Does anybody know anything about Conductive Education and spina bifida?

"September 21st 1978, somewhere near Bath, England", by Susie Mallett

This is the question that Andrew Sutton asked on “Conductive World” this week. Having read what he wrote I can provide a bit more information.

Petö began working with spina bifida in 1953.

I worked with spina bifida at the Petö Institute for a year. It was actually my first year, in 1989-1990, and I have occasionally had spina bifia children in groups here in Germany as well.

Having a spina bifida child in a group of children with cerebral palsy is no different to having a flaccid-toned cerebral-palsy child in a group, or having a MS client who has symptoms like paraplegia in a group where all the others have spastic symptoms. You can fit everyone into a group if you work out how.

Obviously there are different medical factors that have to be considered when working with children with spina bifida, just as there are with paraplegia and MS. But Conductive Education and spina bifida are no more to do with voluntary voiding of urine and learning to walk independently than Conductive Education with children with cerebral palsy has to do with learninng to walk and potty training.

Conductive Education as we know is about much more than this.

The children with spina bifida that have attended groups here in Germany over the years were using a catheter and the district nurse would visit the group several times during the day to assist the young children with this procedure. This would all be organised by the parents for the duration of the course.

At the Petö Institute today

Gill Maguire brought up the question, I think a while ago, of whether there is still spina bifida group in the Petö Institute.

When I was there in November last year I went to find out more about this. There was no one I knew there but I was told that the group is now a mixed cerebral-palsy and spina bifida group. The group leader of the old spina bifida group is still the leader of the mixed group but she was not was not there, as at that time she was in Grand Rapids. I was trying to find out more but Kasey has already confirmed on Andrew’s blog that this group leader taught her at Grand Rapids.

I would assume that the closure of the specialist spina bifida group is due to not having enough spina bifida children, It surely can not be that there are not enough specialist conductors to run it as this was one of the most popular groups to work in my days at the PAI.

The children

The spina bifida children who have been in our mixed groups here in Germany are more like the "Petö" child than are many of the children with cerebral palsy. Maybe this is to do with the “typical spina bifida personality“. They are so grown-up in some of their attitudes. As small children, they talk and talk and copy grown-ups' speech. They don’t only copy though. They learn very quickly to take responsibility for their own lives, perhaps because of the importance of learning to care for their own health from the beginning is instrumental in this.

Conductive Education is really suited to these personalities. This was so noticeable when I was in a group of twenty-five children as I was in the Petö Institute. Even at a time that I could still not understand much of what was being said, I could see the difference between these children and the ones with cerebral palsy, even in the Petö Institute where children with cerebral palsy were different to most I have seen in other countries. All so independent.

The spina bifida children did not have social problems to solve in the same way as the children with cerebral plsy. They somehow appeared more integrated, more adapted to their world. They were incredibly determined to get around for themselves, even if they could not walk. They responded to Conductive Education in the same way as athetoid children do: they loved the realisation that they can solve their own problems.

Some of them really did learn to walk without developing dreadful deformities. Others did not learn to walk but developed amazing determination.

Only this Tuesday I saw one of the children who used to come into our groups. She is now in Italy on holiday with a group from the charity I work with here in Nurnberg.

When she was younger she used to come to our groups regularly until she was about eight. Since then she has only goes on the “conductive” summer holidays. I would say that she is a “a typical Petö” thirteen-year-old.

Erika Medveczky's book

Anyone interested can read about spina bifida and Conductive Education in Dr Erika Medveczky's book "Conductive Education as an educational method of neurorehabilitation."

Dr Medveczky was the neurologist at the Petö Institute for about twenty years and was an ever-present figure in the spina bifida group when I worked there in 1989-1990. The data that she recorded in the second half of the above mentioned book were collected at the Petö Institute between 1987 and 2000.

Dr Medveczky has a longish section on spina bifida in her book. She says that there is now a reduced occurence in Hungary because of screening and multivitamin prevention based on folic acid. She has a lot to say about the tests done before children can begin the self voiding of urine, and the importance on this for longevity, as using catheters often causes infection.

I have enjoyed reading her book. It makes a change to read about Conductive Education with children other than those with cerebral palsy.

I hope that there are some conductors out there who work with spina bifida children, perhaps in Grand Rapids, who have more to tell us on this subject.

