JOY ELLEN YOON — Training Expands for Korean Families with Disabilities

Since March 2022, IGNIS Community has been training Korean families with children who have developmental disabilities. These trainings originally began exclusively in one major city, but it has currently expanded to reaching families in four different cities throughout the Korean Peninsula. Through this “Journey Towards Joy”, now nine cohorts including dozens of families have learned how to implement neurodevelopmental exercises at home.

Family trainings typically consist of 12 hours of lectures followed by individual consultations and assessments. Topics covered in the lecture series include neurodevelopment stages and exercises, sensory processing and activities, and nutritional advice. Following these lectures, individual time is spent with the families, assessing their children, and helping them implement neurodevelopmental exercises while answering any questions they might have.

Most of these families have children with moderate to severe disabilities, including children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down Syndrome, cerebral palsy, neurodevelopmental delay, and various learning challenges. But progress for a child with a developmental disability can be slow and difficult. The greater the disability, the longer the journey is towards wholeness. The older the individual is the more stimulation required to restore neurological connections.

However, despite the enormous amount of effort and perseverance required to help restore function for a child with a disability, mothers participating in the program are seeing significant improvements. Those who diligently implement the Neuro-Developmental Approach with their children are witnessing incredible results.

Many of the children are behaviorally improving. Some are able to sit for longer periods of time, are less distracted, and are learning how tune in to their own bodies. Children’s aggressive behaviors and hyperactivity have greatly reduced. Some are speaking for the first time. Others are improving in their social and conversational skills. But only when the recommended activities are implemented on a daily, consistent basis is progress made. Contrast these changes with mothers who do not diligently implement neurodevelopmental exercises, and the result are drastically different.

This past week this “Journey Towards Joy” program was introduced in a new location. Seven families learned for the first time how to help their children improve their development and sensory processing. In addition to these families, two professionals joined the training. One professional was a speech therapist and the other a special education teacher.

Among those who attended the training, the special education teacher was the most excited. As an accomplished teacher who not only instructs children with all kinds of learning delays but also runs a special educational center and trains other teachers, she readily grasped the concepts being taught. In fact, she was so excited that she insisted on recording instructions for each activity and immediately started reading through the manual.

After the training, this special education teacher’s understanding of her students’ sensory issues was completely transformed. The training helped her evaluate her own teaching methodologies in a deeper way and construct lesson plans that were more appropriate for her students. Already she is starting to implement neurodevelopmental exercises as a regular portion of her curriculum as well as teach parents on how they can help their children more effectively at home. “Journey Towards Joy” deeply impacted both her teaching methodologies and interaction with her students and their parents.

This transformation is what “Journey Towards Joy” is all about. It is not an easy process. These kinds of exercises and sensory activities takes a lot of effort, discipline, and consistency to be effective, but in the end, it is well worth it. Parents reconnect with their children as they spend more quality time together. New worlds are opening up for these children and their parents. Together these families are journeying towards a more joyful future.