Bread for Life. It has a catchy tune, doesn’t it? This was the name of the bread business where I was co-owner and partner with my older sister, Jennifer. We started this business when I was ten years old, and she was twelve. Little did we know we would spend the next six years making over 10,000 loaves of 100% whole wheat bread and earn close to $25,000 in the process.

In the late 1980s my parents were at a homeschooling convention in Arlington, Texas, where they learned about a Bosch bread machine and Magic Mill, two small appliances greatly desired by many homeschooling families at the time. For the first several months my dad, after coming home from work, would make a batch of bread. This included pizza crust, cinnamon rolls, and three loaves of bread. We had homemade pizza that night for dinner, cinnamon rolls for breakfast the next morning, and enough bread for the week. When my mom set out to make it, my sister and I, who were her right-hand kitchen help, were eager to learn alongside her. As we made more and more bread, we delighted in giving it away to our family friends. Happy as they were to receive it, their response sparked our business venture, “I’ll buy it from you!”

I will never forget our first “bread day” when we made a few batches, and it took all day long to make. As you can imagine, there is a bit of a learning curve to making bread, 100% whole wheat bread at that, and we had to get it right. We quickly learned that making whole wheat homemade bread is no easy task. For months our deep freezer was full of “reject” loaves that were not worthy of being sold. Within time we did get it right and along the way we learned life lessons that were a part of shaping and molding us into becoming highly capable adults and that continue to serve us well to this day.

Lesson one

The customer is always right

This is something my dad would always tell us when it came to serving our customers well. It didn’t matter if the mistake was on their end, you serve customers well having the mindset that they are always right.

Lesson two

Time management

The night before baking day we would call our regular customers asking if they would like to place an order. We made bread loaves, dinner rolls, cinnamon raisin swirl bread, cinnamon rolls, and pizza crust. Additionally, at Thanksgiving and Christmas time we made two specialty breads, a 15-inch Christmas tree or 13-inch braided loaf filled with your choice of butter pecan filling or cinnamon apple raisin filling. Based on how many orders we had, we calculated our starting hour, which was anywhere from 4:30am-6:15am. With utmost efficiency we could make 4 batches an hour. This meant we had to mill the wheat berries for the next batch so many minutes into the current batch while the dough was kneading. We knew how long the bread would take to rise and calculated rise and baking times. Don’t forget cooling times! And then there was the clean-up and shower. Pick up time was typically during 4-6pm. When our customers walked in the door to pick up their order you would never know the kitchen was covered in flour, oil, and wheat berries.

Lesson three

How to pick up the phone and make a call

My sister and I would take turns calling our customers. One week she would call. The next week I would call. We had a certain verbiage to use and had it down by heart. Some customers were friends, or friends of our parents. But plenty of customers were almost complete strangers. These customers came to us from craft shows we participated in twice in the spring and twice in the fall. At our booth we had a sign-up sheet for anyone interested in buying more bread from us in the future. This sign-up sheet was placed strategically right next to our sample plate.

Lesson four

People skills

We interacted with adults on a frequent basis. We learned to present ourselves well and to communicate clearly. Naturally, I am more on the introverted side but many people who know me today are surprised to learn this about me. This lesson developed and grew strengths in me at a young age that has led to more opportunities throughout my adult life.

Lesson five

Economics

My dad set up a spreadsheet for us where we penciled in our ingredients and had rows to calculate our costs. We learned about net and gross profit. We knew exactly how much our ingredients cost and how much money we had earned. From time to time, we used some of our profits to pay for summer camp, family vacations, and extracurricular activities, but we always left enough cash in the money box to buy ingredients from our profits.

Lesson six

A strong work ethic

I think this goes without saying! This bread business was hard work and took great effort to produce a sellable product. We were proud of our product and proud of our hard-working efforts.

Bonus lesson

Your sister can be your business partner and become your best friend

We started out as sisters who would fight and argue from time to time, but through working together we learned to depend and rely upon each other, how to get along and to work out our disagreements, and through this we became best of friends. This is the best lesson of all and to this day we are still best friends.We often recall our “bread days” with some fondness, laughing at some of the ridiculousness of it all: waking up before the crack of dawn, the long hard and tiring days standing on our feet, flour on our face, and oil-stained t-shirts. The crazy customers we would encounter from time to time, the time we forgot to put salt in a batch, and our matching homemade dresses we wore at the craft shows. Little did we know at the time how much of an impact our Bread for Life business would have upon us for the rest of our lives. While we were shaping and molding bread dough the life lessons we gained from our little business venture shaped and molded us into the highly capable adults that we are today. 

Reprinted by permission NACD Newsletter, May 2024 ©NACD

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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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Perhaps the only thing that feels better for us at NACD than having parents who really get it is seeing the results of them having gotten it.

It’s an incredible honor and privilege to be in a position to help change lives, and it’s so much fun and very fulfilling when we can see the results. You are about to read a mother’s story, sharing about the things she implemented and about being able to enjoy the fruits of her labor. You will be reading about Aidia Brennan, who is on her way to realizing her dreams. In Aidia’s case her dreams largely revolved around her love of singing. As I look at how Aidia is proceeding on her journey and reaching toward her dreams, it reminds me of one of my other “kids,” Jennifer Lindsay.

