Note: a funny Santa game for all [...]]]> Today is last day at work before Christmas. Allow our family to say Merry Christmas to you all! Lord Jesus will always bless us abundantly and give a very joyful Christmas! God bless you all!

Note: a funny Santa game for all of you.

Happy birthday, Eva! God always bless all the things that you do, for your family, for your work, and for God. God always give you good health and a lot of strength to go through your daily life! Thank you for all [...]]]> Note: apparently there are no blog posts for Eva’s birthday on 15 November

Happy birthday, Eva! God always bless all the things that you do, for your family, for your work, and for God. God always give you good health and a lot of strength to go through your daily life! Thank you for all the love that you give to us (Irving and Joan), and for becoming the best mother and wife in the entire world!

God Bless You!

Because the Glenn Doman training ended on Friday night, we took the flight home on Saturday. And to get a cheap rate, we fly in the afternoon, using Lion Air at 5pm

One homework [...]]]> Note: this blog post is made 2 weeks after we return from Singapore, because we don’t have time until now

Because the Glenn Doman training ended on Friday night, we took the flight home on Saturday. And to get a cheap rate, we fly in the afternoon, using Lion Air at 5pm

One homework after the training is to create a program for each child. So, we plan to go early to the airport and make the program for Joan. After having breakfast at the hotel and packing, we immediately checked-out and go to airport. We arrived around 11am, and it turns out that Lion Air counter only open at 2.30pm

We take the time to process Tax Refund for all our shopping, and go to Kopitiam at 2nd floor (we are at Changi Terminal 1). We open our computer and start making the program for Joan. We took a short lunch break and continue until around 2pm. Then we go to Lion Air counter to check-in.

After checking-in, we collect our Tax Refund tax and take a walk to Terminal 3 to look for gifts. As it turns out, there aren’t many shops there. It crossed our mind to go to Terminal 2, but we don’t want to get late, so we go immediately to Terminal 1 and to the gate. We board on-time and arrived in Jakarta around 6pm. After immigration and collecting our luggage, we try to get a taxi. As it turns out the queue for Blue Bird is very long, so we take Silver Bird instead, because we can’t wait to see Joan. She is sick, remember? We take our dinner in the taxi, which we bought from KFC. It’s funny to eat in the darkness inside a taxi

So, that’s the end of our journey to Singapore. Overall, we are glad that we take the Glenn Doman training, because now we know that we can do so much thing with Joan. Please pray for Joan so she can follow the program, okay? GBU!

The training that we took is the most basic training of a series of training provided [...]]]> I’m very sorry that only now we have the time to post about the Glenn Doman training that we took 2 weeks ago. Joan is still hospitalized, but she is getting better, so I post this while waiting for her sleeping.

The training that we took is the most basic training of a series of training provided by The Institutes for The Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP). But don’t get fooled by the term “most basic”, because in reality, the training will explain to you all the basic therapies from IAHP. And this training is not for the faint-hearted: 5 full days, from 9am until 7pm every day, with only 10 minutes break for every hour, and a short 45 minutes lunch. These all are needed because the training materials is so much, and none of it are not important.

The training is a video training. It means that we don’t get a trainer that directly teach us the materials. Instead, we watch a pre-recorded video. The video is a recording of the same training conducted in IAHP headquarters in Philadelphia, and from the context used, I safely assumed it was recorded around 10-15 years ago. Wow, does it mean that the content is outdated? Well, that’s exactly what I was thinking. But, the fact of the matter is, not much has changed in the basic principles of the IAHP therapy. Of course, they use new or modified tools from the one mentioned in the video, but we will also get the latest updates from the IAHP staffs that come in the training.

