NSU Horizons Spring 2010

Spotlight “MSI gave us our child back.” When Jayden Carr turned six on February 27, he had chalked up multiple hospital stays, hundreds of hours of rehabilitation and physical therapy, and countless days working with speech and behavioral therapists. Yet, anyone who comes in contact with him says just about the same thing: Jayden Carr has the determination of an Olympic athlete. It was a little more than three years ago when the then-two-year-old from Hollywood, Florida, was in a car being driven by his grand- mother, Pamela Carr. It was a sunny afternoon on September 12, 2006. A woman with a history of drunken driving on her police record sped through a four-way stop, smashing into the back seat door where Jayden was sitting. Call it mother’s intuition, but Amy Bobotis- Carr had a hunch something was wrong. She vividly remembers the day that her life and that of her family’s was forever changed. “I knew that day when I kissed him goodbye that it could be the last goodbye,” Bobotis-Carr recalled. “At the exact time of the accident, around 3:15 p.m., I started to get nervous. I was pacing.” Jayden and his grandmother usually arrived home between 3:15 and 3:30, so there was no tardi- ness, just a mother’s gut feeling about her child. “‘Something is not right,’ I said to myself, so I went looking,” she said. Not far from the family home, she saw her mother-in-law’s car, smashed and pushed onto the lawn of a home. “Police told me they had never seen anything like it. You don’t expect to see sea- soned policemen with tears in their eyes.” “A painful nightmare” The following weeks were a “painful nightmare,” said Bobotis-Carr, as she and her hus- band, Randy, knew they had to accept what had happened. Jayden had suffered severe trau- matic brain injury. They had to move on and do the best for their child. Jayden needed more specialized help. He now had attention deficits and behavioral issues as a result of his injuries. “His brain was so scrambled,” recalled his mother. “Jayden’s brain injury was very significant and impacted the way he processed information, as well as his physical development,” said Roni Leiderman, Ph.D., dean of the Mailman Segal Institute for Early Childhood Studies at Nova Southeastern University. “I remember the call that I got from Amy. She asked what I thought about her son coming to the Mailman Segal Institute for preschool.” After evaluating Jayden, Leiderman and the Carrs agreed that it would be beneficial for him to participate in MSI’s Family Center Preschool. The Family Center Preschool and Infant and Toddler Programs utilize both traditional and innovative teaching methods, honoring child-centered educa- tional paradigms, using its 5-C curriculum frame- work developed by the professional staff members at MSI. (The 5-C curriculum is communication, critical thinking, concept development, creativity, and cooperation.) Jayden Carr By Michelle Solomon 26 horizons