You might want to read about Jennifer, another one of our home-educated NACD kids, see where she started, and hear her inspiring story. I am delighted to report on where she is today. Jennifer had a really rough beginning, but she developed many talents and created many opportunities for herself, from her work creating the new generation of GPS systems, to her concert violin, to her singing. Jennifer ultimately decided that her real passion was singing opera, and as she has done throughout her life, she applied her superior processing power, focus, will, and the power and influence of her wonderful parents, and has excelled in her chosen vocation. I’m am very happy and proud to announce that Jennifer Lindsay has signed a contract with the Metropolitan Opera Company and will be performing in their upcoming production of the George Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess. I’m sure she will wow the audience, as she has during her performances around the country. Congratulations, Jen! My goal for our children is to help parents put together the pieces so that their children can function well—very well—but also to provide the children with the opportunity to discover their talents and passions and provide the means for their successful pursuit.

Just yesterday I did a Skype evaluation with Aliya, Aidia’s younger sister, who is doing great as a teen and is herself developing her neuro-developmental, educational, and personal pieces and is exploring and discovering her own talents and passions. Fortunately, Aidia was home in Canada for spring break from her college in England, and I had an opportunity to speak with her and catch up a bit.

Speaking with Aidia was a real delight; she is an amazing, mature, well-spoken, confident, respectful, and lovely young lady. Oh, and very talented as well! She really is the epitome of what we would all hope to see in our children as they pursue their goals and aspirations.

Liana and Gary Brennan, proud parents of Aidia and Aliya, congratulations!

Go team Brennan!

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NACD Instilling Independence
by Liana Brennan

NACD has been in our lives for years and in the past, I’ve said that our lives and children’s lives would be quite different without NACD! I appreciate the significance that NACD places on addressing the whole child and the child within the family. Our youngest daughter, Aliya, was first on the program when she was 4 years old and later, we brought our eldest daughter, Aidia, home from the public school and began a program with her in the sixth grade. We continued program and home educating Aidia until her graduation last May. Our NACD journey has been long and we’ve had some trying years but when the successes are achieved it makes it all worth it!

We are part of a large homeschool community with the same activities and opportunities afforded to them as the public schools. Our girls are able to participate in sports activities, yearbook committees, father-daughter dances, prom, and graduation. It is a large formal graduation and Aidia was selected to address the graduating class! One of the major points of her speech was to seize opportunities as they present themselves, embrace the unknown and break out of comfort zones. At this point she was already following her own advice. During her junior year, she began the university decision process and expressed her desire to study overseas.

This from a girl that dislikes change but realizes that in order to grow and succeed change is inevitable.

As parents it’s our responsibility and mission to raise children that are self-sufficient that will make a positive impact on society. As we sent off Aidia to university in England we prayed that we had equipped her with the needed life skills to thrive, not just survive. Thankfully she has adjusted well as she is living her dream! Technology has made it very easy for us to connect daily, either through FaceTime or text. Recently during one of our FaceTime sessions, Aidia thanked me for being strict and having her complete chores! I snickered because her interpretation of strict differs greatly from mine. I also wished I had a tape recorder handy to preserve her comment. Apparently, most of the other students are not self-sufficient which is causing them a multitude of stressors and health issues on top of the rigors of university. In November she shared that most the students had already depleted their student loan funds that were to sustain them through December. Huge contributing factors are the inability to cook or prepare meals, laundry and manage their personal finances. There are no meal plans in the United Kingdom like there are at most American Universities. They were eating out most nights and then with the realization that their funds were dwindling they begin to eat inexpensive fast food that was not sustaining them and they were falling ill. Aidia was cooking one night for one of the girls in an attempt to teach her some cooking skills. Aidia asked if her parents had not been interested or willing to teach her how to cook. The student shared her mother had attempted but she was more absorbed with her phone and her mother would get frustrated and end up preparing the whole meal. Aidia’s reply, “yeah, that wouldn’t fly in our home.” Aidia has the title of “mom” as she’s the one they turn to for life skills advice. Most days when we are on FaceTime there is a knock at her door with someone needing some assistance or advice.

During one of our FaceTime sessions Aidia said that she thought she would miss us more than she did and as I was recovering from her comment and from having the wind knocked out of me, thankfully she elaborated. She stated that she did miss us because we have fun; we enjoy each other’s company and our family game nights. A majority of the other students were homesick but not because they missed spending time with the family but for what their parents could and would do for them which is very sad.

We began instilling life skills and independence at a young age. When the girls were quite young, I designated two lower cabinets in the kitchen for plastic bowls, plates, cups and wooden tongs. Plus, all the snack and breakfast items that they could prepare themselves. I also kept a low stool in the kitchen to assist them in reaching the sink. I stored homemade granola in a small container with a flip-top lid and a scoop. It was much easier to handle than a large container. I kept the dairy-free milk and in a small container on the lower shelf in the refrigerator. This way they could prepare their breakfast themselves by placing a couple of scoops of granola in a bowl, wash up some blueberries and top it off with dairy-free milk. Using smaller containers made it easier to handle and if there was an “accident” there was a lot less clean up. I also placed items in the fridge on the lower shelves. To protect them from burns I purchased wooden tongs to use if they toasted some gluten-free bread. They were so happy they could make themselves breakfast and snacks and it promoted independence and confidence.

