Noting the recent controversy concerning the Ben Stiller movie, "Tropics of Thunder", which features a scene where the characters use the word "retarded" over and over again, it is refreshing to come across an institute that works with children with many different syndromes yet refers to all these children with only one simple two-syllable term, "brain-injured".

Glen Doman established the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (www.iahp.org) in 1955 to "raise significantly the intellectual, physical and social abilities of all children". That includes children who both acquire and are born with a whole range of intellectual disabilities, including Down syndrome.

Since its inception, the organisation has suceeded in changing attitudes towards what children with brain-injuries can achieve. Originally their treatments were carried out at the Institutes in Philadelphia on an in-patient basis. However, staff and parents working together discovered that a home treatment programme delivered better results to the child. The Institutes recognises that parents are the most important teachers that their children will ever have and so now, they train the parents to deliver the programmes to their child instead.

They have trained parents from 120 nations to deliver brain stimulation programmes which include crawling, creeping, patterning, early reading, maths and encyclopedic knowledge programmes, the elimination of brances and calipers, the oxygen enrichment programme and nutritional programmes. Many of these programmes are in general use and have resulted in some cases, in the total removal of children from prescribed drug treatments (e.g ritalin).

Their website gives some astonishing examples of what parents have been able to achieve in promoting their child's development, albeit through the investment of huge amounts of time and calling for great levels of support in many instances.

The Intitutes works to give parents the knowledge they need so that their brain-injured child may have a fighting chance.