Remediation of underlying deficits/ to label or not

Karen,

When my older son was little, I always put him to bed with music. We did this until he was about 4. We actually wore out those tapes several times. They were the rockabye series. The woman had such a lovely voice, it was very soothing to him. After reading this thread, I now wonder if we inadvertantly helped him to not develop auditory difficulties with those tapes.

I wouldn’t recommend them for an older child but I do think that going to sleep with music is a good idea.

Neuronet takes the same point of view as the Handle Institute, as does Brain Gym, I think.

What is interesting in doing NN is how my son has become less strongly mixed dominance. In other words, the left domianant areas are far less so now (he is right handed).

Beth

I just had an interesting conversation with the audiologist with whom we did IM. She told me she thought FFW and TLP addressed different aspects of auditory processing. She told me about a child she is seeing who had done (prior to seeing her) FFW. He finished in two weeks—but still had lots of problems. The two weeks finishing suggests, of course, that FFW was not getting at what the problem was. She says that FFW attacks temporal processing. Now he is doing TLP and in just three weeks is having all sorts of great results. She told me sound therapies work more on frequency.
Now, how you figure all this out except by trial and error is beyond me.

She was talking about getting training in some Tomatis program called LIFT—I think. Ever heard of it?

Beth

I would have to say that from the day we brought our baby home from China at six months until this day, we have played music at bedtime. I had read some brain research that said classical music was beneficial for areas of the brain effecting math among other things. But she still has auditory processing problems. Maybe the music helps, but I doubt it can fix a true processing deficit.

Janis

You notice that the music in sound therapy is altered—indicating that music alone is not going to do with for kids with auditory processing difficulties.

Beth

For my Austic son classical music has been a god send. Proir to being exposed to The Mozart Effects CD’s he was driven almost by like a motor to spin, rock, dart, lunge, ect. Someone told us about these CD’s and we decided to give them a try. After a few days of listening to them at night he became much more calm. To this day when he gets really tense we play this type of music and it is like seeing another kid. He does his homework on his own while listening. My other two children also love this type of music. All three of their favorite music type is classical with nature sounds with light music in the backround being second.

Beth,
this is a new program from Toronto:

http://www.listeningfitness.com/

I was thinking about doing ti with my son- will be curious to know what your therapist opinion is about this one vs. TLP, which I will more likely pursue at the moment.

In terms of FFW vs. Tomatis; my understanding is that FFW improves timing issues while TLP/Tomatis improves the frequency deficits.

I suppose a good audiologist can sort this out, but probably one will spend more on testing/searching for an appropriate evaluation than doing the therapies themselves….

Ewa

Interesting. I always wondered if we would have gotten some benefit from FFW beyond what we did with Tomatis and Earobics.

I have not heard of LIFT. I believe I saw that on the matrix chart that EWA has posted for Janis down below. I’m not familiar with it and we haven’t been back into the Tomatis clinic for 1.5yrs now, so I’m out of date on anything new since then.

It’s encouraging to know that more and more specialists are seeing results from sound therapy. The research and studies still does not back it up much.

Yes,this is the same program. She is going to go to Toronto to get trained in it.
She uses TLP now so I will let you know if I find anything out about how different the effects are.

Beth

Beth,

I am going to see the provider of TLP on Feb. 18th.

She also uses Tomatis and she had told me that considering the distance to commute (over 2 hours) and my son’s attitude- “..we can do whatever can be done at home without driving..” (I think the commuting to school is taking a toll on him) I will start TLP.

The therapist is also doing Balametrics and BrainGym, so I think it will be interesting to have her meet my son.

I really envy you for your NueroNet provider :-))
Ewa

I have the tape for Ballametrics. NN incorporates Ballametrics and I got the video tape when I purchased the balance board from them. I also have the Brain Gym books—some similarities to NN also.

TLP is easy to use and doesn’t impose on life too much so I would think it would be a good choice for your son.

Do you keep the CDs? The audiologist I was speaking to today was telling me that the developers are now recommending repeating the program for maximum results. I am thinking of trying to repeat the program. My son is much improved but there are still some auditory issues.

Beth

When we did IM, I found my son MORE impulsive and MORE out of control than before. Eventually he calmed back down to normal, and by the end was better at self-regulating. I never heard that explanation before but it makes sense and would explain what we saw…

Beth,

yes I will keep the tapes, and this is why I thought it might be a good investment since we can repeat the program if needed.

Ewa

Janis,
Hi, can you describe in more detail how you tested this? I’m curious about distinguishing the auditory and visual as well. My son scored well on digit span on the WISC, but I’m not sure if that includes forwards and backwards. I would also like to create the kind of comparison you’ve done, but not sure how to! Thanks!!

