The big picture

What else goes on back there besides the sensory flooding? There's a cognitive portion of each session too. For thirty minutes, Sam meets with a tutor to review specific sub-skills that are difficult for him. Areas like comprehension (reading and listening) and math reasoning can be problematic for right-brain weak children.  Kids like Sam often have a great memory for details, but have trouble with summarizing, getting the big picture and identifying the main idea. Understanding cause & effect relationships is sometimes challenging. And since they're usually very literal, they need to learn how to make inferences.  To get stronger in these areas, Sam uses worksheets, games and manipulatives.

When we signed up, I worried that Sam would resist this part of the program and that it might feel too much like school. But he likes it.  He's good at math and enjoys playing around with the numbers in different ways than he does in school. I think I mentioned before that Sam recently had a language evaluation which indicated that he has a hard time keeping up if a conversation or direction is too complex and lengthy - he's fine with individual words and sentences. But when he has to follow along with a whole paragraph, he gets lost. The evaluator didn't think this was because of his ADD. Hopefully this is something they'll work on since I pulled him out of his newly started language therapy when we started at Brain Balance.

This morning as Sam and I were listening to his music and doing wall push ups (my arms are getting stronger too!) I reminded Sam that if he didn't do the exercises as often as they recommend we might have to do more than twelve weeks. He looked at me with surprise:

We stop after twelve weeks?

That's the plan.

But I like it there.

You do?

Yup. It's fun and I like the stars.

I love that you like going.

Crazy. I never imagined that he would actually like being pushed so hard. Or that he would be sad to know that it's not a forever commitment like all his other therapies seem to be. As much as I love chatting with sweet Erin, I won't miss it when it's over. But with at least nine more weeks to go, we're getting ahead of ourselves. 

What goes on back there?

So now that we’re three weeks in and you know all about how happy and chatty Sam has become, let me fill you in a little about what actually goes on in his sessions.

Interestingly, they don't tell me much. It’s not like OT where his therapist invited me to sporadically to catch up and I could see how Sam was progressing. And it’s not like speech where his therapist would bring him out five minutes before his time was up to give me a brief run down of what they did and how he handled it. At Brain Balance, he heads back with Erin and his binder and comes back to me an hour later on his own. I have no interaction with either of the women he works with. I’m not even sure of the name of the woman who does the cognitive portion of the session. And as anyone who has kids knows, I cannot get any info from Sam. He tells me nothing, No names. No drills. No details. No funny moments. N-O-T-H-I-N-G-! They say they don't share because they need to protect their product and don't want other therapists stealing their secrets. Also, since the sessions are so short and intense, they don't have the time to talk to parents on a daily basis. Makes sense but I'm still hungry for information and don't want to wait till our first parent meeting. It doesn't happen till we're 1/3 of the way through the 12 weeks.

Last week I asked Erin if I could take a peak in on his session to see what he does. As gracious as ever, she took me back to Betsy’s office to spy through the two-way mirror. There he was in this crazy sensory motor gymnasium walking on the balance beam. As if that was not hard enough for Sam to master, he had some kind of band on his ankle, another one on his wrist, an earplug in one ear and wacky glasses that were mostly black. How could he not tell me any of this? Does he realize how funny he looks and how silly what he’s doing is? I guess not. Next, he went on to do side planks and climb on the monkey bars - with all apparatus in tact. He was very pleasantly moving from task to task and seemed to be having fun. I asked if all the kids were so compliant and Erin told me that he’s really easy. She kind of has to say that though, doesn’t she?

Because I didn’t feel like the above gives you (or me) a really clear sense of what they're doing and why, I asked Betsy to tell me more.  She explained that there are two goals for each sensory motor session – 1. they want the kids to make functional gains by moving up levels (this is what he earns the stars for) and 2. they want to provide targeted stimulation to his weaker hemisphere so that it can grow and catch up. A well-known neurologist at UCSF, Michael Metternich, wrote:

Research has shown that engaging the brain’s plasticity to drive beneficial changes requires exact stimuli delivered in the appropriate sequence with precise timing. The training must be intensive, repetitive, and progressively challenging. Individuals must be strongly engaged in the training, paying close attention.  It’s all about the mind’s vitality–nurturing it, reclaiming it and giving it strength.

 

According to Betsy, this is the driving principle behind the program and this approach is what makes it different from other programs.  

I’ve read and heard most of what she’s saying before. It seems like Brain Balance is taking ideas from a lot of different doctors and theories and combining them into an intense 12 weeks.

It all makes sense and I want to believe but the cynic in me (the one who keeps telling me not to get too hopeful) is still skeptical. Doesn’t it sound a little hocus-pocusy? I think it does and I wouldn’t be shocked one bit if Casey and Erin invite me in for a séance being led by Betsy. But if Sam keeps smiling as much as he did this week, I’m ok with a little magic and am 100% ready to start drinking the kool-aid. Assuming it's dairy-free.

Dancing

I know you are sick of hearing about Great Wolf Lodge. But I have one more story to share. After dinner, we rushed back to the hotel for a final round of Magiquest. Sadly it ended at 10pm and we were too late. So we put our wands away and headed for the Dance Party taking place in reception. The energetic DJ cranked up the music while the kids followed the moves performed by Just Dance 3 – showcased on the big screen TV. There were about 50 kids dancing along in the center of the immense lobby.  Without a moment's hesitation, Sam launched into the crowd and joined in. Even though keeping up was difficult for him (don't forget about his gross motor skill and motor planning deficits), he loved it and didn't stop moving for a solid twenty minutes. When he paused for a breath, he realized that he was the only of our family dancing so he grabbed my hand and pulled me out on to the floor with him.  I struggled along (it didn't take long to see which parent he gets his two left feet from) and when I couldn't stand the humiliation anymore, Tom took a turn.

Is this a new more outgoing version of Sam? Or am I looking too closely and giving Brain Balance more credit than it could possibly have earned so quickly?

I can't really tell. Even though Sam is super shy, there have been plenty of surprising moments over the years when his behavior has been unpredictable. At the end of every movie we saw when he was a toddler, he would stroll up to the front of the theater and dance. It would become Sam’s stage – with the credits rolling and the soundtrack blaring he would boogie his heart out  completely oblivious to the people watching and his lack of rhythm. He would get lost in the music and it was a sight to see. When he turned sixish he became more self aware and the performances stopped.

Maybe this incident at Great Wolf was just the residue of that dancing fool from years ago. Or maybe Sam is feeling a little better about himself and that’s allowing the happiness to surface in ways it hasn’t in years.  As I write this, I can feel my hope rising and it’s not because I think he’s getting any closer to hitting a home run or running a marathon. It’s because I want him to love himself as much as I do.  And if balancing his brain somehow makes him see that he’s one of the coolest kids around, it will be worth every penny (and then some).