Our son, Jonathan, has always been unique and quirky. He crawled with one leg up, his semantics was unusual. He didn't react to disciple in the way that we expected. As Jonathan approached the 2nd grade, his "listening skills" were driving us crazy. We yelled--a lot. It was as if he couldn't hear us, yet he had perfect hearing. Reading was difficult. Getting him to pay attention was hard. He threw a big fit at just the suggestion of reading a chapter book. He wasn't interested in listening to them either.
He "organized" his room in a creative and extremely messy fashion. He set up his furniture to block path to the closet for example. If I spread out his bedspread which he had meticulously wadded up into a ball on the bottom left side of his bed, he had a melt down.
His behavior was wearing us out.
One day when he came home from school, I found a flyer in Erik's backpack. I had seen it in Jonathan's a few days earlier, but I hadn't paid much attention to it and quickly recycled it with the many other ads I got in both his and Jonathan's folder. This time I stopped. I read the description of a business that helped children with all sorts of problems from ADHD to Asperger's and everything in between without the use of medication. I had always worried that Jonathan had ADD/ADHD to some degree, but I didn't want to have him medicated. I had read a lot about alternatives to helping with these problems including diet (gut-brain connection), but it all seemed overwhelming.
I decided to take Jonathan in for an evaluation. The test results confirmed my suspicion that something wasn't right and they pinpointed his behavior to a T. They told us he had a right brain weakness and that they would be doing things to stimulate the right brain to help it develop. They even did an eye test and I was able to see the results. The difficulty his eyes had in tracking the words was incredible. He was fatiguing and that is why reading a lot of words was difficult for him. It was tiring. Landon and I felt like we should to enroll him in the program although we were nervous about it working.
The program was no walk in the park. We went to the center three times a week for an hour over the course of three months. We were also assigned exercises to do every day. On top of that, Jonathan's blood was tested for food sensitivities. We learned that he was sensitive to what seem like everything under the sun. We counseled with a nutritionist and put him on a special diet.
Jonathan made great progress. We saw huge improvements in his hearing, in his emotional state and in his coordination. His school teacher and our neighbors saw improvements too. When we were finished with the three months, we decided to continue working on it at home as he still had progress to make, but we did not feel it necessary to enroll him in another three months (not to mention the time and money commitment).
We are ever so grateful for the program and hope to see continued progress in him over the years.
(When we unpack, I'll post a picture of him with a frame they displayed at the center while he was there. Every time he made progress in his behavior, I wrote what it was on the frame.)
