tomatis method

I’ve heard of it. Another similar program is The Listening Program which I believe is less expensive. I’m not sure how effective either of these programs are. I haven’t used them although my son has some sound sensitivities right now that are driving me crazy so I’m tempted to try TLP. But I’m going to look into a few other things first.

You might try looking for research about these programs on Google. Another good source is the book “When the Brain Can’t Hear.” You can find it in many book stores and some libraries may have it. It’s a marvelous book.

Other people have posted about Tomatis and The Listening Program some time ago, and many say they have had positive results. I remember some people writing that with Tomatis the child had disturbed sleep and other odd reactions for a week or two, not pleasant but signs that yes something really is happening in the brain. If — and this is a big if — if your child fits the profile that thes programs apply to, I think they are worth considering. Use the search option on the top of this page and see what you can find in older posts.

[quote:afe6cad76b=”victoria”] I remember some people writing that with Tomatis the child had disturbed sleep and other odd reactions for a week or two, not pleasant but signs that yes something really is happening in the brain.[/quote]

The music can be very energizing for children. If they exercise after listening then it probably won’t interfere with sleep.

I would be sure you find scientific studies that prove the value of a particular therapy with children with a particular profile prior to spending a lot of money. You can find anecdotal evidence for almost everything. I would be most likely to consider AIT with a child with autism because of the severity of the communication disorder. I do not believe most major APD specialists like Terri Bellis (author of When the Brain Can’t Hear) are recommending AIT routinely for children with auditory processing issues at this point.

Janis

thanks for all the replies.. i shall look over the old posts (if i can figure out how to use the search function properly!!) and read more..

these listening methods are expensive and i’m not sure if they are suited to my dd - as no one can figure out what the problem is and that makes it difficult to find appropriate methods to help her..

Well, what are the issues with your child?

I work as a reading tutor and I go right to the nitty-gritty: If you have trouble reading, I teach you reading. If you need visual/physical retraining in tracking your eyes and writing, I do that as part of teaching. If you need phonemic awareness, I work as much as I can with that too. Then I teach reading skills thoroughly from the ground up.

This approach is not an overnight miracle, it is six months to a year of hard work. It is not flashy and exciting, it is quiet work sitting at the dining table going over each tiny skill one at a time, repeating a hundred times if necessary. On the other hand, if you do it yourself it is not expensive at all, and even if you hire someone it is less expensive that trying a lot of commercial programs to see what works.

There are definitely kids out there who need even more, who need specialized programs. The easy way to find out if your child really needs something special is to try a very good basic reading (or math) tutoring program for a couple of months; if it works, fine, and if you find places where you stall, a good tutor can pinpoint where and why you are stalling — for example, I had two students this year with intractable dyslexia; both made three years of progress reading in six months (which does look like a miracle in retrospect, but it’s just a mass of small gains); after that time I know that one of them has unfortunately learned to analyze words backwards (so he mixes up did, said, had) and could probably benefit from vision therapy, beyond what I can do; while the other has memory problems and if it were available here I’de recommend PACE or Interactive Metronome, and he also does not discriminate well in hearing and he needs more training in that, again if it were available. Having some clear knowledge like this can make a big difference in doing something productive.

she has comprehension problems, especially with inferential and critical comprehension.. she also has a weak vocabulary - 98 on the wisc iv.. many of the wonderful products that seem to be available are not on sale in australia.. hard to trial and error..
but the bigger problem is getting her to sit down with me and listen..
she will either hide/lose the books/worksheets/software or start an argument with me.. i lose patience and pandora’s box reopens..
when she is a willing participant however other problems arise - loss of focus and concentration.. her mind goes everywhere but the work..
i’ve hired tutors who become frustrated - dd has an amazing ability to manipulate them to do as she wants.. and what she wants clashes with my wants and thus results in frustrated tutors.. i really need to find a tutor who a) understands kids that can’t sit still and pay attention for more than 8 minutes , b) one that can make learning fun, interesting and challenging and c) one that can recognise when a 10 year old is taking them for a ride.. so far no luck :cry:
some (actually a lot) hints would be greatly appreciated.. you seem to have a great understanding and wide knowledge on lds..

Sounds like ADHD to me. Unless you can get the attention improved, she will likely continue to struggle with comprehension. I don’t think any comprehension activities will override the lack of focus. Also, her vocabulary and comprehension problems would warrant a language evaluation by a speech-language pathologist, if you have access. Rarely is a comprehension problem solved by doing comprehension exercises. You need to deal with the root of the problem first.

