Target group of the Foundation
Healthy Children
Better and deeper bonding becomes possible with the parent. The early bonding is fostered by the shared experiences, by the experience of jointly fitting in into the group. The parents may learn a lot about their children, and what will be expected of them in school. The children profit from a longer attention span, better behavior, and the skills they acquire in the training. They will be able to achieve more and will become more resilient, which improves their self-esteem, and their social skills.
It is well known how important it is to form and foster skills before school age that are needed to learn and to integrate in a group. The HRG and PSMT methods can be applied to this goal from the age of 6-9 months. Regular recourse to them over the years enhances early bonding, and gradually improves the attention span and the manageability of the child.
Planned movement exercises corresponding to the abilities and the age of the child help in automatizing the sub-cortical regulation in the nervous system, and in maturing a number of nervous system functions: better observation skills, multitasking, parallel information processing, short- and long-term memory, analysis-synthesis, and problem solving. The constant development improves, in addition to the previously mentioned skills, the seriality and the rhythmic skills, the awareness of the own body, spatial skills, laterality, that is the preference of one side, movement imitation and pattern reproduction skills, as well as smooth practical movements, goal awareness and resoluteness, social skills and the expression of one's own feelings.
Children with attention deficit
It is difficult to establish a border between annoying features in a child's behavior that adversely affect the atmosphere of the family and result in permanent stress, and those that are already symptomatic of attention deficit. It is good to keep in mind that mild symptoms lead to grave ones, and the situation can be worsened by symptom shift when spontaneous maturing takes place without professional help instead of a diagnosis and targeted development and treatment of the condition.
There are numerous factors that can cause attention deficit disorder. Hereditary causes are very important, but other factors can also play a major role: differences in parenting and related issues (too much or too little rigor, constant cycles of "explaining away" problems, setting expectations the child cannot live up to, blind devotion or the parent having a constant sense of guilt). An underprivileged sociocultural background and a dysfunctional family can first preserve and stabilize, later aggravate minor symptoms. Despite the best care possible, it may occur that the child experiences minor hypoxia during pregnancy or birth, which can lead to overall immaturity, and possibly attention deficit disorder.
The overall immaturity can be diagnosed objectively with standard tests at any age. The tests also show the degree of immaturity, which is an important factor in choosing, designing and combining therapies and their intensity. Re-living sensomotor development stages helps the functional re-structuring of the nervous system. The equipment in the gym consists of tools that develop adeptness, attention, movement coordination, spatial skills, and seriality skills. These skills and sub-skills form the basis of abstract thinking, as well.
In the catching up phase, the children re-learn the stages of the human movement development by the means of passive and active movements. This aids the normalization of the yet immature regulatory functions of the nervous system. The lessons are 45/60/90 minutes long, determined by the mental, attention, social and physical load. Moreover, it is these areas where most improvement is attained.
Prematurely born infants and children
According to scientific knowledge, the "early start" is a risk factor and may lead to underdevelopment in motor skills, speech, intellect and attention span, activity and the social-emotional field.
The BHRG Foundation uses development scales to examine prematurely born and other babies from the corrected age of 3 months. If a backlog is observed, we choose and teach 15-18 exercises from a pool of 580 sensomotor ones that best fit the child. The children are controlled once every 1-2 weeks. The diving reflex and the McGraw-postures inducing elemental swimming are never employed in aquatic training, because we consider it to be a grave professional fault to maintain this reflex and elemental movement pattern artificially after their integration period, as this contradicts the principle of spontaneous development and empowering training.
We have 60 swimming pool exercises at the beginner's level. These build upon each other, and when they are carried out regularly, they jump-start the maturing of the nervous system. Training in the swimming pool and in the gym are always built up gradually, because it is crucial that infants are only exposed to that much developmental stimulus as they can process. Otherwise, if they are overwhelmed, it is possible to inflict more damage than one would think.
The development phase lasts until control examinations confirm that the baby's performance conforms to his/her age. It often occurs that the parents want to take part in the HRG and PSMT courses after this point, too, since they are an enjoyable diversion from the everyday life, they bring pleasure and a common feeling of success to the child and the parents alike. The children become better behaved, since a skilful and adept baby has much more perseverance than his/her peers. The continuation of the course can take place seamlessly in groups designed for healthy children.
It also happens rather often that prematurely born children, aged 3-8 years and showing risk symptoms, come to be examined at the BHRG Foundation. Sensomotor development in the swimming pool and in the gym can alleviate the symptoms and prevent symptom shift, but the same effort leads to much better results in the same time if the prematurely born child starts the course at the corrected age of 3-6 months.