Reference

Andrew Sutton - Conductive Education and spina bifida, a failed promise, "Conductive World", September 4th, 2009

http://www.conductive-world.info/2009/09/spina-bifida-and-conductive-education.html

Erika Medvetczy - "Conductive Education as an educational method of neurorehabilitation", Budapest, 2006, ISBN963 229 819 5

Early conductive upbringing

"Post with pogácsas"

One Sunday in Moszkva Tér, Budapest 2003, by Susie Mallett

Spina bifida

I have found very little to read about spina bifida and Conductive Education, I believe that there is no longer a specialist spina bifida group at the Petö Institute and as far as I know it is the same at the Conductive Education Learning Centre in Grand Rapids, USA. I have been told, though, that there are mixed groups at both.

Please correct me if I am wrong and also please tell me whether there are other spina bifida groups anywhere in the conductive world.

As a student-conductor I worked in the spina bifida Kindergarten at the Petö Institute and it was a wonderful experience. I believe that the leader of this group is one of the conductors now training students in Grand Rapids. I learnt so much from her, for which I am now so very grateful.

Very few conductors have experience with children with this neurological disorder and I often get inquiries from students and young conductors asking where they can gather information and/or experience. I tell them all that I can and then refer them to the conductors in Grand Rapids and at the Petö Institute, and also to a book written by Dr Erika Medveczky: “Conductive Education as an educational method of neurorehabilitation.”

New blog on the block

Today I discovered this:

http://ourlittlegibblet.blogspot.com/2009/11/conductive-learning-center.html

It is a parents' blog, written mainly by the father, about life with their almost-two-year-old son Greyson who was born with a neural tube defect. Greyson attends the Conductive Education Learning Centre in Grand Rapids. It is worth taking a look.

I find the blog especially interesting because the child is beginning his conductive upbringing at such an early age.

This could turn out to be a very valuable addition to the conductive"literature", and I hope that we will all be able to learn something by following Greyson's progress.

Best wishes to the Gibb family, and thank you for this insight.

Notes

Conductive Education Learning Centre in Grand Rapids, USA -
http://www.aquinas.edu/clc/

Greyson and his parents’ blog -
http://ourlittlegibblet.blogspot.com/2009/11/conductive-learning-center.html

Previous spina bifida postings on my blog –
http://www.susie-mallett.org/search?q=spina+bifida

Dr Erika Medveczky-"Conductive Education as an educational method of neurorehabilitation", Budapest, 2006, ISBN963 229 819 5

Forging links across the Atlantic

"Oh, the big ship sails...", by Susie Mallett

Working alone

This subject comes up quite often amongst conductors. It is sometimes very hard to work in isolation. I have done it often over the years, though luckily at the moment I regularly have a real live conductor colleague, or even two. This makes life much happier for everyone, clients and conductors.

Thanks to technology I now have many conductor “colleagues” in Cyberspace, which adds to the contentment, giving us all the feeling of not really working alone. I even get to meet some of them personally, an added bonus.

Teamwork

Today there is something new to see from the Cyberspace Zusammenarbeit.

After all the recent blog postings about spina bifida, which ended up yesterday with Kasey Gray and myself landing on the same “Babycentre” website , we decided to take a bite of the carrot that Andrew was had dangled in front of us on his blog a few days ago. We set up a group:

http://groups.google.com/group/spina-bifida-and-conductive-education?hl=en

It is called "Spina bifida and Conductive Education" and its manifesto is:

This is a group for everybody who would like to see the benefits of Conductive Education extended and developed for children and adults with spina bifida, their families and their carers, wherever they may be.

Here you can share experience, ask questions, offer information and advice on CONDUCTIVE UPBRINGING at home and CONDUCTIVE PEDAGOGY however it might be applied.

The group welcomes the experiences and expertise of ANYONE who lives with spina bifida and everyone who wishes to help in a conductive manner.

Write in English, or in any language that you feel comfortable with.

Kasey explains how to join, on her blog.

http://american-conductor.blogspot.com/

I have borrowed her instructions to post here, as she is the technical expert in the team! I thank goodness for the younger ones amongst us. As one of the older ones, I have still managed to insert a direct link under "Conductive Groups" on the right-hand side of my blog. Once there follow Kasey’s instructions:

Anyone can join -- Go to the right side of the page and click "Join this Group" and you will be directed to create a Google account. You can use your current email address to join.

Anyone can post, after they have joined -- Click on "Discussions" then "+ new post". Or add your comments to an existing discussion.

Please join us, and tell us your experience of Spina Bifida and Conductive Education.

Just the right medicine

I have been ill-a-bed-and-wos-up for three days but now on the mend and back to work tomorrow. I was so happy to spend some of my getting-back-to-normal hours this afternoon setting up this group with Kasey.

