Transcription
[Music] welcome my name is Janet doen and I am the director of the institutes for the achievement of human potential and today we're going to take a look a continuing look at results in children who have problems in the central nervous system. We began this at the last webinar and we're going to continue and actually this is each each week we're going to add to this discussion because it's a very very important discussion. So we'll begin by uh talking about mobility results and then we'll take your questions as much as we possibly can.
Well first of all um for those of you who don't know us, this is your first time uh visiting the institutes via webinar. I want to welcome you. Um this is a we're very lucky to be on a beautiful campus here in Philadelphia and to welcome our families from all over the world. We have been here on this lovely campus for almost 70 years now. It's hard to believe but we have and our work has has embraced the most compromised central nervous systems that you can imagine to the least.
Our work began 68 years ago on this campus. Originally our work was with 60, 70, and 80-year-old stroke patients and other patients who had head injuries and it evolved over time from treating those patients quite successfully to beginning a little bit at first and then totally uh to treating children who had problems in the central nervous system. So we are child brain developmentalists and when we started our work 68 years ago, uh we used conventional therapy with those stroke patients and we created the first rehabilitation center here in the state of Pennsylvania. And we began with the conventional treatment and we did it as well as anybody in the world did it. We were a very conscientious crew and we found that our patients didn't get better and in fact, in all honesty, some of our patients uh in our view were getting worse.
So we took a step back and said, "We've made a gigantic mistake. We have been treating the symptoms. We have been treating the periphery. We've been treating the elbows, the knees, the tongue, the lips, the eyes." When in fact, every single patient from the most hurt to the least hurt, they were all injured in the brain. We knew that very very well but we weren't treating the brain because in those days nobody was treating the brain. Everybody was treating the symptoms.
So we stepped back and we said the most radical thing that was ever said here at these institutes. I think nobody thought it was radical but it turned out to be radical. We said, "Brain injury is in the brain. It's in the brain. It's not in the elbow or the knee. We can't fix this patient by moving his left arm 400 times a day. It doesn't change anything."
So we began to say, "How do we change the brain?" We had no idea when we began but as we shifted all of our attention on the brain, we came to realize that of course the brain controls everything. It's the master organ. It turns out to be the most changeable organ in the human body. Think about it from the instant the brain is the brain and that's sometimes sometime early on after conception, the brain is changing. It must change every second of every minute of every hour of every day of a human being's life. From that first second to the second before we die, the brain is changing. It has to. It's the job of the brain to monitor everything 24 hours a day. So it's the most changeable organ in the body and when we realized that, it was a very exciting realization for us. It changed everything.
So that's who we are. And if you were to walk through the door today, you would see children who range from the most hurt children in the world, profoundly brain injured, just on an edge between coma and consciousness, all the way to kids who if you saw them in our waiting room, you'd say, "What's what's she doing here? She looks fine." Well, she may have pretty significant learning problems and have flunked third grade three times. And every kid between that most hurt kid and that kid who doesn't the world doesn't see that kid who flunked third grade as having a problem in the central nervous system, but of course that kid has a problem in the central nervous system. You don't read with your elbow. You don't read with your knee. You read with your brain.
So that's who you would meet in our our waiting room. But you would not meet many who had been diagnosed as brain injured. Instead, you would meet kids who came through the door for the most part with symptomatic labels: mentally mentally deficient, cerebral palsy, epileptic, autistic, hyperactive, attention deficit disorder, global developmental delay. These are all symptomatic descriptors. They do not mention the brain and that's a big problem because the brain is where the problem is and it's also where the solution is. So our kids, the first thing our kids need when they come through the door here is a proper diagnosis. And I can't tell you what a relief it is for our parents to say, "First, they're horrified. Nobody told me my kid was brain injured. That sounds bad." But when they learn that the brain is the most changeable organ in the body, they're excited by the prospects and they should be because they're very exciting. So that's who our kids are.
Well, I want to talk a little bit about the history, our history with results because in the world of brain-injured kids, all those kids we just talked about, when we entered that world, no one had ever imagined you could fix these kids. So of course, it was not a world full of results at all. But as we began to treat the brain and put all the focus on the brain, we began to get results.
