Jacob has been given an laundry list of diagnoses.  First came profound hearing loss, then cortical blindness and potential cerebral palsy.  We even had someone tell us “your son will never see, hear, walk or talk.  No matter what you do.”  As you can imagine, we were terrified.

Thankfully, we found The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.  www.iahp.org  After reading the book What to do About Your Brain Injured Child by Glenn Doman, we knew we had found our hope!  The team at IAHP has been working with and successfully treating brain injured children, like Jacob, for 60 years.

You see, all of these labels that he has been given are simply symptoms of the brain injury he sustained at birth.  That is actually GOOD news because it can be fixed.  Our goal now is not to just live with these diagnoses, but to help Jacob heal and overcome them!

When Bryan and I attended the What to Do course at IAHP we learned a VERY important fact…brain growth can be slowed, brain growth can be stopped AND brain growth can be SPEEDED!  The best part is that the research the staff has been conducting over the last 60 year has uncovered just how to do that.

It is really simple actually.  The staff uncovered the critical steps in child brain development and what causes these steps to occur.  We simply replicate this natural process with increased frequency, intensity and duration to rebuild the damaged pathways.  You’ve probably heard of neuroplasticity…well, they have been doing just that all along!

The other extremely important factors are giving Jacob the best nutrition possible so he has everything he needs to regrow the damaged tissue, improving his breathing and creating an environment that is ideal for his development.  I will write more about Jacob’s nutrition, respiratory program and what we do to give him the best possible environment in another post.

What this adds up to is a very intense program of stimulation and opportunity in recognition of the orderly way the brain develops.  Jacob does therapy all day every day. Every minute is on purpose.  At our last revisit, another mom asked me how many hours a day we spend on Jacob’s program.  The simple answer is all of them!  Yes, its a lot.  Yes, it takes a team. Yes, its hard.  But, YES, its working!  The clearest evidence of this is the change visible in Jacob’s brain via MRI.

This may be hard to understand at first, but just look at the increase in the dark parts of the scan on the right!

So, here we go!  Off to prove the naysayers wrong and delighting in every minute of it!  I look forward to posting videos of Jacob’s incredible improvement.  I welcome any questions and I cannot recommend more highly that everyone read the books written by Glenn Doman and the staff at IAHP.  They help both hurt children and well kids!