Brain Balance

Anyone ever hear of this program? I did a search on LIF and one other person asked and the answers were pretty much "It's a scam." Still wondering if anyone looked into it.
Just saw a commercial for it so I called. Figured I'd try a free assessment, but when I talked with the woman on the phone she kept talking about some guy named Dr Mellilo and how this is the future to children with autism or other neurological issues.

Re: Brain Balance

I have no 1st hand experience with Brain Balance, but I am a Pediatric. OTand belong to an awesome Pediatric OT Facebook Page with almost 14,000 members. Brain Balance seems to come up a lot and the general consensus seems to be that it costs a lot of money, and investment of time. They provide "cookie cutter" activities based upon Sensory Integration principles generated from researching by OTs. The persons providing the service are not professionals. They are people who are "trained" but not OTs, PTs, Speech etc... Many of the OTs on the FB page tried to speak with owners to get more info, but they are vague and elusive. It sounds like parents pay a ton of money to have their kids participate in generally movement based activities that aren't really tailored to the individual child. You might be better off paying (or using school based) an OT, PT and Speech therapist to come up with awesome, individually tailored home/school programs and give you a list of activities like swimming that would benefit your child.

I haven't worked with or know anyone who has brought their child to a brain balance center.... Let me know if you decide to try it, I'm pretty curious to hear what they do exactly and if you see results...

Re: Brain Balance

One of my students went there. Mom spent a ton of money and time. When we had the kids annual review meeting, mom came in with a beautiful color copy binder of charts and papers but mom couldn't express what they were working on and how it was helping. She kept saying It feeds her brain in her areas of deficit. No difference in the child

Re: Brain Balance

Thanks for the feedback. DS is doing well with speech and OT so I see a difference. Just the commercial intrigued me. Thought it was another type of therapy bc he likes to do busy work.
When I spoke with the woman on the phone she wasn't giving me any real answers. Kept repeating herself. I think I'll avoid it and stick to what we're doing already.

Message edited 2/8/2015 8:54:35 PM.