So, the presentation technique is more-or-less like this. First, we listen to the video training for around 50 minutes. Because it is a video, we surely can’t raise our hand and ask questions. So, what we need to do is to note those questions or other things that we don’t understand. Then, during the 10 minutes break, we can ask questions to the IAHP staffs. The staffs are not ordinary staffs, but senior staffs from IAHP. The most prominent one is Janet Doman, daughter of Glenn Doman, the current Director of IAHP. Then we have Suzan from intelligence team, Leia from physical, and Yukie and Dr Lee from nutrition and medical. Janet, Suzan and Leia came from Philadelphia, Yukie from Tokyo and Dr Lee from Beijing. All will answer questions on their own field of work.

Outside of the training materials, one thing of interest is how cold was the training room Janet explained to us that according to their research, the amount of oxygen needed by the brain depends on the room temperature. So, they intentionally make the room as cold as possible to reduce the amount of oxygen that we need, so we can stay alert and more focus on the training. You can be assured that we all are frozen, and almost everyone wear a jacket or sweater, especially those from Indonesia. By the way, from the total of 44 participants, 13 came from Indonesia.

The training content itself is amazing and mind-opening. If you look in the Internet, a lot of people say that the techniques used by IAHP are controversial. After listening to the training, I personally think that their techniques are not controversial at all. Yes, it is true, they go against the mainstream of medical world. But, going against the mainstreams doesn’t make it controversial. Personally, I think they are very logical and have a very strong basic reasoning. Well, Glenn Doman himself admitted that most of the time they cannot explain scientifically why if they do patterning (for example) will help a child to crawl, creep or even walk. And these are the questions asked by medical experts. But, what IAHP can do is to show the results: they have complete record on how many children can see, hear, feel, walk, write, etc. With a slight joke, Glenn said that perhaps the people who will understand their work are engineers, who often don’t care about “how” and will only look at the result. Isn’t it true that what we need in the end is the results?

With all my heart, I really want to explain the content of the training on our website, because I really want to share with everyone. But in the end, I decided not to, because of some reasons.

Number one, I need to honor IAHP’s copyright. They have what they have based on 50 years of experience on the field. At least I have to acknowledge that.

Number two, it will be very difficult to summarize a 5-day training into 1 blog posting, or even a few blog postings. It will be much better for you to take the training. Or, at least you can buy books from IAHP or Gentle Revolution, like the book What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child, How To Teach Your Baby To Read, etc. All these books explained the IAHP techniques in detail, and will really help you understand the techniques used by IAHP.

In addition, aside from the books, your can also find the IAHP techniques from a lot of sources, like IAHP own website. For example, you can find The Institutes Development Profile, list of books, programs for brain-injured children, etc.

The basic thing about IAHP technique is its simplicity. First, we will be taught how to assess our child based on the Development Profile. From that assessment, we can see even though Joan (for example) is 6 years old, from the brain development perspective, she is equal to a 4 months old baby. Then, we are taught therapy techniques needed to increase this “neurological age”, so we can catch up. Every column and row on the Development Profile have its own techniques, and we need to choose the best technique based on our child’s needs. For example, for Joan, we already created an ideal program in several parts. For her eyes, we will use a lot of contrast black-and-white colors, either in wallpapers, flash-cards, computer projection, etc. For her ears, we will use common sounds like bells, glasses, our own voice, etc. For her touch, we will use soft and rough combs, velvet, feather, etc. For her motor skills, we will create an inclined floor to help her crawl, plus patterning.

In addition to that is nutritional program, by avoiding food that cause the most allergies, like dairy products, tomatoes, banana, etc. We will also monitory close our house hygiene, including clean air, dust-free, etc.

The main point of all these can be summarized into a few important points. First, human brain will always develop and adapt to our needs. So, there is no such thing as brain stop developing and nothing we can do about it. Second, to stimulate the brain, all techniques that we are taught need to be done in high frequency, right intensity, and long duration. This will ensure the brain can adapt to the inputs that we give. Third, all these programs depends on the general health of the child: a healthy child will take this program faster. So, nutrition and healthy environment will be really helpful.