Children with psychomotor underdevelopment
The child has problems, there is negative feedback from the kindergarten teacher; he/she misbehaves, is aggressive, self-important. He/she is clumsy, slow, his/her attention wanders off, his/her rhythmic skills are week, he/she often falls, the muscles are too tightened or too relaxed, he/she is unable to carry out posture exercises regularly, is unable to reproduce movements correctly. Both the teacher and the parents are discontented: he/she is slow on the uptake, cannot pay attention, is clumsy with the pencil, cannot count until ten correctly, cannot recognize letters, is not keeping up with the classmates, is badly behaved and hard to control, or he/she does not listen to what I ask, is trifling about, starts everything, but never finishes anything, is not interested in anything, cannot be bothered, his/her peeves are unbearable, is rather obstinate, he/she reacts with quitting and giving up to the slightest load instead of taking up the fight, considers love towards him/her self-evident, but cannot return it.
After the age of 5 years, it is a vain hope to believe that these characteristics and symptoms can be grown out of. The Status and Movement Examination employed at the BHRG Foundation gives a percent measure of the maturity and quality of the subcortical and cortical regulatory functions based on a graded measure of 40 basic skills and subskills in a 45-minute test with the help of 21 test parts. If the score is above 75%, no developmental training is advised, since the remaining 25% is successfully compensated for by the children.
If the score is in the 50-75% range, 50-120 hours of intensive sensomotor training, depending on the scope and size of the issues, in a group of maximum 12 children can normally induce those developmental processes that are necessary for a successful school life and learning.
If the score is below 50%, we normally recommend individual sensomotor training on 2-3 occasions. This involves 4-6 months of exercises tailored to the child, which, in addition to induce developmental processes, most often also makes the child ready to join a group.
The optimal intensity depends on the examination results. 120 hours of training can take place in 120 weeks, that is during 2-2,5 school years if the child participates in one HRG or PSMT developmental class each week. A gradually increasing intensity is much more efficient, and the given amount of practice can fit in a single school year.
Children in an underprivileged sociocultural environment
The parents live in poverty, at or below the poverty line, from the occasional job or are - permanently - unemployed and/or on welfare, are permanently or regularly on sick leave, have addictions or are mentally ill, or have a criminal record. The parents are uneducated (the mother's education has a threefold influence on the future of the child), do not have a profession. The child has to take on work, of which the quality or the quantity does not correspond to his/her age and physique. Children come from broken families, have more than three siblings, live in a small flat lacking the modern conveniences, or live together with an aged or impaired family member in need of permanent care.
The more of the above mentioned factors are to be registered in the close environment of a child, the more his/her circumstances are to be considered endangering. Despite their symptoms, these children rarely get early and regular developmental training, although their environment lacks stimuli and does not promote their biological, psychological and social development, which in itself may well hinder even a healthy nervous system to acquire the basic skills and subskills essential for school integration and learning, and to overcome sensory and problem solving exercises.
The regular recourse to HRG-PSMT training introduces children with an underprivileged background, most of whom experience ghettoization and segregation on a daily basis, stepwise to the norm and requirement system, to which they must conform in order to integrate successfully among their peers. The exercises and trainings help the maturing of the stuck subcortical regulation, and positively affect the bilateral motor coordination, the praxis, the child's self-esteem, the observation, seriality, rhythmic and spatial skills, the body knowledge, laterization and the one-sided dominance.
We have moderate expectations from the families of these children, but of course it is beneficial if they, too, understand why the developmental training is needed, and if they cooperate with the professional directing the therapy. The training can start at the age of 3 years, the latest therapeutic entry age is 5. The examinations, controls and developmental trainings are organized by the institutions that help families with an underprivileged background.
People with a mental handicap
People with a mental handicap have a below-average performance in the areas of perception, attention, memory, recollection, interpretation of situations, thought processes, speech, action planning and execution, as well as emotional/social skills.
Mentally or multiply handicapped children are only capable of handling at an age level lower than their own, which means that their stimulus perception, transmission and processing capacity is weaker, more immature than in the average population at the same age.
The HRG and PSMT methods, when employed regularly and with a sufficient intensity, that is as a new, strong environmental stimulus that cannot be accustomed to as it is becoming continuously stronger, promotes the start of maturing and regeneration processes. Feelings and memories are attached to the multitude of (active and passive) motions, which enable more and more differentiated functions, action planning and execution.
The regular swimming pool and gym sessions build into the daily schedule of the handicapped children, and they gradually become an important source of joy, pleasure, challenges and feelings of success in their everyday life.
HRG and PSMT exercises and trainings can be carried out with handicapped children practically at any age, in contrast with children of healthy intellect, as these therapeutic methods cannot be started with them over the age of 11-13 years due to the psychic properties of adolescence. The improvement in the state of the child stops after a while, but fixing and maintaining the achieved level is a very important task from the physiological, psychological and social points of view.
