With the proper
therapy, training, and
nutrition the brain can
be healed and restored.
homeschooling program and also
show them what they need to do
intellectually, physiologically, socially,
and physically. We design a home-
schooling day for them and teach them
the “why’s” and the “how’s.”
Over the next six months of the pro-
gram, we are there to support them 24/7.
They can call us, Skype with us, email
and fax us. We are their teachers. If they
get a little off track, we work with them
to get them back on track. We move the
homeschool program along as the child
developmentally progresses.
TOS: Can you explain the Your Thriving Child Program?
Matthew: Your Thriving Child Program is an at-home program for those
with mild or no obvious “special needs”
at all. It was born out of our desire to
help parents who are homeschooling but
don’t have the foggiest idea that the brain
is really the central piece they should be
understanding first. A lot of parents are
very confused about why their kids are
struggling and aren’t succeeding. Carol
and I realized that there are a lot of parents who don’t understand the brain.
They read all sorts of books and hope
and pray that their child meets all these
milestones, and when they don’t, they become confused and panic. We had many
parents come back and tell us that they
had implemented all the information we
had taught them to do with their hurt
child. They then used a similar track with
their well kids whom they were training
at home, and those children did spectacularly well. We thought: “Well, yeah, that
makes sense. If it helps the hurt child, then
we can also use it with the well child who
is struggling. They are just going to get better faster because the brain is going to get
wired faster.”
After working with 15–20,000 par-
ents, Carol said, “Let’s develop a two-day
curriculum that talks about the thriving
family and child—something families
can use at home, that really puts the par-
ent in the driver’s seat.” It’s born out of a
www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com
way to help young mothers who are read-
ing all of these books and not really un-
derstanding the big picture. For example,
crawling on your belly is so important
in the healthy development of attention,
focus, bowel control, mouth control, and
using your eyes side to side. No one has
the foggiest idea why crawling on your
belly is such an important neurological
ability. Healthy development of the feet,
of the trunk, to walk with stability and
run—a lot of it has to do with whether
you crawled on your belly or not. So we
decided to create this two-day video and
build a curriculum around it. We wanted
it to be something that parents would
watch and then want to pass on to friends
and family.
TOS: Any last things you would like to
add?
Matthew: This information isn’t old-fashioned. If we learn about the way neurological development occurs; support it
with love, good nutrition, and lots of playing outside; and then combine it with Biblical boundaries and discipline, and you
have been trained to know what you are
looking at, then your children can have
a spectacular developmental pathway. In
our opinion, as Christians, we think that
this is the way that God made us, the way
we were supposed to always work.
Meanwhile, we are helping a whole lot
of hurt kids. We know the homeschool
community is completely focused on
helping their children. That’s why we are
reaching out to the homeschooling community. We know we can collaborate with
them to hopefully be a huge blessing.
TOS: The work you have done to help
families is just amazing. I know that this
information will definitely be a huge
blessing to many families. Thank you
very much for taking the time to speak
with me!
Denice has been married to her wonderful husband Lance for twenty-four years.
They have been blessed with five amazing
children, ranging in ages from 2 to 22, and
they live in Wisconsin. They have home-schooled for fourteen years. Denice has
worked at The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine for the past year as a Senior Ad Sales
Representative.
Matthew and Carol Newell and the FHC
Team specialize in helping parents and families of children with injuries to their brain.
These injuries may manifest themselves as
labels many people refer to as “autism” or
“ADD” or “dyslexia” and so on. The Family Hope Center believes that parents know
their children better than anyone, and that
every child is different and deserves individual treatment. www.familyhopecenter.org
