Disconnected Kids

"Disconnected Kids offers a visionary new approach for helping many children with brain-based problems. These valuable clinical insights add much to our tool kit for caring. "
—Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence

"Dr. Melillo's thesis and proposed intervention give hope to all affected parties (children, parents and clinicians) that neurobehavioral disorders of childhood can be eradicated one day in the near future by relying primarily on behavioral and cognitive treatments."
—Metapsychology Reviews

"I found the book to be very interesting and informative, including case studies of children he claims have been cured of some of these disorders, as well as checklists of ways to identify whether or not your child may have a brain deficiency or delay and what side of the brain may be involved.  It does seem to bring a ray of hope, as many of us have come to believe that there is no cure for disorders like autism."
—HealthCentral.com

"I HIGHLY recommend reading this book!  It was very enlightening to me. I do believe that his philosophy on these disorders is accurate and his approach to helping them is valid."
—Sensor Ease

 

Auteur
Dr. Robert Melillo, the creator of Brain Balance Program™, is an internationally known chiropractic neurologist, professor, researcher, and expert in childhood neurological disorders. He has been in private practice since 1985 and opened his first Brain Balance Center™ on Long Island, New York, in 1998. There are now 66 centers across the country, with more opening ocerseas in the coming year. His study, “Autism Spectrum Disorder as a Functional Disconnection Syndrome – a Model for Rehabilitation” will be published in The International Journal of Neuroscience later this year.

Dr. Melillo is president of the Foundation for Cognitive Neuroscience and executive director of the F.R. Carrick Institute for Clinical Ergonomics, Rehabilitation and Applied Neurosciences, a non-profit university-based brain research center  dedicated to researching methods and products to assist victims of brain injury, chronic pain, and other neurological and neuro-behavioral challenges. He lives in Rockville Centre, New York, with his wife and three children.

Texte du rabat

The proven, drug-free program to treat the cause-not just the symptoms-of autism spectrum disorders and related conditions.

Each year, an estimated 1.5 million children-one out of every six-are diagnosed with autism, Asperger's syndrome, ADHD, dyslexia, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Dr. Robert Melillo brings a fundamentally new understanding to the cause of these conditions with his revolutionary Brain Balance Program(tm). It has achieved real, fully documented results that have dramatically improved the quality of life for children and their families in every aspect: behavioral, emotional, academic, and social. Disconnected Kids shows parents how to use this drug-free approach at home, including:

• Fully customizable exercises that target physical, sensory, and academic performance

• A behavior modification plan

• Advice for identifying food sensitivities that play a hidden role

• A follow-up program that helps to ensure lasting results

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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 …