Brain damaged adults
As a consequence of a stroke or an accident affecting the brain etc., part of the previously developed functions temporarily or finally stop working properly.
One or the other or even all of the areas for large movements, speech, cognition and social skills may be damaged, therefore it is reasonable to start a regression-type movement therapy that helps the functioning of the subcortical regions, and promotes rebuilding the sensory integration functions and the neural connections. In grave cases, trainings start in an individual form, sometimes with 2-3 trainers, but the goal is to make it into the group of companions.
In groups, people get to know each other's tragedy, observe their willpower, their pace of heeling. This and the regular encounters help those physically, psychically and also socially, who have to come to terms with their changed state, work capabilities and relationships, and have to learn to accept and to love themselves.
The official rehabilitation in the health care systems ends sooner than one would be able to tell which "lost" capabilities can be recovered. Regular HRG and PSMT trainings can often recover the original physical and mental state and the social character of the brain damaged adults to a surprisingly large degree, and they provide them with a sensible activity, faith, positive self-image instead of depression. Regular exercise also helps prevent and control the orthopedic, physiological and psychological complications resulting from the altered and normally much more inactive lifestyle.
OUR MISSION STATEMENT
1. Overall measurement and improvement of the condition and level of maturity of 0,5-14-year-old children with particular educational needs or a developmental handicap, in a joint effort with the parents.
2. Sensomotor development of healthy 1,5-9-year-old children with the combined and enhanced version of the PSMT (Planned Sensomotor Training) and the HRG (Hydrotherapeutic Rehabilitation Gymnastics) methods. This also helps in the acquisition of the skills needed to integrate and succeed in school. The abilities of the children are gauged and improved, learning techniques are internalized.
3. We employ professionally recognized and justified examination techniques, therapies and developmental methods that improve the children's knowledge and performance level, and that are capable of determining the weak points and contributing to developmental plans.
4. The multi-stage developmental plan for the children entering the Foundation is created based on the principle of gradually increasing intensity that requires real team effort between the therapists in the gym and in the swimming pool, as well as our speech and cognitive developmental professionals.
5. As an accredited adult further education institution, we offer, according to student demand, three postgradual advanced teacher training courses, and one professional course recognized by the EU and belonging to health professions, several times a year. The fact that accredited professional further education is offered at the Foundation, guarantees that the internal further education of our staff, the furthering and deepening of their knowledge is continuous.
6. Our work is of preventive, corrective, enabling and rehabilitating nature, and it helps alleviate the symptoms of children with an overall immaturity, thereby significantly decreasing their endangerment in the long run.
The endangerment has several levels:
7. Our professional protocol is being continuously and dynamically developed further, we organize internal further education, our professional work groups continuously work on special projects, on writing and upgrading internal methodological papers.
8. Cooperation with the parents is a very important task for us. We often experience uncertainty on the parents' side of children with special needs about how to care for the child: where, by whom, for how much, and with what intensity should which therapeutic programmes be carried out, which can run simultaneously, and which is to precede the other.
The parents are uncertain about what to mention about the previous care the child had received at each therapeutic location. They are uncertain about what and whom to believe.
They are uncertain if they are adequate parents, if they are overly demanding, or too permissive, if they have unrealistic expectations and consequently overwhelm the child with trainings.
Our goal is to cooperate with the parents, think together with them to answer these questions. We can also help the parents assess their situation as an unbiased external observer.
Our goal is to serve as reliable professional support, we are glad to answer questions and if we can assist and think together to solve problems with the children.
The BHRG Foundation is under the professional leadership of Katalin Lakatos, who has worked with children with special needs since 1982.
Professional experience, diagnosis and symptoms of treated children: ICP, babies with hypotonia, 3-18-year-olds with orthopedic deformations, mentally challenged and multiply handicapped children and youngsters, 0,5-6-year-olds in need of early development, children with learning, behavioral and attention issues from segregated schools, schoolchildren in state custody, adults with accident-induced brain damage, autistic children, segregated autistic kindergarten and school groups.
Major degrees:
Professional activities: therapeutic swimming expert, accrediting expert, modular curriculum writer.
Major professional accomplishments: developing and copyrighting the HRG method, 1994. National basic curriculum: special physical education in the Officina Bona programme set.
Teaching: University of Physical Education, Human Kinesiology major (3 years), Semmelweis University, Faculty of Therapeutic Gymnastics (2 years), Pázmány University (3 years), Károly University: teaching 5th-year psychology majors from 2007. Author and instructor of 4 accredited trainings since 1993.
The other associates at the BHRG Foundation have multiple degrees, as well, and they have all completed the majority of the obligatory accredited BHRG further education courses (diagnostics, individual PSMT therapy, group PSMT therapy, HRG instructor).