Both girls had “chores” on their programs. During an evaluation early on, Bob reviewed our chore chart and stated that their chores were a little “light” and we needed to increase their responsibility. I was excited that I had Bob’s encouragement to ramp up their chores. As they matured, we required more from them. It takes patience and a little extra time but the payoff is worth it. We have lots of memories and laughs as we recall eggs rolling off the counter (which happened more than once), or too much of an ingredient like salt or a spice as a recipe was miss read or the ingredient came out too fast, or an omission of an ingredient altogether! Some things that we included on their chore charts as they matured was preparing the family meal twice a week – planning – cooking and clean up, loading and unloading dishwasher, being responsible for their own laundry, feeding, walking and cleaning up after the dog, making their bed daily and maintaining their own room, cleaning bathrooms, dusting and vacuuming to name a few.

Their chores were their own responsibility and they needed to own them, and I did not want to hound or remind them daily. To remove myself from monitoring their chores I placed a chore chart for each girl in an acetate sleeve. Each chart was pushed pinned to a cork board on the kitchen wall with a dry erase marker (washable dry erase marker when younger). They passed the charts daily and it was up to them to check off the chores that were complete. They walked by the chart every time they entered and exited the kitchen so there was visual of what was complete and what still outstanding. If the chores were not complete there were consequences. At the beginning of the next week the acetate was wiped down and the new week began. This system worked wonderfully.

Aidia recently displayed her independence and willingness to jump all over the fear of the unknown and submit for a wonderful opportunity that produced a once in a lifetime experience! Aidia is pursuing a BA honors degree in Musical Theatre and has been inspired by Ramin Karimloo, a Musical Theatre performer, since she was eleven. Ramin has been performing on Broadway and West End for years and has portrayed Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, Jean Val Jean in Les Misérables and Anastasia to name a few. In July, he announced his UK tour. When not performing on Broadway or West End he travels with his band and performs songs from his musicals and other songs that he puts his own “spin” on. Aidia was so excited to hear that Ramin would be performing in Shrewsbury, England where is attending University! Right then and there she purchased a ticket. It didn’t concern her that she would be attending on her own, she was ecstatic that she would see him live! Unfortunately, she has not had the opportunity to see him perform live so this was a fantastic opportunity.

Aidia follows Ramin on social media and on Christmas day he posted that he would like to showcase local talent at the venues on his tour and if interested, and local to the venue, to submit media showcasing their talent. Aidia jumped on the opportunity and Christmas night she sent in various videos of her singing and playing guitar. When she headed back to Shrewsbury after Christmas early on the Jan 3^rd Aidia had not had a response so assumed she wasn’t selected. Upon landing on one of her layovers she checked her email and there was a personal email from Ramin informing her she was selected to open for him! We were so thrilled and excited for her! Ramin even introduced her!! Not many folks are able to say that they have met their inspiration let alone open for them! We were so proud of her and her performance.

Another way that NACD has impacted Aidia’s life is through the Simply Smarter program. Recently an industry leader came in to do a workshop with the students. One of the activities was a series of patterns. I may not have the activity exactly correct but the idea was that they were to stand in a circle and each student had a series of tasks to do simultaneously with the other students. They were to pass a ball to a certain student, speak a word or phrase, then walk to another student to pass the ball, speak another word and continue this pattern while everyone else was doing their own pattern. It was apparently quite chaotic and yet Aidia was able to remember her pattern and in some cases had to retrieve the ball from the student she was receiving it from because they were confused or forgot the pattern. At the end of the session the instructor inquired if Aidia had done this activity before because he had never had anyone complete the pattern successfully before and assumed she must be familiar with the activity. When she stated she had not he was amazed that she had managed to remember the patterns. Her response, “NACD’s Simply Smarter!” This was a great example of how higher processing can build memory assisting in academic and career growth. Aidia is often required to learn songs and dances in short periods of time. Higher processing will be a huge asset in her chosen field.

Through the years many of our days have been long and exhausting. On some of these days it would have been easy to allow the chores to slip, to address the laundry and cooking ourselves in order to shorten our day but at what expense? I can remember a particularly exhausting day when Aliya had pushed back and been defiant and argumentative. It was dinnertime and we had just completed program. Her father had just arrived home as Aliya began her chores. She proceeded to Swiffer the living room and saw her Dad on the sofa and stated, “I don’t know why I have to sweep when Dad is over there having the time of his life.” As you can imagine after a long day that remark just about sent me over the edge. After reprimanding her for her comment I explained that her situation was a result of the choices she made during the day, which meant she was now having to complete chores well into the evening. Thankfully these days are a thing of the past, but had we not persevered we would still be living these days. Currently, Aliya accomplishes her chores without complaint and enjoys meal preparation.

