making sense of the senseless

[walkitout]

I was surfing through Pregnancy & Childbirth books over at Amazon, sorted by rated 4 stars and up. I kept running across these books by Glenn Doman with titles that really made me wonder if someone was joking (_How to Give Your Child Encyclopedic Knowledge_ -- how is that _not_ intended to be humorous?). After looking through some of the editorial comment/review/etc. matter, I concluded that (a) the Domans are _not_ joking, or, if so, they are keeping their laughter to themselves as they collect the cash and (b) this has been going on for a while. I wandered over to wikipedia, and came away half appalled, but still slightly amused. I mean, really? Jumped up flashcards are going to teach babies to do math? _Really_? And, _why_?

For that matter, why haven't I run across these people before? The answer, of course, is _I have_ and I laughed really hard the first time, then promptly forgot the names of the perpetrators. In Ralph Schoenstein's _My Kid's an Honor Student, Your Kid's a Loser_, which I got from BPL before T. was born (aha! This is why I forgot! Well, maybe), there is an uproariously funny profile of the Domans' operation.

Look. It's a bunch of flash cards, either home made, or purchased from the Domans or someone else. You show them to your baby. You convince yourself that this is doing something (like, say, giving your baby Encyclopedic Knowledge). Or whatever. Fairly straightforward. Hard to see _quite_ how the Domans managed to sucker a bunch of people who _should_ have known better (Linus Pauling, Buckminster Fuller) but, to be fair, these are people who have shown a well-developed history of _not_ knowing any better, despite substantial accomplishments in the past within a narrow field.

T. has been largely ignoring the pedalless bike outdoors. I'm a little bummed, but I'm sure I'll get a chance to see it in action some day.

Comments

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

You may be interested in this post from misc.kids, from a lady who was a Doman baby:

I personally would NOT suggest that anyone use Doman's methods. Doman based
his ideas on work, first with veterans of WWII who were brain injured during the war, and later on brain injured children. He discovered that intensive training, also called patterning could increase physical and mental skills. Many parents in the late '60's and early to mid '70's took their children with brain damage (cerebral palsy, mental retardation etc.) to the Institute for the Advancement of Human Potential in Philadelphia so their child could be prescribed this program. If a child was given one of these programs, the parents (and other volunteers) would then spend 6-8 hours a day working with the child on these specific skills.

This worked extremely well for many children, in the short run. Physical
skills improved, and many children who would normally have been in special
education were able to get into regular classes-before the mainstreaming laws came in.

However, there was a price as well. These children are now adults. Almost all the children who went through such programs later were found to have learning disabilities in school-usually perceptual-motor in nature. These problems have to do with brain dominance, and are now believed to be caused by forcing development before it's ready. Something similar has been seen in people who were forced to be right handed-but never to this degree. Another recognizable trait in the Doman babies is a specific personality. Such an individual tends to have many of the traits of a person with Asperger's Syndrome, especially socially and emotionally, tends to be extremely perfectionistic, and have trouble dealing with failure. This is attributed to the high levels of anxiety and stress that this program brings into the family. The child becomes the focus of all this effort, and as a result, the child bears a great responsibility for any failures, and has difficulty psychologically. Finally, many of the adults have seen a resurgence of the physical disabilities, and an increase in additional health problems, because much of the treatment focused not on learning how to compensate for the disability, but how to hide it.

Based on the successes of this method with disabled children, Doman then took it one step further-teaching young children, without brain injury, academic skills. Again, the program was effective, but time consuming. At this point, he released the books. They have been toned down and rewritten a few times, but are still basically the same program.

I am rather vocal about this issue, because I am a "Doman Baby". I have
athetoid cerebral palsy. I am also one of the "success stories"-a child who
would have been considered severely disabled, who most people don't even
notice the disability now, with the exception of a speech impediment (which
most people think is a foreign accent).

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rest of post

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I also have all the problems mentioned above. I have the perfectionistic
personality type and the problems with failure, which has lead to two partial nervous breakdowns. I have severe cognitive disorder and almost no depth and visual spacial perception, which means that even though I can walk, I literally cannot see a drop off in a sidewalk. It also means that I have difficulty doing anything (like alegbra) with both a vertical and a
horizontal component, and I can't fill in a form with multiple rows, even if my handwriting was better. Emotionally, I have always had trouble with
people, although it's gotten easier as I have gotten older, and I have few
friends.

I also have severe problems with arthritis in alomst all by joints, because I was trained to keep my body rigid and folded in-which stops the muscle movements, but since it does nothing to the neurological static which causes them, puts extra wear on my joints. I currently have a physical "age" which is about twice my chronological one, and it is likely that I will have to go to using a wheelchair full-time by the time I'm in my 40's.

While extreme measures, even if all the outcomes are not positive, might be
justified in a special needs child (although more recent early intervention
programs have shown that the approach needn't be so involved to be effective) there is no reason for the parent of a healthy child to take the risks. While I seriously doubt that most parents who read the book follow the program to the degree needed to cause damage, it seems an unreasonable risk at best.

If you can get your hands on them, look at some of the studies by Dr. Michael Shaugnessey and Dr. Janna Seigel from Eastern New Mexico University. He has been reseaching the psychological, and she the educational results of these programs for several years. I had the honor of working with them on some of this research in college, and the pattern is pretty obvious.

Re: rest of post

[walkitout]

Now I am not amused at all.

This is _horrible_.