Thank you, Kasey, for doing a lot of the hard work, it has been a real pleasure working with you. Isn't it wonderful that in Cyberspace we don’t need to get all those different coloured permits, visas and police checks to cross the Atlantic to work!

I look forward to seeing what happens in the new group. Perhaps it is the first of many such projects.

More on Spina Bifida

"On the Metro in Newcastle" by Susie Mallett
June 2011

In my email in-box last week spina bifida was mentioned again in relationship to conductive work.

There are already a few posting on my blog relating to spina bifida where I have described my own experiences and also referred to any related literature that I know of.

Today I have another book in my hand. one of its chapters is about Conductive Education and spina bifida. It could be of help to anyone starting out on this conductive path.

This book is: The Task Series in Conductive Education by Éva Beck, translated by Rátz katalin and published in English by MPANNI in 2010.

ISBN 978-963-87821-1-3

There is also an Hungarian version that was published in 2008.

It is available to purchase from the Petö Institute’s Mária Hári Library.

Notes

Susie Mallett, spina bifida -

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/11/new-blog-on-block.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/09/does-anybody-know-anything-about.html

Petö Institute’s Mária Hári library –

http://www.peto.hu/konyvtar/

Spina bifida continued

Heiliggeistspittal from Museenbrucke, Nürnberg

It is amazing how just one Google Alert can take up so much time and provide so much information, and link up so many people who were just looking for the chance to be linked up.

I got a Google Alert today for this:

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a19665775/sort_of_weird_check_it_out?

It is a website "group" for parents of children born with spina bifida. They have realised they have been spotted.

After I had checked it out, I registered with ease and then, I hope, explained away the some of the weirdness for them, I linked up to a few of the other sites mentioned, to see what I could discover. I then returned to the original site where I discovered that Kasey Grey the “American conductor” had also been alerted to the Baby Centre site and and was offering the mums the benefit of her knowledge on spina bifida and provision of CE in the USA.

A small world!

Two conductors on one site in the space of a few minutes! I don’t know about the mums but Kasey and I were thrilled to meet each other there!

PS

Andrew Sutton has posted on his blog that he has noticed that there are a lot of dots on his map today from North America. I suspect that it could be that this group of mums from Baby Centre is checking out the weirdness of cyberspace.

American conductor -

http://american-conductor.blogspot.com/

Muscular dystrophy…

"A hot Summer night" by Susie Mallett, 10th July 2010

…two PSs

PS I

There were several comments on my recent posting on muscular dystrophy and I promised that I would get round to writing a bit more on the subject. It would still, though, be nice to hear from anyone else who has something to say on the subject.

Jules asked in her comment about similarities in the techniques used in solving movement problems between clients with spina bifida and those with muscular dystrophy.

This depends very much upon the severity of both, but the difference is that, while we can help children with muscular dystrophy to increase the strength in their whole bodies, and find solutions using all their bodies, we teach clients with spina bifida how to strengthen and use other parts of their bodies that are not affected by their condition, to assist in moving their paralysed or partially paralysed legs.

Jules was right in her comment that clients with paraplegia, some with multiple sclerosis and some with muscular dystrophy, some with stroke and some with spina bifida, who can no longer use the strength of their muscles to move and bend their legs, can possibly be taught how to use the power of other muscles in other parts of their bodies, if these are still strong enough, to move their legs with a swing.

Children and adults with muscular dystrophy and adults with multiple sclerosis who are at the stage at which they cannot bend their legs to step forwards have probably also lost the power in other muscles too. Their bodies may also not be powerful enough to provide the needed propulsion for movement.

Jules and Andrew both mentioned 'adapting' in their comments. I have written about this before in my postings.

There really is just not one way to do anything. Conduction is about transformation and for this transformation to take place we and our clients are continually adapting what we know and what we can do, to move on to the next spiral.

There is no typical client with any one of these illnesses or disorders previously mentioned. This is one reason that are no recipes for a conductive upbringing, the other being that there is no typical family. It is also why there are no limits on who and how we can teach and help to solve problems.

Conductors find their own way, together with each client, to achieve something that they wish to do. Together a method is found that solves a problem successfully. This may be something that the conductor and client discover together, it may be something learnt as a student or later from another conductor. It may be a method that the client has discovered, or a combination of all or some of these. These methods will be adapted by the minute, by the hour, by the day and so on as changes take place and other influences come in from different directions.