Now, in those days, if mother took her cerebral palsy child to the doctor or her globally developmentally delayed child or her autistic child, whatever label it was, very often, and this still happens today, very often mother will be told, "Well, um, he looks better than he did the last time he was in here. I'll bring him back in six months." Now, both of those things are infuriating to our mother. First of all, what does it mean "he looks better"? Better than what? It's not a meaningful result. And bring him back in six months. In six months, Mom says, "I can tell you exactly where he'll be in six months. He'll be six months behind everybody else's age." I'm just watching his life. Everybody's going on and he's being left behind. And for many of our kids, especially the kids who are profoundly and severely injured, for many of these kids, they are actually deteriorating. Not only are they not getting better without treatment, without effective treatment, they're actually getting worse. And of course, this is terrifying to mother and father. Is there anything more painful than getting up every day and watching the kid who you adore, who you do anything for, get worse? That's about as horrible a prospect as one can. I can't think about that too much or it's deeply upsetting, deeply.
Well, when we started down this path and started to get some results, my father and and we can't really talk about the history of this without talking about Glenn Doen, the founder of the institutes. And it is his work and the earlier work of Temple Fay that we'll really be looking at as we speak today. He made a law here at these institutes. If you if he asked you, "How's that kid doing?" and you said, "Oh, he looks so so much better," there'd be a very, very unhappy look on my father's face. I mean, my father was a sweet man, but what he wanted to do is say, "How about you step outside my office, come back in with a better answer." He was too kind and too polite to say that, but what he did say was, "I don't want to know what he looks like. If he's blind, can he see now? If he was deaf before, can he hear now? If he was paralyzed, is he moving?" That's what he wanted to hear. Real results.
And so at these institutes, we're very hard-nosed about what a result is. As you read these results, it should be noted and noted strongly that each and every one of these changes was achieved at home by mother, father, and child, not at the institutes for the achievement of human potential, but at home. In some way, this fact is as remarkable as the achievements themselves. Parents are not the problem with brain-injured children. Parents are the answer.
So as we talk about change today, remember that those changes took place at home from the efforts of mother, father, grandmother, and the kid himself. And the kid himself. Never forget that one day I was talking to a mom and a dad about results and about how hard they were working and they were we were discussing how much of the program mother did and how much father did and you know mother said, "Well, I do 80% and Dad does 20% and we kind of split it up on the weekends." And we were back and forth in this discussion. A little hand went up behind them and the kid piped up and he said, "I do 100%." I've never forgotten that. "I do 100%." So the hard work, it's done at home by Mom and Dad and the kid. The kid does the work.
Well, it was a big shift if we go back some 55 years to when we started to move from adults to children because treating a 60-year-old who had a stroke is very different than treating a paralyzed three-year-old who's never moved an inch in his life. The 60-year-old may now be paralyzed too, but he spent 60 years walking and talking and singing and dancing. So his brain has a lot of information on how to do those things. He didn't lose all of that with a stroke. But that three-year-old has never moved an inch in his life. So it's very different to treat him than it is to treat that 60-year-old.
So we had to almost start from scratch to say, "What would be the standard for that three-year-old?" And we went to literature and really to our surprise, no one had really studied this. Other people before us, P and others, had looked at all the things a baby does, but they hadn't and they'd looked at everything, but they hadn't asked the question, "What are the critical things? What are the things that if you don't do them, you're going to be in trouble? The next stage is going to be much more difficult because you didn't do that." That was the question we needed to answer.
And for us, uh, this first challenge was measurement. We have to be able to measure our kids when they start and then we have to measure them, have an objective measurement every time we see them to see, "Is he the same as he was last time? Is he much better? Is he worse?" But we have to have an objective measurement. It can't just be the subjective, "Well, he looks better. Well, we think he's moving better." That wasn't good enough. You know, there is no science without measurement. It's just not possible. It's critical.
