'Cutting-Edge' Program For Children With Autism And ADHD Rests On Razor-Thin Evidence
Some parents see it coming. Natalie was not that kind of parent.
Even after the director and a teacher at her older son's day care sat her down one afternoon in 2011 to detail the 3-year-old's difficulty socializing and his tendency to chatter endlessly about topics his peers showed no interest in, she still didn't get the message.
Her son, the two educators eventually spelled out, might be on the autism spectrum.
"I was in tears at the end," she says. "When I got home, I was just devastated."
Natalie broke the news to her wife, Stephanie, whose mind fast forwarded to a distressing future. Would her son — a squat, cheerful boy who, despite his affectionate nature, didn't have any playmates — ever be able to make friends?
When a doctor eventually confirmed he had an autism spectrum disorder, the diagnosis came with a suggestion: Perhaps the boy would benefit from Prozac when he turned 7.
"That was when both of us fell apart in that meeting," Natalie says. For both parents, medication wasn't an option.
"Prozac is a very powerful drug for adults. Why would you give it to a 7-year-old?" Stephanie wondered after the doctor's visit. "I welled up with all of this emotion. And I said I will not let that happen."
(To protect their privacy, we are only using Natalie's and Stephanie's first names. We are not naming their children.)
The fear of psychotropic drugs led the family to pursue alternative treatments for autism.
To start, they dropped gluten.
Then one day, as Natalie roamed the aisles of a gluten-free expo in a Chicago suburb not far from where the family lives, she came across a booth for a Brain Balance Achievement Center.
Natalie says the program claimed to help with disorders ranging from dyslexia, to ADHD, to autism. Best of all, it didn't involve prescription drugs.
"We were very excited," Stephanie says. "Maybe we found a solution that wasn't going to be about medicine. I was very, very hopeful."
'It Will Completely, Absolutely, 100 Percent Change Your Life'
Natalie had stumbled upon one of 113 Brain Balance franchises across