PS II

I was on playground duty in the kindergarten this week

At first I was scooting around with one of the “Petö children", as integrative children are fondly nicknamed, on a big blue scooter. I was with the boy who has recently found his feet and his voice, his eyes, his hands, and his soul. The boy who now rides a bike and walks for half an hour in the playground with a rolator, and now rides a scooter with me.

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/03/highlights.html

After we had been scooting around for a while (I do not know who was having more fun, the little lad or me) along came our “Petö boy" who has muscular dystrophy. He was riding past as fast as the wind, all alone on a tricycle made for two. He pulled up abruptly and asked my scooter friend whether he would like a lift!

On he jumped (well I helped a little, and seated him backwards for safety reasons - there is the backrest to hold on to), and off they went together for the next twenty minutes.

They stopped now and then for a chat with friends in the Wendy-house or to avoid a crash with another wild driver, but neither of them wanted to get off the bike to try out something else. A Bobby-car fire-engine did not tempt them, neither did the waterway with boats and sprinklers. They went whizzing around the cherry tree and along the straight path until it was time to steer around the chestnut tree and start the circuit again.

All the time our boy with muscular dystrophy was pedalling furiously. There was a lot of muscle strengthening going on there. Head and trunk control were needed to whiz around the bends, as well as good coordination, and extremely strong legs to power the two of them along.

At the same time as doing all the hard work, in the tone of Mr Toad in his red sports car, the driver was calling out in his Turkish-accented German:

“Faster, faster, out of the way! Faster, faster!”

The Turkish Abteilung (department) of our Petö group was driving, the Greek Abteilung was the passenger and the English Abteilung was trying to keep up just in case the emergency services were needed! The Hungarian Abteilung was keeping a close eye on our crazy activities, and we were occasionally caught up in a traffic-jam with the German Abteilung riding on the fire engine complete with water canon.

There were another ten children, all busy with their own games, to be observed, to have chats with and to wave to as we made our adventurous journey before lunch.

I do hope that I get asked again soon to share playground duty.

Note

Earlier posting on muscular dystrophy with comments-

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/06/muscular-dystrophy-and-conductive.html

Orlando and selective dorsal rhizotomy info all in one

"Dusk", February 1st, 2011

Seeking enlightenment

A while ago, when I first posted about the parent who was looking for information on groups for children at the conductive centre in Orlando, I received an email telling me "I think I know someone who went there I will ask them".

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2011/01/stanley-hong-kong-2010-i-received-this.html

Perhaps that someone was Ellie's mum, as it was Ellie's Mum who wrote a long and comprehensive answer on the Babycentre site.

http://community.babycenter.com/post/a26104187/central_florida_conductive_education_center

It is also Ellie's Mum who has written on Ellie's blog about the changes in her daughter's life since she underwent selective dorsal rhizotomy surgery:

http://elliesfootsteps.blogspot.com/2011/02/one-year-later.html

The view from Babycentre

Below is the conversation from the Babycentre site that ended with the information from Ellie's Mum:

Anyone have any experience with the Conductive Education Center of Orlando? www.cecfl.org
Posted 01/25/2011

Sorry... don't know anything about it. Have you checked with the Clinic to see what they think???
Posted 01/26/2011

I mentioned conductive education at our last clinic appointment and was told if it worked it would be all over. So, I feel like they don't know enough about it or are so set in their ways that they aren't open to it in general, so they wouldn't be open to this place even if it were the greatest thing ever. I have a call into Charlie's PT to see if she has any thoughts.
Posted 01/26/2011

This isn't going to be much help... but in my experience, the medical community isn't too keen on the idea of Conductive Ed. I've gotten some lectures from doctors about how there's not enough research to back it up. But we've been fortunate that our PT is open to it and willing to incorporate what we learn there into what we she does. So anyway, good luck, I hope you find some families who have been there and can tell you more.
Posted 01/26/2011

Howdy!
I am jumping in on your board to comment on this post. Hope that's okay!

We spent four months in Orlando last year so that my daughter, who has CP, could take part in CE classes at CECO (Conductive Education Center of Orlando). I can't say enough good things about the center and about Conductive Ed in general. It's AMAZING!!

I highly suggest that you go to CECO and check it out. Their conductors (therapists) are amazing and what they do for the kids is unbelievable.

Obviously, my daughter doesn't have Spina Bifida, but she has attended CE classes with several kids with SB. The presentations of SB are similar to those of CP. The classroom aspect of Conductive Education is one of its great assets. My daughter, Ellie, really benefited from being in a class with other kids "like her". The conductors are trained to work with kids with both CP and Spina Bifida.