Well, we needed a solution and for us, the solution was the developmental profile. You know, if the institutes is, if we had one thing we wish to be remembered for 500 years from now, it would be the institute's developmental profile because it was the very first tool for neurological measurement anywhere in the world and to this day, it is the most sophisticated one.
Well, I'd love to be able to teach you about the profile, but in today, that's not our subject. But I will show it to you. And of course, it, this little box, you can't read it or see it very, very strongly. But let me give you the overview. You're looking at a profile that essentially starts with a newborn baby and takes us through the critical stages for that baby until their completion at age 72 months. So this profile basically says, "By the time a well human being is 72 months old, he has all the basic neurological equipment that he needs to have and that he'll build on for the rest of his life." Now, obviously, a six-year-old is not as sophisticated as you and I. What the six-year-old will do and what he needs to do at six is greatly expand his database, use that database to solve problems and gain experience. Experience, that's really the biggest difference between you and I and a six-year-old. He can walk, he can run, he can read. He has the basic neurological abilities. That's what this profile is saying.
And as you can see perhaps a little bit, you see the first three columns there and those are s, the sensory pathways into the brain. You see vision, auditory, and tactile pathways. These are the critical sensory pathways for the human being. We have not included taste and smell because for human beings, these are essentially pleasure-seeking pathways. But the heart of the matter for the human being is seeing, hearing, and feeling. These are one-way pathways into the brain. Everything we learn in our lifetime, we learn through those pathways. On the other side of the profile, we see the motor pathways, the critical pathways coming out of the brain. We see mobility, we see language, we see manual competence. And these are also one-way pathways, but these are coming out of the brain.
You know, it would be hard to listen to a staff member of the institutes without hearing the words stimulation and opportunity. And this profile is how we manage that stimulation and opportunity because the sensory pathways are all about stimulation. The motor pathways coming out of the brain are all about opportunity. So our job is to put together a program, a beautiful, effective stimulation and on the motor side, to create an environment for the child where he has lots of opportunity to use that stimulation. That's that's really what we do in a nutshell.
Well, we looked at this profile and my father, this was many, many years back now, he said, "We must, we're getting results, we must codify those results, we must publish those results so that parents can see what's possible and so that our colleagues across the street can see the good news. It's actually possible to change the brain and to make it better." And so we looked at the profile and we said, "Well, there are 42 boxes there. There are 42 neurological critical points." But not all of them are equal. If I said, for example, at the bottom of tactility, you'll see the Babinski reflex. Now, whether you have a Babinski, and by the way, the Babinski is there. It's, it's the big toe going up, little toes fanning. It's there to help the newborn baby to crawl. It aids in crawling. And when the baby can crawl, then he loses that reflex. But if I said to you, "Is that terribly important?" Most people wouldn't know that it existed or even care. So we wouldn't choose that as a big factor.
But if I said, "Gee, a kid came here at the bottom of the visual column, right at the bottom, couldn't had no light reflex. That kid is a blind kid." And if I said, "Gee, we've gotten this kid up to that yellow band and that's being able to see detail, that's being able to see my face the way you're seeing my face right now." That would be a pretty major thing. That's called getting a blind kid to see. And in the last webinar, we looked at that particular victory. That's a victory.
So we looked at this and we found 10 points on this profile that were of such major consideration that were really life-changing to a human being. I think we'd all agree, being able to see if you were blind, that's life-changing. Being able to hear if you were deaf, that's life-changing. Today, we're going to look at some of those victories. We designated these as victories. And let's look today just at the mobility victories. What did we pull out of that profile and say, "If a child gets this level, it's life-changing?" Well, the first is crawling, the second is creeping, the third is walking, and of course, the fourth is running. These are the four critical stages in mobility development that are are so clearly outlined on that profile. Today, we're going to look, look and focus on crawling.
