ADHD: A Path to Success: A Revolutionary Theory and New Innovation in Drug-Free Therapy

Rating:
Summary: Hope for ADD/ADHD Families is in this Book
Review: My experience mirrors alot of the other positive reviews for this book. I am so grateful that I took the leap of faith and took my 8-old-year son last March for treatment with Dr. Weathers. The book takes a totally nonconventional approach to ADHD. It doesn't approach ADD/ADHD as a chemical imbalance of the brain. Rather Dr. Weathers attributes many of the ADHD behaviors as a result of learned behaviors and defense mechanisms. His treatments are usually a short 3 days and also very nonconventional. It does sound too good to be true, but I can speak personally from experience that it does work if you put the time and effort into the treatment.

My son was a terror since he was a toddler. He had terrible temper tantrums, was impatient, aggressive. and could not seem to concentrate at school. He was even expelled from preschool. He constantly got into trouble at school. I dreaded answering the phone during the week, because it was often the school calling about my son's behavior. We took my son to at least 4 different doctors--psychologists and psychiatrists. Each one seem to agree he had ADHD. We also got diagnoses of Bipolar disease, Depression, Anxiety, Aspergers Syndrome. It seemed like Ian had every known diagnosis to account for his strange behaviors.

I read many books on all these diagnoses and we tried many behaviorial modifications, supplements, etc., and nothing seemed to help. I was obsessed with my son's problems. The stress extended to the rest of the family too. We finally succumbed to trying drugs when he started to fail in school academically. We tried Trileptal and Concerta for a few months without success. It was terrible. My son became a zombie, he hated himself. He had no self esteem. We all truly believed he had problems because he had a brain disorder which he had no control over. But I was very concerned about the side effects of the drugs and the long term usage. It was when these drugs did not help and my psychiatrist recommended adding another drug that I turned to Dr. Weathers for help. I had read his book a long time ago, but thought it was a "scam" because it sounded too incredible to be true.

In desperation, I reread his book and talked to other parents who had success with the program. I talked to Dr. Weathers and he assured me Ian could be helped. It was the best money we ever spent. In the span of 3 days with Dr. Weathers, my son turned into a different boy. Today he listens, he does homework without a battle, he is attentive at school. In fact, he is excelling in all his classes and is in accelerated classes. He is starting to make friends. I'm not saying that the work ends once you get home. You have to continually work at it, but it's amazing how fast and steady the change has been and ALL WITHOUT DRUGS. Best of all, Ian has his self-esteem back. He no longer blames his troubles on his ADHD, because he has no ADHD or brain disorder. He is proof positive of that.

Dr. Weathers is a brilliant man and has been the most helpful of all the doctors we saw over the years. He will support you even after your treatment is done. I highly recommend this book to any parents who are troubled by the drugs being pushed onto their ADHD kids. Drugs are convenient for the school and doctors, but it shouldn't be thought as the only option available.

Take the time to read and investigate Dr. Weather's treatment. Your child, your family, and your marriage will be better for it.

Rating:
Summary: Our Family's on the Path to Success
Review: Our 8 year old son was diagnosed ADHD and placed on medications. As parents, we saw many negative side effects from mood swings to an extreme weight loss. That's when I said there has to be a better way. We had the bookshelves filled with ADHD books, but had not found a better way. While surfing the web, I came across Dr Weathers book. What drew me to his book were the book reviews (just like this one). I could relate to the tensions, anxieties, and stresses described by parents dealing with their children and more importantly I marveled at the results I read about. I ordered the book on the spot. Dr Weather's theory gave us a whole new way of looking at our son. We removed our son from all medication and began exchanging emails with Dr Weathers to learn more about his CAER therapy. Emails led to phone calls and by spring break we had a visit planned to Dr Weathers in Spokane. Dr Weathers uses a straightforward, no nonsense approach. He helped us to understand that the problem did not lie soley with our son, but with our family unit. He not only treated our son, but my husband and I as well. Dr Weathers shared with us his own personal experience as an ADHD child. Dr Weathers taught us how to function as a family in order to get optimal efforts/performance from our son. We saw immediate results in Spokane and continue to experience more every day at home and school. Our son is a work in progress. But as long as we continue to apply Dr Weather's theory, we continue to meet the daily challenges. My son is going to second grade in September and I've already scheduled a meeting with his teacher so I can share Dr Weather's book with her. My son continues to be drug free and my husband and I continue to watch him blossom, all thanks to Dr Weathers theory and CAER.

Rating:
Summary: The Answers Lie Within
Review: reviews were excellent, so I bought the book. During the first 50 pages I almost regretted it. It reads like an extended advertisement for Dr. Weathers' practice in Spokane, WA. Most off-putting is his term "CAER" for the machine in which he performs most of his therapy. It took until page 221 to find out what a CAER machine really did, and I was SO relieved. It is a mostly automated way to do EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization/ Reprogramming, a fifteen-year old method of reducing affect about specific events. EMDR is a proven methodology. Anybody can do it given a little training, although you may not know this from reading the book. Most important, the book has tremendous scope, dealing with the complex causes and possible cures of ADHD in an understandable and comprehensive way. By the way, the patents on his CAER machine are 5,219,322 and 5,725,472 which are good reading if you are a geek.