In life, I can choose to say:
This glass is half empty or…?
(Audience) "Half full!"
Let’s go further than "half full."
I can also focus on its precious contents and ask myself:
What can I do with that?
I can drink it, I can offer it to someone,
I can use it to water a plant, to rinse something, or to cook.
To be positive is the springboard from which we can choose to go further:
to choose to act.
Do you remember Dumbo, the little elephant?
He was born with ears that were too long, that made him trip.
What could he do with them?
He learned to fly!
Years ago, I didn’t realize that I had water inside of my glass.
I believed my other children's progress was normal,
it was almost a given, it just happened automatically.
But when my fourth son, Nicolas, was born,
I instantly saw there was cause for concern:
no eye contact, he didn’t even cry out for something to eat -
he was in a "vegetative" state.
What can I do with that?
I decided to do everything possible to help him progress.
When he was 6 months old,
a prominent specialist confirmed the diagnosis,
and said that Nicolas would never walk, never talk,
and that he would be a "vegetable" his entire life.
What can I do with that?
I considered it a challenge. And I love challenges!
The more difficult it is, the more I am attracted.
You'll have noticed that I said "challenge" and not "problem."
Which is the connotation of that word?
When we hear "problem," it’s often a catastrophe.
Children hear their parents talking of "problems,"
with an overwhelmed look on their face.
Then we're surprised that children get stuck
when they see the word "problem" at school.
So for me, Nicolas's difficulties were a challenge to overcome, not a problem.
But I had no idea of the magnitude of this challenge.
Fortunately.
Mark Twain said:
"They did not know it was impossible, so they did it."
I did not know it was impossible,
so I did it.
First of all, I differentiated between diagnosis and prognosis.
We cannot change a diagnosis, but the prognosis, yes.
And I chose to not believe the prognoses if they were unfavorable.
And so, the first prognosis: he will never be able to walk.
What can I do with that? I am going to teach him how!
I divided all the steps:
with my family, we taught him to move his arms and his legs,
to move his back by pushing on his legs,
to roll over, to sit, to crawl on an inclined plane,
to crawl on a horizontal plane,
to walk on all fours, then to take his first step.
So I learned how to set goals and, for every goal,
precise aims to achieve.
And what's more,
you can’t imagine the joy I felt every time he reached a goal.
Likewise, I rejoiced more for the progress of my other children.
I learned to rejoice at any small thing around me,
I learned to feel gratitude for everything around me.
And feeling gratitude is the secret of happiness.
Second prognosis: he will never be able to talk.
Effectively, when he was 4, Nicolas couldn’t repeat the sound "ah."
No speech therapist in our area felt competent to work with him.
I could have told myself that it was because of his disability
that he couldn't make any intelligible sounds.
But looking for excuses is to throw in the towel.
To act is to look for a way.
What can I do with that?
I found a speech therapist 60 miles from our home,
who first taught him how to say "moto,"
then "dad" and "mom."
Can you imagine my joy?
There are always ways. You just need to find them.
Then I learned Makaton, which uses sign language.
And so, he finally understood that the sounds he heard had a meaning.
Then it was reading, which he learned thanks to my mother’s method,
and which enabled him to talk.
But as he made physical progress,
Nicolas also loved to play the stereotypical games.
He could switch the light on, off, on, off, on, off … for hours.
In a center where he used to go,
he had fun transferring the water from one glass to another
for hours, days, weeks…
There, a professional told me that he surely needed that.
What can I do with that?
I asked myself: Which need?
And then I got the best idea ever - I mean, for my child,
but I think also for all those who have autistic behaviors.
I told myself he needed to learn something from his experience.
So I taught him "full," "empty,"
and the meanings of "more," "less," "as much as," and "half."
He watched me, and that was it -- he never played that game anymore.
We also repeat some experiences, we also make mistakes
until we understand something, don’t we?
That great specialist had told us that Nicolas would never go to school.
What can I do with that?
I asked to enroll him in school.
At 5 years old, he went to preschool for 2 hours a week.
Why does a child with difficulties need fewer hours in school
than a child who functions well?
I have never understood this logic that is still in place today.
I would like someone to explain it to me.
One day, he was playing, doing his best to color a drawing,
while the teacher had a talk with me.
She told me that Nicolas never understood orders.
Moreover, she noticed he was less competent than her 2-year-old pupil.
And then, Nicolas furiously doodled his drawing,
then crumpled the paper.
What can I do with that?
I understood something crucial.
Put yourself in a child’s shoes.
An adult tells you: "You are incompetent."
How do you feel about that?
The verb "to be" indicates an identity.
If one tells a child he is incompetent,
this label will be inherent to him.
Incompetence will then be a part of his deepest being.
And that label prevents change.
It programs him.
He will tell himself he is like that, that he can’t change.
Imagine the damage that can be done when a child hears:
"He's naughty!"
"He's unbearable!"
"He's shy!"
Imagine the damage that can be done when he becomes an adult,
when he repeats that to himself.
Have you ever said to yourself: "Oh! How stupid I am!"?
To train yourself to stop labeling others,
you have to start by not labeling yourself.
[I'm lazy.]
At the end of the school year, the teacher confessed
that some professionals told her not to waste time on Nicolas,
since he would never learn to read, write or count, anyway.
What can I do with that?
I realized that when you don't believe in a child,
especially when he is fragile,
he will not find resources inside himself.
[Eagle: I dream of flying. Chicken: Eagles stay on the ground!]
