I have just posted a link to CAN-DO on my blog site, so I thought I would take some time to tell people who may be curious, what has CAN-DO done for us?  (Please understand what follows is a very simple and watered down explanation.)

Our youngest son, Boy 2, was born three months premature.  He spent the first three months of his life in the hospital, and was finally allowed to leave when he weighed 5 lbs.  He had many health problems and he left the hospital on oxygen and an apnea monitor.  He looked like a drown rat in some strange medical experiment.  He came to live with us as our foster child and we later adopted him, another story.

Boy 2 had a lot to overcome, and the first 5 years of his life was spent in just keeping himself alive.  His body put every ounce of energy into his survival, not development. 

All of this of course means we spent a great deal of time in therapy, occupational, physical, and speech. Three different states of therapists!  I hated it all.  I became weary of the insistence to do this here, try that there and above all Boy 2 was never given any credit for coming up with a way to deal with a situation in his own, quiet, way.  We spent months on trying to teach him his colors.

While in therapy he was asked to sing simple little nursery songs.  Twinkle Little Star, The Eensy Weensy Spider and so on.  Boy 2 would look at his therapist as if she were from another planet.  They day he decided to sing, he sang Edleweiss, from The Sound of Music.  I proudly told his speech therapist, who just smiled and set him up to sing Twinkle Little Star. 

Boy 2 has some strange mannerisms.  He LOVES water.  He can play in the sink for hours, and I mean that literally.  If he can't play with water, then he will spit.  He will spit on a book and tip the boook to watch the spit run down.  He will spit on the windows and draw in it.  Other mannerisms involve using a utensil (pencil, stick, straw) and poking it into things.  He will line up his cars on the edge of a table and put his face just an inch from them, go crosseyed and twiddle his fingers either above his head or in his lap.  He bangs his head at night against the wall.  (Note: our son is not Autistic, he has seen a specialist about this who totally ruled it out.  Why?  He looks directly at everyone, enjoys touch, and likes to be involved in what we are doing.)

All of these disturbing mannerisms were met with "band-aid" solutions to the problems.   When I would describe what Boy 2 was doing to the therapist I was often met with a blank stare.  The therapists would also find a way to use they mannerisms to teach him things.

One day I met a wonderful friend who introduced us to CAN-DO.  CAN-DO stands for Christian Access to Neuro-Developmental Organization.  We signed up to meet a neurodevelopmentalist, Cyndi Ringoen, who then taught us how to teach Boy 2.  It covers occupational, physical and speech therapy, plus "school" for those old enough.  When I told Cyndi that Boy 2 did not know his colors, at the age of 7, she was not at alll excited about that.  She told us it would come in time.  Other things had to be in place first, and then Boy 2 would know his colors. 

Neuro-development is an area that teaches that you are either right side or left side dominant.  If you are mixed dominance this can cause problems.  Once the correct dominance is decided and actions taken to make a person fully one side dominant, then you can learn. 

We were also taught about stims, those strange mannerisms that Boy 2 had.  Stims can acutally cause regression in development, not development.  So all those years in therapy prior to CAN-DO had actually hurt Boy 2 developmentally. 

Once we found that Boy 2 was left side dominant it was as if he came to life!!  Not overnight, not all at once, but we began to see results right away, and he just never stopped.  He began to ride a tricycle, he could draw, he spoke in complete sentences, (albeit not clearly) and he knew how to joke!  He can add, he can pretend and he knows his colors!  We never once worked on colors in CAN-DO, but he now knows is colors.  We still have to work on his stims but they are no where near as bad as they had been. 

Remember those "band-aids" I mentioned earlier?  These "band-aid" approaches are what most Dr.'s and therapists use becuase they are what people want.  They are a quick and easy way to get rid of the problems.  Neuro-Development takes A LOT of work and it can be very boring, but it gets to the root of the problem and fixes it.

If you have a developmentally delayed child for whatever reason, and you are looking for something outside the norm, then check out CAN-DO's website. 

I also recommend that you read, To Wise to be Mistaken, Too Good to be Unkind, by Cathy Steere.  This is the story of Cathy, her family and her autistic son who eventually started using CAN-DO therapy.  You can order this book at http://www.graceandtruthbooks.com. 

If you have any questions please feel free to e-mail me or post comments.  I will answer as best I can.  Understand that I know virtually nothing about diseases or conditions.  My son has never been diagnosed with anything but a very mild case of Cerebral Palsy, that is now being questioned.  I can only tell you about our experience.