Janis

thats so depressing:(
she has been assessed by three speech therapists who have all reached the same conclusion - she ‘chooses’ to remain and speak the way she does.. this does nothing but infuriate me even further..
has been checked by audiologists, again the same conclusion..
even her school report that i received today has reported no real problems with comprehension..
i now sound like a crazy paranoid mother:((

I hope maybe PattiM will see this and reply, but she first focused on her daughter’s other problems and ignored the possibility ADD. But eventually she dealt with the ADD and her child began making gains. If you get the attention under control, then you can begin to see if there are other issues needing to be addressed. You might try a neurologist who specializes in ADHD if you haven’t already.

Janis

Welcome to the world of crazy paranoid mothers. Oh, well, better that than the mothers in denial until the kid is twenty.

thanks for your replies.. this is all so exhausting :(

Brooklea,

I have been where you are now. When my daughter was giving me attititude because of her ADD, I learned about my own ADD when she was diagnosed. But I realized that I had to be her mom and let someone else take over being her teacher because we were getting NO WHERE…even with all my Lindamood-Bell training, I couldn’t get a handle on her behavior and I was so frustrated…

Your daughter sounds like she is good at manipulating and this is how she has survived all these years by her wits…But now she knows it isn’t good enough and she pulls the behavior to avoid school.

Once you get a handle on her behavior either through counseling, meds or dietary changes you will see her start to change and take responsibility for her education.

thanks for the advice pattim..

many decisions to make as diet and counselling haven’t worked..

Brooklea,

This IS exhausting!!! Don’t worry about seeming like a “crazy” mom. Many of us are in the same boat. I’ve heard that for some ADHD kids Interactive Metronome is helpful. Although I don’t have personal experience with it. Good luck!

Tomatis and related therapies are for auditory processing issues.
We have done some sound therapy but wouldn’t do them without documented auditory processing problems.

Auditory processing and ADHD have many of the same symptoms and teasing out what is actually going on can be difficult. My own son has both.

Interactive metonome, which Laura mentioned, helped my son a lot. There was a marked difference in attention, connectivity to people, and hand writing. We were ready to do a meds trial but never did in light of the positive reports from teachers ect.

I still see the ADHD but is manageable, at least for now.

Beth

Hi Brookelea,

I know the crazy mom feeling, I am the crazy mom. My daughter was diagnosised with LD in Nov of this past school year. I don’t claim to know even half of it. But long story short my DD has LD thus took her to a pediatrician to determine what her LD was. The Dr figured it must be ADD and did the tests. The tests a very subjective, this is not diagnosed by medical tests but a series of multiple choice questions filled out by the classroom teacher and parents. This set of “tests’ came out ADD for our daughter, however it was only at school and the classical criteria is that it is present in at least 2 different environments. I have been reading Ritalin Free Kids and it was very enlightening. Took our daughter to our naturopath and found out that there are at least 4 physical things that could be causing her difficult in regards to her learning.

One thing we found out that there is a chance that our daughter’s left and right brain may not be communicating the way it should because she didn’t crawl for very long. That period of crawling has a great impact on later learning (and this is documented by medical research). Our naturopath recommended something called Brain Gym. It is not very expensive. You are taught the techniques by the instructor, thus it looks to be a short lived expense as well. If your daughter didn’t crawl for very long I’d suggest checking out [url=http://www.braingym.org]Brain Gym[/url] I will be starting this with my daughter soon so I can let you know how it goes. Our Naturopath also recommended trying Reading Reflex program. I found the book at our local library.

I had looked at Tomatis at the beginning of finding out about the LD, you’ll probably find my post here eventually. Here is the website I found about [url=http://www.tomatis.com/English/index.htm]Tomatis[/url]. I still think that it sounds good but very expensive compared to what I am trying right now.

Brain Gym, Somonas, Earobics, The Academy of Reading, The listening Program, Lindamood-Bell, PACE…etc…We didn’t make any progress until we addressed the ADD. Bottom line, I wasted ton’s of $$ pursuing Ritalin free solutions which just set my daughter further back and I wish I could have gotten my head out of the sand when she was in kindergarten instead of 6th grade. She lost out on so much essential foundational learning skills because of the untreated ADD.

