Brain Balance here we come!

For several years I wished I could take my son to a Brain Balance center for therapy. I had read their book called Disconnected Kids and it perfectly described my son's situation. But, since there wasn't one nearby, it wasn't a reality. I guess we could have picked up and moved for a few months but most of my family would have had a hard time with that. Plus, it would have been too expensive to do, so instead I just resigned myself to the fact that we would find answers that we could try at home. We did a few things to help over the years; Energy work, massage, chiropractic,emotional work, brain gym-type exercises, nutritional powders, etc. He has made progress in small increments. When he was younger he was probably considered Asperger's but never officially got that diagnosis. He had quite a few of the typical signs of it. He did stimming (hand flapping) and had obsessions over certain things (vacuums) as well as delayed speech, auditory processing issues, problems with lots of school subjects. Things didn't seem to stick when he was taught a new concept. He had to see/hear/do it over and over again to learn it. We ended up homeschooling him so that he could learn at his own pace. It took a lot of time, but he learned to read and write. He gets frustrated over things, but generally has a sweet disposition. A couple of months ago I was going through my emails and found one from Brain Balance. I get them several times a month and occasionally I open them but most times I don't have time. For some reason, this time, instead of just reading the email I also decided to check out their website to see if they had any centers closer to us than California. I typed in my zip code and was shocked to see that a new center had just opened up in my town. It was actually less than a mile from my house! I couldn't believe my eyes. I immediately called them and they said they had only been open a few weeks. I was so excited that I wanted to go over there that very day, but instead I found out that they were having an introduction meeting to explain their program in detail. You can bet I was at that meeting. Turned out it was standing room only. I had posted about it on all my homeschooling sites because I was overjoyed to have this option available finally and wanted everyone I knew that had kids with Autism Spectrum kids or ADD, dyslexic, etc to know about it. The meeting was awesome and it just gave me so much hope for my son. I hadn't ever given up on the idea that he could live a less frustrating life. I love him the way he is and would be fine with him staying that way, but I can tell he longs for different circumstances and he gets frustrated by things that he can't do. So for his sake I wanted to try this. He was super excited. I didn't expect him to understand what it was about, but for some reason, from the minute I mentioned it he was ready to jump in and try it. Usually new things kind of scare him, so I was very surprised that he was so eager. We signed up to have an assessment done to see if they thought they could help him. It consists of two periods of testing. One tests physical skills and one tests mental skills. Then there is the parent observation paperwork. That gives the parents a chance to give more detail on what they have observed about their child as well as their history. It was a lengthy stack of questionnaires but each one had a purpose. I've never enjoyed paperwork so I can't say I was happy to do it. But it was worth it to get so much information about my son that answered years of questions and frustration. Our followup appointment to go over the assessment was so eye opening. I had no idea how hard my son was working just to overcome the symptoms and do as well as he had. I had more compassion for his struggles after that and felt bad for getting angry when he wouldn't do something. Now I learned that it wasn't possible due to his brain. Now all we had to do was to decide yes or no. It was always a yes for me because I knew it wasn't an accident that I had discovered the center just weeks after it opened. I hadn't looked for centers for a years. Then I suddenly felt like I should look? Definitely inspiration, not accident. So I felt good about it from the get go. My son was a go too, and he was even willing to pay for part of it (most of it) because he felt like it would be good. I had explained the hard things about it that I thought might deter him. I tried to soften it because it was things that would really change his world (no screen time, a very strict diet, lots of exercises) None of that fazed him at all. He kept saying he wanted to do it. I had a couple of super busy weeks so I couldn't call the center to let them know we were going to do the program. During those weeks my son kept asking, "When am I going to start my challenge?" He didn't let up so I finally called them and set up our first appointment. The first appointment is where we went over everything we had to do with him. There was a lot to talk about. I had lots of questions and they patiently answered. This appointment was with just my husband and I. Our son didn't join us for that one. Our 2nd appointment was with a nutritionist to go over the special diet that is part of the program. I thought my son should come with us for that because it might be easier for someone else to tell him he has to give up most of his favorite foods for several months! He was actually ready to start the diet the minute we finished the appointment. Unfortunately I didn't have the food he needed yet so he had to wait a couple of days before we could officially start. I finally got to Costco and Whole Foods so we officially started the diet 2 days ago. I'll go into that more in another post. I also want to make a list of some of the things that my son does now that we found out are part of his brain imbalance. I want a record of what he has been like so that it will be easier to document the changes. I'll post that tomorrow. We have lots of hope now that we haven't had for years.