im

Do a search for “IM” and “Interactive Metronome” in Parenting a Child with LD and you will find many, many posts from parents whose children have used this program successfully. After reading about it for several months, I have my son scheduled to do it over this coming summer. I took the information from the IM website, and from the BBs here to my son’s primary care physician, and he will write a referral for the program for me. That doesn’t mean the insurance company will pay for it, but it might help. :-)

Lil

My experience with IM was fairly mixed. My son’s pre-test IM score was 248 msec. My son took 32 sessions to reach the full goals of IM, e.g. 19 msec for all the hand exercises. My son has both ADHD and a reading disability and the technical adviser from IM felt 32 sessions was fairly average for kids like my son. His final overall score (all training exercises) was 22 and was considered good for his age of 10 yrs. He worked hard and felt quite positive about his excellent attention for an hour, although my son has always had good attention when interested (common in ADHD). I was really pleased for him. The School of Medicine, of which I am an Assoc. Clinical Prof, charged me their full price ($125/session) for half the sessions and a reduced price ($80/session) for the other half. I paid around $3,000 for the total program. This is probably higher than in the community but I had pressured them to buy the program. And, I had agreed to help them defray the costs of the program since they weren’t sure they would ever use it again. They have.

With all that said, I really didn’t see much change in him except that he is more rhythmic in singing and dancing. (Before IM, he was never on the beat!). I have observed him fairly carefully, as has his teachers. His attention is about the same; he still drops food when he eats; his athletic performance hasn’t changed in soccer, skiing, etc; his reading was the same. The Ph.D. who administered the program didn’t do any additional evaluation of him beyond the IM pre-post testing so I can’t really say he didn’t improve in some ways that I didn’t observe.

I know other parents have seen some remarkable improvements in many areas including memory, concentration, athletic performance, etc., but not me. The psychologist who administered the program to my son has used it with a growing number of adult elite athletes/musicians, e.g. who want to get their pre-test scores of 16 msec down to 10-12 msec. (Oh, to have such worries!) These athletes report subjectively that they see subtle improvements in their performance. No one has really been able to devise ways of measuring very specific or discrete improvements. Researchers tend to use big achievement tests or improved golfing scores, etc. In other words, global score improvement that could come from normal developmental growth, involvment in other growth-producing activities during the IM sessions, etc.

I don’t regret doing IM. I needed to know if it would help, and he does keep the beat better in music class! But I certainly didn’t see any major changes in my son. If your money is tight, I would think carefully about doing this program. I might just do lots of sports and musical activities in its place and let practice bring your child along. Just my observation and others might disagree.

We have not tried it, but in a recent study, boys with ADHD who were already taking stimulant medication showed improved attention after IM. Interestingly, boys in the study who played non-violent video games rather than receiving IM treatment also showed statistically significant improvement, although not as much. The boys remained on medication while in the study, so it is hard to say from it what the effects of IM (or video games, for that matter) would be on children who are not taking medication.

Andrea

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Hi dj,

I found IM improved my son’s sequencing skills, attention and motor planning.
I have found it to be one of the most helpful interventions thus far.

I personally did this in an attempt to avoid meds and it does look as though my son will not need meds now.

I could see that a child who was on meds already would not get new gains if their attention had already improved on the meds.

At least one person reported that they were able to discontinue meds after IM and a few others have been able to avoid meds altogether. It hasn’t worked for everyone.
It was very worthwhile for us.

We are one of the ones who did IM very successfully. My son’s LD has a large motor component to it and we saw very major changes with IM. Now we did other therapy first because his pretests originally were so high (350 ms off).

My son is able to write for a much sustained period of time now. Before he would collapse after a couple sentences (always legible—that wasn’t the issue).

He sang for the first time after IM.

He became one of the best soccer players on his team from running around and never kicking the ball.

We made progress with other therapy that had stalled.

His attention has improved. We were planning on a trial of medication in the fall (we did IM in the summer), following diagnosis of ADD by a neurologist. We still have not medicated him.

His resource teacher (who had him the year before) said he is like a new kid.

He is doing much better in math.

It is not cure but for us it has been a piece of the puzzle.

Beth

… which is why it needs to be said that, like medication and other treatments, not all children will respond to IM. What would be really great is if there were research to tell us the profiles of those who are likely to experience a positive response, for all of the different kinds of treatment out there. I think we are years away from that, though.

Andrea

IM was a great treatment for us but we’ve done other things that have not been nearly as helpful. Most notably was PACE. Bottom line is almost anything you do is a bit of a gamble, given present knowledge. I’m not usually the gambling type but doing nothing was a clear negative outcome for my severely LD son.

Beth

My son is not technically ADD, but he has problems with attention, organization and self regulation. He has motor planning issues and is dyslexic. He did IM for 28 sessions and never got his feet even close to the target. He got his hands into the 20-30 ms range only at the very end. He wants to go back and do the advanced training (at $120 a pop I need to find a provider that my insurance will cover!) .

We have seen subtle changes that are hard to know how much was IM and how much was maturity but I do think IM helped. Specifically his stamina for handwriting is much better, he seems slightly more coordinated, and he can do a mean handstand. We also just completed 4 weeks of Seeing stars at Lindamood Bell and all of a sudden he is moving visually through worksheets much better. I don’t regret doing IM because the science behind it makes sense to me and it may have cleared the way for the improvements we have seen.