S3 Episode 8: Rewiring Possibilities for your Child - Brain first! with The Doman Method

Welcome back to My Mighty Quinn, today, I’m joined by Melissa and Spencer Doman of Doman International. Spencer is the grandson of Glen Doman, a pioneer in brain development whose revolutionary approach has helped over 30,000 families worldwide. Glen’s work focused on treating the brain rather than symptoms, leading to remarkable outcomes for children with autism, cerebral palsy, developmental delays, ADHD, and more.

Melissa and Spencer continue his legacy, championing the Doman Method, a family-centred, brain-first approach that gives parents the tools to foster real progress in their children.

We discuss:

• The origins and philosophy behind the Doman Method
• Why treating the brain, rather than just the symptoms, is key to progress
• The six pillars of child development and how they interconnect
• The crucial role of movement in brain function
• Practical steps parents can take at home

Key Takeaways

• The Brain is the Root Cause – Many diagnoses focus on symptoms rather than underlying brain function. The Doman Method prioritises neurological development for lasting change.
• Parents Are the Best Therapists – The most effective interventions happen at home. Parents, not clinicians, have the greatest influence on daily progress.
• Movement Fuels Development – Crawling, creeping, and cross-pattern movements are essential for cognitive, speech, and sensory development. If your child skipped crawling, it’s never too late to go back.
• Reading is a Visual Skill, Not a Speech Skill – Many children struggle with phonics, but teaching reading visually, using large-print sight words, can lead to breakthroughs.
• Gut and Brain Connection – Nutrition plays a key role in brain function. Healing the gut can lead to cognitive and behavioural improvements.
• Never Underestimate Your Child – Speak to your child as if they understand everything. Respect their intelligence, even if they can’t express it yet.

Resources & Links

• Download the Parent's Guide to Brain-First Healing
• Doman Website

Transcript

[00:00:00] Lucia Silver: Welcome back to My Mighty Quinn, the podcast where we explore groundbreaking solutions to help parents understand and address the root causes of their children's struggles. My name is Lucia Silva, and I'm the CEO founder of the Brain Health Movement and the very proud mother of the Mighty Quinn. Our mission is simple and huge, all at once to empower and educate parents with the latest science latest tools, case studies, and leading integrated medical expertise needed to unlock our children's full potential.

[00:00:34] Lucia Silver: Through conversations with world-class experts, we aim to demystify the complex factors impacting child development and provide actionable steps for healing and growth. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by two fantastic guests from the States, from Pennsylvania, Melissa. And her husband, Spencer Doman of Doman International Spencer I should say we're in the presence [00:01:00] of real legacy here.

[00:01:03] Lucia Silver: Spencer is the grandson of Glen Doman, who is an extraordinary pioneer and visionary in the field of brain development. Glen Dom's legacy has now been passed on through three generations of the Doman family, accumulating 60 years of helping over 30,000 families. So really I'm quite breathless at that.

[00:01:27] Lucia Silver: Having been in this arena for the last years, that really is quite extraordinary to me to think that much of the information that I am championing and doing my best with my team to spread worldwide has actually been sitting with someone. For a very long time. But a word on Glen and his grandson and grandson's wife who will tell you more.

[00:01:49] Lucia Silver: But when I share this with you, you'll understand why I had to invite Spencer and Melissa on the show. Firstly, through Glen's ground breaking work, over three generations in child development, thousands of [00:02:00] children across six continents. Diagnosed with autism, cerebral palsy, developmental delays, epilepsy learning difficulties, ADHD as well as Trisomy 21, which is the proper name for Down Syndrome and other genetic abnormalities have been helped by the Doman method.

[00:02:19] Lucia Silver: Glen Doman, with the help of his wife, Katie, it's a bit of a theme here. Husband and wife teams created a new development program for his patients that directly treated the brain rather than the symptoms. There's the gold. These patients progressed far faster and better than he had ever previously hoped.

[00:02:39] Lucia Silver: And while these children might have been given these diagnoses as well as others that he added to his reach, including learning difficulties, speech apraxia, and more, Glenn found that these children had a neurological condition, and if their brain development could be enhanced, their function also improved.

[00:02:58] Lucia Silver: So for many of these [00:03:00] children, Glenn learned that society tended to limit them that a diagnosis was given, but that no hope was given with it, which will resonate with everyone listening because that's why we're here. He did not accept this way of thinking. And his new treatments were called initially the Glen Doman method, but came to be known as the Doman method.

[00:03:19] Lucia Silver: And furthermore, while he achieved great results with the children, he saw, he found that it was when the families of the children carried out the treatment at home that they actually achieved the very best results. Again, very pertinent to us because we're trying to encourage our parents to not rely on clinicians wholly, but to really take the mantle, bring it home and work at home.

[00:03:37] Lucia Silver: Glen began to teach families the fundamentals of brain growth and development and how to carry out the treatment programs at home, moving from a therapy based model to a family based treatment model.

[00:03:48] Lucia Silver: And this was a paradigm shift at the time. It was a hugely revolutionary way of working. So one of our guests today, Spencer, the husband Arm, is the co-author of the book, the Doman [00:04:00] Method, from Special Needs to Wellness. And together he and Melissa are continuing this Grand Legacy and leading Doman International to support thousands of families around the world through their revolutionary approach to helping children with special needs.

[00:04:14] Lucia Silver: Their ultimate goal is to aid toddlers and babies to obtain key developmental milestones like. Talking, interacting with others and walking before they start school in proper school readiness. And their doctors can provide early interventions and services and further specific therapies for preschoolers and older children.

[00:04:33] Lucia Silver: Their organization has three foundational values that comprise their philosophy, and I love this. First, that special needs children have an innate intelligence and great potential. Second, that they support families every step of the way to achieve that potential. And third, this makes me weak because this is me with my Quinn.

[00:04:55] Lucia Silver: That we never give up on special needs children, [00:05:00] or should we say children with special needs. Melissa and Spencer are here today to share their insights, stories, and expertise about the Doman method, a family centered brain first approach that has transformed no less than 30,000 families globally, so as parents feeling lost, overwhelmed, and unsure about how to help your children.

[00:05:21] Lucia Silver: We have Melissa and Spencer here today to help with some of the incredible road mapping to seeing real progress. Let's get started. Melissa and Spencer, welcome. Thank you so much for being here with me today. 

[00:05:36] Melissa: Yeah, thank you for having us. 

[00:05:37] Spencer: Yeah, thanks so much. 

[00:05:39] Lucia Silver: So I'm super excited and I know that our listeners will be to start right at the beginning, would you just tell us a bit about yourselves and how you got here and the work that you're presently doing at Doman International?

[00:05:53] Spencer: Yeah. I maybe to introduce myself if I talk a little bit about my childhood. You, me, you mentioned my grandfather, Glen, [00:06:00] and the pioneering work that he did with families of children with developmental challenges. And I grew up in an environment with parents and grandparents that worked with these families.

[00:06:11] Spencer: And so it, if you checked in on me when I was six or seven years old, you'd find me playing in the waiting room with the, with children, with special needs, between their different sessions, seeing my family and the staff that worked with them in their clinic. And so that was a incredibly impactful thing to see in childhood.

[00:06:32] Spencer: Not only that, these children had an amazing innate intelligence that they were far more intelligent than they were often able to express, but also the incredible love and determination that their families had. To help them. And so I got to witness children getting better, improving in almost every area of their development because every six months the families would [00:07:00] bring their children back.

[00:07:01] Spencer: And maybe a child who couldn't walk six months earlier was now walking, or a child who couldn't talk was now talking. And that left a huge 

[00:07:10] Lucia Silver: interest. It just 

[00:07:11] Spencer: greatly impacted the way I looked at the world. Yeah. And so by the time I was in university, I said, okay, this is what I've gotta do with my life.

