The World We Live In Vs. The World We Should Live In
I think I remember when I was two and my parents first took me into the massive Clark Hall which was to be the primary building of my father Glenn Doman’s institute. My mother, Katie Doman, was the head nurse and the nurses’ station was only about 50 feet from our apartment. I do not remember a day in my life when I was not surrounded by adults or children with brain injuries. This experience spanning six decades is the basis of this article.
The World We Live In
Birth: A large percentage of brain injury in children happens prenatally or at birth. Based on the looks of fear and concern from the medical staff, parents begin to understand something is desperately wrong with their child. Sometimes they can tell by simply looking at their baby that there is something very wrong.
Even though hundreds of millions of brain-injured children have been born in my lifetime, the process of diagnosis still can take forever. Six months to four years is forever for parents who are praying for help and solutions. Many parents never receive a diagnosis. What diagnoses they do receive are based upon symptoms and not the core root of the problem which exists solely in the brain.
If there is no diagnosis, how can a treatment plan be made? This is purgatory for the parents and the child. If there is a diagnosis, it’s based on the symptoms of the brain injury. Therefore, the treatment is based on the symptoms. For 100 years, science has understood that you cannot treat the symptoms and make the core disease go away.Parents' expectations crushed: It may take two weeks from birth, it may take six years. The entire process of waiting for a diagnosis unintentionally crushes the spirit of parents. This greatly reduces their energy and hope for progress.
The difficulties of care: On one hand, a child may be immobile, which means the child needs to be transported and cared for virtually 24/7. Or, the child may be hyperactive and highly disorganized. Keeping a three-, six-, or nine-year-old from climbing the walls is also virtually a 24/7 commitment. It doesn’t take long for the mother to become exhausted physically and emotionally.
Working moms: In over 95% of the more than 35,000 families we have worked with over 70 years, it is the mother who is the principal caretaker of the child. Since the 70s, there has been greater and greater pressure put on our mothers to work outside the home.
The seduction of “free services”: Virtually all developed countries now offer some services for children with brain injuries. These are almost always limited to the conventional therapies such as physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and drug therapy. These therapies designed to treat symptoms and have changed very little over the last 50 years. Parents' guilt is assuaged somewhat because they are doing what the “authorities” are telling them to do. The government pays for it. So it must be right, right? Wrong. It’s been 50 years now with millions of children undergoing these therapies. Where are the results? Why are these therapies so little changed despite the lack of results?
Continued failure: As parents’ hopes are continually reduced or eliminated, they get used to failure. They rightfully become suspicious of the system. Eventually, particularly with fathers, they become very cynical about any help for their child.
Solutions: The solution to brain injury can only be found in the brain. Despite this obvious truth, a huge amount of research and funds have gone into medications that alter the central nervous system. Over the last 70 years, with thousands of children, we have found that these medications, such as antiepileptic medications, create more problems than they solve. You don’t need to see many tiny children who are addicted to legal antiepileptics to know there is something terribly wrong. Mothers complain constantly about their children being in a diminished and drugged state.
A final perfect storm of failure: This is a story about one of our children and we’ve seen this story hundreds of times. Mom and Dad were an educated, very fine, hardworking couple. They were overjoyed to give birth to their first child, a girl. During birth huge mistakes were made by the hospital staff. It happens. But there are hundreds of babies whose lives are saved by hardworking, determined medical staff. Their daughter was profoundly brain injured and the parents received hundreds of thousands of dollars in reparations. All this money was invested in a trust. Although the daughter was profoundly brain injured, she was very wealthy. The parents eventually found us and they did a great program with their daughter. They got her seeing, reading, healthy, seizure-free without medications, and happy. We failed to get her moving which was crushing for us and the parents. Mother became an alcoholic and died. Father became a functioning alcoholic and died. Before he died, he made sure his daughter would be in the best institution available. Being a wealthy man, he added his fortune to his daughter’s large trust. By the time the daughter was around the age of 35, the institution had gobbled up the entire trust and she became a ward of the state. Thank God her parents didn’t live to see this. It would be hell for them.
The cost of failure: Governments around the world continue to spend billions of dollars, euros, rupees, and rubles on children with brain injuries. There is no question that medicine has succeeded in saving the lives of many children who would have died many years ago. But these monies have done very little to solve the problems of brain injury and move the children towards wellness.
The World As It Should Be
When a baby with a brain injury is born in the hospital, the child should be assessed using the Institutes’ Developmental Profile. The profile would provide a neurological age and the child’s growth rate could be determined compared to average children. For example, a one-month-old baby with a neurological age of 0.5 months has a growth rate of 50% compared to an average child. This is a baseline that can be used to determine the child’s progress.
Parents should be told by a positive and energetic staff that their child has an injury to the central nervous system. The parents should be empowered to know that there is a great deal that can be done about this. There is even the chance that the child could develop to become above average. The Doman Method has succeeded in doing this thousands of times.
The mother could begin attending the Doman Method Course: From Special Needs to Wellness while she is recovering in the hospital. She could continue the course at home with her husband and concerned members of the family. The discharge papers from the hospital should lay out all of the best practices of the Doman Method for a newborn with brain injury.
As soon as the mother and baby go home, qualified therapists would come to the parents’ house to teach them each part of the baby’s sensory and motor development program. The parents would receive a Doman Method coach who they can contact for help and to get their questions answered.
The qualified therapists would continue to visit the family, making certain that the program is being done correctly.
Using the Doman Method protocol, the families continue to receive lectures about the child’s neurological development. Every six months the child is newly assessed and the program is updated. This continues until the child graduates to wellness.
For example, a family from Portugal came to us with their moderately brain-injured daughter. The family was not able to start the program until the baby was more than a year old. However, within a year of starting the program, she was functioning above age level in all ways. We graduated her and for the last few years, she has been competing successfully with her average peers.
The Doman Method is not perfect and many children fail to achieve wellness. Many children succeed in being above age level, for example, in reading and general knowledge. However, neurological issues such as mobility or language are not totally resolved. Rarely do children fail to succeed beyond their parents’ hopes from before the program. It’s essential for Doman International to continue its innovation to create better programs and to continue expanding our positive outcomes. Funds need to be provided to accelerate this innovation.