I believe you, you're listening to Ted talks daily, so I needed a little inspiration and today's talk from Billy Samuel Mopey is just what I needed.

In his talk at Ted at PME 2020, the Zambian computer scientist shares how he put his tech and project managing skills to work to help heal his baby's brain and body. All on a tight timeline, really. It is a third of March 2016, and I'm anxiously waiting for my wife to deliver our first born son.

Second, stand in two minutes and then hours without a sign of a child coming through. Then a midwife emerges with a silent baby in her hands and she runs past me as though I'm not even there. Why is he not crying? A group with shoes in my spine as I run after high in terror. She puts the baby on the bench and begins the resuscitation procedure. 30 minutes later, she tells me. Don't worry, he will be fine and thank you for staying calm.

He was placed in the ICU. And though I cannot touch him, I repeatedly say, shine on my son. Don't give up. I am here with you and you don't have to be scared, please pull through and let us go home. You do not belong here. Seven months later, he will be diagnosed with cerebral palsy. A non progressive brain injury, which primarily affects body movement and muscle coordination. About two to three children out of one thousand in the United States have cerebral palsy.

I do not know the statistics for my country and continent because there's not much documentation. Maybe this could be the journey that changes everything. We named him to a beautiful Zambian named for my Lunda tribe of the Bemba's speaking people, meaning Lites. By the time he was seven months. Look at his physical impairment was predominant in his left part of his body, both his left leg and we are less responsive. He couldn't grasp items west of couldn't bobbo his first words because the cerebral palsy shako affects the muscles in his leap's rolling over and other milestones that come natural in typical babies could be seen in our son.

Lubutu was visibly unaware of his own body. And some specialists started preparing us for the waste by telling us that we were going to be very lucky if we ever sat upright and unsupported before us. Was a gigantic, seemingly immovable mountain. What do we do? For the past 15 years, I've worked as a computer programmer and now I'm a certified project management professional. After the denial, crying and partial depression was over. I began to wonder if we could put my programming and project management skills together to try and help the situation.

Acceptance kicked in, and I sensed from deep within for strength and any available knowledge to help with the challenge before us.

I order two books online. And spent countless sleepless nights researching neuroplasticity in a child's brain. My extensive research indicated that people have stroke, are able to recover through assiduous rehabilitation programs, that activates new pathways in the better part of their brains. This left me with one big question. If this works for grown people, why should it not work for a baby? I also learned that human beings pick up fundamental patterns, men between ages zero to five, and after that, consolidation of habits happens.

It was scary. To realize that we may just have five years to figure out the inability of Lubutu. On such a tight timeline, we need it to be viewed as a support system around him, leveraging the limited resources available to us.

This is a clear project before us which needed to be carefully executed and we needed a capable, self driven team, an agile team. Agile is a methodology that we use to execute projects with changing requirements to achieve progressive results in increments. We it to. Deliver quick results and in pieces, considering our wake was largely dependent on Luter's responsiveness and capability, the first team member I acquired was my beautiful wife, Abigail, who is likely a project manager to.

You know, rough, that can be right. Two project managers under one roof. We say around Zambia for a neonatal physiotherapist, an occupational therapist and a speech therapist, it felt like mission impossible. We said roadmaps of one to three months, just enough planning and just in time. We then identified features like we want him to stand and walk independently under different themes like gross motor, fine motor adaptive skills, communication, asymmetric movement and balance.

Next, we created sprints to work on the stimulation of different parts of Luter's body. When you're working on a larger project, you do a series of lead, two tasks collectively called sprits, which the team reviews after execution. We, for example, set a goal to stimulate his left arm, say occupational therapists use different textures to rub on his arm.

Physiotherapists make deliberate movements in Islam to build the muscles. And self-proclaimed general therapist was usually myself. Engage in logical stimulations, like slowly moving his favorite toy from his right hand across a buy in front of him to his left side. To prompt movement in his left arm. And at the end of each week, we would review our results as a team, how did Odigo how did feasible, how did simulation go? Did we meet our goal? Because frequent communication is very important on an agile project.

We created a WhatsApp group for quicker updates.

Felling early and picking up is a special characteristic of agility, and we leverage that because our work is largely dependent on his response.

Luckily, Toyota is a fighter. And his determination is out of this world. After we achieve the goal of activating Islam, we then moved to his leg. The activities were totally different. But followed the similar iterative process. How come to in brain plasticity that you would always be better off learning certain skills when it was ready, even if it means delaying him because he had to learn it right? While working and managing Lubutu as an agile project, a new team member popped up.

Oh, it's Luitel sister Yamila. We had no idea how we're going to manage the process without disturbing him while not making the system feel neglected because we were given the brother a lot of attention, our daily iterations continued and now Lubutu was able to walk on his legs with me cheerleading from the front as I walked backwards because I needed to keep eye contact with them. I sang his favorite songs as we oscillated between our bedroom and the kitchen. We then travel to South Africa and introduced a new movement therapist to the team.

Coupled with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. These friends were much shorter and focused on his brain, teaching him about his own body through small body movements.

Terry did a miraculous job. Lubutu started opening his knees in unison with his hips, and in our second week, he was able to run with better balance. He started making intentional sounds to communicate with us as a result of the new neuropathies fiery. We return to Zambia with amazing results and guess who effectively picked up the therapy, the new team member. Lubutu started mimicking the sister and Sunni was learning more things good and bad from the sister than he was learning from his team of therapists.

To make sure that it stays on track. We built a unique curriculum that incorporates all the therapies with Teacher Gutzon. We've been blessed to have the knowledge before us. And be able to practically apply it. Not all families with special needs children, as fortunate as we are, was to have backlog stories, which is a fancy agitating for pushing failure to a later date. In Lou Waters, gas drilling and potty training. But the United States lead to daily activities.

We manage. To improve the entire left part of Luter's body. From the. To one thing or to the other. From the leg to the toes, Lubutu began to roar over, he began to independently seat. He was able to crawl, stand, walk, run, and now he plays soccer with me in a more coordinated manner. This has left my wife's heart and mind melting, and we've been blown away by the unbelievable results we've witnessed as a result of this experimental methodology, and now we proudly call ourselves agile parents.

You may be a parent with a special needs child like me. Or you could be facing different types of limitations in your life professionally, financially, academically or even physically. I want to remind you that in striving for bigger goals, dare to take small screens. These springs are usually far from excellent themselves, but they add up to magnificent results. Thank you. Ted Talks Daily, is hosted by Elise Hu and produced by Ted theme music is from Allison Layton Brown.

In our mixer is Christopher Fazi Bogon.

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