I posted a similar message to this several pages back in response to a question. However, I had several people ask me to post our experiences with IM after we were finished with it and thought the other message was pretty buried.
Background: My son has CAPD, visual processing deficits, word retrieval, and sensory integration deficits—including motor planning.
IM is a therapy in which the client wears headphones and through a sensor (like strapped to the hands) tries to keep time with a computerized metronome. It is targeted to improve motor planning, sequencing, attention, timing, and seems to generally organize kids neurologically.
I first considered this therapy 1 1/2 years ago. 1 1/2 years ago the same therapist who he just completed the program with (who was just being trained in IM) pretested him. He scored 305 ms off beat—which is the worst category you can be in. She talked to the IM office and the suggestion was that he do some other type of OT therapy first. I don’t think she wanted him as her first client!!!We then started Neuronet and have done it and The Listening Program since then.
To give you some perspective, my son’s therapist told me Dan Marino scored 20 ms off beat—this is cold and what you’d expect from a gifted athlete. An average child would walk in and score 60 ms off beat. My son initially was closer to the next beat than the one he was supposed to be at.
This year he scored 217 ms off—a big improvement but still outside the “normal” range that IM usually mediates in the standard 15 sessions. The therapist told us we might need an additional week.
BUT my son ended IM with an average of 18 ms off beat—better than IM expects (IM says 20 ms average, his therapist says it is very difficult to achieve that and she and the therapists she knows aim for 25). I have no doubt it is because of the therapy he did first.
(BTW, this doesn’t make him a gifted athlete—this is with training—not cold like Dan Marino. But clearly his motor planning has improved.)
Changes we have seen so far:
1. My son can handle silverware and eat neatly.
2. He ties his shoes like a normal person—always before it was so painful to watch.
3. His endurance has increased with handwriting. Our therapist asked us to get a handwriting sample at the beginning of the program—something about 4 or five sentences long. She said kids are often more accurate after IM—not skipping words ect. Now, in my son’s case he copied a little over two sentences (4 lines) and came out of his room whining about how it was too hard and he was tired. This is very typical for him so I didn’t push it. His handwriting looks fine but he falls apart after writing only a few sentences.
Yesterday I gave him the same assignment. He wrote out the whole thing, put his name and an old date on it (the text was about the west last century), and put it in an envelope he had fashioned out of paper. He very proudly brought it to me. I had spied on him because I have never seen him working for so long and was convinced he must have laid down on his bed to rest. He was diligently working.
Now, he still didn’t consistently capitalize or put periods in so its no miracle cure. There was a post last week about all the causes of handwriting difficulties and my son has had aspects of each one. I think IM mainly works on the motor planning.
But the endurance difference was really striking. His putting the old date on it and making it look like mail also suggest to me that the process was not wearing.
4. My husband has been shocked at how well he is reading. He did the reading with him over the past few days so I can’t say. I also am not sure how IM would help reading. I know it has helped his fine motor sequencing which his Neuronet therapist told me is one of his remaining difficulties. Personally, I would not pursue IM primarily for reading unless you know there are underlying sensory motor issues that would benefit.
5. We took a break from Neuronet while doing IM and he has picked up exercises up at a higher level. We are all hoping and seemingly seeing some spillover effects (just like NN clearly helped IM).
The therapist said that often changes are only noticed over the long haul. For example, she had a child who went from being the worst kid on the soccer team to being the team captain. The only thing that he did was IM and of course maturation. We’re going to pick Karate back up and I am hoping he will be more successful at it. He had grown very frustrated with how much worse he was than other kids.
I think this is a very good therapy and is the first therapy my son has ever done better than the average child. I think the other therapy we have done (Fast Forward, Neuronet, and TLP) laid the foundation for IM.
He did not seem to mind doing it. He did three times a week after school for five weeks. His therapist set up prizes and the first time he got a 1000 points, I bought him a package of candy. His successes then motivated him.. He ended up with the most bursts—133 (a burst is being perfectly in time four times in a row) than any other kid the therapist has seen. My son was so pleased—told her that he wants to come back and have a chance to beat anyone who beats him. That comment alone was worth doing IM for!!
Beth
Re: Interactive Metronome--our experience-very long
YES! This is the very thing I said we noticed too!. I call it sustained attention. But it is like you said,they stick to it longer,and don’t seem as tired afterward.
Makes for a much easier homework time.
My youngest highest was 89 bursts in one session. He says,”bring it on!”:-)
BTW,he had to start with being patterned. He was so off,the OT had to take her hands over his and do it with him in the begining.
Tell your son way to go, from me, okay?
Thanks for Posting
Hi Beth,
We start July 1st and I have been waiting for your post….so thanks. It sounds as though you have seen some solid improvement. That is just great!
I hope you do not mind if I ask a few more questions.
