A blog? I hate Facebook. I don’t
get Twittering. I just switched my calendar from my beloved paper one to my
phone last month. So me writing a blog is kind of strange and unexpected.
Then why am I doing it? I am
about to embark on what I am hoping will be a memorable journey with my son
Sam. I want to be hyper-aware of any changes that take place. And I also want
to share my experience with anyone who’s interested.
Even saying this makes me
anxious. I worry that admitting my optimism will stop the goodness from taking
place. Kind of like when we speed into the city with no traffic and I turn to
my husband and say “Wow, that was a great ride. Taking the car was such a good
idea.” Out of nowhere twenty cars jump in front of us and somehow i just know
that acknowledging our good fortune made this happen. So even though I am super
excited and that this blog will chronicle major growth, I also worry that it’s
all hype and in four months, we will be in the same place we are today – just
with less money and slightly broken hearts.
So where are we and what’s the
journey? My son Sam is almost eight. He has the best laugh, he's got an awesome
sense of humor, he shocks me with his addition & subtraction skills and
he's a superstar within five minutes of being exposed to any video game. He has PDDNOS, ADD and a bunch of other
unnamed issues. And despite years
of therapy, evaluations, IEPs and countless miles on our car, he's not
improving as quickly as we'd like so we're ready to try something new. It's called Brain Balance. It's a
twelve week program for kids whose brains need some balancing. Which his
definitely does.
Brain Balance is an Achievement
Center which opened up last Fall in Summit, New Jersey. Have you heard of Dr.
Melillo? I hadn’t but I read his book,
Disconnected Kids, and what he writes makes a lot of sense.
He
believes that many of the disorders that are popping up with alarming
regularity in every first and second grade classroom are manifestations of one
underlying condition called Functional Disconnection. In his book, he suggests
that the behavioral, academic, and social difficulties these kids suffer from
are caused by an imbalance between the hemispheres of their brains. He predicts
that if you close the gap between the two sides of the brain, issues like
distractability, low muscle tone and other Sam behaviors will happen less - and
maybe even go away. His theories serve as the foundation for the work done at
Brain Balance.
Sound too good to be true?
That's what I'm scared of. But before I start looking forward, we need to back
up so i can tell you how we got here.
Having PDDNOS (pervasive
development disorder not otherwise specified) means that Sam has lots of
symptoms that don’t add up to official autism but he’s definitely somewhere on
the spectrum. We knew something was off when he was just under a year old. He
rolled over, crawled and cruised on time but then his development stalled. He
didn’t talk at all. He didn’t understand anything we said. He worked with Early
Intervention for a while and then moved on to private speech therapy, private
OT and private PT.
Eventually, he learned how to
talk, walk, run and jump. Now he
can do it all – he just can’t do it with the ease most others do. He’s still
floppy with low muscle tone. His
fine and gross motor skills are not where they should be. He makes great eye contact but takes a
while to warm up.
In addition to the physical
stuff, he has mild depression, anxiety and ADD. For these, he sees a
psychologist, a psychiatrist and is part of a social skills group. And because he has a hard time
deciphering lengthy directions or conversations, he just recently started
language therapy (a variation of speech therapy).
Thanks to all of this, Sam has
made some major strides forward. I’m proud of the work he’s done and I appreciate how easy he makes it to
shuttle him from one appointment to the next. But I am always on the lookout for
a new cure or treatment so last October, when I heard about Brain Balance from
a mother in town who has a kid with ADHD, I was on a mission to learn more
about it.
Betsy Stoeber is a mom at Sam’s
school and I have known her for the past year. Not well. But we both helped out
at last year’s book fair and I’ve seen her around. She has a nice way about her
and when I heard she opened up a new business that caters to kids like Sam, I
felt comfortable sending her an email asking what it was all about. She
responded quickly and invited me in for a tour the next day.
The walls are a really calm
shade of grey. The furniture has clean lines and is bright and comfortable. I’m
not one to focus on karma or vibes but I got a really good feeling walking
around the Center. She shared the
story of how she got hooked up with Brain Balance; I am envious of her son’s
results. I want to be in her shoes and I am immediately sold - not by the facility (although
the wall color is really soothing and makes me want to spend lots of time
there) but by Betsy’s passion. I
want what she’s selling and I want it now.
The next day I take out Disconnected
Kids from the library. I tell my husband Tom about the tour
and he reads the book cover to cover. I read it too and we go out to dinner to
discuss. He likes what he read but thinks the fee is too high and that we can
do all the exercises ourselves at home. Sadly I admit that while I am committed
to helping Sam, I know my limitations and I just don’t have enough spare time
in my day to take this on.
A few months later, Sam is told
he needs yet another evaluation and through it we discover that he needs to add a new therapist to his arsenal of doctors. Two weeks later, his OT, who
has been working with him since he was just two, admits that she’s disappointed
with Sam’s recent progress. She never gets frustrated. She’s Sam’s cheerleader;
she’s the one who always has a new idea or plan or suggestion so her look of
discouragement puts a pit in my stomach. I ask what she has in mind – A new OT?
Some other kind of therapy? That music program she mentioned a few weeks back?
She’s not sure but thinks that maybe it’s time to mix it up.
Tom and I sit down that night
and reconsider Brain Balance. I am surprised when he agrees and wants to give it a try. Sam gets evaluated the following
week, we hear the results of his evaluation a week after that and sign him up
on the spot. Tomorrow is his first appointment. I cannot believe how excited I
am for him.
So here we are back at the
beginning. Back to me being anxious about admitting how much i want this to
work. Fingers crossed. Let’s go for a ride!
Going over Sam's evaluation with
Betsy last week was fascinating. She started off by pointing to a chart hanging
on the conference room wall in front of us. On it are the traits of kids whose
right or left hemispheres are under-active. Tom and I saw bits of Sam on both
sides. She explained that that's common and that they used the results of his
testing, combined with the information we provided, to determine that it’s his
right side that’s under-activated.
Based on this learning, they created a plan which
should strengthen his body and brain where it is weak. 
