Amy Oakes

She was diagnosed in first grade after there were some difficulties in the classroom, but there were other components to it -- there was oppositional defiant disorder, there were some [autism] spectrum-like behaviors, and difficulty later on socializing with other children.

There were times I remember saying to my husband that her behaviors are holding our family hostage because it could be one meltdown a day, it could be five meltdowns a day, she couldn't do anything to stop it, and I really began to realize that her brain wouldn't let her, even if she wanted to be good, her brain wasn't allowing her to.

She's playing on the basketball team now, she's involved in theatre -- things that she wasn't able to do because her behaviors prohibited her from doing them, i really felt very hopeless, before we found Brain Balance, so the fact that I just have hopes for her now is a beautiful thing, and I think she can do anything she wants to do.

I think I knew from very early on that she was different, but she was my first child, so I figured anything that I saw, there was a chance that she would grow out of it.

She wasn't able to attend mainstream school anymore and the school that we ended up putting her in was an end-of-the-road school … in my mind, it was not a place where she belonged.