Ellie has been attending CE sessions from the age of 2. It is by far the most effective "therapy" that she's received. Last year, she had spine surgery and needed intense post-op rehab. We decided to go to CECO because they offered us 4 hours/day, 5 days/week of therapy. They worked her HARD! And the results were awesome!

I agree with PP, that it's taking the medical community a long time to understand and accept Conductive Education. However, we have come across several doctors and "traditional" physical therapists who sing the praises of CE.

I write a lot about CECO on Ellie's blog (www.elliesfootsteps.blogspot.com), from the months of Feb-June, 2010. If I can give you any more help or info, feel free to ask!
Hope that helps! Chrystie (Ellie, 3-15-05)

Thank you, parents

Thanks to busy mums everywhere for taking the time to inform us all, not only about CE but about the reactions that they receive to it from the medical world, as can be read above.

There are several other mums and dads who have taken the time to share their experiences by writing for one of the latest books published by Conductive Press:

"Intelligent Love" by By Jo Graham, Chas McGuigan and Gill Maguire:

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1755137

The MS group - or I guess we all struggle sometimes

"A struggle for survivial through time", by Susie Mallett 1981

Different tastes

I guess that all conductors have their favourite work. Some prefer mother’s and babies, some are happier with children of kindergarten and school age, others prefer adults. Me, I am happy to work with all ages, although I do have a slight bias towards adolescents and adults.

Within age groups too, different conductors might prefer working with different conditions. I have a particular feeling for children with spina bifida following my wonderful experiences in the spina bifida group when I was a student at the Petö Institute years ago. It is a shame that I shall never be able to find such a group to work with anywhere else. And if you have been reading this blog you will know just how much I love working with people who have had strokes.

Any conductor who works with adult clients will know that there is a huge difference in the atmosphere in all the groups. There is a difference between a beginner’s group and an advanced group just as there are differences between, stroke, Parkinson’s, hemiplegia and brain-injury groups. The atmosphere in a group can be influenced by the weather, the season, the time of the day, the personalities in the given group, and most importantly by the diagnosis of the clients.

Sometimes I find the multiple sclerosis group a struggle.

It is difficult to describe why I struggle with MS, but I often do. It is harder now that I work alone. The best time was when I worked with Raphi, she always sensed the moment to step in and help me out by taking over the lead. It was perfect timing, like a comedy duo on the stage, Morecombe and Wise, timed to the millisecond. She was really good at it.

Now I have to sense this timing myself and when a change is needed I have to do it myself. Go to the toilet, take a break, offer the group a drink, get someone to take over with a word game or we go for a walk outside to get a change of scene. Now that I work alone, all these are tricks I use for myself as well as for the clients.

Different strokes

Sometimes (usually Tuesdays and Thursdays when the stroke group is there), there are really extra specially good days, those are the ones I write about in my blog. They are full of exciting new developments, the clients seem to run the group themselves. They lead themselves on from one activity to another, they are spontaneous and creative, needing only the support and go ahead from me and someone to help to move the furniture. They discuss life, the group, Petö, they put the world to rights and give me tons of inspiration and motivation to carry on writing and developing my work.

There are often days in the stroke group when I an not really needed at all, not to lead the programme, facilitate or do anything to create or change the atmosphere. They are, as I said in my “magic blog”, nearly always in a good mood, not high, not low, but good, motivated and raring to go. I love to see their faces when I praise them for how independent they are becoming.

Of course over the years I have put a lot of work and energy into creating the secure atmosphere for this group and now it works so well, almost each time we meet. The same amount of energy has gone into the other groups but some days it just doesn’t work, and often this is in the MS group, who, when praised often look on the black side and disagree that there has been any progress.

Different days, different ways

On other days, often on Mondays and Wednesdays when the MS group comes I struggle. Conductors are not supposed to struggle but they do. It is sometimes a really difficult job and not only physically.

Why the struggle? This week on one occasion I thought I was loosing this group, I was struggling. It was a case of what ever I said was wrong, so that in the end I gave up trying to up the atmosphere, and just let them get on with being depressed. I needed a colleague to back me up and emphasise what I was saying to avoid all the contradictions and the depressing negations that were going on.

Alone I had to work extremely hard to keep up the tempo, the concentration of everyone and to keep the general atmosphere on an even keel. At times I felt like an actor on stage alone, reciting a monologue to a disinterested audience, sensing that I was loosing them pulling them back only at the very last minute. This is exactly what happened in the group.

