The National Association for Child Development (NACD)

10/06/2026

Homeschooling parents already do the hardest part of an NACD program. They are there every day, and they know how their child learns better than any classroom ever will.

What NACD adds is the assessment underneath. An NACD Developmentalist evaluates how your child processes information, then designs a program that fits inside the school day you already run. Many of our families homeschool, and many started NACD for the same reason they started homeschooling: the classroom was not built for their child.

Homeschool special needs or gifted children with NACD. 50,000+ families served since 1979 with individualized curriculum. Start your free Get Started program.

10/06/2026

The exercise that produced some of the biggest gains across NACD programs was also one of the simplest: hold a sequence, then do something with it.

Bob Doman watched it work in evaluations for years before turning it into Simply Smarter, so any family could run it without us. Daily, a few minutes, adjusting to the user as they improve.

https://mysimplysmarter.com

10/05/2026

We check ingredient labels. We filter our water. We watch out for BPA in bottles.

Almost no one checks the light in the room where their kids spend the evening, even though researchers classify evening light exposure as an environmental endocrine disruptor, the same category BPA falls into. It does not work through chemicals. It works by shutting down the hormone that tells a child's body it is time to sleep.

We break down what the research actually shows, and it is more significant than most parents realize:

Children are twice as sensitive to evening LED light as adults. What the research shows about sleep, attention, and behavior, and what parents can do this week.

10/03/2026

Teenagers do not stop talking to their parents. They stop answering questions that can be answered with a shrug.

Dinner Conversations was written with that in mind. The questions ask what your kid thinks, not what they did, and the same question works for a six year old and a sixteen year old at the same table. One a night, on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

NACD's 47+ years of neurodevelopmental research shows family dinner conversation is one of the most powerful tools for child development. Here's how to do it right.

10/02/2026

If you have been doing ABA for months or years and a quiet voice keeps asking whether it is working, you are not alone, and you are not wrong to ask.

Laird Doman wrote this for parents at exactly that point. Not to say you failed, or that the therapists did. The issue he lays out is the model itself: a behavioral approach can shape what a child does without ever addressing why they are doing it.

NACD starts from the why. Sensory processing, assessed channel by channel, and a program designed around what that assessment finds.

68% of parents questioning ABA aren't anti-therapy. They're frustrated with compliance-focused approaches. Here's what actually changes the brain.

10/01/2026

We made the NACD Approach free on purpose.

For 47+ years the reasoning behind our programs lived inside evaluations, where only families already working with us could hear it. That never sat right. A parent who understands how function is built can do better by their child whether they ever call NACD or not.

So it is all there. 32 lessons, about 100 minutes, narrated by Bob Doman, in English, Spanish, and Romanian. Read it, listen to it, send it to the grandparents.

https://www.nacd.org/the-nacd-approach/

09/30/2026

Most parents who find NACD are not sure what is wrong. They just know something is. Reading is not clicking, or attention drifts, or a bright kid is coasting.

Fit Check is where to start at that stage. About four minutes of questions about your child and your family, and a straight answer by email on whether NACD makes sense to look into. If it does not, we tell you that too.

No application, no call.

https://www.nacd.org/fit-check/

09/29/2026

"Developmental delay" is a description of where a child is right now. It is not a prediction of where they will end up.

Development is driven by input. The right activity, at the right frequency and intensity, in the right order, for that specific child. NACD programs are built to supply exactly that, at home, every day, so the gap narrows instead of widening.

If you have been told to wait and see, this is the page to read instead.

Told to wait and see? NACD's individualized home programs give children with developmental delays the daily targeted input development responds to. Since 1979.

09/29/2026

Simply Smarter is not only for children who are behind.

Processing, how much information a person can hold and work with at once, has a ceiling for everyone, and for most people it was never trained. Raise it and reading gets easier, instructions stick the first time, and homework takes less of the evening.

A few minutes a day, exercises that adjust to the user. Kids, teens, and adults.

https://mysimplysmarter.com

09/28/2026

You do not need to be a speech therapist to run apraxia practice at home. You need five minutes a day and something that tells you what comes next.

Speech Therapy for Apraxia handles the what comes next. Pick a consonant group and a level. The app presents the target, your child repeats it, and the levels move from single syllables toward full sequences as they improve. The daily session runs itself, and the repetitions add up.

Start with this one. It was built by the NACD team with a certified speech-language pathologist, and it is the app our own families begin with.

https://www.nacd.org/products/speech-therapy-for-apraxia-app/