[00:07:18] Spencer: And yeah. And so that's my story. And watching my grandfather Glenn, who was a, he, before he started the work of the Doman method, he was a very, he was a brave soldier during the second World War, like very decorated. And when he. Got home, he basically declared war on neurodevelopmental challenges.

[00:07:44] Spencer: It was his life passion. It's what he lived for. For anyone watching this on video, they'll see there's a photograph of him behind me and he is holding, a model of the brain, which was the organ he focused his whole life on. 'cause he understood that these children, whether they're diagnosed with autism, cerebral [00:08:00] palsy whatever the diagnosis is, the true root cause issue is in the brain.

[00:08:05] Spencer: And if we can help treat the brain the symptoms that we see in everyday life start to go away. 

[00:08:11] Melissa: And then to introduce myself similarly to Spencer. I went to school on the campus, back in the day when Glen was running the institutes. There was a small school for neurotypical kids.

[00:08:24] Melissa: And my mom enrolled myself and my two younger sisters in the school. And for her, when she found Doman method, she was like, oh my God, like, where was this when you kids were three, kind of thing. But similarly to Spencer I was going to school there. My mom also worked in the clinic.

[00:08:42] Melissa: She actually worked as a French translator at the time. There were a lot of French families on the program. And similarly, like after school, mom would be translating. I'd have to go down to the waiting room and wait. Before I could go home. And, similarly to Spencer, like I, I was seeing these kids coming in and out of the [00:09:00] clinic and they would even come up to school with us.

[00:09:02] Melissa: And, I just took it for granted. I was like, oh, this is what happens with kids like this. They go home, they do this therapy, they get better. And it was a real culture shock for me. Once I left that environment and I left the school when I was in a public school system, I was like, oh boy, wow.

[00:09:19] Melissa: This is not at all what I thought it was going to be. And I think for myself having gone from that bubble of Glen Doman in the institute and to come out of that, I think for myself, it was definitely in the back of my mind. There was that motivation of there's something else we can do for these kids.

[00:09:37] Melissa: And. When I finished my own university, like I had two paths. Either I was gonna be a, become a baker and have my own bakery or do Doman method, and I decided to do Doman method and here I am today and I've, I personally, when I first started, I decided like mobility development was definitely the area that I was most interested in.

[00:09:56] Melissa: And now today I'm the director of mobility [00:10:00] development at Doman International. Anything about getting immobile, kids crawling, creeping, walking, and helping our walking and running kids thrive through becoming. Physically. Excellent. That's my wheelhouse, 

[00:10:13] Lucia Silver: wow.

[00:10:13] Lucia Silver: And just as a footnote to that comment, Melissa, for those parents listening who have been listening to us for some time, you'll understand, of course, the connection between movement and brain development. They are inextricably connected. So it is an area that gets close focus within the work that we collectively do.

[00:10:30] Lucia Silver: Movement matters is our strap line. There it is. But I also wanna say, I'm listening to you and thinking, I felt a weight on my shoulders and in the best sense of the word when I went through the transformation with Quinn, which I did all through discovering things and researching online myself at home, on seeing him change, I felt.

[00:10:52] Lucia Silver: Almost negligent if I didn't take this information and share it with others. [00:11:00] Yours is a 10 times concentration of that in that not only was it in the family where you were privileged enough to be working and seeing someone and being taught by someone who was transforming children, but to have grown up watching the before and after to then walk away.

[00:11:19] Lucia Silver: I can't imagine how you could go and have been a baker, Melissa. So I'm very pleased that you it's just, it's extraordinary to me every single day, the number of parents having aha moments about this, they know nothing. So even to get parents slightly in the starting gate is huge, let alone the extraordinary changes and thriving that you are seeing with the children through your practice.

[00:11:43] Lucia Silver: Thank you with, what is it? With Spider-Man? With great power comes great responsibility. There you go. That's you two right now. So let's wind back, and for those who might not be familiar please tell us what is the Doman method and how does it differ from some [00:12:00] of the, I want to say traditional therapies.

[00:12:01] Lucia Silver: There are so many therapies, but how does it differ? How does it stand apart? 

[00:12:06] Spencer: Yeah, so I, it really stands apart because of its comprehensive nature. I mentioned before it, we do focus on the brain where the root cause of the child's issues are. But what we do is we, there are six different components of the Doman method.

[00:12:23] Spencer: Six different parts that we, we use to address a child's brain development. So the first is nutrition and supplementation because diet. Is very important for brain function and development and can lead to neuroplasticity, which is the brain's innate ability to change. Many people don't realize that outside of our brain, there are actually 500 million neurons, which are brain cells in our digestive track.

[00:12:51] Spencer: And so the brain and the gut are constantly communicating with one another. So nutrition is an essential part of the Doman method. [00:13:00] The second is sensory development. Many children have sensory problems. They don't see well, they don't hear well, they don't feel well, or sometimes they have the opposite issue where they're hypersensitive they hear too much they feel things too strongly.

[00:13:13] Spencer: So we do a lot of sensory stimulation to help the brain. Why are sensory ability so important? Those five senses, the ability to see, hear, feel, taste, smell. That's how we learn from the world around us. It's the only way we can learn. And so if the sensory pathways aren't working well the child's learning ability is gonna be greatly hammered.

[00:13:35] Spencer: So we do sensory stimulation. The third is movement. Melissa's the expert in that area, much more knowledgeable than I am, but mobility is important not only to help a child develop balance, coordination, the ability to walk and run. It's also important for cognitive development. And there are many activities that help foster cognition and speech development.

[00:13:58] Spencer: And those have been a part of our [00:14:00] program. The fourth component is cognition and speech, where the doman method is probably best known. 

[00:14:06] Melissa: Yeah. 

[00:14:06] Spencer: For our early reading and math programs, because they're used not just by children with special needs, but by parents all around the world. My own parents taught me to read.

[00:14:15] Spencer: Before I was school age with the reading and math programs, and my siblings as well, Melissa's parents did. Millions of parents around the world used those early reading and math programs. And maybe we can talk more about that today. The fifth component is social development, right?

[00:14:29] Spencer: Because there are so many children who have, who need help in terms of becoming more independent, responsible, and mature. And then the sixth and final component of the Domane method is oxygenation. Oxygen is the food of the brain. And so we have programs that are focused on increasing oxygen delivery to the brain.

[00:14:49] Spencer: When we do that, we often see improvements in areas like focus, concentration speech development with children, with epilepsy, we can often reduce or prevent [00:15:00] seizures. Yeah, so it's really the comp. I know this is a long explanation, but it's really the comprehensive nature of. The Domane method and the fact we have a team that are experts in each of these areas where we can really support families and help children grow.

[00:15:15] Melissa: Yeah, and I think, in the modern times and now what is 2025 you can go to places that will focus on one of those pieces, right? But if you want information about any of those other five, you gotta go to this therapist or this place, or this intensive. And I think for our families who come to us, I don't, they, we talk about the six elements of Doman method and they're like, okay yeah.

[00:15:37] Melissa: And then when they actually come and see us, they realize oh yeah, no, we're talking about all of these things. And, those parents leave those appointments and those sessions like really feeling like they've gotten all of. Their questions answered. And again, in, in the modern time with the internet and things like that, like you can find information at your fingertips.

[00:15:57] Melissa: But despite that and despite [00:16:00] having all of these different resources, again, when families come to us, like it's a one stop shop if you wanna put it that way. So I think that's still something very unique to this world of neurodevelopmental issues and things like that.