Janis,
My six year daughter also likes the series as well. When I first heard it though I thought it might be too old but to my surprise, she looked forward to it nightly when we were still in that mode. (She is a very good reader though.) My friend who owns the tapes has a kindergartner that likes it too but everyone is different. She even uses it as punishment. Early to bed without Odyssey if you break family rules.

One thing my daughter Karlee loves more than anything is when I make up a tale about 2 fictional princessess who live in the sandbox castle at Grandma Garthe’s house near the treehouse. Princess Sarah is the ‘goodie two shoes” who always does everything just right. Princess Sophie usually has a problem that parallels something that my daughter Karlee has had a problem with such as sharing earlier in the day or week or other things such as: tattle taling, not doing her chores on first time obedience, or hurting people’s feelings, being bossy etc…

Something that I found so funny is that Karlee will say things like, “I can just picture that in my mind.” I found that so interesting after just learning Visualizing Verbalizing. She will beg for another Princess story. I love it too. She gets the message of how to improve her behavior and I don’t have to be too preachy. Sometimes she will tell me a story back which is fun. We use words like antagonist, setting, characters, and it is fun to see her use the vocabulary correctly.

Good luck.
Michelle

Someone just gave this link on my APD list:

http://rmlearning.com/auditoryprocessing.htm

TLP for only $375…use at home…keep CD’s!

Janis

Karen,

The Test of Auditory Perceptual Skills (TAPS-R) has several subtests which test auditory memory: numbers forward and backward, words, sentences, etc. It also has a discrimination subtest and one that says processing but I think it is better termed reasoning (read that somewhere). I always knew auditory memory was an issue, but it helped to actually have a normed test to show where she stands.

I plan on researching a test for visual sequential processing, but I’ll tell you what I did informally. Get some plain white notecards. Write a series of three numbers on several (I used 7). Then I wrote 4 numbers on seven more cards. I gave her a pencil and paper (and you can go on up to 5 numbers, etc.). One at a time, I showed her a card, let her look at it for a few seconds, then took the card away. She’d then write what numbers she could remember. It’s just a simple way to find out if it a strength or possible weakness. From what I read on the NACD site, children 7 years and up should be able to do 7 numbers. My child only got 4 out of 7 three-digit sets correct and only 2 of the four digit sets visually. You can do the same thing by calling out the numbers and having your child repeat to get an idea of auditory sequential memory.

Janis

Thanks, Michelle. I’m glad to know your little girl likes them. I looked up the series and was surprised at how many sets of tapes there are! I may order a couple of the videos just to introduce her to the characters and then maybe she will be better able to visualize if we try the tapes. Thanks again for the idea!

Janis

Perfect, thanks. I bet after doing seeing stars that ds does Ok on this. But it will be interesting to see… thx again.

This center is run by Paul Madaule. (and looks like LIFT is based on some work by Madaule). He has an interesting background. By the time he was in high-school, he was depressed, frustrated, failed most all his classes, and lived alone in his LD World. He met Dr. Tomatis and was completely changed. He has since opened the center in Toronto and devoted his life to it.

He wrote a book called ‘When Listening Comes Alive’. Great book - explains exactly what to expect from Tomatis, how it works etc.

I would trust his work - he’s an expert in the field.

I understand *what* you are saying, but again I am really worried about the *why*. We do know that trying to change hand dominance is a very bad thing, causing intense nervous problems and often reading and writing problems. I and many other people I know are mixed dominance. True, that makes us different from the majority. But different is not necessarily bad.
I happen to be ambidextrous although trained to work more with the right hand (easier to go with the majority), distinctly right-eyed, possibly left-eared, pretty balanced as to the feet — you have to as a downhill skier, and able to use both sides of my brain as evidenced by having four degrees — in math and languages and art/design and education. I am an extremely successful student, although this isn’t the place to brag so I won’t go into the details.
Being a different kid of person, I’ve run into a lot of people who want to hammer me into a pigeonhole; the efforts have been anywhere from useless to extremely damaging. Those of you out there with different kinds of kids have probably had a few experiences of this kind.
I am cautious about experimenting on kids’ brains, and would be very very leery of any effort to switch dominance. Efforts to use both sides better would seem more reasonable, but still to be approached carefully.

Classical is often recommended. My daughter decided to rebel against he rock-and-roll playing mother and to like Mozart. I think anything complex is good. Bach is excellent, but work up to it gradually, first light classics like Chopin and easy-listening Mozart, then workin into more complex sounds. I used to by the sale CD’s, things like “Mozart’s Greatest Hits”, etc., and my daughter loved them. She likes bagpipes too (our cultural heritage, and always good for a joke.)