Glenn Doman Changed How the World Looks at Children with Special Needs

Adopting a Positive “Doman Viewpoint”

The entire “system” for children with special needs is rigged. The viewpoint toward these children is rigged. The general viewpoint is that children with neurodevelopmental conditions are hopeless and that little or nothing can be done for them. Imagine if you were born and everyone had the viewpoint that you were hopeless and little or nothing could be done for you? How would your life be today?

Because of this viewpoint children with neurological conditions are denied even the opportunities of average children. Even when we know that they need far greater opportunity than average children. So the viewpoint and label placed on these children limits them and pushes them down, down, down, throughout their lives.

Doman International exists because Glenn and Katie Doman never agreed to this viewpoint. They and the early team of staff that worked with them disagreed with the prevailing viewpoint. They created a new viewpoint, that brain injured children could become well. Glenn realized that all children with neurodevelopmental conditions had suffered an injury to the brain before, during or after birth, and so he called all these children “brain injured” to accurately describe their issues.

It was no longer the objective for brain injured children to be well. Brain injured children have the potential to be way, way, way above average. Every week when we report the results of the brain injured children we are seeing, we report facts. Brain injured children are reading, doing math, having general knowledge, problem solving, and understanding foreign language, far superior to their average peers. Children are running, brachiating, doing gymnastics, swimming, and biking far superior to their peers. Two, four, six, eight year old severely brain injured children have had perfect health for twelve consecutive months. This is unheard of for average children.

It is essential that everyone in the lives of our brain injured children have the viewpoint that the children can be intellectually, physically, and socially excellent. The more people in the child’s environment that agree with this the better the child’s progress will be.

The system is rigged to try to convince parents to adopt the viewpoint that the child has little or no potential. Staff come to Doman International because they have already understood the great potential of children with special needs, and they want to help parents achieve it. Parents come to us having met other parents, or having seen our social media, or having read What To Do About Your Brain Injured Child (1974). In their hearts they know their children have great potential.

It’s important that parents make sure there are no naysayers in the environment of their brain injured children. Anyone who does not believe in the potential of the child are negative influences and their presence can be bad for the child. Our children need all the help they can get. They cannot afford to be in the presence of individuals who are not on their team.  

Years ago, my wife Rosalind, the clinical director of Doman International, was seeing a family for the first time and teaching them their physical program. The child was learning to creep on his hands and knees. Rosalind gave them a goal of  building up to 400 meters of creeping a day. The mother burst into tears. Rosalind was concerned that the mother felt the goal was too difficult. The mother said “no”. She said she was crying because, for her child’s entire life she had been told the things her child will never be able to do. Now Rosalind was telling her what her child could do, and exactly how much. This is our viewpoint, our parents viewpoint, and the viewpoint that the entire world needs to adopt.

Please help us make this positive viewpoint of children with special needs prevail. You will be improving the results for these children around the world.