I don’t negate that children with ADD need help, possibly some form of Ritalin, or whatever the new drug is called. However there are children being diagnosed that are not ADD. There is a fine line where the child goes from being a normal child to being a child with ADD. In my case my child is one that looks like she is being misdiagnosed by one professional out of 3. And the one that thinks that she is ADD wants us to just think about medicating her, but to wait to see how she does in the fall.

But in relating this to Brookelea, my point was to explore all options with an open mind. Just because people may think your child is ADD does not mean that your child has or doesn’t have ADD. It is a complicated puzzle that needs to be looked at carefully, and IMHO by more that one professional. Many LD’s can look like ADD, and visa versa. Just proceed with your eyes open and carefully. I have seen too many children that do not have ADD be diagnosed as having ADD and became medicated for this disorder which had disasterous effects on the child and the family. I have seen where it was the correct diagnosis and the meds worked for the child. It is just a word of caution, every child is extremely different and unique. Isn’t that good :D

thanks to everyone who has posted.. i have read all the posts and feel so much more enlightened on the subjects.. just so frustrating when no one believes you and thinks that you are making it all up:(
i’m actually on the verge of a) killing her today, b) selling her to some third world nation or c) running away to europe.. dd has a massive project due on monday which she has had over 2 months to complete.. there is no doubt that she is more than capable of completing it but she hasn’t even bothered to start it.. i have tried everything under the sun to get her to start but to no avail.. the cries, tantrums, screams and outbursts only lead to me having a migraine..
problem is that she is on a scholarship and her no show on work may result in the scholarship being revoked..
i really don’t believe that she has an auditory problem but instead just completely unmotivated, lazy and insensitive to what others may feel or want.. she can be so incredibly intelligent but wastes so much time avoiding doing anything.. when i press her to do work she blames me for not caring enough about her education (which is absolute rubbish)..
i have rang centres (aussie spelling) around where i live and most have suggested tomatis or listening program - both of which i am sceptical about in regards to dd..
dd did walk early and hardly crawled so we did all braingym - on and off for the past 5 years.. did help a bit, especially with reading..
losing the scholarship would be a great blow - dd would have to leave the school even though she believes that i will pay for her to stay ($15000 per year).. my dh and i have warned her that this will not happen unless she can find a money tree!! even her school report that i received last week reported that dd doesn’t hand homework in on a regular basis.. i queried her and her reply is ‘its boring and easy, i refuse to do it’.. i was not amused..
seriously i’m worn out and have almost given up..
sorry to exhaust you all..

There’s a book by Dr. Levine. It’s “The Myth of Laziness.” Your post somehow reminded me of it. Quite honestly, I think my non-ld child is pure lazy a good deal of the time.

BTW, I can completely relate to the “no one believes you and thinks you’re making it up.” I’ve dealt with that over the years too. It’s very frustrating and unfortunately can waste a lot of precious intervention time.

There is just too much riding on her self destructive actions… She has NO IDEA or understanding that she is the one who is responsible if she loses out on a scholarship I don’t think Somonas or Tomatis is going to remediate her behavior.

I remember the frustration you are experiencing before my daughter was diagnosed. I felt overwhelmed I wanted to just chuck it all, and give up. We spent about $4000 a month for about 3 months getting her treated at a learning centre trying absolutely everything we could. We made slow progress but they kept saying the same things, “she just can’t focus,” she is inconsistent, stubborn, Finally with out savings drained we decided to try meds as a last resort. What a difference this made!

Since I am an SLP I tested my DD and now her vocab receptively is WNL but expressively she is still in the low average range. She has come so far in the 6 years that she has had meds and intensive therapy, however, she still has a long way to go. The exciting thing for me is that she is going to get a high school diploma…She passed the language portion of the exit exam but just missed the cut off on the math…guess what we are focusing on this summer…MATH…

You are doing the right thing to get her help…and from my own experience it is hard to stay the course. One of the phrases I use with my ADDer’s is “Master your commander.” The commander is their Brain…and I really stress the responsibility for their actions…because if they can’t master their commander they will lose out on opportunities in life. However, this concept of mastering their brain and accepting responsibility for their behavior is tough…as ADDer’s mature later and learn things the hard way through repeated mishaps that impair their confidence and self esteem.

pattim, we are in such similar situations.. i too have spent an absolute fortune on my dd over the past 6 years and nothing has helped..
her behaviour is intolerable.. i have just banned her from going to school camp - she knew the rules and went out of her way to push them..

i will speak to the psyche today..

thanks for your support