[00:16:14] Spencer: Yeah. And one last thing, Lucia. The Doman method is empowering. When so many therapies are parent eliminating, many parents get used to, and when they come to doin international they'll say something like, I'm starting to feel like a chauffeur where I'm dropping my child off at different therapies, but I have no idea what's going on.

[00:16:34] Spencer: I don't really see development in my child. And and it's very frustrating. And so what we do is we focus on teaching the parents because there's no one who's more dedicated to a child's development, right? There's no one who has more time, more love to give a child than parents. 

[00:16:52] Melissa: And parents are the, the world's leading expert in their kid.

[00:16:55] Melissa: They're with them every single day from day one, and [00:17:00] they know how their child ticks. They know what they like, what they don't like, what works, what doesn't work. And I think when parents come to us they realize like finally, after months or years, like they're actually being listened to.

[00:17:13] Melissa: And they're really as Spencer said, they're a major part of the success of the program. And that's a lot of pressure, but it's because they have the most vested interest in. Their child's wellbeing and getting their child to thrive. 

[00:17:27] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. And I think it's a massive antidote to the way that conventional medicine has failed us.

[00:17:35] Lucia Silver: And by conventional medicine, the organization and how it silos information. One of the reasons I believe we've got to where we've got to is because medicine is so compartmentalised. Neurology isn't speaking to gastroenterology. Gastroenterology isn't speaking to mental health. Mental health isn't speaking to, and so forth.

[00:17:57] Lucia Silver: The hormones, all these [00:18:00] interrelated departments don't speak so similarly, even with an integrated medicine, as you've said, the component parts of chiropractic, of occupational therapy, of naturopathy, diet, nutrition, environmental, toxins, movement, your area, Melissa, all of these are.

[00:18:20] Lucia Silver: Still being slightly siloed. So as a parent you might start thinking, oh, this is all about the gut. But then realize that actually that was impacted because of neurodevelopmental delays before you need to be back into functional neurology. Oh, I need to be back into diet now and now I need to be handheld through primitive reflex integration.

[00:18:40] Lucia Silver: Now I need to move into, and it can feel. Overwhelming in the first instance. And so I think having an overarching authority that can, I'm calling it a triage. I'm helping parents almost as well, come to me and go, oh, we're at this stage of development. Where do we need [00:19:00]to go next And help siphon them into the next stage.

[00:19:04] Lucia Silver: Because what I wanted to move on to next is within those six areas which I should add that Melissa and Spencer will be appearing on our complete course as well and helping to explain the whole child multidisciplinary approach specifically so that we've got a little bit of an overview of the big picture before we start.

[00:19:26] Lucia Silver: But just honing in, you've mentioned six. Elements of the Doman method. What about the sequencing? Because I'm often sharing with parents that we're not trying to be revolutionary here. We're just trying to go back and do what nature intended in the first place. With primitive reflexes, the way the brain grows, we start with the autonomic nervous system.

[00:19:47] Lucia Silver: Then it's the primitive reflexes. Then we know it's vestibular eyes and ears, and then it's motor sensory. So we know there's an order that we're following because that's how our brains would've been built healthily in the first place. But [00:20:00] is that how you receive children into Doman method as well? Do you go back to basics?

[00:20:04] Lucia Silver: How do you work? 

[00:20:07] Melissa: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that really depends on where the child's biggest issues in development are. So like for an example, if we have a child come into our clinic who's having major sensory issues not yet speaking, things like that, we might actually put them on a program of commando, crawling and creeping on hands and knees in order to recapitulate and to take that step back and fill in the holes in, in that child's development.

[00:20:35] Melissa: 'cause a lot of those children, if we look back at their history, either they skipped some of those steps or they spent such a short amount of time doing those things that the brain didn't get the fulfillment that it need. It didn't have that opportunity to connect those wires or bring those puzzle pieces together.

[00:20:54] Melissa: And I. We've seen that time and time again when a child hasn't had those opportunities [00:21:00] to, to fully develop in their mobility like a neurotypical baby. We're going to see changes in their convergence of vision, being able to use two eyes together, which affects their reading. Crawling and creeping is crucial.

[00:21:14] Melissa: Actu like actually to create some of those sensory things and it's usually sensory perception precedes the mobility part of it, but mobility can also help with those areas of development as well. So if a child hasn't had opportunities in those areas, we shouldn't be surprised that. Again, their convergence is thrown off, which affects their reading, their sensory perception is thrown off, which affects their understanding.

[00:21:39] Melissa: And the list goes on. Again that all depends on where the child is at, but that's a fairly typical example and it's, certainly it's a lot of hard work both for the parents and the child, but when those parents start to see the results, like that gives us the traction and gives them the motivation to, to keep going with it.

[00:21:59] Melissa: Yeah. 

[00:21:59] Spencer: [00:22:00] Yeah. And we also use a tool that was first created by my grandfather over 60 years ago called the Developmental Profile. And on this profile, basically it lists the 42 most important child development milestones that a child needs to achieve in the first six years of life. And so when we evaluate a child with those milestones, it usually becomes very clear, okay, this is a child who needs help in these areas.

[00:22:27] Spencer: Yeah. And we really focus in on those areas of the child's development because every child is unique. Every child has their own symptoms. And I, I do wanna say we have these six components, but I don't want anyone to get the idea that it's a one size fits all approach. Yeah. We, the last time we sat down and counted, we counted something like 400 different treatments that we use that fit into those six components.

[00:22:52] Spencer: Yeah. So we really look at each child and say, okay, what's this child's issue? What is the best treatment that can address this child's specific [00:23:00] challenges? 

[00:23:00] Melissa: Yeah. And that developmental profile that was developed, it's. It's an ongoing and changing thing as well. Just in the last few years we had a debate about an area of manual development and there's another area that we all continue to debate about, but that's okay.

[00:23:15] Melissa: But that profile that Glenn originally developed, like that was just years and years of observing neurotypical kids and seeing what do they do. And there was, there were no boundaries. He evaluated Eskimo children. Children in the Amazon, children in the Serengeti, like he 

[00:23:32] Spencer: over 80 countries. Yeah. 

[00:23:33] Melissa: 80 different countries to, to compile that information. 'cause he wanted to make sure, like what a kid did in Manhattan was the same thing a kid did in, in the Shinguawnu tribes of Brazil. So you know that. That is what should be happening. But like Spencer said, like we use that tool to evaluate and see where are those holes, right?

[00:23:55] Melissa: And we take, the programs, the hundreds of programs that we have, we plug in to, [00:24:00] to help repave that pathway for that child. And what I often talk about in the course is like we, there's a certain foundation that we have to put down and if that foundation is strong the higher level abilities that make us unique as humans, reading, writing, and things like that.

[00:24:18] Melissa: If that foundation is stronger, those higher level abilities are gonna be that much easier to achieve. 

[00:24:24] Lucia Silver: Yeah, I was gonna come back to precisely that actually, Melissa. But first I just wanted to say anecdotally about how Glen was, insistent on looking around the world because there's a lot of clues there as to how we're brought up culturally, our diets and so forth, and ever more so now, there's no coincidence that we have an epidemic.

[00:24:42] Lucia Silver: It's not a genetic epidemic. We have an epidemic of. Challenges that our children are facing neurodevelopmentally in the way that they develop because of the way we are now living. It is relevant how we are now living. That it, that wasn't relevant before. So [00:25:00] I was looking at someone on, I think it was in, I think it was in Cambodia a couple of weeks ago saying.

[00:25:06] Lucia Silver: We have had no record of autism in our country until none, no record, nothing until recently. He was linking it to certain types of vaccinations and antibodies and so forth. Very interesting. Again, no co in the states, less than 50 years ago, one in a hundred cases of autism, and now we're one in 32.