Besides, this was proved by Rosenthal and Jacobson,
with the Pygmalion effect.
Remember Dumbo?
He learned to fly because the crows believed he could do it.
I learned
to see the potential inside people.
I learned to believe in their abilities.
And when people feel the faith we have in them,
they do miracles!
Remember that the school teacher said Nicolas didn’t understand orders?
What can I do with that?
I needed to understand why to be able to help him.
He could hear ever since he had surgery for his deafness,
when he was 4 years old.
But Nicolas didn’t listen.
He lip-read and he was very nearsighted,
so if the teacher was farther than 7 feet away,
he couldn’t understand what she was saying.
So I learned to find out the real reasons behind an issue,
and not just take it at face value.
When he was 6 years old,
Nicolas was taken out of the school system.
What can I do with that?
Great!
Anyway, he only learned in his school that he was incompetent.
At the time, I taught twelfth-grade science classes.
And I was placed in front of a child
who didn’t know the difference between 1, 2 and 3.
What a big challenge!
I learned to meditate to find a way.
And I conceived of an amazing method to understand numbers and operations,
which still benefits many children today.
When he was 7 years old,
Nicolas was even rejected from the special education system.
Fortunately!
It’s because he needed another way.
We decided to do homeschooling.
Don’t think it was easy for me because I was a teacher.
For me, everything had to go fast.
When I was 4, I could read; at 16, I graduated from high school;
at 18, I got married; at 19, I had my first child;
at 20, I earned a mathematics teacher certification;
at 21, another certification and the highest mathematics teaching degree.
Nothing to do with teaching a child with such extreme difficulties!
What can I do with that?
So I learned… patience.
I learned to analyze every aspect of learning.
I worked to discover what level Nicolas was at,
to bring him higher.
That's how we should do it with all students, isn’t it?
They are there to be built up.
But when a child has too many difficulties,
when he doesn’t understand, what do we do?
We can tell ourselves that he just needs to work --
or worse, that he is incompetent.
I choose to ask myself: What can I do with that?
And I consider it my responsibility --
it is I who must figure out how to teach him.
And I look for different strategies until he understands.
So I went on teaching Nicolas.
But when he reached 10 years old,
I felt he was no longer progressing in his understanding.
I was trying to figure out the best processes for his learning
and I felt blocked.
What can I do with that?
Then I took off alone in an RV, to attend a Feuerstein Workshop
close to Amsterdam.
There I learned the 29 cognitive functions,
and it was a revelation.
They are the building blocks of reasoning.
If you build a house without a foundation,
what happens?
It doesn’t stand!
In the same manner, in order to build learning,
we need the cognitive functions to be in place correctly.
I improved their presentation
so that they would be accessible even to children.
It’s a marvelous tool to understand
the origin of learning issues.
They even helped my other 4 children who were advanced for their age.
A precocious child functions so fast,
they don't even know how they found a result.
They don't even know what they do to think.
And a precocious child often fails at school
because if the result doesn’t come immediately, they freeze.
What can I do with that?
I helped them learn how to analyze their thinking
so they would be able to succeed in their studies and in their life.
Then I watched around me,
and I saw the other children were far away from Nicolas.
Nicolas was not near the other children because he was afraid of them.
He kept a 7-foot security perimeter.
What can I do with that?
I told a local teacher about it,
and he proposed giving a training to his pupils about autism.
Then they looked for strategies to approach Nicolas and to include him.
The year spent in that 5th-grade class was his nicest school year.
In the school playground,
he allowed the others to approach him, to touch him,
and he had a lot of friends.
I learned that,
thanks to knowledge, preparation, and a teacher’s willingness,
miracles can happen.
I saw a lot of children around me who had difficulties.
What can I do with that?
In an nonprofit organization that I had created,
we helped them to overcome their difficulties,
thanks to a method that I had learned and improved upon.
The results were so wonderful that I wanted others to benefit.
But I couldn’t take care of everybody.
So I created a company called "Upbraining,"
to get the opportunity to train parents and professionals.
We designed efficient tools to develop cognitive functions.
We identified which learning processes were necessary.
The way we teach is called "metapedagogy."
It’s a transversal method to existing pedagogies.
It applies to everyone,
even to non-disabled persons.
I remembered that Nicolas had trouble learning how to write.
So we designed apps for tablets
for learning how to trace writing basic lines, then letters,
while making it fun.
Nicolas had also had issues
with learning about, recognizing and managing his emotions.
What can I do with that?
I designed tools to recognize, understand and manage emotions,
that others could benefit from as well.
But emotional intelligence doesn’t refer only to emotions.
It also addresses the ability to communicate
in the best possible way.
Many people on the autistic spectrum have difficulties in this area.
But you don't need to be on the autistic spectrum
to have difficulty communicating.
At home, Nicolas couldn’t tolerate arguments.
What can I do with that?
We learned how to communicate without fighting.
And I created tools to learn how to communicate
and how to manage conflicts.
Thanks to this experience with my son,
I got the opportunity to learn, to create,
and to help others.
Nicolas loves accounting,
working on the computer, playing the piano,
skiing, riding horses and getting to know other people.
Maybe we don’t choose what happens to us,
but we can choose either to act as a victim,
waiting passively for things to happen,
or to be proactive and to act.
That’s our choice.
We can do it.
For every experience,
we can act,
find a way,
and learn something.
Thanks to Nicolas and his brothers and sister, my life became fascinating.
So, disability?
What can I do with that?
I can say, "Yes."
And, "Thank you."