You know, when we first designated these victories, we said, "Well, we've got to, we've got to publish them." So we went and we looked for a journal, a place that focused on brain-injured children to send the results. And we found, to our surprise, that there was no such journal. And my father said reasonably, "Well, you know, maybe it'll be two or three years before there is such a journal. So during that time, we'll simply have to publish them ourselves because we can't not tell people. That would be wrong." So we created a journal which we called the IN REPORT. And it just stood for the Institute's Report. We figured we'll, we'll make this for two or three years. And in that journal, uh, we reported every victory that had been achieved in the year before. And there were other articles and instructive things, but the primary reason for this journal was to record those victories.
And there was an editorial policy. It's, it's the same today as it was when we first published the IN REPORT. It hasn't changed. It says, "If there's any individual, any group, any college, any university, any hospital, any clinic, anybody anywhere treating children who have problems in the central nervous system, anybody anywhere, and you're getting results and you want those results published, we will be very happy to publish your results side by side with our results." So that was there at our very first issue and it's still there today, exactly the same.
Well, unbelievably enough, this journal is now 50 years old. And here is the issue just recently has come out. It's the 50th anniversary of our little journal. I can hardly believe it. In all that time, we're still looking for a journal that focuses on brain-injured children. And by the way, if there's anyone out there who knows one, please contact us because we would be more than happy to send our results there. Our children's victories are published very faithfully, not only a child's name but their country of origin, where they were in that area of the profile before, and then where they are now with their victory. It's all there for anybody to see. And as my father said at the outset here, "The victory itself is astonishing, but maybe equally important is that was not accomplished here at these institutes, but hundreds of miles from here, thousands of miles from here, by mother, father, and the kid."
Well, let's look at a summary. Here are the results achieved in 3,551 children between 1998 and 2022. So these are the most recent addition of these statistics. Let's talk a little bit about immobility. Injury to the brain, either before, during, or after delivery, can result in immobility or paralysis. This is because of injury to the motor pathway. It is not because of injury to the arms and legs. It's important to say that because most of the world is still trying to treat the arms and legs, which are the the symptom of that injury to the brain.
Appropriate sensory stimulation and motor opportunity are the answer when the motor pathway is in trouble. Sensory stimulation, motor opportunity. When the child is provided with appropriate sensory stimulation with increased frequency, intensity, and duration in recognition of the orderly way in which the brain develops, and then given ample opportunity to move, that pathway will grow. There's a lot in that. It's a very, it's concise, but there's an awful lot in that. Appropriate sensory stimulation, frequency, intensity, and duration, and and then lots of opportunity to move. That's the way you grow the brain. There it is. There it is. The result. The child will begin to move a few inches and then a few feet and then use crawling as a means of transportation from place to place. Once a child can crawl across a room, he's no longer immobile. And this, this in our view, is the greatest single mobility feat of the human child, to get from immobility to mobility for the baby right from birth. To get from not being able to move to being able to move on your belly across a room, that's a huge feat. That's probably the toughest 10 feet for a human being. I mean, you might be able to argue that the trip of delivery is a little tougher, surely more dangerous, but aside from that delivery process, which is pretty wild, that ability to use your own body to get from point A to point B for the tiny baby is a huge feat. And for the severely brain-injured child who is paralyzed, to achieve this is a very, very major victory.
Of all the victories you could have on our profile in mobility, that's the biggest. That's the hardest one to achieve. Crawling is the hardest. Creeping is the next hardest. Walking is the next hardest. Running. People think, "Oh, running would be the hardest." No, crawling is the big one. We know if we can get a kid who is paralyzed to be able to move on his belly across the room, then our chance of getting him creeping, well, that really puts light at the end of the tunnel.
Well, let's look at the crawling victory. We're going to take a a deeper dive here. Of the 1,334 children who were unable to move, they were paralyzed, 540, or 40%, crawled for the first time. They went from being paralyzed to being able to crawl across a room. Wow. Now, to make that real, because you know, you talk about 500 kids, I think it becomes more real if we could just focus on one kid. Let's do that. Let's look at the case history of Otto. He was, Mom was having difficulties in the pregnancy and um, because they were worried about the baby, he was born by cesarean section, uh, two months premature. So to to save the baby, they delivered him two months early. His diagnosis was periventricular leukomalacia and epilepsy. That's that was his conventional uh diagnosis before coming here. At that time, he couldn't move. The time he was 18 months old, he couldn't move. Um, he could roll a little bit to one side or the other, but he could not flip himself over. He could not move forward. He could not move backwards.
