What Brought Us to Brain Balance

I hesitate to write this post. Most of the time on this blog I just talk about me. Or food. I do this because it is easy and less prone to criticism that way. I don't like to get really open about the deep details of my children because, as any mother, I feel vulnerable for them and for me with them. So generally I stay away.

But, I feel compelled to tell Our Story, as you will, about our little family and why we decided to approach Brain Balance for help. I feel like I need to document this all, both for me and for any other family that might be struggling.

I think that every earnest mother cries at night once or twice a month about the issues she sees her children facing. I am concerned about every one of my children at various points of time. But I have been consistently puzzled by my little fire-cracker right in the middle--and this concern has been going on for a few years, now.

A is my third child and is five. He is funny, interesting, earnest, and a lot lot more. He is also a complete genius. He knows all of the states and capitals, can identify them by geographic shape alone and will recite them in alphabetical order for anyone who will listen; easily navigates through 3rd grade math curricula (He will check your wallet for paper currency and immediately tell you how many pennies/dimes/quarters the amount is equal to); reads independently well; knows more about the solar system than I have ever known including in-depth knowledge of black holes and certain nuances of gas planets; memorizes everything including long lists of English prepositions and lists of linking/helping verbs. He would have started public school this year--albeit one of the youngest in the class--had I not already committed to homeschooling all of my children. This, I thought, was a particularly good thing for me to do for him especially, considering how advanced he is academically and how young he seems, socially and physically.

Adults love him. LOVE HIM! They love how uninhibited he is in talking to them, putting his hands on his hips authoritatively and asking "Did you know...(fill in the blank with some fact about space {or whatever})? It seems really cute until they notice how adamant and exhausting he is at recounting facts over and over and over. Or how he completely invades their personal space and inapropriately jumps on them as he interacts.

In fact, he is a major space invader to everyone--young and old. Adults try to shrug him off or give a specific facial expression to show that it is enough and A doesn't seem to notice or read people at all.  No matter how much I talk to him, or scold, or promise rewards, it continues. This bothers me constantly as, when a stranger comes to the door, he immediately runs up to them trying to grab whatever they have in their hands. This embarasses me to death and for a long time I thought that it was just my bad parenting or something... I would always wonder why he seemed to discourteous.

With his peers and other children he does similar things, but it is worse because of their similarity in size. Often times I will look out the window to see A laying on someone or bonking into other children. He also bites, hits, and kicks. Oh joy.

This is all normal behavior, maybe, for a 2 year old, but not a 5 year old.

Kids avoid him, because he is a bully to them. And most of the time he hangs out by himself--at the park, in the neighborhood, with his brothers in the backyard. It seems like, most of the time, his interactions with other children, including his brothers, are limited to physically bothering them. Otherwise he is inside looking at books about space or talking to any adult who will listen to his cache of knowledge.

• He's a nightmare in the car--hitting, pinching, touching, and bothering anyone who is seated next to him. It is very stressful.
• He hates anything to be changed, irrationally so. Once, when I taped a paper to a cup for a special game that I was going to use for school for his brother, he screamed for about 5 minutes about how much he didn't want me to do that. Then he ripped the paper off the cup and tore it into little pieces. A similar thing happened when I put up a vinyl sign on our front door that said "welcome." He screamed, kicked, and slammed doors for over ten minutes, threatening to "scratch [the vinyl] off and throw it away." I was so confused since it had nothing to do with him.
• He does crazy daredevil things.
• He spent most of the last two years lounging around everywhere. Often I would find him throughout the day just laying on his bed or on the grass outside. He seemed tired often, but not sleepy. Though he slept well for naps and through the whole night.
• He doesn't really play with toys.
• He's had a vague tummyache every few mornings for a year.
• He screams and has a tantrum if we need to go anywhere in the car.
• He can't seem to follow multi-step directions.
• He seems depressed or bored most of the time.
• He physically bullies his brothers and stranger children. A few weeks ago at the park he pushed a little girl down the slide and then later ran up to a girl and pushed her down on the ground. I was so embarrassed and confused by his actions.
• Everyone puts him in "time-out"--primary, music class, other community children's classes. Even the day that Aaron and I went to our first presentation for Brain Balance, we came home to find that the babysitter had put him in time out for the rest of the night.

All of this is unfortunate because he is a great and very likable child. He is funny and thoughtful and says the most sincere and faith-filled prayers I have ever heard.

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Several weeks ago we had a particularly exhausting week of A's bullying behavior to his brothers. He would walk down the hall and then, out of nowhere, shove his little brother into the wall. Or he would walk into a room where his older brothers were working and knock down their toys or bite their ears or legs. We were all starting to flinch whenever he came into the room. And what was the most concerning of all was that we were starting to have very real relationship-damaging interactions in our family--both from me or Aaron scolding, yelling, spanking etc; and from his brothers seeking to avoid him and saying things like "I don't want him in our family anymore." This, coupled with the problems he has out of our home, I had had enough.

So, in tears I messaged my friend Tammy on Facebook. She had done the Brain Balance program in Georgia a few years ago with her two autistic sons and had remarkable results--so much so that she came back to Utah and opened up two centers there to help all of the other families that she could see that were struggling. I had read her blog and the books that she cited and was familiar with the philosophies behind the center. I asked her if she thought that the symptoms I cited for A were symptoms that "needed brain-balancing."

I was kind of embarrassed to write the message, honestly, because all of A's behavior could instead just reflect on my own poor parenting (and probably half of it still does), instead of her program. But I felt strangely compelled to talk to her and I felt desperate to do something for him. Tammy wrote back quickly and confirmed that A may benefit from the program. But it wasn't until I got to the center and read even more of the literature that I really saw all of the symptoms that he had--things that I never noticed before and just chalked up to his "funny personality."

So, we started the program.