Disconnected Kids: The Groundbreaking Brain Balance Program for Children with Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, and Other Neurological Disorders Updated Edition

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I dedicate this book first and foremost to my wife, Carolyn, and my children, Robby, Ellie, and Ty—I love you all, you are my life’s true inspiration and the foundation of all I am and all I do. Second, to my parents, Catherine and Joseph, for all their love and support. Third, to my sister, Susan, and my brother, Domenic, and all of their families: Bill, Susan, Billy, Jeffrey, Katie, Colleen, Joey, Alexandra, Olivia, and Nick. You all have played a role in this accomplishment, and I love you all. I would like to thank Janet Groschel and Gerry Leisman for their professional inspiration and support, and Debora Yost for all her help, advice, expertise, and patience. Last but not least, I would like to thank my agent, Carol Mann, and her staff, and all those in my Brain Balance family, especially my nephew and partner, Billy Fowler. You have all helped greatly in the development of this book, the Brain Balance Program, and the Brain Balance Achievement Centers. A special thanks to Denise Festa, who started me on this journey all those years ago.

INTRODUCTION

Stopping the Worst Childhood Epidemic of Our Time

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I keep on picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff. I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.

—J. D. SALINGER, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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We live in a world and a time of great contradiction. On the one hand, we are experiencing unprecedented advances in technology. The world’s information is literally at our fingertips. We can access high-tech entertainment on a giant screen in a flash. We can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world with a smartphone.

Yet at the same time, we are experiencing an alarming escalation in the number of children who cannot fully function in this world because they don’t have fully functioning brains. Today, there are some 21 million children who have been diagnosed with severe attention, behavioral, or learning problems. Every day thousands more are being diagnosed with ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, Tourette syndrome, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, or other frightening conditions that confirm that something is not right in the brain.

This is an unprecedented phenomenon and the most important health issue of our time. Just a generation ago, autism was considered a rare disorder that was diagnosed in about 1 out of every 10,000 children born in the United States. Six years ago, when I first published Disconnected Kids, 1 out of 150 children was being diagnosed with autism. Today, the rate of children being diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder is 1 in 68, including 1 out of every 42 boys. Other conditions are skyrocketing at a similar rate. ADHD is now considered the most common childhood health problem of any kind worldwide and the most common childhood mental issue, with kids as young as three years old being prescribed Ritalin or Adderall. These statistics are making headline news everywhere almost daily, yet no one is explaining why. Why is this happening? How can we stop it? What can we do about it?

When I first started researching neurobehavioral disorders back in the nineties as a parent of a child with ADHD and as a neurology expert, I was very frustrated by the lack of good, accurate information that could explain what was happening in a child’s brain. When I asked professionals, I got vague answers about chemical imbalances and genetics and little else. When I read books, I found that they all said the same things. They reviewed the symptoms and then related a number of case histories and examples. They talked about basic treatment with medications. They said these conditions were mostly genetic and couldn’t be cured. That was about it. They never clearly stated what the actual problem was and how it produced the symptoms of ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other disorders. In fact, they were even unclear as to what the actual symptoms of these disorders are.

I began to realize that the lack of real concrete answers was due to the fact that they didn’t have real facts as to what these problems are and what is causing them. I could find no single, established neurological theory that was accepted and used in the scientific or educational community. What I did know and could clearly see was that the problem was increasing dramatically. It was obvious to me that whatever we were doing was not working.

Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. After a while I realized that the reason I was having difficulty finding an answer was because there is not a single answer.

Childhood neurological dysfunctions share many features in common and are often referred to as learning disabilities or behavioral disorders, implying that the primary symptoms affect only behavior and that the rest of development proceeds smoothly and without incident. This is not the case. Each disorder is complex and often involves every system of the body. Science, however, doesn’t take a whole body approach to seeking a solution. It has been searching for a solution by focusing on what appears to be the major issue. With ADHD, they say it’s an attention problem or impulsiveness. Dyslexia is a reading problem. Autism is a socialization and communication problem. No one has been looking at the other issues these children have—problems that could help provide clues to the underlying cause. But I did, and I could see that they involve every system in the body, not just the brain. That’s how the Brain Balance Program was born.

These disorders may manifest with different symptoms but they are really one and the same problem: a brain imbalance. There is even a name for it—Functional Disconnection Syndrome, meaning areas in the brain, especially the two hemispheres of the brain, are not electrically balanced, or synchronized. This electrical imbalance interferes with the ability of the two hemispheres to share and integrate information, meaning the brain cannot function as a whole. The result is that a child with a brain imbalance has normal or even unusually good skills associated with the higher-functioning area or side of the brain, and unusually bad skills associated with the underactive area or side of the brain. The problem seems to come about because one side of the brain is maturing at a faster rate than the other. As the child develops, this imbalance becomes more significant and the two hemispheres can never fully function as one. The brain is functionally disconnected. Fix the disconnect—that is, get the immature side of the brain to catch up to the other side—and the symptoms go away. So does the disorder.

This is what the Brain Balance Program does and why it is so revolutionary. Despite the program’s success and all the scientific studies proving how and why it works, most professionals have not changed. They are still approaching and treating each of these conditions as a single condition—and they are content to only treat the symptoms, instead of arresting the problem. I have found that most of these children have a combination of many different symptoms that include sensory, motor, cognitive, academic, emotional, and immune...