AIT - experimental therapy

Norm,

My six year old was just diagnosed with auditory processing disorder in the fall, so I have heavily been into this subject. Do you know there is a listserve just for CAPD? I have learned a LOT there. Be very, very careful about trying unproven therapy. I am considering Fast ForWord because I did have a CAPD expert analyze all her test results and he said that FFWD in his research, helped children with auditory intergration problems, and that is the category in which he feels my child falls. There are many great audiologists who test occasionally for APD but do not devote most of their practice to that specialty. Even within the specialists, they disagree on certain issues. That is what makes deciding on treatment very complicated. By the way, a group of CAPD experts met a year or so ago and sort of changed the name to simply APD, so you will see that often on the list.

Here is the site for the CAPD list (it has instructions for joining):

http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/capd.html

Here are a few other useful sites:

http://www.ncapd.org/

http://pages.cthome.net/cbristol/capd.html

http://www.llclinic.com/

Janis

I am familar with AIT. It stands for Auditory Integration Therapy. AIT is just one of several sound therapy programs out there. Another popular one is called Tomatis. AIT was recommended for my son several years ago. We did not choose to do it at the time. It sounded like hogwash to me too. But, I’m starting to consider it again because I know 2 children who have been through this therapy and it helped them. The parents are friends on mine, and they are not quick to throw their money at experimental type approaches. Neither am I. Both families have girls who were highly sensitive and easily irritated and distracted by noise. The kids both have language delays and are ADD-inattentive like my son. My son is very aware of extraneous noises like airplanes flying overhead. The little boy crumpling paper sitting next to him comes in volumes louder than his teacher’s voice. My son scored below the 5 percentile for separating foreground/background noises, and below 15% for competing words and competing sentences during his audiology evaluation. What this tells me is that my son needs to be in a well-managed quiet classroom. We tried an Easy Listener (also called an FM system) for a while. It was more of a distractor than a help to him at young age. My son still struggles with distracting sounds, but he is learning to overcome and compensate for it as the years go by.

I can highly recommend FastForward and StepForward. My son did FastForward 4 years ago, and StepForward the following summer. We saw some dramatic improvements with language expression during the first program. If you go to the website for Scientific Learning you can preview some of the games. 4 years ago, FastForward was considered very experimental and now I think it is widely accepted as one of the best therapies for kids with language and auditory processing issues.

Ask the audiologist for some reference names of other parents that have done the AIT therapy. I have heard that doing AIT before FastForward can increase the benefits that kids get from that program. It has been around for several years.

An interesting tidbit is this. When my son scored SO LOW on his audiology evaluation, I had myself tested. Not surprisingly I scored almost as low on the same tests. I do have difficulty hearing in noisy settings like restaurants and can’t hear some people on the phone. But, the good news is that I survived with this condition for 38 years and I made it through college and grad. school. I did not have some of the other learning disabilties that my son was born with, but I learned to compensate for these hearing deficits. He will too. My low scores helped me to put the whole testing thing in perspective.

I hate to say it, but almost all the interventions that I’ve seen for auditory processing run about $1000+. Some time it feels like there is a conspiracy out there setting all the prices on programs for LD kids starting at $1000 and going up to about $4000. Don’t be surprised that insurance companies don’t cover a lot of this stuff. We’ve had to fight insurance companies for coverage every step of the way. You are smart to have a “buyer beware” approach. I’ve learned it takes a lot of research and asking questions to find out which programs/therapies give the most “bang of the buck”. And it is not just the costs that you consider. It is the investment in time, impact of your child, and impact on the whole family.

But, I think I can safely say that FastForward is definitely worth investigating for your child. AIT, I don’t know. Others here on this board will be able to tell you.

Good Luck,
Rosie

Check to see if either or both of these programs are being provided by your school district. This will save you a lot of money providing them privately.

Hi Rosie and Norm,

Thanks Rosie for telling your experince with FFWD! They have renamed the programs, by the way. They are now FFWD Language, FFWD Language to Reading, and FFWD Reading, (then there is one for older kids and adults). That makes the levels a bit easier to understand. I would agree that there is more research on FFWD. FFWD, to my knowledge though, was not created specifically for children with APD. It just happens to help certain children with certain profiles of APD. My child has auditory integration problems and FFWD was recommended by the APD specialist (we actually had two). Neither recommended AIT. I know there has been past discussion on the CAPD board about those programs, though. APD kids can be so different. For example, my child has no difficulty with speech in noise. When she was younger, she was sensitive to loud sounds, but not now.

