What Moms and Dads Need to Know about the 3-Day Seminar, “How to Help Your Child with Special Needs”.
We encourage families to get the information about our special-needs seminar either delivered to their home or delivered through the Internet so that they can determine what kind of seminars we offer, and which ones will be good for your situation.
Obviously, we encourage spouses to talk to each other, to go through parts of the web site together. We've created some parts of the web site so that they can be printed out, and moms can give the information to the dads when they return home from work and vice-versa. Then take what you've learned from the web site or information package we send you, and discuss whether the seminar would be an appropriate thing for the family of a child with special-needs.
We have designed the three days to be an intense learning experience. It’s a practical and well thought out learning experience that puts Mom and Dad in the driver's seat of their child’s progress. We love to have both parents attend together because they can then focus on what is happening with this particular child in their family, and get them together as a team. This helps because, for the next three days they can ask the staff questions, talk to each other, and not be distracted by other things. Let’s face it – when we are at home, and we are trying to learn while the phone is ringing, and the kids need to be picked up from school, the laundry needs to be done, our ability to really focus on the important aspects of our families’ health gets sidetracked. So, the purpose of the three-day seminar is to get you focused together and help us focus with you.
Then, after you’ve made the decision to attend, fill out the seminar application and send it in right away to reserve your slot. When you fly or drive in the night before, and get a good nights’ sleep, you are then ready to really get started. For the next three days, it’s all about you. Not only will you get all of your questions answered, you and your spouse will understand so much more about your child – and all of your children, than you did three days ago. Those three days will be filled with more information than you imagined, more than you ever thought possible.
For families who take the three-day seminar, there is an option for the family to bring their child and have a 2-day personal and in-depth evaluation and private session with the staff. We evaluate your child with mild to severe neurological issues, whether they are blind, deaf, on seizure medications, if they can’t walk or talk, or if the child has problems with understanding, autism or behavior issues. We do a comprehensive audit of your son or daughters’ neurological, respiratory, endocrine, cardiac and digestive systems - as a whole child. By looking at the whole child, by the end of the 2nd day, there is nothing that we don’t know about them. Then our staff gets together, and we design a comprehensive, very tailored program just for your child. We then teach it to the family. After this, we coach the family through the next six months with DVD’s and videos, faxes and phone calls, letters and whatever it takes so that we are in constant communication about your child’s progress, and continuously coach the family on how they can really be the best therapists.

The Family Hope Center believes, knows, thinks - and in all ways - has confidence in parents. We teach parents what they can do to help their child, and we can put that together with the right tools and the right understanding of where their child is in terms of their neurological situation. The child’s brain has been compromised; it needs us to improve the neurological links within the brain, and we need to support the brain to learn. If we get to do an evaluation, and we develop a plan and teach it to the family, we know - because the results speak for themselves - that this is a very powerful, powerful dynamic to help families heal their children.
Next time, I’ll discuss the “Do’s and Don’ts” of helping your child with their program. In the meantime, if you or your spouse have questions or comments about this blog, or any other issues concerning your child, please call me or one of our staff at the Family Hope Center. See you next week!

The First Steps in Helping Your Special Needs Child
Today we are going to talk about getting started on a program to support your child with special needs and your family towards gaining new abilities that they have not yet acquired. If you have a child at home with special needs, how do you create an environment where, on purpose, every day you are implementing actions that will create change over weeks, over months and even over years?

Over the last 25 years of helping kids and families the special-needs, what we have looked at this as an ongoing process - a marathon. The process starts by helping the family to understand that there are certain principles that if we put into place, can create some excellent changes on purpose as opposed by accident. It’s important to understand where you are and where you're going within this marathon.

So, we put together some ideas and thoughts culled from over 25 years of helping children and families on how to get started on the program, really some “do’s and don’ts” for families just beginning to you tackle this problem. The child is not doing well; he needs some help in his mobility, he needs help in his social development. How do we do that, and make sure all the family members all heading in the right direction.

First, we encourage parents who initially learn that their child needs help, and are looking for ways to help the child, to go to our web site, http://www.familyhopecenter.org/ . On this site, folks will get an understanding of what we do, and why we do it, as professionals, the type of team we have we have - a very comprehensive team that works together to support families. This team includes a doctor, a nutritionalist, experts in the field of hyperbarics, physical development, social development and respiratory development.

We encourage you to learn who we are and what we do, and how our approach differs quite differently than the approach that most conventional therapist use to help kids, kids with neurological problems, kids with special-needs, whether that is a special-needs child, who is just out of a coma, or who has been labeled with cerebral palsy, autism or ADHD. Our objective is to have you sit down and take time to go through the testimonies of our families; the stories of the mommies and the dads, and how their children changed from where they were to where there are now they are now in terms of their development.

The second thing that we would like families to do is to call us on the telephone. After they have gone to the site and read through it, we are sure that they will have lots and lots of questions. Talk to our staff, we want to hear your story. We want to reach out to you and help you. Whether you ever make a visit to The Family Hope Center is really up to you.

On this weekly blog, I’ll continue to outline the steps for a program to help your child with special needs. Please, please forward this blog or our web address to any family member, friend, neighbor or associate that has a child who is struggling with brain injuries and don’t know if they truly are receiving the right treatment.