When he was two, his parents attended "What to Do About Your Brain and Youred Child" course here and they began a program of sensory stimulation and motor opportunity at home. Two months later, he began to crawl for the first time. Now, that's pretty good because for the first life, he didn't move an inch. And now, after two short months of stimulation and opportunity, he began to crawl. And you can see in this picture, um, he is on a big floor prepared for him. That's on an angle. It's on an incline, which helps him to be able to every bit of movement to make it to amplify it. Gravity helping him come down that slide. And you can see also, Mom and Dad have kept him in as little clothing as possible so he has good friction with his hands and his feet. And of course, you can't see it here, but waiting at the bottom of that slide will be Mom or Dad, uh, to greet him when he comes down that slide. So it took two months for him to actually begin to be mobile. That's a very, very good result. By the time we saw him for his first appointment, he was crawling 50 meters a day and no longer on an incline, but on the flat floor. 50 meters. It's pretty great. That's a real crawler. And of course, he received a crawling victory.
Now, a little update. He's and now age three. He has tripled his crawling and now he's holding the creep position. So it took him two years before crawling. Now we're actually getting him up into the creep position and getting him ready to be able to move on his hands and knees, a far higher level in mobility than crawling on the belly. Well, a clear and very good result that this family got. So stay tuned and let's see how this young man does as we go forward.
Well, now I can see the clock on the wall is telling me it's time to get to questions. You know, before we start, I I have some questions already which we'll do, of course. And if you have questions, that's great. Often at the end, we haven't been able to answer all the questions. So I just want to say at the outset, if we don't get to your question, if you go up to our website, put in, you know, find the link to put in your question, we will be very, very happy um to answer any and all questions that you have.
Let me ask you a question right now. How many people who are here today with us um have been here before? That this is not you, you know, the work of the institutes. Could you give me a thumbs up or something so I can get a sense of how many people are here and how many people probably are completely new? And while we're doing that, I'm going to look at the first question. And the first question is, "Is it really safe to put my child in a prone position?"
Well, this is a common question and I want to say, if you have a child who has any compromise in the central nervous system, not only is it safe to put your child in a prone position, it is by far the safest position for our kids to be in. Brain-injured kids drool, they often as they often vomit. If they're placed on their backs, their chance of aspirating that vomit is very, very large and that would be very dangerous. So the safest position for them is on their bellies, by far. It's the only position from which they can move. You cannot move if you place a child on his back. He's like a turtle, he's upside down, he can't move. And also, we should say that brain-injured children, from the most hurt child who we've described, that coma child, to the least hurt child, maybe a learning problem, brain-injured children have problems with respiration. They do not breathe as well as they should. And that means that oxygen can also be an issue. And oxygen is the primary food of the brain. When you put a baby in the prone position, he can breathe better and therefore oxygenation is going to be better. So this is a big issue. Mothers have been essentially scared to death in the last 20 years about putting their kids in the prone position. Every waking moment that you are with your child, you want your child in a position that he can move. And that the only position from which he can move is the prone position.
"My child is not moving. What's the best environment for him?" Well, you've seen a little bit of that in that one slide. You want to put your child on a smooth surface where there's no friction. Carpet creates friction and be much more difficult to move on carpet. So a smooth floor is very important. And of course, since we're talking about the floor, you want it to be clean, you want it to be warm, not cold. Those simple basic things. You want him to have as little clothing as possible. Every bit of clothing can hold him back. So putting him in as little clothing as possible is good so he can get that friction with his hands, his feet. You might have to keep the room a little warmer for that reason so that he doesn't have to be all bundled up. And you could see in that earlier slide that we actually put our kids on an incline if they're not moving yet. And this helps them. So if they move even a little bit, that incline helps them to move forward. So those are very basic rules to make the floor warm, smooth, clean, as little clothing for your kid, and in that great environment where it's inclined but safe. Remember, we have sides on that incline. And of course, we're right there with our kids at all times encouraging them.
