an in-person evaluation for the children in the region, particularly Romania and Bulgaria, and the second was to provide an opportunity for the families to spend time together. To varying degrees families with children with developmental and genetic issues find it difficult to integrate their children into many, if not most, social situations. Getting to spend time with other families with similar issues who understand, permitting them to share support, encouragement, and to just be able to relax, accept, and socialize was a great unique experience. Sadly, Romania and the surrounding countries are often not very accepting of many of our children; so it was particularly important to hold this event in Romania.

Our Romania chapter, which includes many Bulgarian families, is certainly our most proactive NACD chapter, doing everything they can to support each other and to educate other families in their countries about the hope that NACD offers. Our families travel from around the country to participate and share their NACD experience at every possible event that they think might help another family learn about the hope for their children. They understand that NACD’s family-centered approach means that any family in any place in the world is only a call, an email, or a Skype visit away from their coach and evaluator on any day and that they can help their children irrespective of what may or may not exist in their area.

The feedback from the event from the families was outstanding, and everyone wants to repeat it next year, even with the understanding that we may not have funding assistance. At the families request, I have happily committed to coming back again next year (I didn’t have a chance to visit the castle on this trip, so I need another visit to Transylvania) and we will hopefully return to the same spot and show off and share the children’s progress and help generate some new memories to add to those we created this year.

Personally, it was a bit demanding. It took twenty-two hours to get there, arriving in the evening and starting the evaluations first thing the next morning; but it was truly a marvelous experience. These are incredible families! Being able to relax and interact with the families and share meals and a little down time outside of the evaluation process was extremely rewarding. Perhaps some of my greatest memories are of watching the children with issues and all of the typical siblings interacting together as naturally as if they had know each other forever. The typical siblings were amazing to watch. They instinctively knew how and when to help and how to communicate with or just be with a new special needs child they had just met minutes before. Speaking of communication, the majority of the parents spoke English and often an additional language or two, as did the children. I loved all the “Hi Bob”s I heard from so many of the kids who were just learning to talk as they walked in for their evaluations.

We have some hope that other NACD chapters and groups around the country and the world will come together and do more to help build their regional community of NACD families.

Lesson to be learned: We do better as part of a community that shares a common approach, common ambitions, and a belief that the primary responsibility for our children and the best people to help our children are we, the parents. We can make a difference and change the lives and futures of our children.

As always it is an honor and a privilege to be involved with such incredible families and children.

For more photos and a daily journal of Bob’s trip, please visit our Facebook page!

Testimonials from our Romania Attendees

TEODORA POP

I also wanted to write a few words about this experience, but it is so hard to write about everything in a couple of phrases.

For me it was an amazing and different and new experience, even though I am with NACD for 2 years and a half now and I´ve been before to Bucharest to help Bob with translations. This time I also took part in the organisation of the event and it was amazing. Meeting families for the first time, seeing other again and listening to everyone´s story, sharing opinions and advises and being there with Bob during the eval was a HUGE learning experience for me. I am confident that my decision to stay in Romania and dedicate myself to this cause and to the NACD families in Romania was the correct and the best one! I am honored and humbled working with the NACD staff and with all of you here in the Romanian chapter!!!

IOANA GRECU

The experience in Cheile Gradistei was beautiful and full of emotions. We waited eagerly for this moment. We couldn’t wait to meet Bob Doman, and the impression of him is a great one. We feel that he is a very good person and very involved in what he is doing. The kindness with which he is looking at the children makes you trust that what he is saying is good for the little ones. The parents are great, full of hope and positive. We left the place trusting in the NACD program and trusting in ourselves as a family that we took the best decision when we joined the program. The landscape helped us to relax and to spend some family quality time. Even though we had to leave earlier than scheduled, the presence of the other kids and parents made the days feel very short and filled with great moments. Thank you for everything!

IOANA RASPOPA

I need to say that we are grateful for a great weekend. Yes it was beautiful, but meeting with Bob (this time Matei was OK and awake comparing to last year) was a huge reinforcement for us. We also got really useful information from Teo and from other parents that gave us courage to push for more changes for Matei.

RALUCA BUSUIOC

You know what the experience at Cheile Gradistei makes me think at? We are thought that from the 3: frequency, intensity and duration, the most important is the intensity. So this experience was not as much duration as is was high intensity! Exactly like in the NACD activities: high intensity, so that you will want more!!! So that it will be forever in your mind and in your heart!

