#GetMaxToCalifornia

I’ll apologise in advance for the long post, but please stick with us to the end! Max is a 3 year old little boy from Stockton-on-Tees who was born 11 weeks early. He suffered bleeds to his brain which led to brain damage and ultimately, cerebral palsy and hydrocephalus, among other things. Max has spent lots of time in hospital and even had brain surgery at four months old. Despite that, Max is a happy little boy but he isn’t yet able to sit safely, or crawl or stand by himself.

As you may or may not be aware, Max went to London in March 2023 to take part in a block of ABM therapy and even had the chance to work with the creator of the therapy, Anat Baniel herself. This is the first and only time she has ever been to England to deliver therapy!

First of all, a little more about ABM…

The Anat Baniel Method NeuroMovement (ABM) is grounded in the principles of Neuro plasticity. It is a simple gentle Movement approach and focuses to help the child maximise their potential, whatever the diagnosis. 

NeuroMovement® and the 9 Essentials utilize brain plasticity science and positive brain change to create new connections in your child’s brain. This often leads to spontaneous, extraordinary breakthroughs in movement, thinking, self-regulation, and connection with others.

Max has been taking part in ABM every month since September 2021 with a practitioner called Shirley Cornish. He does 2 lessons a day for three days in a row. It costs us upwards of £400 each time we have a monthly intensive. When Max first started ABM, his vision was poor and his consultant told us she thought he potentially could be severely visually impaired. We couldn’t believe the change in his vision after only one intensive. Max is a child who responds very well to ABM; he becomes calm and is able to quiet his mind and focus. This enables his brain to develop and create new connections, therefore helping him to achieve more.

Max is so close to crawling, and his cognitive and speech development has come on incredibly since he saw Anat Baniel last month. He has gone from saying a handful of words to being able to put two words together. His development in recent weeks has truly astounded us.

Anat Baniel herself told us that Max’s brain has so much potential and he needs to continue attending lessons with Shirley, and even possibly increase the amount and frequency of lessons if possible. She also said that Max would benefit from working directly with herself and her team for a long intensive if it’s something we could do.

This brings me to the purpose of my post…Anat Baniel is based in California and she wants Max to take part in a three-week intensive. If anyone would have suggested this to me before we went to London and Max had the opportunity to work with Anat, there is no way I would have considered spending such a significant amount of money to go when I didn’t know how huge the benefits would be. However, and I’m sure all you parents will understand me when I say this, Chris and I will do whatever we can and spend whatever we need to in order to give Max every opportunity to learn and develop and seeing the changes in him have given me so much hope for his future. I have never asked people to help us fundraise directly for Max, and it’s not something I am doing lightly, but this is such an incredible chance for Max and if we can get him to California, it could potentially change his life and ours. We are aiming to get him there in June 2024! I’ve never believed in miracles, but I think this is as close as we’re going to get for Max.

We are going to get Max involved in the fundraising and we have loads of ideas of things we can do, so if people can sponsor/support/donate/fundraise in any way at all, we would be eternally grateful. The therapy alone, without considering travel, insurance, car hire and everything else, is going to be $9600, so we’ve got a lot of work to do! If Max is lucky enough that we are able to raise more than what he needs for this trip, the money will be put into his 'therapy' account and used for ongoing private therapy.

So for now, let’s get the ball rolling as we try to #GetMaxToCalifornia