We knew we must make a major contribution by changing the intellectual, physical, and social growth of all kids around the world for our hurt kids' sake.
The hurt kids needed a world worth graduating into.
It has been many years since a boy named Tommy Lunski came into our lives and without knowing it started us down a path that was to change our world and, in fact, our view of ourselves and human development.
Tommy was four years old but Tommy could read better than an eight-year-old. But that was not all - Tommy was severely brain-injured. What did it mean? We knew Tommy very well. We had been treating kids like Tommy for years. Tommy was severely neurologically disorganized - he was not able to walk. He was a brain-injured kid, pure and simple. But was it so simple? Tommy could read and read very well indeed. While his well peers were playing with alphabet blocks and learning colors, Tommy was gobbling up any book he could get his hands on.
On our own Spectrum of Human Neurological Organization, where did Tommy belong? He was certainly below average because he was unable to walk. He was certainly above average because he could read above his peers. Could a child be in two places at one time? Where was that nice clear line between hurt and well? Tommy made that clear line very fuzzy.
Thousands of Tommys have come and gone now and each one has made his contribution to making that line fuzzier and fuzzier.
Parents from around the world proved that hurt kids can achieve excellence in physical, intellectual, or social realms while simultaneously working day and night to solve their remaining problems.
In 1979, The Institutes made an important decision. It was in that year that The Institutes created the Better Baby Institute and began giving courses for expectant parents and parents of well babies.
We had seen too many Tommys come and go - they graduated with superb abilities into a world of intellectual mediocrity. Their peers in school were often unable to read and write. Our parents had moved heaven and earth to get their kids well, but the world those kids graduated into had not even kept pace with the poor standards we knew as youngsters.
This seemed very clear to us. Nevertheless, at the time there were those who didn't understand. They reasoned that we would be taking time from hurt kids in order to give it to well ones. Even today I occasionally get a letter which says: "Do you still treat hurt kids?"
It is hard to imagine a thirty-six-hour day, or an eight-day week, or a six-week year unless you are one of the parents or a staff member. In that case you live such days, weeks, and years. When we decided to teach parents of well babies we did not reduce the number of hurt kids we see.
Five weeks of the year we devote to parents of well babies - that gives forty-seven weeks of the year to devote to hurt kids.
Five weeks - is it worth it? Do babies deserve those five weeks?
We began the How To Multiply Your Baby's Intelligence Courses in 1978. Nearly ten thousand parents have taken this course. Do you know that more than thirty percent of the parents in this course realize that their "well" kids are not well? They realize that the fuzzy line works both ways. Do you know what they do? They go home and fix their kids. No waiting list, no appointments, no revisits. They take the knowledge they have gained that week and they put it to work for their kids.
These are moderately to mildly hurt kids. They would not have shown up on our waiting list until they were nine or ten years old and had already experienced many years of painful failure. Now they won't show up on our waiting list at all because they are well. Now they will be at the top of their class, not the bottom.
Now the places on the waiting list they would have taken can be used for more severely hurt kids or those kids whose parents did not have the opportunity to attend a Better Baby course when were babies.
Is it worth five weeks a year to prevent the years of failure and pain a hurt child survives before making it here?
Is it worth five weeks a year to help a baby get well before he is old enough to know he is in trouble?
Is it worth five weeks a year to teach real prevention, the kind that saves a life?
Do we still treat hurt kids? You bet we do, fifty-two weeks of the year.
by Janet Doman, Director
