Calling Kids to Conductive Education Summer Camp

By Dan Merkur

Following the May 1993 conference DISCOVER CONDUCTIVE EDUCATION, hosted in Toronto by the Ontario March of Dimes at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, a group of parents organized a Conductive Education summer camp for children with physical disabilities. It ran three weeks in August 1993.

I joined the organizational committee at its first meeting early in June and gave an active hand in the lunatic scramble to find appropriate children, locate venues, raise funds, hire conductors, arrange work visas and coordinate equipment-all in the eight weeks before the camp was to start!

Word of mouth spread among parents and therapists, bringing together 22 children aged two to eight with cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus, multiple seizures, and motor disorders of uncertain diagnosis. Locations were provided by Play and Learn, a nursery school satellite of the Hugh MacMillan Centre in Toronto, and Erinoak Treatment Centre in Mississauga. The Easter Seal Society provided the services of Susan Tamas, the only conductor trained at the Peto Institute in Budapest who currently resides in Toronto. Additional Peto-trained conductors were imported through the MOIRA organization in Hungary and through Tsad Kadima, the Israeli Institute for Conductive Education.

Much-needed financial support was provided by the Easter Seal Society and the Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus Association of Ontario, several service clubs and private companies, and through fees from each child. The Ontario March of Dimes donated legal, accounting and administrative services and assisted with external fundraising.

Our experience of Conductive Education at the camp exceeded all expectations. Every family felt that their child made more significant gains than in any comparable three-week period. Some gains were dramatic: the first time that a child sat unassisted, used a potty, walked on quad canes, or walked unassisted.

At the camps, the children were introduced to the Conductive Education routines, which consist of fine- and gross-motor task series performed as far as possible in a spirit of group play and song. The first premise of Conductive Education is to focus on the child’s activity. In physiotherapy, by comparison, the child often lies passively and learns to be dependent while the therapist manipulates the child’s body. Conductive Education addressed the body through the child’s mind. It forces self-reliance on the child.

Of course, all children are ambivalent about growing up. Children with disabilities invariably display exaggerated forms of these developmental issues. They can be incapable of the autonomy of their age-mates, and many of them become adept at getting adults to do things for them. Conductive Education addresses these issues directly. The group format encourages both competition and peer support among the children. For many of the children, a radical increase in motivation, confidence and hope was the single most important benefit of the camps.

Another impressive benefit of Conductive Education is physical fitness. For the first three or four days, our sedentary participants had more severe physical demands placed on them than they had ever known. By the beginning of the third week of camp, they began to achieve the stamina and sense of physical well-being that is expected for actively growing children.

For some of the families who attended last year’s camps, Conductive Education has become a total lifestyle. Feeding, dressing, toileting, moving from room to room and so forth are now conducted at home more or less as Conductive Education task series.

Slightly over half of the families have continued to meet together for parent-led sessions of Conductive Education each weekend or two. Although the children will sometimes balk at parental demands at home, there is enough carryover of motivation from the peer group sessions on weekends to keep the home momentum going. The children’s gains continue to be impressive. A child of five, whose most favourable prognosis was to walk 15 feet on quad canes as the maximum achievement in his lifetime, has already managed 100 yards and is now expected to learn to walk without assistance. A child of nine who could neither sit nor feed herself last summer now sits regularly at school and has recently learned to feed herself an entire meal.

The parents involved in last year’s summer camp have formed a voluntary organization called Positive Action for Conductive Education (PACE). We continue to enjoy the assistance of the Ontario March of Dimes. Most members are parents of children with disabilities. Others are professional therapists.

We are in active preparation of further summer camps in July and August of this year. Providing that we raise sufficient funds, we are planning to accommodate 50 children. About 10 places remain to be filled. Each camp will run five days a week for three weeks. Younger children will attend half-days and older children, full days. For liability purposes, each child must be accompanied by a legally designated guardian at all times.

There will be two sessions: from July 11 through 29; and from August 1 through 19. In Toronto, the July camp will be held at the Hugh MacMillan School and the August camp, at Play and Learn. The Mississauga venues are not yet certain. We have almost enough interest at present to warrant the addition of a further camp in Hamilton.

The fee is $480, which is 20 per cent of the estimated cost of the camp per child. It is imperative that parents participate in fundraising in order to help defray the balance. PACE is a volunteer organization. It has no overhead and no administrative costs, but also no professional fundraisers. Charitable donations will be receipted for tax purposes by the Ontario March of Dimes. Cheques should be payable to “Ontario March of Dimes for PACE.”