[00:25:29] Lucia Silver: And in certain states in California, it's now looking in the next couple of years to be more than one in 10. Yeah. So that's not happening by coincidence, nor is it happening because we are diagnosing more. That's taking into account the fact we're diagnosing more as well. So it's really important, isn't it, with all of our methodologies, interventions, and protocols that we move with the times.

[00:25:51] Lucia Silver: We weren't. Ingesting as much plastic, mercury, all of these toxins that were involved even in our tap waters, things that we're quite [00:26:00] innocently ingesting and not knowing it's all having an impact and it all needs to be considered in the bigger picture. 

[00:26:06] Lucia Silver: I was just wanting to come back to you, Melissa, on your mobility specifically. And that with the way that children are moving less you've talked about crawling and that's very important for hemispheric work. Linking left and right brain.

[00:26:20] Lucia Silver: Yeah, but particularly we are not moving as much. And I really would love you just to speak to that in your area because children were in their front yards. They were getting mucky, they were moving around, they weren't in strollers being carried around in carriers, in car seats. We are moving much less.

[00:26:40] Lucia Silver: Yeah. And when you were talking about the way the brain develops I explain it very simply that, in you, you cannot expect the higher functioning of the brain, which happens later on in development. So our cognitive skills, reading, writing, organization, concentration to be in [00:27:00]place when the foundational skills are not there, and it's the cerebellum, which is our movement center.

[00:27:06] Lucia Silver: If it is underdeveloped, one of its roles is to shut down or activate accordingly. The prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex is the seat of learning. It's the bit that we're screaming at our kids at for not working well in school and not concentrating if they didn't move enough. Yeah. This guy can't shut down or activate this guy, forgive my right.

[00:27:28] Lucia Silver: Incredibly simplistic way of explaining it, but I like simple, stupid could you, I mean that it's a beautiful, that must be at the heart of some of what you are focused on within mobility, right? 

[00:27:40] Melissa: Sure, absolutely. And we joke as a staff we, we all have our areas of expertise and we all think oh, they need more of this.

[00:27:47] Melissa: And we're always, buting heads like where to get started. But it's true. And I really do feel if we're talking about it historically, I feel the biggest shift when it came to children's mobility [00:28:00] development was actually the, the certain campaign to help, make sure babies are sleeping safely and things like that.

[00:28:06] Melissa: Of course like we need to make sure that babies are sleeping safely at night, but I think the real kicker was that pediatricians and therapists were then telling parents like, never put your baby on your, their belly. And we had this, decade, 20, 30 years now where like parents are scared.

[00:28:25] Melissa: Are scared to put their children down on their bellies. And we have these kids who are put in these, the little mechanical swings and in the bopies and this and that, and they're not given the opportunity to really develop from a mobility standpoint. And the scary thing is that even in this last year on the kind of like typical developmental scales that pediatricians use, they're now taking off commando, crawling, they're now taking off, crawling on hands and knees, and it's oh, we're just moving with the times.

[00:28:56] Melissa: And it's no, babies were doing this in the sixties and [00:29:00] the seventies and the eighties and the nineties. Why aren't they doing it now? And we, and that look, that's a very tongue in cheek topic to talk about, but I think the. The real negative thing that came out of that back to Sleep campaign is that now parents are just scared out of their wits to, to even put their baby on the ground.

[00:29:19] Melissa: And now we're seeing the effects of that. You stated all of the different statistics about like rising rates and autism, and there's many different factors there. But again, for me as a mobility specialist, it's like you, you have to be considering that that babies are just not being given the opportunity to be on their bellies.

[00:29:40] Melissa: And we get all of these like crazy, expensive and like flashy tools when really the floor is the best place Yeah. For that child. Make sense with 

[00:29:49] Spencer: the floor make. Yeah. And if you think about a baby that's placed down on their back, it's like putting a turtle down on its shell, on its back.

[00:29:57] Spencer: They're unable to roll over to get to [00:30:00] their tummy, and the only way they can learn how to move forward is on their belly. And so now even the, let's call it the establishment, has recognized that this is detrimental and has started to tell parents about tummy time, but 

[00:30:16] Melissa: it's too little, too late at the, it's too little.

[00:30:18] Spencer: Yeah. I mean it's kinda oh, give your child some. Tummy, time, 10 minutes in a day. No, like a child needs to be down, A baby needs to be down on the ground on their tummy. Unless we're every waking moment, unless, of course, like if we're loving them or feeding them, great, but otherwise they should be down on the ground.

[00:30:33] Spencer: And by the way, children love it. They, because they're free. But we tell, the estab that whatever we want to call it, tells parents the exact opposite. 

[00:30:43] Lucia Silver: It seems that's where it's, it seems so simple, and yet it's not. I said to you guys when I first met you, I thought I was a pretty intelligent, researched mom when I was pregnant, but I didn't understand the importance or the implication of movement.

[00:30:57] Lucia Silver: Sure. We're bandied around. Tummy [00:31:00] time. Tummy time. I remember tummy time, but nobody explained why tummy time. Yeah. I just remember thinking, oh, don't go near the thing I'm trying to work. Oh, don't move over there. But, it was it was damage control was always what was going on.

[00:31:13] Lucia Silver: That sort of cultural shift rather than, oh, don't worry. The kid's in the garden somewhere. The baby's somewhere in the tree. You nowadays it's worry, worry. But also just to understand that progression, that when a baby is on its tummy or as you say Spencer flailing on its back, learning to flip over again like a turtle.

[00:31:33] Lucia Silver: It's not, it's the movement. Yes. Which activates all the systems and gives feedback to the brain, but it's also. Proprioception and balance and understanding how far the eye is from the extension of the arm, how to gr it's, everything is involved in those movements and developmental Exactly. It accents and the fact that the CDC, your CDC, I'm not sure what the British side of things or the Europeans side, but I know that CDC [00:32:00] has, as you said, it's relaxed, those things, but it's actually said it's added something like three or four months to some of the milestones. So it's saying something like that too.

[00:32:10] Lucia Silver: Yeah. Don't worry if your kid's not crawling for another six months. Don't worry. And the analogy I responded internally with that was we're no different from animals in terms of, yes, we have unique personalities, but our brains and the metabolic and the mechanical side of our development, the biological side of our development.

[00:32:30] Lucia Silver: It is mapped from the beginning, and it's brilliant. And nature knows vets. You wouldn't take your dog into a vet and go, now it's perfectly all right. It's not it still hasn't started walking yet. You expect a puppy to start, to be breastfeed, to be feet, milk feeding, taking the milk from mum and then getting up at, on its feet and then eating solids.

[00:32:52] Lucia Silver: You don't go, oh, it doesn't matter if it's back. Leg isn't working yet, do you? It's categorically what you expect from the development of [00:33:00] that and I think it's it exactly the same for children. There's no reason why suddenly you should change from being six months later, walking three months earlier crawling.

[00:33:13] Lucia Silver: There is a blueprint and it's immaculate and it's great human arrogance to be assuming that it all changes. I find that astounding. 

[00:33:22] Spencer: Yeah. And there's been a lot of research in this area that demonstrates exactly this. There's an amazing university of London piece of research where they track thousands of children and they basically found if babies aren't creeping on their hands and knees by nine months of age, their chances of a learning disability multiply, greatly increase just with that one milestone.

[00:33:46] Spencer: Yeah. Which is something we've, we've known for many years. And then the other thing is there have been many schools who have thought, our children are failing in classes. We need more academic time. They remove recess. 

[00:33:58] Melissa: Yeah. They remove the physical [00:34:00] activity part 

[00:34:00] Spencer: And the test scores go even get worse even though they're getting more teaching time.