1. Have you noticed any increased ability to remember things and follow directions—e.g Go to your room, brush your teeth, put on your pajamas? At this point, we get at least 1, maybe 2 of those things done. On a good day we might get all 3.
2. How about stuff in the time/space areas—can he better navigate through a parking lot?
3. Did he have problems w/interval timing? Do they remain? Any better ability to judge the amouint of time required to cross a road ?
SI, Listening Therapy, swimming and Tae kwan do have really helped our son with his body but he is still lost in the time and space areas. I am hoping that you may have ssen some improvement there (if indeed they were problem areas in the 1st place).
Thanks so much for your post.
Margo
WOW!! and how IM helps reading
Beth, WOW! Great news. Tell him how proud we are of him! That is really, really good!
I agree with your statement that IM is not designed to improve reading but with some kids IM does. No, it is not a reading program but it works on the skills that are needed to read or to do math. My son’s reading did not change but his timed math test scores improved dramatically after IM which I contribute to better processing and better organization with motor functions. Plus, learning rhythm helped him, a lot. So many things in life have rhythm. I contribute his awesome baseball skills to IM. Learning rhythm will help in so many areas.
I believe that IM will set the stage for a lot of other things to happen down the road. I am so glad that you went back and did this with him.
Donna in MO
Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tried i
This sounds so exciting that I am eager to find someone near me who does it - but we aren’t done looking into OT and other therapies that should precede IM. But I don’t want to miss a window of opportunity - so if you guys don’t mind letting me know how old your kid’s were when they did it… Thanks!
Re: Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tri
my boys were 12 and 11. And the OT reccomended it.
Re: Thanks for Posting
Gosh that’s exciting! I can’t wait to hear about more experiences with IM!!!
Linda please be sure as share your experience too. I’m very interested in reading about it.
Margo, what do you mean by lost in time and space? My son sometimes has difficulty describing when something happened or where it happened. Is this the same thing?
time and space
Hi Laura,
He does a decent job of descirbing what and where things happen, but, he has a poor concept of time—from actually reading an analogue clock to telling how much time has passed or judging how much time he needs to complete a task—e.g crossing the street before the light changes or before the approaching car will hit him.
He also has poor navigational skills—getting from one place to another, finding the car in a parking lot, even recognizing which house belongs to his friend (granted, some of the houses do look very similar, but–-he has been there once a week for the past year!!! ).
If he had to take public transportation, he would miss his stop—or be in a state of anxiety, unsure of which stop was right. He would have trouble getting from the ticket both to the theatre.That kind of thing.
We are working on it – I am forcing him to navigate his way around on his own—as long as it is safe. But the drivers where I live are NUTS…so it is worrying me quite a bit lately.
Take Care,
Margo
Re: Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tri
My son is 9. I think whether you need OT first depends on how severe your child’s problems are. I might do the pretest and find out first. I intially was going to do just IM and sound therapy because I thought I’d get the most “bang” for my buck. I think it is true still—if your child is at a point to benefit from it. You make a lot of progress in a short time compared to OT. As it turns out my son really needed OT type therapy first, but not all children do.
Beth
Re: Thanks for Posting
My son is not great at the direction following either. Can’t say I have really noticed a difference but maybe I am so used to nagging him I haven’t even given IM a chance. I will try and report back here if I do notice a difference. Of course, failure to follow directions has so many causes that it may be hard to generalize.
My son doesn’t have the sorts of problems you note with time and space so I can’t comment. IM does work on timing so maybe you’ll see changes in the calculation of how long things take.
Beth
Re: He got his certificate last night
My son got his certificate of completion last night and lovingly hung it on his bulletin board, displacing his drawing of cactuses (his latest passion so you can see how much it meant to him). I sure hope the sustained attention carries over to homework Socks!!! The bad thing about doing it at the end of the year is that you don’t see as much carryover into homework. On the other hand, it was much easier to do it at the end of the year. School work was winding down.
His IM therapist emailed me and told me that he has become a bit of a local “hero ” . She has told other kids she is working with how well he has done (beat the record for bursts) and now many of them want to know how well did Nathan do on this. He just glowed when I told him this.
Beth
Re: Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tri
My experience with IM isn’t so positive, but I wanted to share it in case it is helpful to anyone. My son was 9 when he did IM. I was hopeful, because intuitively it sounds like a great program. I would observe kids and I would notice that those who were successful socially, as well as academically and in sports, seemed to have a natural rhythm and sense of timing. So when I heard about IM, I got on the band wagon. My son had made great strides in many therapies (FFW, SI, Tomatis, vision therapy) up to that point, but some fine tuning was (is) still needed.
For my son, the therapy was boring and tedious and little gain was made. Getting him there for the daily sessions was a chore. The therapist did little to encourage or to make it anything other than boring. I’m not sure he was “called” to do this kind of work. Moral of the story: with this therapy, the therapist plays a very important role. For kids with extreme timing difficulties, gentle guidance and praise of each baby step is essential in this therapy that feels so unnatural to them. Be sure the therapist is a good match for your child.
