Monthly Archives: May 2017

Mark Turner – Breaking New Ground & Making New Records

Mark Turner, trick skiing at the 2015 World Disabled Water Ski Championships, Sacramento, California

Mark Turner, trick skiing at the 2015 World Disabled Water Ski
Championships, Sacramento, California

One of the great rewards of my work is hearing updates from families I’ve seen in the past. Now that I have been working with kids for fifty years, some of these kids are actually getting fairly old themselves. I recently heard from one of the families I worked with in the 80’s and surprisingly, also heard from two other families that I hadn’t seen in decades on that same day. It was a very nice day!

When Mark Turner’s mother wrote to me to let me know about the terrific things Mark was doing and to thank me for the help we had given her when he was a young boy, I was surprised, as I was immediately able to picture Mark, his Mom and to recall specific events from his evaluations. At NACD we all refer to the kids as “Our Kids”—not patients, clients, labels or diagnoses. The families of “Our Kids” are “Our Families”. I don’t know to what degree most of the families perceive others on our team or me as part of their families except for obvious exceptions, like those who refer to me as “Uncle Bob”, but we do feel like part of theirs and feel honored to be able to help them and participate in their children’s development.

Mark is doing great and breaking new ground for those with disabilities, but I will let his mother tell a bit of his story. Needless to say, I am very proud of Mark and his Mom and really appreciate their taking the time and reaching out to me. I hope they can be an inspiration for others, they have been for me.

—Bob Doman

The following is a testimonial provided by Chyril Turner and is reposted from The National Association for Child Development – Testimonials – Mark Turner:

It is natural for parents to feel concerned about how to help their children live fulfilling lives. Parents of children with special needs have additional concerns. My son, Mark Turner, was nine days old when he became paralyzed due to complications related to a congenital heart defect. He is now 39 years of age and enjoys a very rewarding life. We attribute a good deal of his success to the program developed by Bob Doman and the National [Association] for Child Development. I am so grateful for all the recovery Mark has experienced on this program and have the peace of mind that comes from seeing him achieve his dreams. Mark’s story is shared in the hope of inspiring others to believe in themselves, do the rigorous work that it sometimes takes to meet life’s challenges and to follow their own dreams.

Mark’s paralysis occurred in the lower portion of his body. He was originally placed on a traditional physical therapy program that utilized the best practices traditional medicine had to offer at that time. He made good progress and yet, when he was two years old, I was shocked to learn that the next phase of his program would be occupational therapy. The new goal would be to teach him to cope with his special needs. The widespread belief at that time was that significant neurological return was not likely to occur after two years from the time the paralysis began. Giving up hope for recovery was unacceptable, leading me to search for a program that would further the neurological development that he was still experiencing. Eventually we connected with NACD.

Bob Doman and his team, taught Mark’s brain about the part of his body that did not adequately receive neurological signals. Mark participated in the NACD program for about twelve years and made significant progress. One of my favorite examples occurred when he was about four years old. He was sitting in the seat of a grocery cart facing me and talking excitedly about something. All the sudden, he started moving one of his legs from side to side. Wow! He had moved this same leg from front to back, but never side to side! It still touches my heart to recall this precious moment.

While on the NACD program Mark developed a great deal of confidence in his physical abilities, and his self-esteem was significantly enhanced. He came to believe he could do anything he wanted to do in life and Bob was one of the biggest supporters of Mark’s ever growing confidence.

When Mark was 13 years old, he began participating in disability waterskiing. He loved it and his desire to improve his skills also became a strong teacher of his brain. Every time he would set a goal to reach his next challenge in slalom, trick and jump skiing, his brain had to figure out how to use his body in a new and very specific way related to each type of skiing.

Mark eventually became a national champion and was a member of the United States Disabled Water Ski Team competing in five world events. This provided the opportunity to travel throughout many countries, including England and two world events in Australia. He received the title of World Champion in slalom skiing, and has held two world records in this event. He has also held the title of Best All Around (slalom, trick and jump) for his division.