[00:34:04] Melissa: Yeah. 

[00:34:04] Spencer: And again, it's because when children are engaged in physical activity. Like you said it's developing so many different, it's increasing oxygen delivery to the brain. It's helping improve their vision, which is important for reading and writing and so many academic skills. It also releases all kinds of biochemicals and hormones, which are positive for child development and wellbeing.

[00:34:26] Spencer: So yeah, children need to be engaging in a lot more physical activity. And 

[00:34:31] Lucia Silver: and it all goes back to our prefrontal cortex, Spencer it teachers are no. Get them back into the classroom. Give them more hours of teaching. No. Get them out and moving. Yeah. And that will continue to help the prefrontal cortex, so they will be able to concentrate more.

[00:34:46] Melissa: Exactly. Yeah. And the unfortunate truth is that, not every kid is meant for that. Sit in a desk for six hours. Type of learning. And instead of just saying, Hey, maybe this kid just needs an extra recess session [00:35:00] or whatever, it's oh, this child now is, they can't sit still.

[00:35:03] Melissa: They have ADHD let's medicate. So now they can sit in the desk for six hours. When it's really just no, that child has a uniquely wired brain and we need to make their way of, we need to make our way of educating work for them and make, make those changes and create that environment for that child.

[00:35:20] Melissa: And again, like that's the. The great benefit that we have with Doman method, we can say, oh, okay, this kid needs this much hours of physical activity. We'll make sure it's in there. So that they can learn and they can, really solidify all of the academic things, the cognitive things that we're trying to give them.

[00:35:37] Lucia Silver: Yeah, and if I could say, 'cause I think it's so important that we have an individual approach, but I also wanna talk about it preventatively as I know you guys do too, is that if it was all going according to plan, we would be encouraging education in the first place. Let's just say we had an entire classroom of well developed four year olds.

[00:35:56] Lucia Silver: Everyone's had enough movement, everyone's had a healthy diet. At [00:36:00] that point in time, we would be recommending loads of recess and loads of exercise because it's unilaterally good for everyone, right? It's unilaterally good for development. I don't wanna be saying that, certain kids in the class need this, need that if we were given the chance, if I was given the chance with Quinn again.

[00:36:18] Lucia Silver: Irrespective. I would have him moving. I would be, choosing a school that really put an emphasis on that. You look in Chinese schools now, they're incredible. They're sitting in their le, they get in the middle of lessons, they're breaking up a lesson and doing movements in their seat.

[00:36:34] Lucia Silver: 'cause they've understood what we need. 

[00:36:36] Melissa: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. 

[00:36:37] Lucia Silver: Okay. Spencer, you have spoken to me in some detail about the particular effectiveness of your of the Doman method, of your method and your application, particularly with children struggling with reading and writing. I'd love to hear more about this. Again, anecdotally, we band around a statistic quite a lot here, but I'd love it that 80% of children with dyslexia didn't crawl.[00:37:00]

[00:37:00] Lucia Silver: So again, I know that links back to Melissa, but that's a UK statistic and it speaks to, what we've been talking about developmentally up until now. But I'd love to hear more, 'cause I know how incredibly effective the Domen method is in this area. So please talk to us a little bit about why this is a sweet spot and how you're working within this area.

[00:37:19] Spencer: I'll add another surprising statistic, which is, at least in the United States, 67% of children don't read at age level. So two thirds of children are failing to read at grade level. When we look at reading with children, specifically with special needs, the first major problem is many of them are never taught to read.

[00:37:36] Melissa: Because they're, it's assumed that they wouldn't understand anyway. So yeah. Just sit in the desk and color while the other kids are learning to read. 

[00:37:43] Spencer: And that's a major problem. It's amazing how many 12-year-old, 14-year-old children, we see families bring them in and they, we ask the parents, have they ever been taught to read?

[00:37:52] Spencer: And they say, no they've never done that. So that's the first thing, and that's an outrage. But the second thing is, the reason why [00:38:00] most schools aren't trying to teach these children how to read is because they intuitively know that their approach to reading is gonna fail with the child.

[00:38:07] Spencer: And that's because most children are taught to read in the kind of classical, phonetic way. Children are taught to recognize letters and then using their own language, try to sound out the sounds of different letters to put a word together. That's very problematic for children with special needs because it relies on their own speech at which often is an area of great difficulty for them.

[00:38:35] Spencer: Yeah. And so what we've done is we've created a reading program. First of all, that doesn't require the child to sound out or speak out words on their own. That's the first thing. And that's it's very important to understand reading is a visual ability. It has actually nothing to do with speech.

[00:38:52] Spencer: If we put tape over our mouths right now, it wouldn't get in our way of reading. And so once we understood [00:39:00] that reading is a visual ability in the brain. In fact, there's an area of the brain called the visual word form area, which is the part of the brain which is responsible for recognizing words.

[00:39:12] Spencer: Once we understood that, it became pretty clear, okay, we need to teach a child to read in the way they're gonna learn best. And the best way to do that, it turns out, is to show children large print. Okay? Most children with special needs have a specific problem called convergence, visual convergence problem, and this visual convergence problem can make it very difficult for them to use their two eyes together.

[00:39:41] Spencer: And that makes it difficult for them to read small print. So when we enlarge print I'm not sure if anyone's watching this on video right now, but if you hold up. I'm holding up a large word with red print with big, bold letters. When we show words with large print to these children, it [00:40:00] removes this obstacle and it makes it easy for them to see what we're trying to teach them as opposed to trying to teach them to read in a book with, which has very tiny letters 

[00:40:08] Melissa: and probably lots of pictures that are also a distraction as well.

[00:40:11] Spencer: Yeah. Pictures along with the text, which are distracting the child. Exactly. So what we do is we show sight words on cards with large print. Now that on its own is not enough. We've got to teach the child these words with repetition and so we will show the child a group of words. Imagine five different words of animals, right?

[00:40:35] Spencer: So you've got giraffe, elephant, hyena, and you're showing the child these five word cards, and you will teach a family to show them several times in a day for perhaps a week. Okay. And that is enough repetition for the child to, to learn, to recognize and read those words. But the best thing is the child enjoys it because it's not like [00:41:00] the painful experience that many kids have had in school where they're being told, all right, say this word out loud or sound out this word.

[00:41:07] Spencer: Which honestly is very upsetting for a lot of kids. And many kids just absolutely refuse to do it. Now, they can be passive. They can just watch and learn as we teach them. And of course, we have ways of evaluating children that doesn't require them to necessarily read out loud. And when we do those evaluations with children, the vast majority 95% or more yeah.

[00:41:30] Spencer: Perform amazingly well and can show us, they can read the words. But it's all about how we present reading to the child. And when we do that, this is one of the reasons we know children have an amazing innate. Intelligence because when we teach them in the right way, even if they have speaking problems, they can show us what they're capable of.

[00:41:50] Lucia Silver: Very exciting, isn't it? It's I can imagine what parents must feel in seeing this emerging when it's been stuck. Do you [00:42:00] integrate that work with. Primitive reflex integration, all that's going on at the same time 'cause convergence with at and r as our parents will learn from our courses.

[00:42:11] Lucia Silver: But there, there are corresponding eyes and primitive re all that going on. Are you doing that at the same time? It's all going on. 

[00:42:19] Melissa: Oh yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean we, we very often will design programs where it's like we're doing a bit of physical activity, we're doing a bit of that primitive reflex work, and then we're doing reading as a reward, take that step back.

[00:42:32] Melissa: But it's, yeah, absolutely, it's a crucial aspect to, to really succeeding with reading. And, we've seen that so many times, children with dyslexia or learning problems like. The physical, and I, again, I know I'm biased, but the physical program base and the primitive reflex base is crucial for us to have success with that reading program.

