Balance brain is a training program to help children improve their focus, behaviour, social skills, problems with anxiety to help with their academic performance. It was developed by Dr. Robert Mellilo and set out in his book ‘Disconnected Kids’.

Instead of using drugs to treat children’s problems it goes beyond the mainstream approaches to help with the challenges that children face including: sensory, visual and auditory processing difficulties; learning issues; problems with focus and attention; poor impulse control and hyperactivity; anger issues and tantrums and other problem behaviours.

Balance brain is an after school program that uses advances in brain research to help children with neurobehavioural problems. It is based on the idea that the left and right hemispheres of the brain are not connected properly. As a consequence, one hemisphere becomes faster and stronger than the other while the other is slower and weaker. This means that the characteristics of one hemisphere influence a behaviour more than the other. This lack of balance results in identifiable academic, social and behavioural problems that children exhibit.

In general terms, the right hemisphere perceives the world as a whole. It controls and moves the muscles in the body and provides spatial guidance as well housing areas that control non-verbal communication and can be regarded as the social side of the brain. This means that it feeds on novelty and becomes bored quickly as it controls the creative aspect of the brain’s function. The left hemisphere of the brain, in contrast, is focused on individual details rather than the holistic view. It is used for pattern recognition and is used for routine tasks and repetition.

To determine whether the hemispheres of a child’s brain are out of balance, the a cognitive assessment is performed called the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (or WIAT). Through data collected using this method a determination can be made about which hemisphere is stronger in a given child. Based on these results, the Balance brain process involves crafting a customized program that uses specific sensory stimulation and cognitive stimulation for each hemisphere to re-balance them in a child’s brain.

By emphasizing the areas of the brain that are less connected in each hemisphere this technique enables better communication between them which then helps to increase a child’s functional abilities and results in the child being able to better achieve academically, behaviorally and socially as well as helping to deal with any underlying issues.