"How can I motivate my child to move?" Very, very common question. There's a whole chapter on this in the book "What to Do About Your Brain Injured Child" um because it's such a frequently asked question. And I think that of course, there are many answers depending on your child's personality, depending on the severity of your child's problem. But I, I think to generalize it as broadly as I can, the most important thing your kid wants is you. And he wants you happy. So the closer you are to him and the more you're encouraging him, the more likely he is to want to move. And for example, if you put him on a warm, smooth, clean environment and you go off to the kitchen, the chances of him moving might be very small. But if you get to the other side of the room and are encouraging him, and perhaps you have a book to read to him as soon as he gets to you, um, that's going to be a great encouragement to him. So it's really about your relationship with your kid and good communication and setting up an environment where he says, "Gee, I know it's hard to move, but if I can move six inches, I get to see that book." The other thing is to create a need for him. If he's very happy where he is and he's got everything he needs right there, why would he move? You know, if I'm in a comfortable chair and I have a book, chances are I'm not going to be moving very much. So you have to think, "How can I create a need for him to move?" And the best need is you. A good book to read to him, maybe a few inches away, and then he gets that distance, gets a big hug, a big kiss, you read the book, and then he gets another opportunity to move at some other point.
"My child has very poor head control. When I prop him up to sit, his muscles not strong enough. What can I do?" Well, I think in this question, there is kind of another question built into it. And that is, "What's the value to having him sit up if he is paralyzed, if he can't move?" And the answer is very simple. It's not a good idea to prop him up to sit. Gravity will pull him one way or another, twist his spine. No child should be sitting unless they can sit completely independently. Never prop your kid up to sit. Never, never, never. The more he's on his belly, the more he's given opportunity to move. Guess what? All of this gets stronger. Kids who can crawl begin to hold up their heads themselves. So that's the beauty of mobility. That's the power of mobility. That's why you don't want to skip a vital stage like crawling because it does so much for the brain and so much for the body. I highly recommend when we finish today that the first thing you do is get down on your living room floor or wherever you are and crawl across the room. You will learn a huge amount from that experience. And maybe the biggest and first thing you'll learn is, "I'm out of breath. That was hard work." It is hard work. And you may be out of breath, which shows you that crawling builds a bigger, better chest. Crawling helps to create better, deeper, more regular breathing. And this is critical for a severely brain-injured child. He needs these things desperately. So first and foremost in this question, don't prop your kid up to sit. Put him on his belly. Give him the opportunity to crawl. And the more he has that opportunity, you're going to see everything change about his structure. A structure that looks pretty abnormal right now will start to look better and better as he gains appropriate function. Okay, okay.
Well, I think I should see if we've got some questions there. Okay. Well, let's look at another question um that our parents have. And that is, "Is it valuable if I have a child who is literally not yet moving forward on his belly? Is it valuable to get him up in the standing position?" And again, it's a little bit like the sitting question. When a kid, especially a kid who might be three, four, five, six years old or older and still not able to move, it's natural, it's understandable that we're desperate to see that kid in a normal position. And the normal position for that kid is standing. It's because we want to see him standing, we've ended up in a world that will essentially brace him to get him up and get him in that normal position. And when we do that, of course, he's not really standing. We've put him in that brace. It, what the reality is, is he can't fall down. He can't fall down. It's not that he can stand up, it's that he can't fall down. And from that position, position, he essentially is just paralyzed in the vertical position. So it may do our hearts good to see him in this position, but we've essentially made him immobile, vertically immobile. And is that good for him? No. We want him in an environment and a position where he can move from the moment he wakes up till the moment he goes to sleep. It's very, very important that he can move.
