"Tenyearold Mallory Oakes loves to read  in fact she has been doing it since before she was  years old. Her mother knew she had a gifted child but those gifts would not come without challenges.  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 Amy Oakes told FoxNews.com. She would wake up in the middle of the night with night terrors at a very young age she stopped napping around  months  any type of change in our schedule could set off an epic tantrum. Oakes didnt know it then but her daughter Mallory was one of more than  percent of American children living with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder ADHD She was diagnosed in first grade after there were some difficulties in the classroom Amy said. But there were other components to it  there was oppositional defiant disorder there were some autism spectrumlike behaviors and difficulty later on socializing with other children. Oppositional defiant disorder is one of the most common conditions linked to ADHD in children and is characterized by anger tantrums opposition to authority and sometimes aggressive behavior. For Mallory the disorder led to a pattern of epic meltdowns which left Amy reeling and willing to try anything to control them.  Initially I tried a number of different things  different kinds of therapies art therapies. I took her to somebody who supposedly could heal through touch she said. We tried some medication therapies that ended up being really a nightmare for us and making matters worse. Medication is often the first line of defense in conventional medicine for kids with ADD and ADHD with doctors prescribing everything from stimulants to antipsychotics and even antidepressants to help control the symptoms. The spectrum of ADHD and related disorders is broad and there is no onesizefitsall treatment. 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 Amy said. She couldnt do anything to stop it and I really began to realize that her brain wouldnt let her even if she wanted to be good her brain wasnt allowing her to. Mallorys oppositional behavior reached a fever pitch when the family moved from their home in Hoboken N.J. to the suburb of Glen Rock N.J. in .  She wasnt able to attend mainstream school anymore and the school that we ended up putting her in was an endoftheroad school  in my mind it was not a place where she belonged Amy said.  Desperate for a solution Amy started searching for success stories about kids like Mallory who had been helped by different therapies. Thats when she found the Brain Balance Achievement Center in Allendale N.J. We went in for the assessment and her behaviors at the assessment were really terrible Amy said. I thought we werent going to get accepted to the program and they told us they could help us and we never looked back. The specialized learning centers of which there are now  throughout the country were developed by Dr. Robert Melillo a neurology researcher and author of the book Disconnected Kids to help balance the brains of kids with learning disorders like Mallory.  What thinking really is is really coordinating different networks in the brain so that we can bring all of those networks together at one time Melillo told FoxNews.com. And if kids have poor coordination in their body they often have poor coordination in their brain  poor coordination between their networks  so they cant bring all these networks together to learn in the most optimal way. The program uses a combination of sensory motor physical exercises and academic learning to help stimulate and strengthen the parts of the brain responsible for certain disorders.  If you get a child who has really strong left brain and delayed right brain those are kids that may be labeled with attentional problems or behavioral problems or social issues Melillo said. The easiest way to get their brain to become coordinated is by making their body coordinated so a large part of what were doing is this sensory motor interaction building their muscle tone building their strength building their body spatial awareness. The program also incorporates what Melillo calls bionutritional guidelines to make sure children are getting the proper nutrition for optimal learning. Parents are a big part of the learning experience and are tasked with athome exercises to do with their kids.  Mallory attended the Brain Balance Achievement Center three times a week after school for three months at a time starting in November . She has since gone on to complete two more cycles of Brain Balance learning and no longer takes medication to manage her condition. Shes playing on the basketball team now shes involved in theatre  things that she wasnt able to do because her behaviors prohibited her from doing them Amy said. 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. For more information visit BrainBalanceCenters.com http"