I did everything that I could to get the group rolling forwards smoothly but I had obstacles thrown at me all the way. Negativity, statements that what I was doing was not the same as usual, ( these from a client who had been away from the group for a year and has deteriorated both physically and memory-wise so much that he could not remember the programme. I could not of course tell him that though).

I tried every trick up my sleeve to try to keep the peace, I introduced some extra breathing here, some more relaxation music there, a game somewhere else. I suggested a tea break but this was no good as there was only tea with no milk, I opened windows to let in fresh air and bird song but with the temperature up to ten degrees it was too warm. I felt like everything I did was met by a negative reaction. It is easier when I have at least one of them on my side but today I had no one. One client even suggested that it was the fault of the British that he was so tired.

The clock had been changed as it was the beginning of Summer Time. He told us that this had been brought in by the British with their Grenwich mean time and then all the world’s time zones. And why couldn’t they have made all of Europe the same time, etc etc?”

That was Monday. The despair was there again on Wednesday but I didn’t exhaust myself and cause myself to struggle. I let the MS group do what the stroke group do and decide for themselves. I let the MS group Decide for itself what kind of atmosphere they wanted. They didn’t create a particularly jolly one but it wasn’t too dreary either, I tried to ignore many of the negative quips and got on with our work. I didn’t verbalise this intention, I just kept a back seat. Maybe next time I will tell them that this is what I am doing. Maybe I had worried too much on Monday. I should perhaps have let them discover for themselves what is best or not best, perhaps they will discover ways for themselves to lift the depressing atmosphere to a working one.

A change and a rest

The following day I would be with the stroke group and I could feed myself with some positive energy. But conductors working alone do not really have enough resources to protect themselves from this kind of mental exhaustion and now that I am working alone in the adult’s groups, I cannot ignore the other side-effects of working alone. After three weeks of sometimes three groups a day, which means shoving big adult-sized plinths around the room six times a day and lifting ladderback chairs, stools and rocking boards, and shoving walking bars and ladders all over the place, every inch of my body is aching, despite cycling 20 kilometres most days.

It is no wonder thatI am exhausted

I am now looking forward to two weeks of painting and walking in the hills over Easter with my “painterly” young man.

Variety, the spice of life

"Let the sunshine in", August 27th 2009, by Susie Mallett

What to say?

As a student-conductor I learned gradually how to prepare a daily routine for a group of twenty-five children or adults. Obviously, this was not the first time I had made such "lesson plans" as I had been working as a teacher before I went to the Petö Institute.

I had also had experience of writing work-plans for myself f preparing of four-course meals, when learning cookery and nutrition at school. Every detail that I wrote would always be double-checked by the examiner before the exam took place, and on the day too to see whether it actually worked. Everything down to the time taken to peel a potato and washing up between preparing different courses was checked to see whether the whole thing really did end up as the intended meal and tidy work place.

Despite these experiences it was still a difficult learning process at the PAI. especially as in the first weeks when I could not understand a word that was being said in the group. I had yet to learn the language!

Perhaps this was to my advantage, and the more I consider it the more I am certain that it was.

I realised that I could work with a child without using of words. I worked in the same way in my first months in Germany when I had little idea of the German language. I did however by then have wider knowledge of Conductive Pedagogy, which helped to some extent!

As a student-conductor I was not devising programmes for twenty-five from day one but in the first weeks in my first group I was working alone for an hour each day with four English children in the spina bifida group: making up games and activities appropriate for their stage of development. Yes, I suppose that I was thrown in at the deep end because I could speak English! At that time very few Hungarians could. This was before the explosion of language schools opening in Budapest, and Russian was still the foreign language “learnt” by pupils at school (and at the Petö Institute).

Very grateful I was too for what I learned in this haven

It was an hour of freedom from trying quite impossibly to make head or tail of what was going on around me. I was allowed to work in English. No one ever said to me what I should say, I knew only that I had to find the right words so that the children would understand what they could do and what they could learn.

Gradually the size of the groups that I prepared activities for grew, and also included Hungarian children or adults and the Hungarian language. Eventually I was working with whole groups. But it was in those early days in the spina bifida group, with the four small English-speaking children, that I realised that it was not important what I said but how it was understood.

The children needed to understand what they were doing and what they could achieve by doing so. The words that we used to describe this did not need to be the same each day, just as the games were not the same each day, but they had to be words appropriate to the situation.

Just as all the games and activities that a client takes part in during a session change, so too does the language used, the tempo, the rhythm and all the other means of facilitation.

Least said

When a client cannot yet sit straight then there is no need for me to speak this instruction. First the stages needed to achieve this position need to be learnt, and perhaps also spoken.