So anything, any device, whether we put him in, whether it's a younger child and we put that child in a high chair, backpack, car seat, all the devices, we have a little walker, a little jumping there's so many devices now for kids. And all of these devices are ways to stop the kid from moving. Even the ones where the kids can jump up and down, there's no forward movement there. That's not real movement. That's not the kid moving themselves forward. These devices are for the most part, almost without exception, ways of inhibiting movement. Now, of course, you have to put your child in a car seat when you're in a car. You want him immobilized in a car. You want to protect him in that situation. But in all other environments, you never want to immobilize or prevent your child from moving unless you absolutely have to, as in a car seat. Otherwise, he should be free to move and have as much opportunity to move as possible. And I have to say, a lot of the the devices that are designed for very little kids, for 12-month-olds or 18-month-olds, these devices are not only not good for them because they encourage them to get on their feet before they've crawled, before they're creeping, you don't want them to skip crawling, you don't want them to skip creeping, you want them to do as much of that before they get on their feet. And you only want them to get on their feet when they're really ready, when they've had enough crawling, enough creeping so they can get up independently and do that. You don't want that to happen before those stages have been put in properly. So many of those devices that you see for very little kids are not only not good for them, but they're dangerous.
Here at the institutes, probably a hundred ways to hurt a good brain. And I think by now, we've seen everything. I hope we, everything. I hope there are not any new ways out there to hurt a good brain. But one of those ways of hurting a good brain is putting a kid in some of these devices. And the kid moves it to the head of the stairs and tumbles down the stairs. Or the kid gets trapped in in some way. Mother's in the other room. Um, so yes, we have some kids on our program because they were in those devices. And those devices are not babysitters. Child anywhere near those devices would have to be monitored and supervised every second. So they're not only not good, but they can actually be quite dangerous.
Now I see someone has a question. They can submit a question if they want. I'm looking to see. I'm sorry. So write, if you have a question, please write it. You don't have to submit it later. You can submit your questions right now. I didn't mean at the outset to give you the impression that you have to submit them later. I just meant if we don't get to everybody's question, um, then we'll be happy to do it later. So if you have a question, please feel free to put it up there and we'll, we'll handle it.
You know, when you look at stimulation and opportunity, um, again, these are the, the two words that we hope you will leave with. What would be the appropriate stimulation? What would be the appropriate opportunity for where my child is right now? Now, we're going to come back in the future and we're going to look at creeping and we're going to look at walking and we're going to look at running. But that's the question you should be asking: "What would be the best stimulation and opportunity right now?"
Well, let's look at, "What do I do next?" And I think for, and that's the always the question that everyone has at this point. I think the mo, the most straightforward thing. I think people divide into two groups. The people who like me say, "I need to talk to somebody on the phone. I want to talk to somebody. I want the straightest pathway." And the straightest pathway to us is to go up to the link that they will give you and you can schedule a call. Um, and we will be happy to talk to you and answer your questions, whatever they may be, to the best of our ability. If you have a child anywhere in that spectrum from comas to mild learning problem and everything in between, any of those symptomatic labels, your kid is likely to be one of our kids. So by all means, the most direct thing is give us a call.
But I think not everybody is like me. Some people want to read. They want a lot of other information. Maybe just learning about our work. Now, I would strongly recommend go up to our website. It's a very deep website with a lot of information on it. Yes, there are books you can read and we certainly recommend doing that. Um, so people who need something right now, give us a call. We're here. And everybody else, take a look at that website. I hope it will be helpful to you.
"Here's a question. What about older children who can walk but are delayed?" Well, again, um, we have many, many kids who come here walking but have other problems on that profile. And again, for those kids, we're going to evaluate them on that profile, see exactly where they are, see what is their neurological age, what is their rate of growth, and we're going to design a program. What they need to get them 100%. Well, our goal for all of our children, it doesn't mean we always make it, but our goal is for our kids to be able to do anything that their brothers and sisters can do and anything that the kid across the street can do.
