Help: Earobics2 & FastForWord (long)

I’ve often questioned the pretty intensive marketing of FFW — the research findings were on a very specific and young population but you’d never guess that from the promotions. (Unfortunately, because this is the standard these days for marketing, advertising that focuses on providing information with any objectivity is, on the whole, not too effective; IMO most folks aren’t taught to look for/at objective information but are immersed in the slick promotional stuff throughout their American lives.) HOwever, your kid has the profile of people for whom it really makes a difference from the good & bad anecdotal stories I’ve followed. Did you also check out the IDA Perspectives on FFW and other “controversial therapies?”

I’d occasionally take a day off *anything* tough for celebration of accomplishments, so *that’s* what’s remembered,but you’ve probably already thought of that :) And remind the kiddo *often and well* of his progress (with numbers to back it up so the opinions can’t beconsidered biased).

FFW clearly is not for all children. We saw a marked improvement in our son’s auditory memory and receptive language skills with it though.

I agree on dumping the Earobics 2 until after vision therapy. We had some of the same sorts of problems doing FFW until our son had done some vision therapy. He couldn’t find things on the screen!!!

If you want to work on auditory memory, another computer program with would be Brainbuilder from Advanced Brain Technology. It uses numbers too so it doesn’t have the meaningful part. But it doesn’t have the issue of visual skills interferring like Earobics 2. It only takes about 10 minutes a day. The biggest disadv. is it gets boring.

You have come along ways with reading. You might also consider just continue working on it alone until you start vision therapy.

And congrats to your son. He is doing great.

Sue, can you give me a url for IDA’s Perspectives? I went to their main site but couldn’t unearth it. Also, do you know if high scores in receptive and expressive language go with the FF profile you mention? My son has very high scores here but is often a bit slow to formulate and/or express his thoughts.
Is his phonemic manipulation trouble + auditory processing deficit enough to more or less confirm a need for FF? Originally FF was designed for language-delayed children I understand (which my son was not) but I’ve seen it recommended most often for the “decoding” type of CAPD. Is phoneme manipulation the essence of decoding trouble? (I seem to recall it is from a course I took but I’m not sure.) I don’t want to rule this program out because of marketing hype if I can determine for sure that he fits the profile.

Earobics is a sporadic thing with us. It was an activity my son self-selected from a menu of alternates last night. I think we’ll lay off and focus on accomplishments for awhile as you suggest. Thanks.

Thanks for the Brainbuilder suggestion. We’ll check it out if it’s not too pricey while we’re waiting for Vision Therapy. It sounds non-taxing time-wise if boring.
Did you do the CrossTrain FF program where you’re not locked in but can pick your own timing for the program? (You implied interrupting it to do vision therapy.) Our audiologist recommended sticking to the intensive, non-stop regimen, but it scares me. (The “what ifs…”) What is your take on this?
It’s hard to prioritize unless you check out sites like this. My husband worries that if we do too much of this kind of program, it will communicate the message to our son that he has a really big PROBLEM! However, I think our son already knows he has a problem and would like to get past it. One problem we have is our son has a younger brother who in his eyes is “really smart”, doesn’t need much help, can do everything well etc. (He’s right.) Boys are so competitive. We work on the sibling issue a lot, emphasizing everyone has his strengths and weaker areas. Luckily they seem to carve out separate areas, interest-wise, but it’s still a touchy area.
I had insomnia til three this morning—trying to sort things out I guess. I’m so proud of my son but I’m afraid too. He gets pessimistic and can get down on himself so easily. A great “program” I’m doing with him right now for this is the one outlined in Seligman’s book”The Optimistic Child”. (I heartily recommend this as a resource to anyone concerned with the emotional and social side of LD—an area that doesn’t get touched on a whole lot on sites like these.)
Having my son in tears over FF would kill me I think after this recent experience. How did your son respond emotionally?

Brainbuilder is about $60. I have it and have used it but not religiously. I know people who have and have had really nice gains.

Yes, I used Cross Train but we still did the intensive program. Really that is the way it is set up. The advantage is that we kept it up until my son mastered all the games, dropping them as he got to 90% plus. Plus, we didn’t have to pay a provider fee. We didn’t stop with the visual issues because it only affected one game but he stagnanted on it until he had some visual therapy.

I don’t think my son actually cried over fast forward, although he wasn’t crazy about it. He struggled a lot at first because he was used to EArobics where you have choices. With FFW, you do whatever exercise comes up for 20 minutes. He hated that. But he adjusted when it became clear he had no choice. Eventually he got into passing levels but it took awhile. The memory of it has somewhat faded, like childbirth!!!

I wouldn’t worry about conveying a message that your son needs help. He already knows that. And you are right that their self esteem takes a beating. My son, who has made much progress, will tell me he is one of the worst readers in his class. I showed him what he was reading a year ago. Even he couldn’t believe the difference. It is also hard with a younger sibling. My son has a younger brother too but they are nearly 4 years apart. He is very quick so if they were closer we’d have the same problem. I have the book the Optimistic Child. What are you doing with it?

