Grinity - you have done so much for this board that I wanted to respond to your points. I have personally benefitted from your guidance at times so I really do appreciate what you say and do on this board. I really hope we can all learn from this discussion because neurofeedback is not on the radar much. After meeting Dr. Lovecky, I'm scratching my head as to why - except to say it's probably expensive and time-consuming.
Before we talked about the ADHD diagnosis and treatment, Dr. Lovecky had mentioned the various checklists that indicated our DS had ADHD. Here, I think she was trying to get us to accept that our son actually had ADHD - which wasn't an issue for us because everyone has been saying our son had attentional issues since he was born. Of course, my son got a diagnosis for ADHD last summer based on his inconsistent and scattered scores on the WPPSI.
After getting us to admit that our son had attentional issues and an ADHD diagnosis, Dr. Lovecky then broached the medication issue by asking us if we had considered medication. I replied, "what about neurofeedback?" I said that when I had an IEP meeting with the public school, they wondered why we didn't just put our son on medication. But our pediatrician had advised me to get further testing before accepting an ADHD diagnosis and medicating him. Pediatrician wondered how far we would go with the testing and if we get a brain scan or EEG.
Dr. Lovecky said neurofeedback would re-wire the brain permanently as opposed to a temporary fix. She said it would get to the heart of a lot of his problems with our son and eliminate the need for medication completely. She seemed to think the neurofeedback would resolve the ADHD, the PDD symptoms, and the issues with the visual and auditory processing systems. She said that if we did the neurofeedback and worked on the CAPD, then in a couple of years time we would probably get the test scores that are closer to our son's ability.
To be honest (and I don't mean to be disrespectful here), I don't feel the need for clarification or an outline on the risks, treatments, etc. of neurofeedback vs. medication. We didn't get so caught up in talking about neurofeedback that I forgot to ask her opinion on medication. I didn't need it. I heard that neurofeedback re-wires the brain and that was enough for me. I had already seen results with my son and vision therapy, which basically involved re-wiring the brain with ambient glasses and daily vision exercises. So it wasn't a leap to say "what about neurofeedback?"
I've been reading as much as possible on giftedness, ADHD, LDs, VSL, etc. as possible. Dr. Linda Silverman mentions neurofeedback in our book, Upside-Down Brilliance, as an alternative home remedy for ADHD-like symptoms to get off medication completely. She says kids with ADHD spend too much time in theta states, where they are spacey, and they have a difficult time sustaining beta states, where they are focused.
Medicating children with ADHD unfortunately does not go to the root of the problem or solve the cluster of problems that usually come with ADHD. My son has been in two gifted schools - both of them were supposed to be aimed at and designed for gifted kids with ADHD. Teachers at both schools told me that if the ADHD kids didn't take their meds in the am, they knew about it immediately and the day was a mess and nothing got done. Being a former teacher myself, I've seen it.
I'm not opposed to medicating a child, but with my son it wouldn't solve the cluster problems that he has or address the wiring of the brain. Neurofeedback would. My son was born with special needs, some severe - including a type of severe brain condition and severe sensory processing issues. He's now 6.5 yrs old, but only finished vision therapy 6 months ago and had over 5 years of therapy (a combination of ot/pt/speech/feeding/vision). Years in these therapies have helped but they haven't solve the wiring of the central nervous system and brain dysregulation that went haywire due to uterine constraints and being born with torticollis (CMT muscle on the neck).
I know neurofeedback is controversial within ADHD but with very high success rates - vision therapy is too...and the list goes on and on. It's a bit out of the box and the idea of re-wiring a child's brain or having surgery is scary to most people. Medication is seen as the answer for ADHD, but it is not the sole answer or the most effective one in treating it.
Neurofeedback is a scientifically proven form of brainwave feedback that trains the child's brain to overcome slow brainwave activity and increase and maintain its speed permanently. Neurofeedback is a non-invasive, drug-free, effective approach to ADHD.
Most significantly, 80 percent of the time, neurofeedback is effective, and there are none of the side effects associated with the drugs commonly used for ADHD.
I don't know if Dr. Lovecky regularly recommends neurofeedback or not for ADHD. My guess is that Dr. Lovecky saw my question "what about neurofeedback" as a kind of litmus test for me and my husband to see whether you would consider alternatives for treating ADHD. I could be wrong though. We had a lot of ground to cover so I don't think she wanted to spend a lot of time discussing ADHD or the various treatments. The fact that I inquired about neurofeedback seemed to be a relief for her. Remember, though, my son has already had some controversial treatments and therapies and seen many specialists.
Grinity - I really like 4) discussing neurofeedback is fun, exciting, and unusual so everyone got distracted. That's good. I wish I could spend a week with Dr. Lovecky or Dr. Silverman picking their brains.