[00:42:54] Spencer: And one, one other thing here that maybe ties a lot of this together, you mentioned the [00:43:00] cerebellum earlier and we talked about crawling and creeping. 

[00:43:02] Melissa: Yeah. 

[00:43:03] Spencer: And we talked about ATNR, these are all functions of a lower area of the brain called the midbrain. And interestingly, the midbrain is, it is important for mobility coordination, and, movement, but it also controls a visual movement. So very often these children have these convergence issues. They have problems with depth perception. Many parents will say, why does my child always hold the railing when they walk down the stairs?

[00:43:31] Spencer: It's because that child doesn't have depth reception.

[00:43:33] Spencer: They can't perceive how deep that stare is, and so they grab it with their hand, they grab the railing for their life because they're afraid of falling. So interestingly, when we do these different movement activities, we see an improvement often in reading. But we do these things jointly because we want to. Kind of attack the problem from as many, areas as we can. 

[00:43:54] Lucia Silver: And you'd see, you'd also see the corresponding responses in the way they're using their eyes as [00:44:00] well. So you can see children using one eye for reading. Again, partly to do with not crossing the midline, but they're also exactly Domanant on one side.

[00:44:07] Lucia Silver: Or you can see it in the asymmetry of the face where one eye, one side is developing more than the other side as well. I noticed the beginning with Quinn, there was a lot of, slumping over and not crossing the midline and leaning down with his work on one side.

[00:44:20] Lucia Silver: So that was definitely ATNR but it was also coming back to your department, Melissa. You see here, we see it happening already. It's all under one umbrella here. But primitive reflexes are then linked to postural reflexes, which develop a little bit later, right? And once again, a piece of.

[00:44:39] Lucia Silver: Extraordinary research done out in the us it was a big quantitative piece of research. 600,000. I dunno if you guys told me about this actually, but it's a huge piece of research where when they finished doing it, they realized that about 80% of these classes had kids, this rapid increase of kids clumsiness and [00:45:00] slumping and almost falling off their school seats.

[00:45:04] Lucia Silver: That was how, you often see kids wrapping their legs, round chairs to stabilize themselves. Again, how that links in with if the primitive reflexes haven't been integrated, the postural, the core isn't there. So these kids are sitting, and that's also affecting their ability to read, write, concentrate.

[00:45:22] Lucia Silver: If you are slumped down there, you can't hold yourself up. Yeah, that's gonna have another impact on learning, isn't it? On and on, on your ability to write or move from, again, ATNR move from the blackboard to writing down and back again. That's the eyes and the, and that's convergence again.

[00:45:39] Lucia Silver: It's all, yeah. All impacting, isn't it? 

[00:45:43] Melissa: Absolutely. 

[00:45:43] Melissa: Absolutely. 

[00:45:44] Lucia Silver: As parents, we know that one of the hardest things is seeing your child struggle, day after day without making progress. And it's more than anything about education, but it's also about hope and positive mindset and having, the right vehicles and the right [00:46:00] care to follow.

[00:46:01] Lucia Silver: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges that, that modern society is seeing our parents facing right now? What's the most common thing presenting to you? In clinic right now?

[00:46:15] Melissa: A couple things come to mind for me. I would say number one, compared to when Glen first started this work, in the fifties there were no answers.

[00:46:23] Melissa: It was just like, your kid's just gonna be in an institution and that's it. Now I think the biggest thing is that parents are oversaturated with information. You're hearing about ABA and this developmental thing and these intensives and this and that. And I think a lot of families who first reach out to us the number one thing we're hearing is we've already committed to this.

[00:46:44] Melissa: We're not sure how do we fit Doman method in? And again, as we talked about earlier, like the issue with those other treatments, it's one area of development, one area of development, one area of development. So I feel like for a lot of. Modern families now [00:47:00] they're just getting pulled in all these different directions of should I do this?

[00:47:03] Melissa: Should I do that? Should I do that? And look, maybe the other big thing is, more and more, especially in the last, I would say, like probably about 10 years or so for us there's more and more pressure for both parents to be working and both parents, need to be outside of the house and earning for the family, which of course like is, in some circumstances is very necessary.

[00:47:26] Melissa: But I think there's a lot of like things in modern society that are starting to pull apart, that mother, father, child connection. And it makes it harder and harder for our families who come to us to want to do the amount of work that they want to help their child thrive.

[00:47:44] Melissa: And, again, like we're not here to judge. We know some families, both parents have to work or whatever, and that's okay. We make our program work within what the family's capable of doing. But like I said, I think in the last 10 years we've really.

[00:47:59] Melissa: [00:48:00] Changed how we approach our programs and how we work with our families, just given that this is where we are in our society now.

[00:48:08] Spencer: Yeah, it's so many distractions. Yeah. I mean that that's the truth, right? We're constantly, we've got screens with notifications that are popping up every day.

[00:48:19] Spencer: And along with it, a million different opinions about how parents should be interacting with their kids. And I just think it's overwhelming for a lot of parents. And then for a lot of moms too, there're being gaslit. Yeah. A lot of moms go to their doctor, they go to their therapist, they express something, and they're told it's not true.

[00:48:39] Spencer: If I had a nickel for every time a mom told me that, she said, to the doctor, Hey my child said his first word. And they're told, no, come on. Your child has severe, they didn't say that. The child was making a random sound, and 80% of the time, mom is the first person, and this is in our experience, mom is the [00:49:00] first person to realize the child has a problem. And usually she'll start talking to people about it. She'll go to the pediatrician, she'll tell the mother-in-law she'll, and everyone says, no, every kid's different.

[00:49:10] Spencer: They all develop differently. Or, 

[00:49:11] Melissa: oh, you're a first time mom. You're overthinking this. And a lot of first time moms like, I, we do very detailed histories for every one of our families, and we ask that question, who first thought there was a problem with your child?

[00:49:24] Melissa: And. I can't tell you how many first time moms were like, I knew by three or four months there was something wrong. But I kept second guessing myself and my pediatrician just kept telling me like, oh, you're a first time parent. You're overthinking, you're over worrying. Knock it off basically. And she was right all along and she was right all along.

[00:49:43] Lucia Silver: Absolutely. That gaslighting I think is huge. And then when you start investigating stuff, which I did, and I went back to my not even pediatrician 'cause you can't even get a referral to a pediatrician unless you can prove that there's a serious enough. So you are already dealing with a general practitioner who might be [00:50:00] 65 years old and hasn't actually looked at any of the up and coming medical stuff since he was at uni 40 years before.

[00:50:06] Lucia Silver: And you present something on primitive reflexes and they're like, what? So you can't even get it. You try and then take yourself off to educate yourself and no one's receptive. And then it's. As you say, don't worry about it. And anyway, if you can't resolve it, there's some medication for that later on.

[00:50:25] Lucia Silver: If it's still going on at secondary school, this is me with Quinn at age six going, something's not right, exactly. Yes, so how can they know what's truly going to help their child? How do you begin with this navigation? Aside, not everybody's gonna be able to come and see you guys at the Doman method.

[00:50:40] Lucia Silver: They will be able to follow you on the course. And we've got people listening all over the world. Some can come and see you, some can't, some need to start their work at home. Where do you start? Where do you start guys? What do you do? What's the first step? 

[00:50:55] Spencer: I think that for parents, the first best thing to do is just continue educating [00:51:00] yourself.

[00:51:00] Spencer: And I. I wrote a book with my dad, Douglas called the Doman Method from Special Needs to Wellness. It's available on Amazon all over the world. You can find it. And I would just start by, by reading that book, if you wanna learn more about what we do. And by the way it's not a theoretical book.