FELICIA TUSLUC

It was a great experience, both because of meeting people with which we share the same vision of recovery and of the joy in our children’s eyes enjoying the fresh air with us and other children like them. Meeting Bob face to face again revived our hope and trust in the complexity of the program and in our capacity to obtain great results.

PAULA SERBAN

For me this experience was revealing! I saw my child with different eyes and my soul was filled with hope. Meeting the other parents was as important, feeling their support and full understanding. To be able to talk with people that totally understand was something that I wished for for a long time. Besides the NACD family it is very difficult to find so much understanding and good advice. Now I feel that I have recharged ‘my batteries’ and we can keep going with so much hope. Thank you so much NACD!

RALUCA MANEA

It was wonderful seeing Bob again and getting to meet old friends that we have known merely in the on line. The children had a great time and loved to make new friends. It was a great time of connecting and reconnecting.

ALEXANDRA ANGHELINA

For us it was a first on multiple levels. Our first evaluation, first time meeting Bob Doman, first contact with a community of this type, first time seeing how a program looks like. So far we are loving everything that we discovered. We start this road filled with trust and extremely motivated to learn how to implement the program correctly.
The experience of meeting other NACD families was a great and interesting one. I can only bow in front of all this people that I got the chance to meet. They are an example worth following.

Thank you so much for this experience. And we cannot wait to see you all next year!

ANGELA HLATCA

For us, the Hlatca family, this year evaluation was another reason for hope and joy: after one year of vacation we finally were able to start the program again. We were happy to see Mr. Bob Doman again and he encouraged us and gave us new hopes for Tudor. This year´s location was a very beautiful one and we felt great there. The evenings were the best, having the opportunity to meet new NACD families and spend time together, to share experiences and to enjoy our beautiful children with which we played a lot. Mr. Bob Doman spent some time with us in the evenings and he is such a warm and very friendly person. A big thank you also for those who organised this very successful event!

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, July 2019 ©NACD

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At our recent staff training/brainstorming session last October, it was time to talk about articles for upcoming newsletters. I personally like to contribute in January because it fits right in to New Year’s resolutions, setting priorities, and making plans. Over the years I have actually written articles that touch on some of the key components of this current topic, but not from this angle. In fact, even though our family has been involved with NACD for over eighteen years now, I don’t think I could have actually written this one prior to now. It hasn’t been until recent years, maybe even recent months, that I can honestly say that what I believed to be true all so many years ago has played out in real life. This article will touch on why we started and have continued with NACD for almost two decades; it will talk about how to accomplish more by having siblings do activities (cheap labor); and it will touch on the fact that non-hurt/neuro-typical kids can gain function exponentially by having their own programs as well. What I want to focus on, though, is beyond efficiency, beyond the hurt child gaining additional function, and beyond making good use of time via sibling assistance. It is actually directed at what I believe to be the greatest impact that having a hurt child, more specifically an NACD hurt child, has had on the lives and the development of character in his siblings. It is about the fruits of all those hours spent with their brother helping him to accomplish the impossible.

When we first started on NACD, our son had been receiving the very best of what traditional therapies had to offer, and yet we saw much greater gains in only 3 months of his individualized program than we had seen in years with various therapists and specialists. Our original prognosis for Evan was grim. Walking—probably not. Talking—very unlikely. Seeing—well, there just wasn’t enough of the occipital region of the brain left undamaged. While Evan had begun walking prior to our initial evaluation, structurally it was not a good walk. Language was considered a handful of approximations for a very limited number of anticipated/rote words. Seeing—was just a dream. Within a short period of time on program he was talking more, walking better, and his brain was beginning to understand how to process some visual information. At the time, Evan was 5. Philip was 6. Kenny was 4. Mom was tired. We had a long program to accomplish each day but fortunate for me, the other two brothers were young enough to believe the old Tom Sawyer white picket fence routine. I made it look fun enough to hand over the pleoptic flashlight for several rounds a day to brothers. Very quickly they starting joining in on more and more, and within a few years they were experts at the implementation of Evan’s program and, in fact, did a higher percentage of it than I did. I learned how to use the different temperaments of the brothers in order to decide who did which activities. They greatly enjoyed coming to Evan’s evaluations so that they could hear Bob say they were doing a good job with their brother. More than anything, they learned that hard work (when it is the right work) accomplishes what some people would give up hoping for. I can honestly say that my boys have never looked at a task and said, or probably even thought, “This is too hard.” They know that they were a big part of helping their brother do things that doctors said were not possible. I attribute the fact that at the ages of 24 and 22, Philip and Kenneth are decades ahead of their peers in their careers due to what they learned all those years ago with the pleoptic flashlight, the digit span cards, and all the other tools of our trade. They started to understand that once a good plan is established and worked on, success only takes a little bit of time and lot of determination. As Philip and Kenneth grew and became busier, I was fortunate to seem to have a supply of additional program implementers. Jason was born when Evan was 6, and Grant came along 4 year after that. I am not sure we even “taught” them how to step in and do program activities with their brother or how to assist in any way. By this time program was so much a part of our lives that it would have been like having to “teach” them to eat. It just happened because that is what we do.

