Brain Balance Beginning Symptom List

As promised, I wanted to post a list of things my son presently does that are things that could be caused by a brain imbalance. But to explain more what that means, I first want to give a little background as I understand it from what I've read and heard. The people at Brain Balance discuss brain hemispheres and how they can be out of balance. A healthy or mature brain is one that has equally balanced left and right hemispheres and they talk to each other. There are many pathways that go from one hemisphere to the other. That is how information is brought in and laid down on the brain. Information from the right eye goes to the left brain and vice versa. An imbalance in the brain occurs when one side of the brain is over-stimulated and the other is under 'done' or hasn't matured as fast. The two sides have trouble communicating. It would be similar to a generation gap. The adult side is talking in language the baby side can't understand. This causes learning problems or problems with physical abilities of balancing and hearing/processing or speech. In a recent study I read about it actually showed how the wiring in a brain of kids with issues actually has problems. Instead of the wiring going from one hemisphere to the other like it should, it wires back on itself. I think this might be why loops occur in these kids. They get stuck in a pattern. Many autistic kids will actually walk in a circle or a figure 8 pattern. They also get in mental loops like fixation on one thing (my son likes gadgets of any kind and also loved vacuums when he was younger) One good side affect of this is genius kids where they are super good at a sport or music or math. They excel beyond most at this one thing, but they might be socially backward or unable to do other things up to par. They are stuck on that one thing. That part of their brain is wired around and around instead of crossing over. They have a list at the Brain Balance center that shows what symptoms show up if your child is brain dominant on the right or the left. My son has an under-active right brain and over-active left. When I found out what stimulates the left brain to be over-active I can see why. Electronics (TV, computer games, handheld games) inflexibility (he hates to change and freaks out sometimes when we change plans last minute)   Here's my partial list of things that I noticed about him, some of which I didn't even realize were part of his brain issues:   stuffing his mouth with too much food   speaking too loudly in most settings repeating questions over and over till he receives stimulus back 'fixating' on certain things taking extra long to learn how to ride a bike running awkwardly not looking people in the eye reading issues *the test for this was so interesting. We were able to watch where his eyes went on the page as he tried to read. They were all over the page. not understanding humor taking things literally allergies spelling problems not feeling comfortable in playing sports emotional meltdowns over seemingly small things addiction to movies, electronic games immature digestive track sensitivity to light and certain noises singing off key (can't hold a tune in a bucket as my hubby says about himself) speaking monotone rhythm problems with both dance and playing instruments also in dancing being unable to mirror what the teacher is doing having to be told something over and over to get it not being able to follow a list of instructions. Usually only does the first thing he's told but rarely the second step/instruction inability to put new information into practical use. He may memorize the 'rules' but doesn't actually understand how to use them (causes issues with math word problems) auditory processing issues-he hears fine but doesn't 'get' what was said poor handwriting and drawing ability socially immature (acts younger than his age) not being able to read social cues- can't tell if someone is uncomfortable about what he's doing/saying So, part of what they do at the center is to over-stimulate the weak side of the brain and cut back on stimulus to the overactive side. This means little to no electronics. It also means we have to change things up all the time for our son. He has a pattern of how he does things and we have to mess it up. He gets home, gets the mail, showers and then goes out for a bike ride (and has a regular route he takes) and then....... it goes on from there. If you try to interrupt his pattern, he doesn't appreciate it very much and often goes on with his pattern even if you tell him he can't. This means that we have to take him out of his routine. Today we took him to an art museum. Art is very right brain. Also, he hasn't been to this museum for years so it's bringing in new stimulus. I also shifted his schedule around and had him do something else before showering. Then as he was trying to leave to ride his bike I stopped him and told him it was time to do his exercises (They send you home with a set of exercises to do 3X a day that stimulates his right brain). At first he argued, then he went and played the piano to try and avoid what I asked him to do. For him, this is like pattern B when his pattern A is interrupted. So, I had to change that too and get him doing something else. We also had someone else get the mail today. I'd say he has gotten the mail about 95% of the time since we've lived in our present home. He fretted about it. Luckily he is old enough for me to explain to him that we have to do this to help him. We were told to expect some immature behavior to come out. It's part of the program and actually shows progress. It is caused by the part of the program that addresses Primitive Reflexes. I'll cover those in another post because they are super interesting. But basically they are the reflexes that babies are wired with to help them survive. But you are supposed to grow out of them. Kids that are stuck in them or haven't yet matured out of them have issues that are currently being labeled as ADD/ADHD or Autism spectrum. More on that later.