We recently relocated internationally and Aliya has adjusted well. She experienced some anxiety but with the tools she learned through NACD she has settled in fine. Aliya is meeting new people and is playing drums for her youth band at church. The church recently had a big event in which she played for the evening and afterward families sought her out to tell her what a great job she did and that they loved that she was a female drummer. She continues to take lessons and is progressing well. I believe that Simply Smarter has been a contributing factor to her progress.

We are so thankful to NACD and their desire to provide us with the instruction to allow our children to reach their full potential. As parents, we must be willing to let our children experience life but equip them with the tools to be independent and successful so they may pursue their dreams without any additional stressors.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 4, 2019 ©NACD

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On January 26th I was given the honor of providing the keynote address for the Winter Home School Conference in Layton, Utah. The conference was a great success with a couple thousand in attendance.

As I was preparing for the conference, I realized that I needed to address an underlying systemic issue with homeschool, which was simply that the majority of homeschool families were simply replicating school, the very thing they were trying to replace. Just a couple of nights before the address, I realized that the key to this problem had been staring me right in the face. The foundation of the problem was, in fact, the very term “homeschool.”

I titled my speech “Targeted Home Education-T.H.E. Way Forward.” My presentation was aimed at helping parents understand all of the underlying problems and issues associated with turning their homes into mini institutions/schools. I helped them understand how building home education on the foundation of a curriculum, which is an anathema to everything we know about learning and children, was taking them in the wrong direction.

Home education provides an opportunity to individualize education, to build the foundation of learning, short-term memory, working memory, and executive function, the pieces that permit all of us to learn, think, and function in the world; and they are the pieces that can make all of our children smarter, much smarter. Home-based education should permit us to work with the “whole child” and help our children discover themselves, learn how to learn and to love learning, to pursue their passions, and become happy, successful adults with a sense of independence, service, and values. If we target what we are doing with home-based education, we can do so much better and even do it in less time than with a curriculum-based approach.

All of our NACD staff who were present and I were pleased with all the folks coming up to us throughout the afternoon and evening and announcing:

“We’re home educators, not homeschoolers; and we want to do it better and smarter.”

NACD Newsletter, February 2019 ©NACD

I wrote an article expanding on these concepts if you are interested in learning more:

T.H.E. Targeted Home Education:
Homeschool Renamed, Re-envisioned, and Given a New Way Forward
by Bob Doman

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What is the purpose of your program? Many of you approach your program as if the goal were to check off a lot of boxes. That’s not the goal. The goal is to produce change. It’s easy to lose track of where we are going and to get lost in the process. As you are looking at your one thing, think about goals. Think about those important things that we are trying to change or develop and focus and work with intention.

Intention is working with a targeted mental focus for the purpose of producing a specific future change.

One of the most glaring things I see when reviewing program videos are folks obviously working without intention, which results in very slow progress. I wouldn’t want to count all the processing videos I have watched that made me want to scream. As most of you know, developing processing skills is rather foundational and really important. You should also know that even an incremental change in processing results in wonderful things, like better understanding, increased language, increase in global maturity, improved behavior, and better cognition-global change! Understanding this importance, many families justly prioritize their processing activities; but what I often see are parents doing the activities without a lot of intensity, which means they are doing it without intention. I often have to pay very close attention to the videos to determine if the child is getting the sequences right or wrong because watching the feedback from the parent or helper, there wasn’t much difference in the response, whether the sequence was done correctly or not. Without quality feedback and reinforcement your child isn’t even going to know what the goal is and certainly is not going to be working with intention.

To digress a tad, on my last trip to our Cincinnati evaluation site, where I work out of a hotel that sits on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River, just across from the city of Cincinnati, I renewed my perspective on intention and intensity. Often on these trips I take a little walk along the river after I have my dinner and before I go back to my room to address more emails. Looking across the river I can see both the Cincinnati football and baseball stadiums. The Ohio River is a big river, and although the stadiums sit close to the river’s edge, they are still quite a way away. During the baseball season the Cincinnati Reds play, and during the football season the Cincinnati Bengals play. If I happen to be out in the evening and a game is being played, there is absolutely no question if someone gets a hit or a homerun or a team scores a touchdown. On this last trip, I was walking and looking out at the stadium when a touchdown was scored by the Bengals. The roar of the crowd from where I was across the river was almost deafening, and then the sky lit up with fireworks. The intention is to win the game, and it is understood that to win the game you need to get hits or advance the ball on the football field. The fans react with intensity to each of these events. There is no question of the intention of the players or the fans. It is also not surprising that teams in cities with good fans who help generate intensity and keep the players focused on the intention do well.

The goal of working on processing is to raise the processing level, preferably quickly. Watching these videos, it becomes blatantly obvious that more often than not the intention is to complete the activity and check off the box. I’m sure as the parent pushes themselves and their child through the activity, they think that they just need to do this another few hundred or thousand times and their child will move forward and ultimately, they probably will. But if we address not only processing activities, but also everything we do with our kids with intention, we can meet our goals faster, and generally much, much faster.

