My son recently started the Tomatis program and after 20 hours of listening we have seen a moderate regression in about every area - auditory and visual processing, motor planning, general organization ofthoughts and language, and his emotions are off the charts. The clinician who is providing the Tomatis program says that I should not be concerned and that she frequently sees regression followed by “reintegration” and in fact it is what she wants to see happen. I never expected such a dramatic response after only 20 hours. His OT’s also see the regression and have concerns but do not have enough expereince with Tomatis to advise me on whether or not I should continue the program. We are currently scheduled for 60 more hours of Tomatis in the fall. Has anyone had expereince with Tomatis? My son is 7, entering first grade in a couple of weeks and he has ADHD, SI dysfunction and LD’s that are only classified as receptive and expressive language based.
Re: Tomatis program
If you use http://www.metacrawler.com to do a search on “Tomatis” you will find quite a few websites that discuss the method. I’m not sure they will be helpful to you, however.
I found the following thread on a Harvard neurological bb. A couple of the people who posted said that they would be glad to answer email questions about Tomatis. The thread is at this address: http://dem0nmac.mgh.harvard.edu/forum/AutismF/7.12.981.20AMTomatis.html
You may also want to post your question on one of the Harvard bb’s.
Mary
It's very common!
The clinician is right. It’s called movement and many (most) will go thru the regression. I was told movement is good - it means it is working and having an effect. The sound is waking up parts of the brain that were asleep and it can cause negative reactions - they are short term.
My dd went thru it. Mainly when they started the high frequencies. She was EXTREMELY emotional. As a parent, you kind of freak out and wonder if you are doing a bad thing.
It lasted a week. And then we saw the improvements start. Toward the end of the therapy, when they were working on right ear dominance, she also had a negative reaction- night terrors. Our Dr. stopped that focus and they went away.
If the reactions are becoming too negative, your clinician should be monitoring and adjusting the program. If it’s the high frequecies that are doing it, they may drop them down a tone or so.
Re: It's very common!
Thank you for the reassurance. It has been 4 weeks since our first 20 hours and I have just started to see some improvement in the last 3 days. I am scared to go back and complete the program. I have 2 more weeks to decide.
I don’t have a lot of background knowledge about Tomatis- other than what I have read here- but anything that produced that sort of a response in one of my children would make me worry. Something about this is not agreeing with him.
Robin