Re: Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tri
I think the therapist makes a big difference too. We were fortunate because we had some choices. I choose the one who I thought understood my son best and who I liked best (fortunately they were the same!!!). She wasn’t the closest (or the furthest) geographically. She set up rewards for him and made bets with him about what he could do (realistic ones that increased as he got better). She praised him a lot too. Of course, it helped that he ultimately was very successful but this child was pretty bad at the beginning.
I must admit that when I first watched her work with him my initial thought was boy this must be boring for someone with a masters (she is an audiologist) to do for half the day. She, however, always seemed to see him as puzzle—what was going on in his brain to make this exercise or that easier or harder for him.
I think, in retrospect, it might not be a bad idea to ask a potential therapist how they motivates the kids.
Beth
Re: Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tri
I am really excited about our OT. He is sooo into this program, gives seminars, several of the articles on the IM website were written by him, he was interviewed by TV networks, etc.. I have actually not met him yet, but he is getting the most fantastic reports from parent. I understand he does a great job motivating the kids and explaining how it helps, etc. He has done IM w/ about 50 kids…so I am pretty confident he will be a cool guy. He is also a man, which is a huge plus for my son.
By the way, I am doing it too so I will give you guys my take as well.
Re: time and space
How interesting our son’s are kind of opposite here. Mine is very good with reading a watch (he seemed to learn it quickly, like money concepts too —except for occassional reversals), but when referring to something that happened earlier in the day he might describe it as “Once I saw…” as if it happened years ago!
In fact, I was driving on the freeway about a year ago and there was a guy on the side shoulder laying down next to his car while changing his tire. About 10 minutes later my son said, “Once I saw a guy laying on the freeway.” My son was 6 or just turning 7 at this time. If I question him further, he can often describe situations in more detail (or is getting better at it because I do question him alot), but it seems strange to me that he’ll describe it this way.
I too worry about my son and cars, but more so because he’s not always aware of them.
Re: Curious about age of your son, and the others who've tri
I am an IM provider and I always start out by telling the parents that IM is boring. (About half way through, IM turns from fun to hard work.) And when you think about it, it makes sense. When you are very interested in a task, like for example, watching T.V., it doesn’t take a lot of internal skills to focus on that task of watching T.V. It takes a lot more skill to focus on tasks that are boring like homework, listening in class, and reading (especially when reading is hard). Thus, IM becomes harder and harder requiring more skills over a longer period of time because the purpose of IM is to get the student to use their focusing skills.
I tell parents that THEY want their child to do IM. (The child didn’t come to me and ask me if they could do IM.) So, I encourage the parents to set up a reward program. When they get half way done they reward them with something. (I think of small things like a new toy, money, a special day in the park. Stuff that doesn’t cost a lot. ) Then I also encourage them to give one at the end of the time. This one bigger like a trip to the movies, a day of shopping, a special toy. I also tell parents to shoot for a certain score rather than the number of sessions. This will get the child to work hard to get the low score rather than just counting down the days.
I agree that the therapist makes a big difference. Children who are competitive ususally do better because they want to beat someone elses score. My kids were always helpful because they all did IM so they know how hard it is to get bursts. When the student gets done they will ask “how many bursts did you get?”. The student would tell them and they would say “Great job! That’s ____ more than you did last time! Cool!”. I have also started showing the student a magic card trick. I first show them the trick and then I tell them that when they get a certain amount of bursts I will show them how to do the trick. Then I have them do the magic trick for everyone in their family. (Magic tricks go very well with IM. It takes focus, sequencing, and attention to do them correctly.)
It’s great to hear about the success stories!
Donna in MO
Re: He got his certificate last night
totally awsome. And you know what Beth? If this program does NOTHING else,tell me his pride in this acomplishment was not worh every penny!
Someone made a very good point about therapist,but ironicly in this post something came up that I had forgotten about. The therapist in anything is of upmost importance.
My youngest completed the program in the specific timeframe but my oldest was delayed in his completion,and wound up having to go two weeks more. My oldest pretest scores were significantly lower then his brother’s,BUT he is an A type personality, hard on himself,and competitive. His troubles with getting the scores was he wouldn’t relax and “get into the zone”. It is important to get down to the lower scores,because in the lower scores it is a subconcious act,so it becomes second nature,hence the improvements even after the program is completed.
Re: He got his certificate last night
That’s what I think too, Socks. My son has been one of those kids who doesn’t even do therapy in the time they expect!!! I, of course, have not told him this but I fully expected he would do the extra week the therapist expected. I even had it on the calendar so he got a prize by ending early too!!!
Beth
Awesome!
We start in 2 weeks.
If you find something that also helps further with sequencing let us know. My sons two biggest problems are handwriting (I think mostly related to fine motor dyspraxia) and sequencing.
I will let all know how it goes for us as well.