As an example of how we can create intention, I will at times do processing activities with criteria. What this means is that rather than doing a processing activity for a specific duration, such as a minute or two, we do the activity with a target. For example, if we are just starting to get auditory digit spans of five, working with criteria we will let the child know that the goal of the session is to get a five. As soon as they get a five, we have a party and the session ends. Their intention is no longer just to cooperate, to try or pretend that they are trying; it is to get a five! And our intention is no longer to check off a box, it is to get a five. It can be amazing to see how much faster we can move forward when the intention is clearly defined, and the child is receiving good feedback.

One of keys to focus and intention is data and attention to detail. If you are working on teaching your child to identify pictures, read words, recognize numbers, or complete a math process, you can only work with intention if you know where you are and where you are going. For example, if you are trying to develop your child’s sight word vocabulary you need to know what they know. Perhaps you have shown them 50 new words over a month or so. How many do they know? If I were flashing them the words, I would periodically stop on a word and ask them what it was or start a review session by testing a few words. I would mentally keep track of how many of the words they know, about what percentage they know, and even what types of words. Armed with some data we can do a number of things. If you provide your coach and evaluator with the data, they can make recommendations to do everything from change frequencies and durations, to how many new words are being introduced, to what kinds of words to introduce, or even to putting it away for a while. If the data is simply that we have checked off x number of boxes over these weeks, that doesn’t really help us reach our goal. The intention of every session should be to succeed, to teach your child to read more words; and to do that within each session, you need to be gathering data and work with intention.

Intention is every bit as important for every other aspect of program, whether we are teaching a child to walk properly, to track better, or to love looking at pictures. With absolutely every activity we do, we need to be mindful of what we are trying to achieve; and we need to be observant and constantly adjusting, modifying, and gathering data. Our intention is to produce new function, new abilities and to change your child’s life one piece, one step at a time.

I find intention to be a fascinating neurological phenomenon. You can consciously start doing something with intention, but then your brain appears to learn to apply it without conscious effort. As an example, through the years I have had children read short non-fiction articles as part of their program, primarily to improve reading comprehension. Generally, it would appear to the parent who was working with the child during the day that the child was engaged, and since we were working to develop reading comprehension, that they were actually reading to learn. I would on occasion have the parents do an experiment. The experiment was quite simple: at dinner after everyone had sat at the table, but before anyone was allowed to start eating, I would have the child’s father ask them what the story they had read earlier was about. Many parents were shocked when they discovered that their child couldn’t even remember the subject, let alone any of the content. A common answer from children to the question, “What did you learn at school today?” is “Nothing.” If the family repeated this for a few days, the child would start remembering more and more about the story; and if the parents randomly asked the dinner question, the child would usually maintain their new intention, which was not just to read the story, listen to the story, and answer specific questions immediately after reading the story, but to learn and try to retain the information. After the first couple of days I’m sure the child, when they sat down to do their story, was not consciously thinking, “I need to remember this because Dad is going to ask me about it at dinner.” The child’s brain had changed and was applying greater intensity to recalling the information on an ongoing basis. Your brain adapts and changes and even generalizes intention. Very cool!

One Final Note on Intention

Parents generally work with a child with better intention than anyone who is paid. As a parent there are a lot of things you could do with your day rather than work with your child. You don’t do it because you’re getting paid; and actually, many of you could be out doing things for pay if you weren’t home working with your child. You do what you do because your intention is to help your child. Even for you it can be tough keeping your focus and working each activity with the needed intention.

If you are having people help with program implementation or even sending your child to school or therapy, the issue of intention becomes significantly greater. If working with a child or children is a job, often the job is defined as implementing specific methods as best you can. Not a bad objective, but it’s not the right objective. The intention should be to produce results—good results and fast results. One of the frustrations I face every day of my life is educators, therapists, and even physicians applying the same methodologies day after day and week after week and year after year, in spite of that fact that they haven’t worked or haven’t worked well or worked fast enough. It is easy for people to get stuck in the rut of “this is what we do and how we do it and so be it,” regardless of the results or lack of.

Sorry for the little digression—back to program helpers. It is more difficult for people getting paid to help with program to achieve and maintain the proper intention than it is even for parents. As parents and bosses and supervisors, part of your job is to train your helpers well, clearly define the intention, quiz them on the data, and tie their efforts to achievement of the intended results, not checking off boxes. You might find it interesting to note that historically volunteers do a better job maintaining intention than people who are paid, and often the more people are paid, the poorer job they do of program implementation and working with intention. Obviously there are exceptions, but if you are not getting paid or if the pay is minimal, it is more likely that the primary goal it to help the child.

On occasions where we have had siblings help with program, we encourage good intention not by paying the kids or even rewarding them for their time, but for results. It has been fun watching how fast things can change if we do something like, “When Johnny can do two 5s in row, we are all going to go out for dinner and to a movie.” Everyone’s intention is tied to their successfully hitting the target.

Fifty years ago, when I started doing this work, I heard comments such as, “You must be a very patient person,” or, “You need a lot of patience to work with handicapped children.”

