The vestibular system/therapeutic interventions

I don’t know about what occupational therapists use. I do know that there are bean bag exercises in the Audiblox program for balance and coordination.

We have done vestibuarly based therapy—Neuronet (www.neuronetonline.com) with great success. NN incorporates a balance board into it—in fact, it is the Ballametrics one. My son is much better integrated and we’ve seen spill over into learning.

We do this as a part of vision therapy. We do a lot for balance, bounce balls to a metronome, floor work that is designed to integrate the brain mind and body.

I think these exercises have really helped my son in many areas.

This is where I think good OT and good VT intersect.

When your read the studies on neuroplasticity done on animals the animals achieve neural growth through and enriched environment that involves mostly motor stimulation.
When I read these studies I keep thinking, “Those animals are undergoing occupational therapy.”

For example; the mice who were placed in the cage with wheels to run on and mazes to stay active had neural growth while the mice that were put in cages with no such stimulation had their brains degenerate.

I am interested in knowing more about Ballametrics also. The therapy resembles the Dore Achievement Center’s, from what I can see. I believe Dore has patterned their exercises from Dr Belgau’s exercises.The Davis Program and Brain Gym also refers to the midline and using the right/left hemisphere of the brain to its maximum. I also reread Delivered From Distraction and his personal experiences with his son and Dore therapy. Hallowell states that he saw a remarkable change in his son’s reading. Any feedback from those who have tried Ballametrics as a tutor or a parent?

Do duly remember, though, that sometimes you still gotta teach ‘em to read :-)

I have long suspected that the hours and hours of time in the swimming pool (getting lots of intensive instruction - I didn’t learn easily!) served similar functions to OT therapies.

I think that kids who have a single “kink” in their skills sometimes can show amazing gains through therapy without specifically addressing reading. My middle child benefited from Neuronet, which incoprorates ballametrics, but also required extensive reading therapy. Basically, Neuronet made him teachable but he still had to be thought

I have also done NN with my youngest who was an early decoder but not reading without a fight going into grade three. The difference has been remarkable. He has gone from fighting to read grade 3 material (I had to basically force him to do his summer reading material) to willingly reading grade 4 material. The other day he asked me why reading used to be so hard and is now so easy.

The other big change we see is that he is now much more engaged in conversation. His handwriting has also improved a lot.

But he was never diagnosed with learning disabilities. NN has helped him alot but I would never generalize from this experience to the kinds of kids who are the subject of posts on these boards. Most LD kids require explicit reading instruction in addition to other therapy.

Beth

I agree that you still need to address the reading issue. However, in a child who has the intellectual capacity to learn to read, yet does not without difficulty, there has to be so much more to the whole issue of brain processing skills. I was very intrigued by the Linda Silverman book on the visual-spatial learner and her emphasis on the right/left hemispheres. So much to consider… and we are not the experts in the field.
I appreciate your insights with your own children. Do you know how NN compares to Ballametrics? How long did your therapy take? Can I ask the price? Or is that rude??

With my older son, we actually did NN off and on for several years…alternating with other therapies. With my younger one, who has far less severe problems, it will probably be six months, excluding the time we only did sound therapy.

NN is about $70/hour, which is similar to other therapies in the metro area where I live. It is actually very cost efficient because it is a home based program. You only pay for therapy every two weeks.

NN is broader than Ballametrics but Ballametrics is easily available to a parent.

Beth

Would you recommend Balametrics? what changes did you see in your children?

I received the materials from Ballametrics when I ordered their balance board, which NN uses as well. There are some similarities, but as I said, NN is broader. I have not used Ballametrics though but it is an option since NN isn’t widely available.

My youngest son, who is not as severe as older one, has had big jumps in reading ability. He was struggling with third grade reading this summer (was going into third grade). He was an early decoder but reading just never clicked for him. He is now enjoying fourth grade material and asked me why reading used to be so hard. We have also seen an increased ability and interest to engage in conversation as well as improved handwriting.

With my older son, the changes have been slower, intermixed with other therapies, but more life changing. In first grade, we were told he could not learn. He was in special ed for both reading and math. He has a combination of language based and nonverbal learning disabilites as well as ADD. He is now in a regular sixth grade class in a demanding parochial school. He is a B/C student and has been on the basketball and now the school soccer team. I mention sports because, besides academics, we have also seen huge changes in his coordination. My son’s learning disabilities have a motor basis and improving them, has improved his coordination. Interactive Metronome, which we also did, was important here as well.

He has done almost every therapy around (IM, Listening therapy, PACE, Fast Forward) and almost everything has helped him. He has had intensive reading therapy as well, including phonographix and Seeing Stars. So I cannot attribute his progress only to NN, but it has been a very important part of his remediation. Without it, the reading therapy would not have been effective.

Beth

My older son has similar challenges to Beth’s, and we have done the same therapies (excluding Seeing Stars and Listening Therapy and including Neuronet.) I think Neuronet helped somewhat, but we never really finished as after more than a year he was still struggling with some of the exercises (though he mastered the most difficult one).

I was told that in some cases, it can take two years, steadily, to completion, and to be frank, we just ran out of steam. (I am several hundred miles from our provider, so there are logistical problems too.) I feel periodic guilt about this.

