In the informal survey posts there were some mentions of CD’s for sound therapy and Tomatis. These are new to me and I’d like to know more. My son has speech problems adn some sensory and balance problems as mentioned in the low frequency CD?? Would LOVE to hear more about this. We went to local musical and he usually loves plays but complained he didn’t like this one because he couldn’t understand the music. It’s the first time he’s complained. He “sings” but his songs never rhyme- in fact rhymes seem to irritate him and he can’t “carry a tune.” I just thought he was tone deaf like me. I know he has some CAPD issues, but except for the reading and speech glitches he didn’t seem to fit most of the symptoms.
Re: What's the theory? Provider?
It does get annoying all these have to do it my ways…. But what’s the theory? And could you explain the low frequency references. My son has trouble swimming for example could this be CAPD? As I said I’ve been proceeding on the basis he has a mild form of CAPD because he fits the profile as far as reading, but not the rest of the symptoms I’ve read about. I’m wondering if I need to check more into the low frequency side? If you buy from provider Cd’s and headphones can you then do at home??? Is this something that wold work in conjunction with LIPS. Should it be done before rather than after??? If there’s a website maybe you could just post that. Sorry for all the questions but I need to follow this up. Are the sound CD’s with Tomatis is it a different program?
Re: What's the theory? Provider?
My son is about to start getting low frequency therapy right now. We are doing it through a provider that he is already seeing for other therapy. I am not sure how widely available this is (she got it from Germany). It made a big difference the first time we did it with his ability localize sound. We’re doing it again because she thinks it will help stabilize the gains we saw through doing high frequency therapy (The listening program). Most of the other programs are high frequency therapy.
I think you can buy TLP yourself but can’t remember how. (I know some help but somebody else might be able to tell you).
Problems with swimming can be problems with bilateral coordination which often characterizes children with interhemipheric integration problems like my son. Is that what you mean by problems swimming?
Beth
Re: Sound Therapy CD's? Tomatis?
Different providers and programs use different techniques to measure and test for results of their programs. TLP uses Tomatis as a base for the program.
Dr. Tomatis (the founder of the program) developed a sort of bell curve looking graph, divided into 3 quadrants (motor,language,creativity). When we go to the center my dd would be given a ‘listening’ test. It was almost like a hearing test, but they would map out on this graph what her listening curve looked like. They could tell which areas she was out of sorts with and customized her listening program to address her weaknesses.
Couple of the differences between TLP and Tomatis is that TLP is very generic - you can’t really customize to each user. It also does not do any bone conduction and doesn’t really work your right ear dominance.
However, Tomatis is VERY expensive and not very convenient as you have to drive to a center to do it and there aren’t very many centers in the US. I don’t even like to think about how much we have spent.
To understand more about Tomatis there is a great book called “When Listening Comes Alive” - it use to be on the ABT web site - I think Amazon might sell it too.
Re: Sound Therapy CD's? Tomatis?
Thanks for all the info. I may be able to check out the German side. My son despite a number of lessons has not been able to learn to swim. We’re not sure why. He’s doing very well at Karate. He does have trouble with sequential things like tying shoelaces.
Re: Sound Therapy CD's? Tomatis?
My son is taking Karate to help with bilateral coordination. I think Karate is more difficult than swimming in this matter frankly. Maybe your son is afraid of the water or something else more garden variety and unrelated to his LD. I know lots of kids who had difficulty learning to swim for this reason.
Beth
I'd recommend a kick board :)
When I’ve had kiddos with coordination issues, we start with a kickboard and get body position and kicking and breathing down… then breathing wiht one hand up and one hand down… then one arm and back up to the kick board and the other one…
Breathing is the real bear.
Re: I'd recommend a kick board :)
Breathing seems to be the bugaboo here too. Thanks this sounds like the how to teach tying shoes sequence thing. I just didn’t know how to do it with swimming. Part of prob is that most of lessons took place before we knew he had any of these issues. Only now thinking it may be related. Like reading, other kids already got it. Def not afraid of water. He “swims” with just his nose above water. Observers think he’s drowning and Mom just busy with younger sibling and not paying attention.
Re: I'd recommend a kick board :)
This isn’t bilateral coordination like I was thinking. I think you are right it is sequencing. My kids learned by putting their heads in the water and then turning side to side before adding it to the other strokes. But I suppose you have tried that. My five year old has learned by doing first under water with kicking and then adding arms to kicking (still under water) and then coming up for air and going back down. Breathing with every stroke is the last thing added. I live in FL now and it is interesting to me how differently my youngest has been taught. Much younger children learn to swim here and they have the process very broken down.
Beth
We have the shoelace problem too!
I hate to do this, but I ended up buying my son shoes that are zipped (also, we’ve had the slip in basketball shoes). Although after lots and lots of practice, he finally did learn to tie shoes, he does have difficulty tying them so that they stay tied. So often, he would just leave them untied…which would sometimes cause him to trip on the laces. I would of course be frantic worring that he’d hit is head!
Re: We have the shoelace problem too!
My daughter inherited very slow-growing hands and late-developing coordination; at age 12 - 14, her hands were the size of a six-year-old’s and she bought clothes in the women’s department, shoes in the men’s, and gloves in the children’s.
Tying shoes along with scissors, writing, drawing, and folding were all difficult to impossible for her. She had neither coordination nor strength. I found some really cool neon-co,oured elastic laces which she used for a couple of years, then she started wearing running shoes with low enough backs that she could leave tied and squeeze in and out of so she tied them every couple of weeks or so, and now she’s wearing the stylish slip-ons. She learned to tie shoes I guess around age 6, but it was always very difficult and painful for her (luckily ski boots are buckled now! But she never skated beyond beginner until her late teens, when she could finally tighten the skates.) She has excellent coping skills however.
Sometimes you can master a skill, and sometimes you work around it for a while.
Somonas, Tomatis, and from the Listening program all have to be done through a “provider” the CD’s are very pricey on top of it…$80 to 90 a pop and then you have to have a certain type of headphones on and then you have to meet with the provider to change the listening protocol every week or so…It gets very expensive quickly..