If a client has learnt to bend and stretch a leg in a controlled way, then there is no need for us to speak or count while doing it.

The aim of our work is for clients to solve situations spontaneously in their everyday life. It is not our aim to teach people to walk down the street counting from one to five. It is our aim to teach them to do it through whatever means they need to be independent, all the time lessening the need for external facilitation to which the spoken word and counting belong. Our aim is the internalisation of the action, meaning that the motivation and the activity comes from clients themselves.

We change the methods of facilitation used in the “life” in the group continuously, until it is no longer necessary to speak at all about the movements and it is enough to say "Please take your place on a chair" for the position to be reached spontaneously.

The time that this process takes of course varies from client to client which is why we as conductors learn to differentiate in all we do. It is also why it is necessary to have two or more conductors in a larger group, allowing for groups to be divided for certain times in the day for some of the activities.

In the stroke group I may have people who can say only a few words or only a few letters. These words will perhaps be used in a rhythm, which assists in relaxing muscles enough to carry out a movement. Another client in the same group, however, may only be able to say something out loud when working with the side of the body not affected by the stroke, and when using the affected side will try to achieve the same result only by thinking .

This will all be accommodated in the activities of the group.

Always changeable

There are no words or counting rhythms or thought processes appropriate for each and every client in a group, for each and every day, or for each and every part of every day.

I cannot ask a colleague working with a kindergarten group what she says in a particular situation or for a particular movement, if I am working with a group of teenage boys and looking for advice as to what to say there. In the same way I cannot speak to seventy-year-olds in a Parkinson’s groups in the same way as I do to three-year-olds.

And who forecasts the changes?

How do we know when changes are needed and what changes are needed?

We have our well-trained observation skills for exactly this purpose, to see what is needed when. To train these skills is why as students we were encouraged to sit down and watch when the groups got too full of conductors.

How I wish that I had time to sit and watch my groups working and playing these days.

I love to sit and watch, I learn so much and enjoy so much to see how children especially put to use in their play what they have learnt, as it were "automatically". I just cannot understand how some conductors think that because children are enjoying five minutes playing together it is an excuse to leave the room. A time to make some phone calls or do some paper work! This is such valuable time to learn about the clients, time when new activities can be thought out. It is time that clients often do things spontaneously under their own steam for the first time . It would be such a shame to miss this.

Often though, the process of change comes about "spontaneously": the answers present themselves during the work.

Good observation skills can help the process along.

Conductive Pedagogy is not about plinths, and words, and counting

It is about aims and solutions, it is about observing what people needs in order to learn, physically, socially or psychologically.

It is about finding as many creative ways as possible to teach and to practise what is learnt.

Conductive Pedagogy is a means to use to teach our clients how they can organise their lives.

The path that we take to reach these aims must be as varied as possible, so that it is a representation of real life, which means variety in the language used as well as in the activities.

What a funny world of languages

A Lego programme

‘Frau P, can I do the Lego programme today?’

That was the greeting my colleague received every morning last week from the oldest child in our conductive Kindergarten group.

He meant that he wanted to lead the lying programme.

He had been invited to have a go a few days before so that he could experience what it was like to have to speak at the same time as a child who just never leaves off chattering, a child just like he is. My colleague swapped places with him and she pretended to be the chattering child. He did very well and had been pleading ever since to lead the ‘Lego programme’!

An explanation is needed

But I do not know where to begin.

Do I explain first where the word Lego comes from, or do I describe the variety in the life in our group with its so many languages and funny accents?

Let me begin with the languages

Russian, French, Arabic, Turkish, German, Spanish, Greek, English and Hungarian. Take your pick – there is at least one person in the group who will converse with you no matter which of these languages you choose. 

Even if you decide to speak German with a strange accent, like I do, the children won’t mind, in fact most of them will have one too and the others will have great fun copying you.

When these children began Kindergarten those with no native German speaker as a parent would probably have had little to no exposure to the German language. Those with one German parent are usually fluent in German and perhaps also in a second language.

Most of those children whose first language could be Russian, French, Arabic, Turkish, German, Spanish, Greek or Hungarian, pick up German very quickly while playing with their friends all day long in Kindergarten.

Even so, as they get older they all attend German-language classes during their pre-school year to get them up to scratch so that reading-, writing-, and arithmetic-learning does not come any harder than to their German peers.

This is just what the little Turkish boy who wanted to lead the Lego/lying programme has been doing for over a year now. He has blossomed since his language classes began. He has developed such good skills with the German language that we are at last able to experience his wonderful sense of humour at last. We are also able to experience his never-ending chatter.

