Poppy and Haley Take a New Direction

“There’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard”.

Arundhati Roy

As parents and caregivers of non NON VERBAL children many of us dream of communication with our children; we sense that our children have a rich inner life. Yet we get no confirmation from clinicians who seem not to have the tools for confirmation or if they exist, do not have the urgency or willingness to use them.

Our obligation is to ask the question, are these tools available? Poppy and Haley have come to the conclusion that they are. As we have written before the neuroscience industry has shied away from our children if not blatantly avoided them. We believe  the time is now to use their tools that probe attention, intentions and cognition.

Our guiding principle is to view all people without a voice as aspirational, attentional, and intentional despite their inability to convey those characteristics to us. And it starts with our own children.

Haley and I have spent 15 years together. I know her unique abilities and outlook on life. Having joined her class during the homeschooling period I was blessed with the opportunity to get to know her classmates and observe their unique abilities. We need to embrace our unique position and form bonds with neuroscientists.

To that end, Chatting with Haley and Poppy has taken a new direction. We have over the last year successfully opened discussions with two neuroscience institutes who use non invasive technologies to study cognition. We have ongoing discussions with the National Center of Adaptive Neurotechnologies and recently opened dialogue with the Brainwave Learning Center, a project of Stanford University Education Department and Neuroscience Institute.

Please join us by using the comment section to tell us your stories of your child’s unique skills. They are immensely helpful in turning the tide. Finally we look forward to sharing with you the progress we make