"My grandson went through your program and he's now a very mobile 11-year-old. He rides horses, swims, and bikes. He ran in races at school, enjoying life to the best of his ability. So proud of his achievements. No doubt this program changed his and our lives." That's wonderful. It, it's great. One of the great things about the social media, I have to say, is the number of families who come back and say, "Gee, my kid's 30 years old now, but he was a baby who was in trouble and he's doing great." That's absolutely wonderful. We love to have that feedback and we love to be able to tell your kids' story because it's so important to mothers and fathers whose kids are struggling right now to have that example. Because so many of our kids, and maybe this is true of your kids, so many of our kids are given such terrible prognoses. You know, "He'll never walk. He'll never crawl. He'll never creep. He'll never talk. She'll never see." Um, and these prognoses are devastating for our parents. So it's wonderful when a mom and dad can say, "No, he's walking. He's talking. He's seeing." That's what these results webinars really are all about. It's the heart of the matter to say, "Does it really have to be that grim prognosis?" And we're here to say, "No, it does not have to be that grim prognosis. Not at all. Not at all."
Well, last of all, you see "What to Do About Your Brain and Youred Child." If you ask me what's my single best piece of advice for a parent whose kid is struggling with a neurological problem, whether it's a huge problem or tiny problem, you know, a small neurological problem can create a gigantic academic problem. And people don't really understand unless you have that kid. If you have that kid, you know that. But the world doesn't understand that kid very much. They say, "Why isn't he doing well in school? Maybe he's lazy. Maybe he's not taking enough time." It's not true. A tiny neurological problem can cause a huge problem. My best advice, whether you have the most hurt kid in your neighborhood or the least hurt kid in your neighborhood, is get to the "What to Do About Your Brain Injured Child" course. Move heaven, move earth, do whatever you need to do because the course will change your life and it will change the life of your child. It's the best single thing after the profile that we've created here at these institutes. An intensive course just for parents, just to teach you about your kid. And now it's online, so you don't even have to leave your home to do it. There you are, where you see this slide, we're in the Valentine Auditorium, where I am right now. But you get to be in that Valentine Auditorium for the entire course and learn about the brain and how to start to save your kid. It's spectacular. It's spectacular. So if I have one wish, it's that everybody attending these webinars finds their way right into the Valentine Auditorium as soon as possible, as soon as possible.
"Well, I think my daughter is 13, brain injured, visually, an epileptic. Yes, your question. She's in the next course. She's in the next course." Okay, good for you.
"My daughter is currently on a ventilator many hours a day. We're now trying to get her prone when she's off the vent. Good. Should we be making it a priority to get her prone while on the vent too?" Um, I don't really feel that I would have enough data to answer that question. Um, of course, we don't use ventilators on our kids when they're here. By the time they're here, they're off the ventilator, that's for sure. So I think that's a medical question that has to be dealt with completely by your doctor. And you're coming soon, right? So I think you're going to be in the December course. So that's fabulous. We'll have a lot of time to talk about that. Perhaps get more information from your doctors, have our doctors in touch with your doctors. That would really be the answer to that question.
"My kid is 45 and a college-level teacher of physics and chemistry. I was delighted to be part of one of the first Better Baby Institutes courses that took place on your campus. Glenn says a godsend in my life." Well, that's wonderful. We do a second course called "How to Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence." That course actually, we started in 1978, believe it or not. Thousands of parents of babies have been through that course. And you know, I'll tell you a touching thing. When we first invented that course, even our board members gave us a bad time and said, "You're going to spend a whole week just talking to the parents of well children, you know, instead of putting that week for the parents of hurt kids." And we said, "We're doing that because once parents understand the brain, if any of those babies are going to have a problem, those parents will know what to do about it. They'll understand the developmental profile." So we see that course as a gigantic step in prevention of future problems. And then the board said, "Okay, we buy that. That sounds good. That sounds good." So that's real prevention. In the world of hurt kids, put your kid on the program from birth, give him all he needs, and then you'll never know the problems he was going to have. Won't that be wonderful? We'll never know. That's ideal.
Well, I think we're, we're out of time, believe it or not. So anybody who has a question that we haven't answered, please put it up there on the website. We'll be very happy to answer your questions. Make that Calendly call, talk to Jackie, register. We talk to our child brain developmentalists. We're all delighted to be able to talk to you. It's been great. Thanks. Behave.