While one would think that having a brain-injured child is very difficult on a family, the reality is that meeting the needs of each of the children in the family is the more difficult task. I had decided to homeschool at least through the early grades when they were young. Truth is, I am selfish with my children and I enjoy them immensely. In fact, when they have each entered public education at the High School level I cry like a baby the first morning that I drop them off. Since we did decide to homeschool and since we still had a fairly long program for Evan, it only made sense to utilize the same mentality with the non-injured brains as the injured one.
Accelerate processing skills. Input gets output. Establish a positive learning environment. Guess what? These things work like a charm with a fraction of the time or money that anything else could have. We had regular evaluations and utilized NACD for accelerated cognitive development as well as their educational needs, and each son has entered school with huge advantages over their peers. While I am a proponent for homeschooling given the right circumstances, as an evaluator I know that it is not always the best choice for each individual child. I have a large number of clients with siblings who are seen that attend private and public schools. With these children the key is using the time available to hit the processing pieces that create a critical mass effect on cognitive skills. Just think, 15-20 minutes a day on an individualized program truthfully reduces hundreds of hours struggling, fussing, and crying over homework. When learning is easier, everything else falls into place. If you haven’t already begun to place siblings on program in order to get their neuro-developmental needs accelerated, I would highly recommend it. On top of helping them achieve, it also sends them the message that they are important and that their needs are just as big to you and the “special needs child.”

I won’t go in to detail on how important planning and scheduling is. The only word that I will say about it is “gargantuan.” If you want to be motivated in the area of time management skills, read and reread and reread Bob’s recent article on it. Without good scheduling and management of time, my ship would have sunk years ago. As a mom, I work, I homeschool, I chauffer, I cheer them on in sports, and I check up on where they tell me they are and what they are doing on a regular basis (insurance). Without planning, the vast majority of the things I am responsible for would fall by the wayside.

I have had families ask if they think the sibling might someday resent having to make sacrifices due to the hurt child or the child who struggles. While the right answer has always come out of my mouth, I confess to having some fears along these lines in years past. I tell you this, though, not one of my sons today has anything but good things to say about their brother, Evan. One of my favorite stories took place several years ago when they were all in the van with me on a daytrip. One of the younger boys started talking about someday when he grew up. He threw in that he would have a garage apartment in his home for Evan to live in so that he could help with his children. Then an amazing conversation started to take place with the boys. First to jump in was my oldest who explained that he was the oldest and therefore got first pick. Then the next in line started to argue that he has been just as much a part of Evan’s success and care and that he had every intention of having Evan in his home some day. As they all started to argue back and forth over “who would GET Evan,” I calmly asked, “Evan, who do you think you might want to live with when Mom cannot be here?” Without missing a beat his answer was, “preferably my wife and children.” I convey this story as a testimony that the time that my boys have spent assisting their brother and basically building his brain has created a bond that is far beyond what most brothers go through. For many families the biggest fear is what will happen to their special needs child when they are gone. For me that fear is more along the lines that I hope they don’t come to blows deciding who takes the lead in responsibility for everybody’s favorite brother.