Mark is now making world history in a new way. A few years ago, he was doing exhibition skiing at tournaments for skiers who do not have physical disabilities. Exhibition skiing is a very important way to get the word out about disability skiing. While he was watching the other skiers, Mark realized he had a good chance of competing and placing. He has become the first skier in the world with a disability to win medals in his age category at tournaments for skiers with regular needs. Currently, he has placed in the top tier at the state and regional levels and has skied in the national championships.

In addition to his focus on tournament skiing, Mark works full-time for a major international travel company. He also serves as a volunteer at clinics, where he teaches people who have paralysis, amputations or visual impairments to learn to ski. He provides individual coaching as well for established skiers with or without special physical needs. Mark is also one of the co-creators of a contemporary documentary film about the history and empowerment of disability water skiing, H2O Effect: Disability Water Skiing From Beginning to World Championships! Here is a link to this 33 min. film:

Much of Mark’s incredible drive and self-confidence can be directly attributed to the tenacity he developed while participating in the rigorous NACD program. He and I would like to thank the team at NACD for all they have done, and to thank everyone who has supported this extraordinary organization in any way. To all the parents of children in programs at NACD, may you experience the kind of peace of mind and joy that we have found with NACD guiding the way.

Sincerely,
Chyril Turner

What is Natural? I Thought I Knew and Still Think I Know

“Breast Feeding is Unnatural.”

That was the headline I saw the other day when perusing the news. My first reaction was, “WHAT? What is this country coming to?” An article/study in Pediatrics entitled, “Unintended Consequences of Invoking the ‘Natural’ in Breastfeeding Promotion,” written by Jessica Martucci and Anne Barnhill, essentially claims that “referencing the ‘natural’ in breastfeeding promotion—may inadvertently endorse a set of values about family life and gender roles which would be ethically inappropriate.” I’m sorry, but “natural” actually does fit my set of values. How extreme can the obsession with sexuality and gender get?

When I saw this headline, it immediately took me back to UCLA in the early ‘80s. I was doing an early morning news show that was being filmed at UCLA’s Child Development Center. The station brought me to UCLA so I could provide an opinion about UCLA’s daycare perspectives. We did the interview in a huge room that was full of babies, toddlers and lots of noise. The children were on mats and in various cribs and there were students interacting with some of the children, while others slept, cried or expressed varying degrees of displeasure. As we began the interview, the head of the department made a statement that literally left me in a state of shock. She said that young children being home with their mother was UNNATURAL!

To gain a bit of historic perspective, common use of daycares and preschools is really a relatively new phenomenon. Daycares actually date back to the late 1800s as facilities for working mothers. But even back in the ‘50s it was rare for a child to go to daycare. There weren’t yet preschools and the majority of children didn’t start school until they were five or six. To further put things in perspective, back in the ‘50s when we were having air-raid drills in school and were hearing “better dead than red,” we were traumatized hearing stories about Russia, where little children were put in schools as early as two or three years of age—horrifying!

Back at the time of my interview at UCLA, formal daycare was still rather rare. Working moms generally relied on family members or informal situations where stay-at-home moms would take care of another child or two.

In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson created Head Start, a program that was initiated as part of his “War on Poverty” to help meet the needs of preschool aged children from low-income families. Head Start was and is a good thing. Providing early educational opportunities for children from disadvantaged homes is a good thing. Children from disadvantaged families absolutely do better with early childhood educational opportunities.

Today, however, educational propaganda has created the distorted perspective that all children are better off in daycare and preschool and that they are, in fact, being deprived of opportunities if they do not attend. Economic reality is such that many mothers need to work when their children are under five. There are mothers who choose to have careers and need nannies, daycare and preschools, which is fine. Certainly, the better the daycares and the preschools, the more opportunities those children have. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. An involved dedicated mother, who after all knows her child better than anyone else on the planet and who can provide her child with individual attention throughout the day, is not only doing something that is quite “natural,” but is probably optimizing her child’s first critical years of development. An informed, dedicated parent given the right tools, can do absolute wonders—quite naturally.

—Bob Doman