That brings us back to why he was offered the opportunity to try to lead the lying programme while a conductor pretending to be a child was chattering continuously.

He loved leading the Lego Programme

The lying programme in German is the Liegeprogramm. The German word Liege sounds like ‘Lee-ge’.

Lego in German is pronounced ‘Ley go’.

These two different words sound very similar to a seven-year-old Turkish boy whose bedroom floor is cover with Lego bricks! So, just as I swapped csipő (hips) for cipő (shoes) throughout my first Hungarian lying programme exam, this child replaced Liege for Lego, and I doubt, just like for a while in that spina bifida group in the Pető Institute long ago, it will ever be the quite same again!

I think that these children with different mother tongues do amazingly well. There is also a Columbian, an Iraqi and another Hungarian in the larger Kindergarten group but the rest of the fifteen children there are German and there are native German-speaking staff-members.

All the children have ample opportunities to hear Germans speak German in our integrated Kindergarten.

I often wonder whether we are an integrated Kindergarten because we have children with and without motor disorders or because we have so many different languages and cultures amongst us.

When these children come to the three-week long Pető sessions it is more difficult for them to develop their language skills and we have a lot of fun while discovering about the different foods that children bring with them for breakfast, and from learning new words and from teasing each other about our strange pronunciations.

Parlez vous Français?

We all now sing Frère Jacques in four different languages. I learnt this song as a child in French not English and this is always my first choice of language when I sing it. Later I learnt it at the Pető Institute in Hungarian and at the same time, also from the Hungarians, I learnt it in English. Now we all sing it together in German.

One day while working in this same group I was singing along in my Norfolk-accented French when I heard someone singing along with me. It was a four-year-old boy, the newest member of the group, whose father from Cameroon speaks French at home.

But just wait a minute!

That was not French that I was hearing, it was German, but it sounded just like the words that I was singing. The rhythm was the same the melody of the voice was the same but something was not quite right.

We all eagerly requested a solo performance and we discovered that this is how it went in French-German –

‘Schwere Sache, Schwere Sache, dorme du?’

That is just about German and means —

‘Difficult things, difficult things, do you sleep?’

The child who sang this solo speaks German almost exclusively but his father speaks to him in French. He understands his Dad but responds in German. It is almost that he refuses to speak in French, as was the case in this song.

Tuning in our ears

So in our multi-cultural Pető group we take part in Lego programmes, usually without the bricks and sing about Difficult Things instead of Brother John. We also have a great deal of fun and what outsiders think when they first hear us all, goodness knows! I hope that it is as funny for their ears as it is for our own.

Conductors who have moved from other countries to train to be conductors or to work in their trade will know and understand the problems that the children in this particular integrated conductive Kindergarten are up against.

Most clients outside of Hungary who are receiving a conductive education and upbringing from conductors will have experienced their mother tongue being spoken in a foreign accent. It always amazes me how well these children do. They seem to understand almost through osmosis what to do, just as I am convinced that this is how I first functioned when I began my training at the PAI.

How foreign is foreign?

I often tell the story about one of my very few early experiences of working conductively in English. It was with twin four-year-old Polish boys in Canada who had, in their short lives, mostly experienced the English language as spoken by Hungarian conductors. It was quite obvious at the start of our work that they did not understand my Norfolk-English. They thought that I was really foreign although I had actually felt so at home over there in that part of the British Commonwealth.

Conductive terminology in foreign!

What to call what? That is something that crops up less often these days as a theme for discussion. As conductive work becomes established in different countries words for what we do, what we use and what we wish to describe become established within the conductive community. We often forget that they are not understood outside our conductive worlds.

Recently I was spontaneously asked to speak in English about the up and coming World Congress for Conductive Education, for a voice-over on a film. This happened in Germany. No problem one might assume for an English native speaker. My Hungarian colleagues all thought so too, but it was a huge problem for me. I had no idea where to begin I did not know what people say in English. Yes, perhaps I am a native English-speaker, but not one who has spoken about conductive upbringing using the English terminology that I required now. I declined that spontaneous request!

The different languages and cultures in my life

I would really miss the multi-culture in my conductive lifestyle if I only worked and lived only in my native Englishness.

I know that my work would be very different if I were not English but it would also be very different again if I was not influenced by so many other cultures and languages. I hope that the lives of our littlies in Kindergarten are enriched from the integration of cultures just as they are enriched by their integration with children with, and without, motor disorders.