[00:51:18] Spencer: It's a practical book. It tells you like, here are activities you can start tomorrow with your child. Yeah. It's it's meant to be helpful. And of course, parents can also go to our website, doman international org and learn more about our work there. So yeah that's what I would start with is start educating yourself and continue educating yourself.

[00:51:38] Spencer: The second thing I'd say to parents is listen to. There, very often in life it's easier to do the conventional thing that everyone else is doing, even if you feel it's not going to work. Many of us would. We see the herd heading in one direction and we're like, we don't think it's gonna work.

[00:51:56] Spencer: But it's just easier to go along with it than to forge my own [00:52:00] path. And it's a little scarier going out into the woods on my own. But listen to your gut and 'cause it's your child. It's too important. Yeah. And and so hope, I think all parents can find something of help in the Doman method.

[00:52:16] Spencer: Even if they, and even if they read the book and they're like. Maybe some of this is right for us, they'll, it'll be helpful because they'll be able to implement those things and some people will read the book and say, wow, this is for us. We know this is what we wanna do. And we're always here for those parents.

[00:52:33] Spencer: Yeah. 

[00:52:34] Melissa: And what I would add to that too is again with all the options that are out there, like I, I always tell parents to ask the question to themselves. Is this going to help my child at a root cause level? And if you're being asked to do a PT or an OT or this or that, that's like the conventional, traditional stuff.

[00:52:52] Melissa: Like we've been there, done that, it's 60 years. It's not changed all that much. It's all symptom treating. [00:53:00] We're not doing anything from a neurological standpoint. So if there's nothing there that is really gonna help your child on that brain neurological level, just go in the opposite direction, keep researching, go back to educate yourself and find those things that are gonna help your child at that root level.

[00:53:16] Lucia Silver: No, I love that. I love what you both said because I think from Spencer, from your side saying that, don't be frightened to go against the grain. That's why I'm where I am and that's why Quinn has healed as he has. But I had a parent reaching out to me the other day saying this was about vaccinations, which I know is very controversial, but I love the fact that this parent, because she's been following us, is educating herself.

[00:53:39] Lucia Silver: And the point is to make an informed choice. And she said to me is her second child three months old, the vaccinations are knocking on the door saying, come and have your vaccinations, and she's. She's Lucia, is there anything I can read? Because I don't just wanna blindly go ahead with everything.

[00:53:55] Lucia Silver: It's just occurred to me. 'cause with everything else you've been teaching on the brain health movement, I [00:54:00] should ask why I should find out. Yeah. So without expressing my own personal opinion on vaccinations, I simply sent her some information and we continue to send some information so that she can inform herself.

[00:54:12] Lucia Silver: And I think it's about being mindful. The problem right now is, right up to teenagers going, mom, everyone's got a phone. All my friends are on a WhatsApp. We're all doing that. And then you see other moms, I watch the kids at football, Quinn's in a football team. And the football coach hands out these Haribos at the end of the blinking and match.

[00:54:32] Lucia Silver: These hasn't, it's not food. I keep saying that's not food, that's some type of toxin. But, mom, everybody had, he doesn't do that anymore because he understands now. That. And it's tricky because now my son is pushing against the grain. There's 13 players all having sweets and Quinn gets handed a satsuma.

[00:54:54] Lucia Silver: Not the easy road, but no one who ever succeeded at any level in [00:55:00]life ever did what everybody else was doing. That's what I tell 'em. You look at any superstars, any pioneers, any trailblazers, look at Glen Doman, it was because they were able to look in another direction and forge the way.

[00:55:13] Lucia Silver: Yeah. Spencer, you have a quote. There's nothing harder than watching your child go day to day without progress. The secret is brain plasticity and you learning how to unlock it in your child. Funny enough, Quinn's father but daddy, I'm not with anymore, but we had a little chat at the doorstep today and he follows a little bit about what we're doing and he said to me, even neuroplasticity, that was, we knew about that back in when the forties, as early as I think, right? We're not reinventing the wheel here, but it is the, that is the gold, right? Brain plasticity, neuroplasticity, we know, and there is copious amounts of research now that we can see on A-Q-E-E-G.

[00:55:53] Lucia Silver: We can see on brain mapping, the brain changing. So this is not some woo idea here. [00:56:00] This is very tangible changes. And when we say learning to unlock, when Melissa, you are saying, educate, empower, take action off the basis of knowing that every day that you do this work and you keep going, you will see change.

[00:56:16] Lucia Silver: You will. 

[00:56:17] Melissa: Exactly. Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[00:56:20] Lucia Silver: Let's just as our last two points here, could you guys share a couple of your wonderful case studies? Obviously not giving away any names or anything, but I think it's a lot easier for our parents. Sometimes we talk a lot of abstract science, this is the way the brain develops, but it is so lovely to be able to hear this boy aged eight came in with this, we did this and out came this outcome.

[00:56:47] Lucia Silver: Would you just share it if you've got a couple of those to hand your favorites your tier jerkers? Absolutely. 

[00:56:52] Melissa: Yeah. Absolutely. I the first person that, actually the first child that comes to mind, I actually spoke with her mom [00:57:00] yesterday. And this girl has been on our program for two years and.

[00:57:05] Melissa: When she started the program, not able to read, not able to do math and her brain, the way you could describe it was like, sieve. We would show her things and she would say, okay, yep, got it. We would come back to it an hour later. It was like brand new information for her couldn't recognize.

[00:57:22] Melissa: And this was with our program, like when mom started our reading program at home, she, within weeks she was calling me, she was like, it's not working, it's not sticking. Like she's it's like we're resetting every single time. And this girl they, she has to go to school.

[00:57:38] Melissa: She lives in a country where it is mandatory. Like she, so she was also like getting reading program at home, but she was also getting drilled at school. And, the teachers kept telling this mom, she's failing. And it's like you beg the question why can't she just be at home while mom fixes the problem?

[00:57:55] Melissa: But that neither here nor there. 

[00:57:57] Lucia Silver: Oh, how old is this? This little girl. 

[00:57:59] Melissa: [00:58:00] This little girl I think is eight years old. Okay. Wouldn't you say eight? Spence? Yeah, eight. And like I said, she's been on our program for two years, but where she started, where like we would show her words like an hour, like a goldfish.

[00:58:13] Melissa: She would just reset over and over again. Just in the last couple months, she's now able to take books off the shelf and she reads independently and she understands what she's reading. Like mom is very diligent about finding ways to evaluate this at home. And we had the conversation yesterday on the phone, like maybe giving reading, like putting reading on the back burner to focus on math.

[00:58:36] Melissa: And I, I told mom yesterday, I was like, the fact that we're even having this conversation about her and her cognitive development is. Huge. Absolutely huge. And her math has come quite a long way as well. This was a kid who you would put five poker chips in front of her, and she couldn't tell you how many chips were on the table.

[00:58:56] Melissa: Wow. And now she's able to do addition and [00:59:00] subtraction and multiplication with numbers, with two numerals. They're starting to teach money in school, and she doesn't get the concept like a hundred euro cents equals one euro. But I told mom, I was like, have you ever done over a hundred with her?

[00:59:13] Melissa: And she said, no. So I was like, all right, we gotta teach her a hundred. Yeah. And then she'll understand the concept. But again, like this is a kid who totally unable to read. Totally unable to do any kind of math. Now she's reading independently and she's able to she really is starting to understand the concept, the basic concepts around math.

[00:59:35] Melissa: She, like I said, she can do multiplication, addition, subtraction. Her writing is all, is fantastic, and they speak two languages at home. She, she's learning all of this both in her, home, home tongue, but also like her mother tongue as well. She's really, wonder like just such a great.

