How Neurofeedback Saved My Son from Autism

By Ng Sun Luen

This book is not a manual on neurofeedback. Such a manual would require a thousand-page text written by an expert therapist. Rather, it tells the story of a fathers experience with neurofeedback as he witnesses this new science being applied day by day to pull his son back inch by inch from the world of autism. It is the story of a father who refused to accept all those grim prognoses from pediatricians, child psychologists, and child psychiatrists that autism was a genetic affliction with no cure. And lastly, it is a book of hope for those parents who are not yet prepared to surrender their children to the scourge of autism without a fight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Aug 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543742671

Ng Sun Luen

The author worked as a Malaysian expatriate for a Singapore company in Indonesia. After Bobby, his younger son, was diagnosed with Autism, the author’s refusal to accept this grim prognosis set him on a crusade to find that elusive cure which ended when he discovered Neurofeedback.

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Copyright © 2017 by Ng Sun Luen.

ISBN:                 Softcover                          978-1-5437-4268-8

                          eBook                               978-1-5437-4267-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1    The Birth of Bobby - A Happy, Healthy Baby, Initially

Chapter 2    Bobby’s First Birthday - Early Signs of Behavior Disturbances

Chapter 3    The Early Years - Missing Development Milestones

Chapter 4    The Dreaded Diagnosis

Chapter 5    Then Begins the Search for Help

Chapter 6    My Chance Encounter with Neurofeedback -Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Chapter 7    Seven Disappointing Months with Neurofeedback

Chapter 8    Enter Loreta and We Have Found the Key

Bibliography

Dedication

T o my wife Arni who continued to soldier on with her motherly duties in the face of insurmountable challenges, to my elder son Ricky who never doubted that, one day, his brother would return to him, to my younger son Bobby who had the courage to cling on to the hands of those who would never let go and last, but not least, to Dr. Joseph Guan, Bobby’s Neurofeedback therapist from the Novena Medical Centre in Singapore, whose patient and determined application of this new science gradually drew Bobby out of his speechless world of shadows and returned him to us. We wish him many more such successes which would put an end to a nightmare from which so many parents are struggling to awaken.

Introduction

W hen I look back now over the seven years it took to bring Bobby back from his world of silence and shadows into our world of sounds and light, the one thing that never ceases to amaze me is where did I find the stamina and resilience to do all the things I did. The reader who completes this book will surely agree that it was no easy task to visit school after school to find one that would accept him only to be politely informed the following week that he will have to leave because he was a distraction to the other children, doctor after doctor in the hope that at least one would understand his affliction and give my family and myself some hope as to his chances of recovery, only to be told not to worry as he was probably a late developer with some minor hyperactivity problem, to spend countless hours on the phone by day and many sleepless nights on the Internet trying to locate the best speech therapist, occupational therapist, behavioural therapist and sensory integration therapist only to lie awake at night wondering whether I had overlooked any other options available that could truly be the effective cure - and to be overcome by guilt the next morning.

It was indeed an arduous journey, one which no parent should ever have to undertake. And yet, we had no option. Bobby was autistic. To do nothing or to make excuses such as he was born that way and nothing could be done about it or that it was in his genes (which was what a few doctors told me) would be to condemn him to a life which I would not pretend to understand. I can only guess how he feels when I see the grimace on his face as he strains to understand what I was saying to him, whether I was angry, happy or disappointed. I could see how he had to take my hand and lead me to the toilet because the words just will not come. And eventually, all the pent up frustrations explode into a series of tantrums with their attendant self injurious behaviors.