We still do one of the exercises (And he mastered his most difficult one.) but my emphasis now parallels Sue’s comments on the value of swimming. Interactive Metronome led to some sports successes, and although my son is still not big on team sports, he excels at badminton, snowboarding, fencing and squash. Finding sports a child enjoys is so important. I feel I am now providing Neuronet in another forum, so that while we did not “graduate” from Neuronet, its goals are still being accomplished.

I observed him close up recently playing badminton with a slightly younger, less skilled boy. I was impressed with the way he was able to muti-task (a major goal of Neuronet). He could carry on a lighthearted conversation while playing for fun, and at the same time humourously dispense little coaching tips (without sounding superior or preachy), make funny self-deprecating remarks when he’d blow a shot and comments like “Don’t you just hate it when that happens? I do that a lot” when the other boy would blow one.

I was impressed with his social skills as well as the physical multitasking ones. Prior to Neuronet and Interactive Metronome, he could not have managed all this at once. It’s impossible to tease out what role the various therapies played vs. the benefits of my getting him into all the sports he was interested in, but there has certainly been a positive effect all round. Sports are more fun and are big self-esteem builders, but it was likely the OT like therapies that got him to the point where he could take off with them.

Anyone here think puberty is a postiive factor?

My 6th grade son hasn’t done anything therapeutic since last year when he did VT. He is in a specialzed program at school so he gets intensive reading remediation , but that’s it.

All of a sudden he’s playing soccer really well, doing more and more socially appropriate things, more aware of the world around him. He looks more and more normal in how he related to groups etc.

My son is in sixth grade also. I have heard that puberty can bring on positive changes but frankly I haven’t seen them!!! We saw changes earlier and the only changes I see with puberty are being much more argumentative and difficult!!!

Beth

Our neurologist said the hormones of puberty do wonders for spacey, disorganized kids. We also see that he is motivated to be part of a gang, meet girls etc and that is pushing him to overcome his innate shyness.

And of course we are getting more arguments and eye rolls. !

Well, my son is certainly disorganized, although not extremely spacey. I do see some greater organization and maturity with figuring out what he can handle on his own and where he needs help. But he is a total slob and seems to take pride in that. Also, we are having trouble getting him to do new routines—like putting on deodorant. Sigh.

I also have read that there is a big jump about age 13 in LD kids. My Jewish speech and language therapist called it the bar mitzah effect. An audiologist told me there is natural development in the brain of the corpus collsium (sp?), which is what connects the right and left brain, at about this age.

Maybe it will happen yet. My son is still 12. I know the first audiologist my son saw told me that at 13 you get as much from maturity as you are going to get in terms of auditory processing.

I do think that therapy can set the stage for allowing natural development to take off. A lot of times our kids are so behind that they avoid the very things that help most kids. When they catch up, at least somewhat, then they can enjoy success. My son who has had vestibular issues has become a pretty good basketball player. I have found there is a reciprocal relationship between therapy and sports. Therapy lays the foundation which sports can build on. The sports can move the therapy along too. We saw marked improvement in certain therapy exercises after basketball season last year, for example. And then when he mastered those exercises, his dribbling became much more controlled.
And then this year, plain practice helped improve his shooting. In this regard anyway, he has become like any other kid.

But I am waiting for the puberty effect—that one is free!

Beth

I’m holding my breath on the bar mitzvah effect, especially since we are planning a bar mitzvah ! (god only knows how he will learn the hebrew, but we have 18 mnths to get ready….) I think we are only in the very first stages of puberty, but there is no question that he is more socially savvy, and that his strong desire to connect with his peers is leading him to do things I thought were impossible a year ago.

The organizational stuff may be more a function of the school he attends. Hard to say how much he would retain if he were left more on his own at this point.

I think I may be seeing some of this effect in my son at 12 1/2 - more independence with homework and study skills, a greater sense of responsibility, willingness to do chores without being asked etc. but then sometimes it’s one step forward, one back. For ex., while he now always makes his bed, the floor of his room is now more regularly a horror show!

This thread is prompting a connection I made as a result of professional development day conference for teachers I attended recently. Vestibular therapy and sports involvement help build resiliency and success. A Dr. Parker (first name gone, but I will check my notes if someone wants to look the guy up) of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, has published research on the factors that cause success vs. drop-outs from universities and colleges and has found that neither high school grades nor socioeconomic class are very significant. What matters overwhelmingly are students’ ratings on a standard emotional intelligence measure—a new hot topic in education—specifically, their ability to handle stress, their adaptability, their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills (the latter meaning their ability to identify & name what they’re feeling and tie it to a specific problem/event). (His research study was replicated at two American and one other Canadian university at least.)

I think the vestibular stuff we’ve done, the sports successes and my modified parenting approach years ago after reading “The Explosive Child” by Greene and my husband and I modeling our own usually not bad coping skills have all played a part in the young adult I now see emerging and are predictive of future success in the emotional domain, a domain that is way more important for success than formerly thought. Not that, like Beth, we don’t see the odd adolescent type annoying behaviour, but overall I feel heartened by what I see and by this research, which has to be true of LD kids as well.

My LD, ADD niece (a true early adolescent nightmare child for my sister) and a graduate of an alternative high school that caters to ADD kids) is now at college pulling off 90s and preparing to transfer to a university. She is thriving with the help of LD services and an emotional iq rating that I would say is pretty high—great coping skills, but in her early adolescence my sister truly despaired during a spell of curfew breaking, Oppositonal Defiant type behaviour etc. What a difference a few years can make!

That’s good news about the corpus collosum at age 13!