Beth

Hi Beth,
Re Optimistic Child—I have been doing the Penn Depression Prevention Program which is included in the book—intensively in the summer for awhile when my son flirted briefly with suicidal ideation (I got him to a therapist who specializes in LD pronto; he was not deemed seriously at risk; Seligman’s book was recommended.) I also saw some self-mutilation-type behaviour (head banging) last summer in response to feelings of self-blame. All of these episodes related either directly or indirectly to his brother (22 months younger) and his perception that conflicts were being resolved by us in favour of younger brother due to his age. We changed what we do—follow Barbara Coloroso to a “T”, teach conflict resolution and use Seligman. The Optimistic Child is a godsend. There have been no more scarey episodes. The testing component showed me that my son is not at high risk for depression but that in conflict situations he tends to be passive and is a catastrophizer. Many of Seligman’s activities seem geared to older children, so I modify some, but my son loved the Sherlock/Hemlock Jones story which teaches children to look for evidence to challenge their own pessimistic thoughts. The program works.
We haven’t been back to the counsellor, but will check in soon as I’d like to maintain the connection if needed in future.
Hence my fears about FastForword. After vision therapy, I am interested in FF if I’m convinced it’s needed, that it won’t be too stressful & frustrating, will do lasting good and lead to overall gains in self-esteem. Also you have to be able to fit the 100+ minutes in without courting overload. A tall order!
Thanks for your support.

How much does your child like working on the computer? My son loved being on a computer so much that even when FFW got boring, he never complained. I also had my son earn monopoly money each day for his time on the computer. He could use the money to buy treats from the “Mommy Store.” I stocked a bunch of small and medium toys as incentives. External incentives, like earning prizes, helped a lot with FFW. We did it 4 years ago when the intense program was the only option. My son had good gains, but not miraculous like the hype. The intensity of a 10 week program is actually one of the aspects that made the program successful in my opinion. Practicing for 90 minutes EVERYDAY for 10 weeks, a child is bound to improve their skills.

We like PACE for the same reasons. Although, we found PACE to be more stressful.

Def. do ffw or PACE in the summer, if you are worried about stress. Really my view is that in the summer the kids may not like the programs but it doesn’t stress them out. It is when you add school work that it is a problem. But still I would think that the kind of stress you are talking about is self-esteem and these programs do not cause problems with that—in fact the kids get better so they experience accomplishment. The stress we’ve experienced has been from doing too many things at the same time and not giving our child enough down time.

I’ll have to find the Optimistic Child. I actually bought it for my older nonLD child.

Rosie, your Monopoly money idea is a great one. I’ll save it. My son likes the computer ok though he wonders why we just have educational programs and no fun ones! He hated the auditory memory game on Earobics 2, of course, but was otherwise ok with it. I’m going to take your advice on the rewards and also Beth’s and try to do this program in the summer. I’m now fairly convinced it could help him, with auditory memory at least, a big area of weakness. Only problem is we usually go to our cottage for the whole summer, and it has no internet access. Staying home to do FF would seem like a punishment to him, but if we start mid-May and finish at the end of July it might be do-able. Alternatively I guess we could do PACE in the summer (funny, the PACE site doesn’t say what the program consists of but I assume it’s not a computer program??? Though from what I’ve read on these boards, since FF is more sensory-motor level training it should come before the cognitive training.) Thanks for your help.

Assuming that your cottage is not so remote to not have telephone access, I’d pay to have internet access and go to the cottage for the summer. (can I go too???) If you are going for the summer, you can always pack the computer. You could work the games around other activities. If you stay home, you are either going to have both kids staying home and the younger blaming the older for the lack of fun, or one going and the other mad. Think about having something educational or work oriented for your other child (even quiet reading) so the older doesn’t feel too cheated.

We took FFW with us on vacation. Now it certainly wasn’t the same vacation but it was better than staying home. We did it at my parents. We then took a week off when we went to my in-laws whose computer was in the middle of the house.

If you are going to do FFW, do it before PACE. We found that our gains with PACE were limited by the sensory-motor foundation and we didn’t do PACE until we had done lots of work on the sensory motor level.

I agree. Summer at the cottage with FFW could be a great solution. We took our computer up to my mom’s lake house when we did it. We paid for long-distance service for 1 month and used our internet dial-up long-distance. You only connect to the Internet to download and upload data once a day.

PACE is not on the computer, and it is also best to do in the summer. I think you could do both in one summer if you have lots of fun time built in to day too.

I wish I had done it that way.

Rosie

We did FastForWord at home this summer. My child is not shy about expressing his opinion about anything, anytime! (We joke that when he grows up he’s going to be the Boss.) While he had to be coaxed and rewarded to do FastForWord, he really enjoyed seeing the graphs showing his improvement. We talked a lot about how hard work pays off and complementing him on his accomplishments.

We also had his 11 yr sister and 15 yr brother try the demo sections of FastForWord. They both thought it was hard and told him so. It made him feel better - if they thought it was hard, then the difficulties he had were due to the program and not him. We also “tortured” the siblings with extra work over the summer - one with a math review and the other with a ACT/SAT prep computer program. Everyone had things they had to work on

I was concerned about the FFW hype but, in the end, think he showed real improvement in his listening ability. He began, for the first time ever, to enjoy (almost obsessively) listening to books on tapes. His sensitivity to touching his hair went away. He seemed to be much better connected to the world - very few huhs, etc. I saw much more improvement this summer compared to six months of language therapy 2x a week. I would do it again - in fact, we may do FFW #2 this summer.

One last thought - working hard and seeing success can be a real character building experience. You can structure the rewards and show him his successes.