For parents with brain-injured child, like Cerebral Palsy, Autism, Epilepsy, mental retardation, spastic, etcl, we really really really recommend the IAHP techniques. If you can afford it (financially), please do take the training, we highly recommend it. Or at least, read the book What To Do About Your Brain-Injured Child and the other How To series, and try the techniques yourself. We haven’t try it, but based on discussions with other parents that have, the result is much better compared to other “conventional” techniques like physiotherapy, epileptic drugs, etc.

If you have any questions on Glenn Doman or IAHP techniques, how to take the training, etc. please fell free to contact us. We will be delighted to help you.

First day is our traveling day to Singapore. We took AirAsia at 6.55am, so we have to wake up at 4am and go to airport by 5am. Joan was awaken when we are leaving, so we pray together first, cuddle [...]]]> This is our travel notes to Singapore, attending Glenn Doman training for parents with brain injured child.

First day is our traveling day to Singapore. We took AirAsia at 6.55am, so we have to wake up at 4am and go to airport by 5am. Joan was awaken when we are leaving, so we pray together first, cuddle her so she will not complain or miss us. She did cry a bit, but that’s because she was just awaken, and after that, she give us her beautiful smile

We arrived at the airport around 5.30, and proceed immediately to AirAsia counter at Teminal II D. After checked-in, we process our free exit tax (just bring your copy of NPWP and Family Registration), and proceeded to immigration. After that, we use one of the lounge using Eva’s Citibank Platinum, which covers us both. Not bad for breakfast.

About 6.15am, we go to the gate, and almost immediately got boarding call. We depart a bit late, because we have to wait for 1 late passenger. Our airplane is Airbus A320, so it is a bit more spacious. We spent most of the flight sleeping, because we really wake up quite early.

We arrived in Singapore round 9.30am at Terminal 1. I thought we will arrive at Budget Terminal. Apparently, only Tiger Airways use that terminal. After going thru Security Check and Immigration, we proceed to take our luggage and took a cab to our hotel: Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel. It’s not check-in time yet (still around 11am), so we only registered and leave our bags with the concierge. Then we surveyed the training location. The announcement there showed registration starts at 2pm, even though the email that we received said 4pm. So, we thought, we only have time for lunch.

We didn’t see any malls around, so we checked with tourism counter at the hotel to find the nearest MRT station, so we can move freely. Apparently, Clark Quay MRT is the nearest, and he said that we can walk following the Singapore River, or we can take a bus. We thought it was near, so we chose to walk. Since we are not used to walk, plus the heat, we gave mid way, after walking for around 20 minutes. And we still see that Central Plaza (location of Clark Quay MRT) is still further away So we searched for a restaurant nearby, and we found Bakerzin, so we ate ther. After that, we go back to the hotel on foot, again

When we arrived in location around 2pm, no one is there. I called Katherine from GD Baby, Glenn Doman representative in Singapore. She confirmed that the registration start at 4pm, just like the email announcement So, we go back to our room and rest. I also checked on StreetDirectory, so we won’t get lost I look for the most important ones: how to go to Clark Quay MRT (take bus #51, for 5 stops, apparently it is quite far), how to go back to the hotel (same route, bus #51, but have to walk a bit further from Central Plaza), how to go to IKEA Alexandra Road (because we want to find some items for our house), etc. I’m confident that this time we won’t get lost

Around 4pm, we come again to the registration desk, and we see Katherine and Hernita (GD Baby representative in Indonesia). After getting our training materials and name tags, we get a briefing from Glenn Doman’s staff. There are several staff, and we were briefed by Yukie, one of the staff from The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP), the institution co-founded by Glenn Doman. She explained the objective of the training, what need to be prepared, the process, etc.

After registration and putting all the training materials in our room, we go to Takashimaya, Orchard. We need to find the gifts for Joan today, because we see that the training schedule is very tight, and we might not have any time in another day. From Takashimaya, we have our dinner at the basement food court, and went back directly to the hotel. After that, we take a good rest, we don’t want to be very tired for the training day.

I’ll explain about the training process in a different post. Maybe not in details, I’m afraid I might violate some copyrights. But perhaps I can explain a bit, to give some information to other parents who are considering to take the training or not.