Liam's NACD program

In response to the many folks who have inquired about NACD (National Association for Child Development), wondering "what is it exactly?", I decided to do a video blog to try and demonstrate a bit of what this organization has to offer. We began working with NACD for Liam this past October. I became interested in this approach after reading a book titled "The Brain That Changes Itself" by Norman Doidge, which is about the plasticity of the brain and, more specifically, how neuro scientists discovered that the brain is plastic at any age. I then went on to read "What to do About Your Brain Injured Child" by Glenn Doman, which chronicles the story of how Mr. Doman pioneered interventions to help severely brain injured children by directly treating the brain using the knowledge and understanding of brain development and principals of brain plasticity. These books, along with my google research and hearing from other families utilizing this approach, got me inspired to seek out neurodevelopment therapy for Liam. We settled on NACD, which is headquartered in Utah, but comes to Seattle every three months to do evaluations on their clients in this region of the country, because they seemed like a very well rounded program that could offer us guidance in all areas of Liam's development and need. I also liked their price structure, which is basically paying dues each month, but this money goes toward re-evaluation every three months and unlimited support in between. I've been kind of pioneering my own program for Liam, based on various principals of specific therapies, for a long time and really liked the idea of having an organization giving me specific activities, techniques, and goals. I also liked that we would get an updated evaluation and new program every three months. That all sounded great to me!

NACD provides neurodevelopmental evaluations and individual programs that consist of several activities parents run at home. The activities are eclectic and are chosen to target specific areas of the brain that need input to bring about change for higher neurological functioning. A neurodevelopmental evaluation basically assesses the person's level of functioning in the areas of visual, auditory, tactile, mobility, language, and manual competence. It looks to determine at when stage of brain development in each of these 6 areas is the person functioning from lowest (medula and cord) to highest (sophisticated cortex). For many people with brain injuries, development is scattered across these areas and even within them. It's my understanding that a program such as NACD seeks to offer targeted intervention at the lowest brain level that shows incomplete development. This helps to bring about a more organized and efficient brain that is capable of learning easily. After the neurodelvelopmental evaluation, NACD emails a very detailed program of specific activities to be run with Liam daily. Many of these activities are run more than once per day. NACD identifies a frequency and duration for each activity. To bring about permanent change in the brain, it needs specific input with a specific frequency and duration, provided over time with good intensity (motivation on the part of the child). Random input usually will not get the job done. We also have a few activities targeting academics and, as Liam advances in his development, NACD can offer more academic programs for Liam.

Our program has over two dozen activities to do with Liam, with most activities being run two times per day. While the duration for each activity is usually quite short, 1-2 minutes, it usually takes the bulk of Liam's school day to complete. We do have one activity with a duration of 20 times per day, which is a real killer! The most difficult thing for us is keeping Liam's motivation up. Certainly, if his mind is not in it, we might as well be doing nothing. We don't always achieve good motivation and we aren't always able to get all the activities completed, but that is to be expected. We, and Liam, do the best we can. I've made some video of some of Liam's activities to help show what it looks like. Most of these are a couple of months old, as I haven't gotten around to putting this together until now. However, it will give you a reasonable idea of what we are up to each day and, if you are a parent interested in exploring this type of intervention for your child, I hope it helps to demystify it a bit.

Click here to view the activities with descriptions on youtube.