I sum up this article encouraging you to consider involving the siblings to play a big part in the implementation of program activities. Do not see it as a sacrifice that they have to make; it is a blessing that you are bestowing on them and their futures. Just last week Jason said to me, “Mom, I don’t think any of us would be nearly as successful in the things we do if we didn’t have Evan.” He is so right. I have to ask myself, “Is Evan where he is today because of them, or are they where they are today because of Evan?”

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 25 No. 1, 2012 ©NACD

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NACD Evaluator

NACD works with cream of the crop parents–parents who are willing to do whatever they can do to help their child succeed. While being able to do an entire program, as well as all your other duties that fall under the job of parent, sounds fairly easy in theory, we all know that reality is a different story. The more help you can have to help implement your child’s NACD program, the better. Bob Doman said in a seminar several years ago to look at yourselves as managers of your child’s program, not as the only person that can implement it. Some of the best people to implement program with our kids are those individuals who live under the same roof. When siblings help siblings, they can accomplish much. First of all, children and teenagers can provide great intensity. Secondly, by having your other children help with the implementation of program, chances are you will be able to complete more program than you would have alone. Finally, while your child on program is reaping the benefits of additional program with intensity, the siblings (both younger and older) are getting benefits as well. Not only can they become accelerated in their development, but they can also learn about responsibility and hope— that nothing is impossible and through hard work, caring, and diligence, the sky is the limit in what they put their mind to.

Frequency, Intensity, and Duration: You hear those words from us over and over. What is the most important of the three? INTENSITY! The intensity of the input is what is going to determine whether it sticks or not. Kids have such a great way of creating intensity with program. They know how to play, and they don’t have any preconceived notions of their sibling’s abilities. The following clip is a perfect example of a sibling helping a sibling with a processing activity. In this video little Ellie is helping big sister Samantha do the ball tower activity:

It doesn’t look like work, does it? It was a fun game they were playing. Our kids on program love their siblings. They light up when their brother or sister enters the room. That is intensity. Most anyone is capable of implementing program activities. A smart 4 year old can do sequencing. A child or teenager can be taught how to implement pleoptics. And many of our kids can do something that is hard for us to do all the time – keep our kids engaged! Playing ball or video games, interactive play, or teaching a computer game are all things that siblings can do to keep their brother or sister busy and engaged. Take advantage of their help!

You have already discovered that getting your child’s entire program done can be difficult. Life is full and busy, and finding the time to provide our kids with the input necessary to move forward can be tough. Enlisting your other children to help implement program may be a critical step toward making the progress you desire. Many times we recommend that you look at your family’s day and week—especially the times when the other kids are home. To maximize the amount of program you get done in the day, create a 15-minute time structure. With a fifteen-minute time structure, we recommend that you break up the program activities into fifteen-minute segments. Be sure to count all your frequencies within those periods. One way to make it easy is to have an index card system. With this method, write down fifteen minutes worth of program activities on an index card. Have two separate piles…one ‘to do’ and one ‘complete’ pile. As you, your spouse, or the siblings do a card with the child on program, that card goes into the complete pile. When having your other children help implement program, it is very important that everyone knows what the goals are. For example, with processing activities, the goal could be to get the child to sequence three. Or if the goal is to get the child crawling on their belly, a goal in each session could be to help the child crawl 3 feet to a goal. If keeping the child engaged is a goal, the fifteen minutes could be dedicated to playing ball with the child or playing a Wii game. Having weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals is essential for an NACD family.

Finally, if you were thinking about how to get your other children to help you, I would first encourage you to make these things non-negotiable with your children. Just like jobs that they are required to do in the house, it is simply another role they play as a member of the family. Sometimes it is necessary to have the talk with your more mature child that helping their sibling walk and talk and think will help all of them, and what an amazing opportunity to know that they played a huge role in that process! Our siblings who help their brother or sister change and improve their function learn invaluable life lessons. They learn not to set limits. They learn that anything is possible if you work hard at something.

For those of you who do not have multiple children, these same ideas can apply to hiring someone to come in to help with program. It doesn’t take a licensed professional to do program. Volunteers from church, your babysitter, the 13 year old across the street, can all help. Even just a couple oh hours each week can be enough to dramatically improve intensity, help get more program done, and help you not go crazy! 2009 is almost over. We encourage you to sit with your family and discuss what can be done to make 2010 a more productive and life changing year.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 22 No. 16, 2009 ©NACD

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