This book is not intended to be a handbook on Neurofeedback. This is best left to the many doctors and therapists specialized in this field of medicine. My intention in writing this book is to share with you the many failed remedies I have tried for Bobby and how I stumbled upon the one that worked. My intention is to share with you the numerous successes and failures, the elations and the heartbreaks and the many ups and downs which my family and I went through as Bobby worked his way through each programme. I will attempt to describe the changes I could see in Bobby’s behaviour as slowly and gradually, the cobwebs began to clear. When you consider that in a normal brain there are about one hundred billion neurons or cells each with thousands of branches or synapses representing the brain’s signalling pathways (one type of neuron in the cerebellum, the seat of our thinking and reasoning processes, known as the Purkinje cell is believed to have up to one hundred thousand synapses), then it is not difficult to understand how any system which contributes to creating healthy connections between the neurons would result in positive behavioral outcomes. As the positive feedback from his teachers and other therapists began to pour in, I knew that my family and I were nearing the end of our seven year journey. We refused to let go when all seemed so lost and hopeless and we were sinking into the depths of despair. And then we discovered the one therapy that worked for Bobby.

For parents with autistic children the message of this book is hope. You may have heard of other approaches or therapies such as the bio medical approach, the Denver method, ABA therapy, floor time, the GFCF diet and many more. To actually seek out and try as many alternatives as possible requires you to keep up the hope that you can find the magic bullet that would save your child.

At this point, the reader would probably be thinking, so how much hope can I put on Neurofeedback, what results could I reasonably expect? To answer this question let me recall a conversation I had with Dr. Guan, Bobby’s therapist, after one of his therapy sessions with Bobby at his clinic. He beckoned me over to his side where he was seated in front of a large computer screen. He said, This is how Neurofeedback works.

Looking at the screen in front of him, I saw the image of a brain with countless neurons and from each one of these were sprouting countless branches or synapses, wriggling towards one another until they met and connected. Autistic traits are more pronounced in brains which have fewer connections compared to the normal brain. Neurofeedback seeks to stimulate the growth of more synapses and thus the creation of more connections which would provide a more complete web for impulse exchanges. In other words, it promotes clearer thinking and reasoning, he explained.

By this time, I was getting a clearer picture of the magic that this brain training process was working on Bobby’s brain, but being an Accountant by profession and used to dealing with hard verifiable facts and figures, I put the question to him, So Dr Guan, based on all your years of experience and all those children you have cured and all those who have made significant recoveries from autism, what is your percentage of success? He looked straight up at me and with a confident tone in his voice said without hesitation, Eighty per cent. However, if you looked closely at those twenty per cent who failed to make any progress, does this mean Neurofeedback let them down? You might want to consider the fact that in most cases I have come into contact with, either their parents were not convinced of the effectiveness of Neurofeedback and did not keep strictly to their scheduled appointments or they had withdrawn their children from therapy before it had a chance to produce tangible results.

His answer shocked me. I had never heard any claims of a potentially hundred per cent success rate in any of the other modes of therapy related to autism. However, I had run out of options and even an eighty per cent rate of success was worth trying for. Only you, the reader, can make this important decision for your child and I wish you the best of luck.

Chapter 1

The Birth of Bobby - A Happy, Healthy Baby, Initially

T he date was the 5 th November, 2009. A Thursday. I remember the day distinctly as I had taken two days leave from work in order to spend a long weekend with my newborn. I could still hear the sound of the leaves fluttering outside the window of the waiting room at the Pondok Indah Hospital in Jakarta, Indonesia, where I sat with my elder son Ricky. We had moved over here from Malaysia in 1994 when I received a job offer from Haliburton and we have remained here ever since. I remember thinking that it was uncharacteristic for the sun to be shining so brightly outside the window considering that November was the middle of the monsoon season in this part of the world and wet, soggy days are very much more frequent than bright sunny days which are almost a rarity.

My wife and I had decided on an elective caesarean section based on the date the doctor calculated as due for delivery. Therefore, although Bobby was delivered before the onset of labour pains, he was not premature.

We decided we could not risk waiting for labour considering the notorious traffic jams in Jakarta which might take even an ambulance two to three hours to arrive at the hospital!

We only waited for about thirty minutes before Bobby was wheeled out of the operating room with the doctor walking beside him. I noticed that Bobby was surprisingly quiet for a newborn, especially one who had not yet been fed by his still anesthetized mother. Instead of wailing loudly, he took one look at me and his brother, yawned and went to sleep. I thought we must have appeared rather boring to him.

I turned to his doctor