I’m not a patient person. To the contrary, I’m quite impatient, which is why I am constantly creating and looking for better ways to do everything. My intention is, and your intention needs to be, to be impatient, to work with intention, and to make it right, make it better, and to improve your child’s life. With our joint focus and intention and, yes, some impatience, we can do it.

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 32 No. 1, 2019 ©NACD

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As many of you know, NACD is all about family. We encourage and empower parents to work with their children. We encourage and empower siblings to help siblings. We also encourage families working together to change mindsets about what truly is possible with our children, regardless of labels they may have received. I am so thankful to be able to interact and assist parents that want to help their children be all that they can be. One of the places I travel to is Chicago, and we have some great families there. Over the past year, we have had quite a few families start NACD from Davenport, Iowa. They all attend the same church and know each other well. It was a domino-like effect—one family started with their three children, then over six months we had 3 more families with all their children start on their NACD journey.

While each child has their own individualized program, the parents communicate frequently and exchange ideas on how to create intensity and how to organize their days. Many of them have large families, and they homeschool all their children. As you can imagine, that takes good organizational skills and time management! I am so proud of these parents who in such a short amount of time—some with 4 kids on an NACD homeschool program—have created an NACD atmosphere full of positivity, discipline, frequent bursts of input with high intensity, and developing responsibility in their children. And did I forget to mention that one mom had a baby over the past four months and one is having one in December? Are they teaching all their children all the subjects that would happen each day in the public school setting? No. They are teaching smarter. They are building the neurological foundation. They are accelerating processing. They are building up responsibility so that the children actively assist in keeping up the house (inside and out) and help with the younger children. They are hitting reading and math and are working to incorporate passions and interests that the children love to learn about. There are certain activities they can do as a family, and there are certain activities that have to be done 1:1. Some of these parents are also learning how to parent more effectively, understanding what behaviors are and are not appropriate. As a community they help each other in raising their children. When I met these families during evaluations in October, I saw really happy kids. I saw kids who were more mature, had higher levels in processing, and were going up grade levels in academics. I saw kids who really liked learning and were developing interests in building, cooking, money, and fitness. I saw children who were developing positive self-esteems and confidence. They are truly loved, not just by their parents, but also by their community—not to mention me!

Parents—it truly does take community in helping raise our children and to support us in the implementation of NACD programs. I know many of you reading this don’t feel like you have that sense of community. That is why we have created the NACD forum for all things NACD. The NACD forum is on the portal—the website you visit to upload your videos or to review your child’s program. If you log in, then on the top right is the heading “Forum.” If you click on that and hit “view,” you will see all the different categories. If you click on a heading, such as “Health and Nutrition,” you will see different threads about that topic. Feel free to post questions, comments, and suggestions on that particular thread of interest. This is meant to be a positive place for community! Give ideas on how you build intensity or share fun videos of your child accomplishing something new. Have a good app your child likes? Post it and why! As staff, we will post frequently and provide our feedback.

NACD Families can access the NACD Forum in the top-right corner of your Family Dashboard on the NACD Portal.

Please note:The NACD forum is not a place to market yourself or your business. It is not a place to share different program activities. Remember that each program we design is specific to YOUR child. If something on your child’s program needs an adjustment, please contact your coach. NACD reserves the right to take posts off the forum if they are negative and not relevant to helping build a positive community.

We are excited to have this for you and hope you will enjoy it!

NACD Newsletter, November 2018 ©NACD

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In an effort to help our NACD families and others maximize their efforts and make the most out of the time they have to work with their children, it is incredibly important to keep reminding everyone about the significance of intensity.

The foundation of what we do at NACD is designing very targeted individualized programs that are created to help provide the maximum results, relative to the time invested. The significance of being targeted is that we stimulate and change the brain when we apply specific, organized, targeted input with the necessary frequency, intensity, and duration. Random input is just noise to the brain; disorganized input is irrelevant to the brain; and any input that is not received by the brain with intensity never happened.

We understand that intensity, the most important of the Super 3 (frequency, intensity, and duration), is not entirely a reflection of how loud or strong or exciting we are when working with our kids. The big factor is what the intensity is with which they are processing the input. Have you ever seen someone fall asleep at a party or in a movie theater or sporting event? These are all intense environments; but if that person is asleep, it has zero intensity for their brains—it didn’t happen. I recall the question I heard way back when in school—“if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it, did it make a sound?” It’s not about you, it’s about them. Back to the folks at the party-how about if they are not asleep, but just dozing? Or, they just had a fight with their significant other and are running through the last argument in their mind one more time, or have a song stuck in their head that keeps going around and around. How much did all that “intensity” that is going on impact them? Probably not much. Ultimately intensity is based on how the individual is receiving/processing the input.

I have always related intensity and impact on a scale of 1-10. If something goes into a brain with the intensity of 9 or 10, learning is virtually instantaneous. Drop it down to 7-8 and we need a fair amount of frequency and duration to change the brain. If the intensity is only a 6, we need a lot of frequency and duration—many times per day and lots of days, weeks, or months. At a 5 we are in for a very long haul. And below a 5, we are better off taking a nap.