[00:59:54] Melissa: Example of the program works so hard oh, 

[00:59:57] Lucia Silver: amazing. And I just wanna pull out [01:00:00] from that. First of all, the lion's share of work, it's directed by you guys. It's safeguarded by you guys. It's, scientifically backed and evidenced by clinical work that you've done before that's been successful.

[01:00:12] Lucia Silver: But ultimately, we have to impress, don't we, as practitioners, educators, clinicians, the lion's share of this work has to take place at home. You bring your child into clinic, but it takes the family, the tribe, back home to keep that work going. It's not that you guys or any of us can wave a magic wand, it, the work has to be done.

[01:00:33] Lucia Silver: So that's the first point. The second is, what did you, what sort of stuff did you do? Just give us the two headlines. What did you do with this little girl? 

[01:00:41] Melissa: Yeah. So her program initially started with crawling, creeping. Like a really intensive reading and math program.

[01:00:49] Melissa: So we went back to those initial baby steps. 'cause again, she didn't have a ton of experience with this as a baby. And even now, like I, I told mom we don't [01:01:00] have to keep doing crawling and creeping. She's no. We're gonna keep a little bit in there. Like she's very insistent that we have it in there.

[01:01:06] Melissa: But from a physical standpoint, we've done crawling and creeping. We've done reflex integration specifically around ATNR, which was a real game changer for this little girl. And we also do sophisticated like active cross pattern activities. 15, 20 minutes a day, she's spending time like consciously crossing that midline, we're doing this kind of stuff all the time.

[01:01:29] Melissa: And again, like the mom. Has just, she's even developed things on her own. Like she has this huge poster board and she'll say, all right, go do this one. And it keeps growing. But that I think has been a game changer for this little girl. And again, I'm biased because.

[01:01:46] Melissa: It's from a physical standpoint, but there's no way she would've been able to make the gains that she has without that core piece of going back to those baby steps, making sure we're constantly crossing that midline and doing the [01:02:00] necessary reflex integration to get where we are. 

[01:02:02] Spencer: And with her, we also did an auditory program, which is called the Safe and Sound Protocol.

[01:02:08] Spencer: Yeah. Which is, it can be very helpful for things like auditory processing, but also very helpful for children that deal with anxiety. Who have issues with focus or who are, constantly worried or fixating on things or who have repetitive kind of thought cycles. We did that with her and it was very helpful to help her come more out of her.

[01:02:30] Spencer: Shell become more social and more comfortable in her own spirit. Yeah. 

[01:02:34] Melissa: And now she even like this, she would never do this before, but now she even engages like her neighbors in conversation. So she'll meet like Mrs. So and so outside and, she'll ask questions and she'll answer those questions.

[01:02:46] Melissa: Like she was a very. Like shut down kid for a lot of different reasons. 

[01:02:51] Spencer: Like she, she was first like stand in the corner on her own, watching people and now she's charming. Yeah. Fantastic.

[01:02:57] Lucia Silver: We spoke actually to a [01:03:00] sound processing, auditory processing world expert a couple of days ago on our podcast.

[01:03:04] Lucia Silver: And it was really, it's another piece, isn't it guys that, you in involved, but the combination of auditory processing and even Morrow, the Morrow reflex, if a child is in a state of high alert fight flight, it's very difficult to begin sometimes any work, let alone, diet change.

[01:03:20] Lucia Silver: Yes. Any work. So to bring that nervous system into a safer place to begin with so that they can then be receptive to doing. The work that you're talking about, Melissa, you can't say, get down and do you know your ATNR exercises or go down there if the system's, strung out and stressed or if there's problems there with that processing.

[01:03:40] Lucia Silver: So I think, again, this just speaks to the importance of having a whole child perspective, and a multidisciplinary perspective that you guys have and why I'm so delighted that you'll be, featuring on our course to help create that umbrella perspective before our parents start on their [01:04:00] little trajectory through at home.

[01:04:02] Lucia Silver: So before we wrap up, what is one thing you wish every parent of a child struggling needs to know? 

[01:04:12] Spencer: I would say. Speak to your child like you, talk to them like, like you speak to anyone else.

[01:04:18] Spencer: Speak to your child in a sophisticated way out of respect for their innate intelligence. Even if you don't fully understand how much your child is understanding of what you're saying, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing that when parents are told, right now we're running a massive experiment with parents, with children, with special needs where they are told by every expert, and I put that in quotation marks, that they know that your child has limited intelligence.

[01:04:48] Spencer: As soon as you tell a parent that they speak to their child in a different way. They interact with their child in a different way, they stimulate them less. So yeah, if I could tell every parent in the world one thing, it would be [01:05:00] talk to your child as if they understand everything. It will be great for their comprehension.

[01:05:04] Spencer: It'll increase their self-confidence. It'll increase their maturity. 

[01:05:08] Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. And I guess I would add to that, and again, 'cause it's on theme for this conversation, I would just say get moving. Even if it's 10, 15 minutes a day you, and even just hanging out on the floor, hang out on the floor, go for a walk in the neighborhood, whatever that is give your child that outlet.

[01:05:25] Melissa: Give your child that outlet. Because even that little bit is gonna go a long way when it comes to just feeling more regulated, more calm in the body. And yeah, that's, I think what you said was there. Oh, 

[01:05:39] Lucia Silver: I love that. I love most of them. I think we should put that in a sandwich.

[01:05:42] Lucia Silver: And I'm gonna add. I'm gonna put, I'm gonna put Melissa, you as the goodie in the middle of the sandwich, and I'm gonna be the extra piece of gluten-free bread. And I'm gonna say connection. Connection as a family. So while Spencer, you are saying, speak to their highest self, speak to their [01:06:00] greatest potential, and Melissa, you are speaking to the moving.

[01:06:04] Lucia Silver: I think all of that can happen through connection as well, right? So if they're getting moving, get out and move with them because you need it as well. Mom and dad, parents, carers, get out and move to go to the park. Spend that time in nature. Play a ball game. Have some fun outside. And above all else, absolutely see the potential. 

See where we're heading to. And also, we're often responsible, aren't we, for projecting our own limitations as parents, our own fears. So come out of that and see the great potential of these incredible little adults. Melissa and Spencer, thank you so much for joining us today.

[01:06:42] Lucia Silver: You are just delicious, both of you. I'm so happy to have had you. Your work's truly life changing, evidently, and I know our listeners will find so much hope and inspiration in what they've heard today. For those listening, you can find more information about Doman International in the show notes and on our website [01:07:00] at the brain health movement.com.

[01:07:01] Lucia Silver: And don't forget to download, we'll create a cheat sheet checklist, and I know that Melissa and Spencer will share some of their goodies and studios some areas where we can actually give you some more information on how Doman works, and you can download those highlights from today's conversation.

[01:07:18] Lucia Silver: It's a great resource to help you get started. Spencer and Melissa will also be one of the featured world leading experts in our upcoming course. Our whole child multidisciplinary roadmap to healing where we'll be diving deeper into the whole child therapies and the roadmap you can follow at home with your children.

[01:07:35] Lucia Silver: Finally, if you found today's episode helpful, please share it with other parents who might benefit. Leave us a review and subscribe to my Mighty Quinn on your favorite platform. Together we can continue to bring these life-changing conversations to more families. Until next time, remember, information is the mothership.

[01:07:52] Lucia Silver: Small steps lead to big changes and healing is always possible. Together, let's keep raising awareness, building [01:08:00] community, and unlocking potential for our children. Big kiss to you too. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in and I'll see you next time. 

[01:08:09] Spencer: Thank you. Thank 

[01:08:10] Lucia Silver: you. Thank you.