Regarding the post below, I would be highly surprised if any schools are using AIT. There are a few in the country using FFWD, but you might have to move a far distance to find one! I ordered the FFWD training kit for $49 and will do it at home this summer with my child if I decide to do it. (It takes 90-100 minutes a day, so it would not be practical to do in school anyway as far as I am concerned). Then I will have to pay the license fee of $850 to do it with her. I would not pay a SLP to do it in addition to the $850 fee.

Norm, I think I forgot to ask you, is your daughter having difficulty learning to read?

Janis

with a lot of information about AIT. It includes the diary kept by a mother who put her autistic son through the therapy.

http://www.ccnet.com/~njones/AIT.html

AIT is one of a number of therapies that does not have independent research verification of benefit (FastForWord is included in this category). However, the anecdotal evidence is that each of these therapies can be very beneficial for *specific* problems.

I would not discount AIT just because it’s scientifically controversial. I would, however, do some extensive research on sound therapies. Samonas, Tomatis, and The Listening Program are all sound therapies that can be included in the same general category as AIT. One of them might be a better fit for your child.

Mary

My son has done Fast Forward. He was 7 at the time. We saw significant improvements in auditory memory and receptive language skills from it. It was very difficult for him to do though. I have since learned that sound therapy first can make FFW easier.

I too thought sound therapy was hokey and didn’t even consider it when my son was initially diagnosed. I have since done some research on it and my son is currently doing The Listening Program, which is the mildest form of sound therapy available. It is far less expensive than AIT—several hundreds dollars instead of a $1000 and can be administered at home, although we are working through an audiologist. So far, we have seen improvements in his ability to learn sequences of sound.

One audiologist I spoke to when researching sound therapy told me that she had done AIT and Somonas and had much better results with Somonas. She had fewer side effects with Somonas. Dea, who posts on this board, has had very good results with Tomatis. In fact, it was her experiences which encouraged me to investigate sound therapy more.

My son has CAPD also and if I had to it all again I would have started with sound therapy. We have backtracked to it because we found that there were certain things he simply couldn’t learn, despite the other therapy we have done.

Beth

Janis,

My son has auditory integration issues and has done FFW and it did not help those issues at all. We did see improvements in receptive language and auditory memory. Neuronet has helped the auditory integration issues.

Beth

Beth,

Let me ask you a question, if you don’t mind. I have not done any reading recently about the listening programs. But I seem to recall from the past that I thought they were more designed for autistic children, not APD. Am I wrong? We went to an APD university researcher for our testing and then sent our results and paid for an analysis by another APD specialist and neither mentioned using a listening program like the ones you mentioned. Fast ForWord was recommended because she has auditory memory and integration deficits.

Thanks,
Janis

Thanks, Beth. I’ll take improvement in auditory memory if I can get it as I think it applies to just about everything a child ever learns in school! I’m just not sure about NeuroNet for my daughter, even if I had access. Right now I’m leaning toward FFWD Language and Phono-Graphix to help with reading. I don’t think my child’s APD is severe, so I want to try to give her what she needs while not overwhelming her with therapy. And THAT is what is tough to figure out!

Janis

Janis,

Most of the AIT success stories I have read are autistic kids. I don’t think that is true for other types of sound therapy. I tried sorting out the differences between them but gave up after awhile. The audiologist I spoke to several times about AIT and Somonas sent me a checklist for Somonas (which she strongly preferred) that was classic APD type symptoms.

I approached the audiologsit we are working with for Neuronet therapy about sound therapy. We had already done some through her (which helped) but had run into some brick walls. She had some recent conversations about TLP with another audiologist in town who had some great sucess stories. I was thinking about doing TLP anyway but it was relatively inexpensive and available to parents so that’s how we ended up doing it. (About a year ago I looked into Somonas locally and was going to do it as part of OT therapy but did Neuronet therapy instead).

The audiologist who originally diagnosed CAPD did not mention sound therapy to us either—he recommended Fast Forward.

Beth

Janis,

The memory improvements are nice. I just wanted to tell you that we didn’t see any reduction in auditory integration symptoms with FFW so that you don’t have that expectation. (of course, your child could be different). I think FFW works mainly with the decoding subtype of CAPD. My son tested normal on decoding after FFW. Interactive metronome would be another therapy, other than neuronet and OT, that works on integration.

Beth

Part of the reason I think my daughter has the integration problems are poor auditory memory, slight deficit in phonemic awareness (85 standard score, not terrible but not good enough), and slow processing. Or maybe she just appears to process slowly because of the integration? It does sound like she would benefit from FFWD if I can discipline myself to do it with her that intensively.

Thanks for both replies!

Janis

Thank you for your input. I am very glad to see that someone has had good results from an auditory therapy. I am very interested in The Learning Program for sound therapy. Where can I find out more and/or get a hold of this ? I have an CSE meeting on thursday and you input has been very helpful.
Thanks