Let’s look at some of the things that affect intensity, starting with physiological issues. Diet is one of the things we talk about with all parents. I won’t get into the specifics of diet in this article but suffice it to say that if you feed your kids pancakes with syrup for breakfast, just send them back to bed and forget about school. Sleep is another foundational issue, and doing what is needed for both you and your child to get enough sleep is very important. So before we go any further, let’s see where we are. If what you are trying to put into your child’s brain is super exciting to them and they love it, they ate some good protein, had a great night’s sleep, and feel wonderful, you might get them to an 8. Trying to input something they might like but don’t love, drop to a 7; not a wonderful breakfast, drop to a 6; and then you were up with them for half of the night, we just dropped to a 5, and perhaps you are both getting ready for a nap.

Just yesterday I had a talk with a very nice family, great, concerned parents who have a teenage son on the autism spectrum. He has had a few small seizures that did not appear to have any residual effect and is on two different anti-convulsive medications. His doctors have also put him on two additional drugs that are used for schizophrenia and irritability. When I look at this boy, he looks like he is about to fall over with his eyes open. He’s at a 2-3 for intensity, and if you work hard, you can push him briefly to a 4, and on rare occasion to a 5. Under the circumstances we hope to maintain what function he has until these medications that all slow his brain down can be altered or eliminated.

Drugs that are used for seizure control and behavior and attention control are slowing down the brain. As a side note, the neurologists and neurosurgeons that I worked with almost 50 years ago were aware that the vast majority of seizures actually caused no harm, and my clinical observations over all of these years verify it; but we still have neurologists who see their mission as stopping all seizures, regardless of the fact that they are medicating the child to the point where there can be virtually no development. I’ve been happy to hear that after 50 years, there are a few neurologists acknowledging that not all seizures spell the end of the world and are being much more conservative with the medications. And fortunately there are new very promising alternatives to the drugs.

Diet, sleep, health, exercise, or the lack of, and medications all have an effect on the brain, your child’s ability to process information, and thus to be stimulated and develop.

I have a confession to make. I do not get regular organized exercise. I played sports, and I played them hard. I have almost always lived where I had a good size piece of land and always loved working outside and work hard. I enjoy walks and hikes, but a daily exercise routine—never. It’s a good thing your child has parents and helpers to help structure their days, establish priorities for them, and to motivate them and make things fun. Perhaps if I had some great fun personal trainer who came and got me at a specific time each day and praised my success, I might exercise. I probably would also need to add a 25^th hour to every day. As adults we are responsible for ourselves. We can choose to eat well, exercise, whatever; however we are also responsible for our children, and it is our responsibility to see that our children eat well, get their sleep, and do all the other things needed to help them develop well. Even the smartest child isn’t wise. We need to make the choices for them and keep them heading in the right direction. Side note: How many of you give your pets more nutritious diets than your kids?

The younger the children, the easier it is to make things fun and increase the intensity. I constantly hear that little Johnny is bored with this or that or he doesn’t like it. The reality is that it’s not about the activity, it’s about the environment of the activity and how it is presented. Remember Tom Sawyer and how he got the kids to paint the fence for him? Create the right atmosphere, and you can get your kids to have a ball cleaning toilets. If something doesn’t hurt, you can create an atmosphere that makes whatever you are doing fun, and if something hurts, stop doing it because something is wrong. If you can’t get your intensity or their intensity above a 5, what should you do? You should go take a nap and come back to it later with good intensity.

One of the most common issues I see when watching program implementation is a lack of intensity when a child gets something right or does something well. I can observe someone working on processing, and the difference in the response when the child gets something right or wrong is almost indistinguishable. Often when reviewing program implementation videos, we have to pay close attention to see if a child got something correct or not because we can’t tell the difference from watching the reaction of the parent or caregiver.

Children of most any age will respond to your positive attitude and words of praise. If older children need something more to get their intensity up to adequate numbers, then explore some form of a positive token economy, where achievement as a reflection of their trying and doing something with sufficient intensity to impact their brains can purchase special privileges and such. But always let your child know that you are proud of them for their efforts and achievements. Don’t reward compliance that does not equate with intensity. Reward achievement even if you have to initially make it a bit easier for them so that they can experience success.

One of the most common killers of intensity is duration. Many of the activities we give children have a duration of only a minute or two, and the duration we give is a maximum. Maximum, not minimum. More often than not, more turns a positive into a negative. We encourage parents to, if at all possible, end an activity on a high note. Parents tend to continue an activity until the child has had it, and it turns negative. The result of that is the next time you go to do that activity the child recalls it as a negative, not a positive. Imagine giving your child the forbidden fruit—ice cream. You give them just a spoon or two and they love it and you stop. They want more. Now imagine that you gave your child a couple more of spoons of ice cream—still loving it—and then you gave them a small bowl. They’re still loving it, but not quite so much. Then make them eat a large bowl, having to force them to eat it over the course of an hour; and to really make it fun, make them eat more and more until they throw up. That would sure teach them to love ice cream. When should you have stopped? We have the ability to turn most anything that can be positive and fun into a negative. Remember: it’s all about intensity.

