I am a spec. ed teacher that is going to another meeting called by an outside learning Center. They are once again, going to bring up recommendations of 100 + hours of costly therapy (which will be provided by “trained” paraprofessionals, usually college students) which includes the Tomatis music listening tapes. Outside of the private learning centers promoting it, and Tomatis himself - what is the word on the street - not to mention research to support this? Any one have any feedback or information. I don’t want to go in negatively, but there does not seem to be alot of research to support this timely/costly therapy.
Tomatis
Sorry,
Just read your post again, more carefully. It sounds like the learning
center is offering The Listening Program I referred to. I was assuming you work for a public system and that parents are looking for reimbursement from it. Am I correct in this?
There is anecdotal & clinical evidence only for this approach, lots of the former on these boards.
Re: Tomatis Listening Therapy
Yes the Learning Center is offering the program as a “tool”. The the parent comes back to the district and states/ requests/ demands/ that the school district pay for it.
Re: Tomatis Listening Therapy
I have used listening therapy with my own child—TLP—which is far less expensive than Tomatis. It is also not individualized. I would agree with Jan that there is really not much more than antedotal evidence on listening therapies. That doesn’t mean they don’t work but rather that they certainly haven’t reached the criteria of research based interventions.
Beth
Re: Tomatis Listening Therapy
I am also an LD teacher and the parent of a child with auditory processing disorder. I agree with Jan that schools should not have to pay for unproven techniques or programs. Even therapies with much more research like Fast ForWord are hard to get the public schools to provide.
Janis
Tomatis
Tomatis listening saved my daughters life. We did the full program as well as The Listening Program. (We see much more benefit from Tomatis vs. TLP). Even my extremely skeptical husband says it’s the best therapy we have ever done. Worth the $$. My dd now ASKS if she can go back and includes it on her ‘goals’ that her teacher at school has the kids put together.
We paid for the program privately and would not have even considered asking the school to pay or provide.
I researched Tomatis several years ago when we were considering sending my son to a private school that would accept him only on the condition that he do the Tomatis pgm. (to the tune of about 2000 additional dollars). I found a meta-analysis by googling (source: a prestigious U.S. graduate school of education, the name of which I forget) and one or two small Saskatchewan studies that I think were included in the meta-analysis. (For some reason, Tomatis first launched itself on this continent in Canada, in Saskatchewan and in Ontario, where I live.)
There is no independent research of sufficient credibility verifying the use of this technique currently.
I too am a teacher, but also the mum of an LD child. Despite my skepticism based on my research, I am considering an offshoot called The Listening Program for my child. However, it in my view, it should not be the responsibility of a public system to provide access/funding for an unproven program, any more than it is the responsibility of a health system (and I live where we have a publically funded one) to pay for every hot but unproven new therapy. Parents should foot the bill until credible research exists.