The big secret to success is intensity—the intensity with which your child takes in the input you are providing.

Intensity is not only foundational, it is mandatory: Get it?

 

Anything that adversely affects your child physiologically has a negative impact on intensity: Get it?

 

Any mediation that affects your child’s brain is likely to have a negative impact on their intensity: Get it?

 

What you do can affect your child’s intensity, but ultimately, it’s a matter of doing what works to create intensity in them: Get it?

 

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing; stop while you are ahead: Get it?

 

If your intensity or your child’s falls below a 5 and you can’t raise it, take a nap: Get it?

 

To be successful we need to provide your child with specific targeted input with sufficient frequency, intensity, and duration: Got it?

 

Good!

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 31 No. 8, 2018 ©NACD

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How long is a day? How long is a minute? How long does it take to make a bed, take out the trash, make a sandwich, or eat a meal? I’m sure you can all answer the first two questions, or at least you think you can; and I suppose that you could give a fair guess as to how long it takes you to do many common tasks. But I would bet that you would be off in these estimates by a fairly substantial percentage. Let’s try to understand a day and look at these pieces a bit more closely so we can start thinking about time in perhaps a different and more productive way.

But there are some of you who do not think of your day in these three or four chunks, but rather in smaller increments. Recall the old saying, “If you need something done give it to a busy person.” We might want to tweak that a bit and say, “If want something done, give it to a productive busy person.” I suspect that most of you feel you are really busy, but productive? Why do these productive, busy people get it done? I propose it’s because they look at and think about their day and time in smaller pieces and perhaps even schedule those pieces.

Back in the eighties when I was working like a young nutcase trying to help kids and change the world, I was productive from generally around 6 a.m. until 2 or 3 a.m.. My day was so scheduled that you could have asked me at any given moment what time it was, and I would have been able to answer accurately within a few seconds. I often got through those long days with mini power naps, and I could fall asleep within a couple of seconds and wake up typically one or two seconds before my scheduled wake up time. I really had a good handle on time. Part of what helped me fine tune time was doing live radio and TV shows.

Back then I did a lot of radio and TV, which really helped develop my time perspective. How long is a minute? Sixty seconds. And how long is sixty seconds? When doing live radio or TV, I learned very quickly that the programs start on a specific second, commercials happen at specific seconds, and the show ends on a specific second. When I did these shows I would have a clock with a very prominent second hand to watch and/or someone off to the side, making all kinds of motions, gestures, and facial contortions trying to keep me apprised of the time and on target. To make it challenging, the host would inevitably throw a question at me to end a segment. When I first started doing these shows I would be nervously watching the clock, and when asked a question with less than a minute left, I would look at the host and quickly answer the question, then look up at the clock. More often than not, there would still be something like 45 seconds left. Wow—a minute is a long time. I felt like I could have recited the Gettysburg Address in that time. (Which I, in fact, just timed and can do in a minute—who would have thought?) So one minute is a long time, and there are 1,440 of them in a day. Now I am not proposing that you run your day with a second hand; but I suspect we can do better than morning, afternoon, and evening, or worse yet “tomorrow.”

As an exercise spend a little bit—a very little bit—of time and make a list of common jobs and tasks that you do on a very regular basis and estimate how long each job takes. How long does it take to make a bed, empty a dishwasher, prepare sandwiches, take out the trash, etc.? Write down your estimations. Then over the next couple of days, time how long these tasks actually take and compare them to your estimations. You may be surprised. You may find that you actually spend a lot more time thinking about finding time for things than it would have taken to have just done them in the first place. Armed with this new insight, make yourself a chart of a day, breaking the day down into 15-minute pieces. If we allow eight hours for sleep, that leaves you with 64 of these 15-minute huge chunks of time. Now with your chart in hand and your new time perspective, start filling in your chart for your next day. Start by chunking things into 15-minute groups, putting those things that absolutely have to be done, like meals or whatever, into the appropriate time slot. After you fit in all of the absolutely-must-be-done items, then add in the really-really-need-to-do items. Good. Now you have probably filled in eight or ten of your 15-minute blocks. That only leaves about 56 empty blocks. Okay, so let’s move into the really-need-to-do items, followed by the like-to-do items, and the items you meant to do the day before but didn’t get around to. Do you have space for the things you meant to do but didn’t do last month? Still have some empty spaces? How about scheduling in a nap, time to read, or a workout? Wow—could you actually have some free time? For many of you, this will be an enlightening experience. For some others you may have actually discovered that 64 blocks are not enough. If that is what you learned, then you too have learned something very important. You can’t do it all. In order to get your child’s program done, you need to get help, you need to delegate, you need to evaluate the importance and results of the various things you are doing, you need to prioritize. Is your plate is too full? Talk to your coach, and let’s modify what you are doing. (Do you really need to spend time traveling across town for the questionable whatever?) But for most of you the good news is that it is possible to create enough time in your day to do what needs to be done.

Get ready—your life is about to change!

Reprinted by permission of The NACD Foundation, Volume 24 No. 3, 2011 ©NACD

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