Difficulty with Interactive Metronome

Can he tell you what he dislikes about doing it? My son found it difficult at first and then got better at it. He was just whipped the first couple weeks. His scores starting were much higher than your son’s but was further along at 12 sessions. I guess I am thinking that if it is the beeps that annoy him you might be better off finishing the standard 15 sessions and then do TLP. My son had done TLP (plus Neuronet) prior to doing IM. Thus, it is hard to know exactly what helped.

I would say that I have learned the hard way with therapy that if you are hitting a wall, try a different approach and come back to it. So personally, I would not keep doing IM beyond the standard 15 sessions.

Beth

We are doing IM again. It has taken us way more than the normal number of sessions. We did not have the compliance issues you are experiencing. Are you doing this yourself or through a provider?

My son was completely exhausted in the beginning. He did not complain directly but I saw him exhibit some real signs of stress and exhaustion. He was moody, irritable and initially had an increase in impulsivity later on in the day. He held it together during the therapy. I think by about the15th session he was much less stressed.
I know that IM helped him tremendously even though he only got his overall score to the 40s with the initial 24 sessions. That is why we are doing it again I want to get him as low as possible and our therapist is giving us a price break (probably because he is an interesting case and it is taking forever.)
If I had to do it over again I would not pursue this without something like the listening program or neuronet first.
It is has been very frustrating to have to go through as many sessions as we have. It has been 39 and counting.

Still and all I continue to see improvements. He was completely stuck on some of the vision therapy exercises that are in the book by Etta Rowley. He just did them for me with ease today. His visual perception has improved too but that might be vision therapy.
Hope this helps!

Thanks, Beth and Linda. I think the stumbling block was doing it in the summer when he perceived his little brother as getting off scot free. (I had planned to do Handwriting Without Tears with his brother but the pgm. took too long to arrive.)

I am the provider (a challenging case for my first one). Previously when we did therapy (FFWD) I dropped to part-time from teaching for a semester and partial homeschooled him, taking him out of school in the afternoons, a good deal from his point of view. We had planned to do that in the spring but various factors conspired against that plan.

We are doing a very modified pgm.—not the standard 15 session, the modified pgm. being recommended by the pgm. support people. The plan is to move gradually on time and repetions. (Max. we do now for a single ex. is 135, for just one of the exercises.)

I like Beth’s advice. I think I’ll let this go awhile. I’ve booked a phone talk with our audiologist (who also provides Neuronet & TLP but who, unfortunately, is almost five hours away, hence my need to provide pgms. myself. ) I can partial homeschool him next Spring when I will be working part-time again. I suspect he also needs PACE—it’s a challenge to fit all this in to a busy schedule! It sounds like TLP/Neuronet should come first.

Thanks for your help.
Jan

IM was very difficult at first so we may have run into compliance issues too if I had been the provider.

I’d be very careful going to PACE if you have a child with lots of sensory motor issues. We did it when my son was 7 and it is the only therapy we’ve done that I don’t think was worth the effort we put into it. I think he was too young also—the program has a floor of age 6 so that made it difficult too. He topped out early and I kept plugging away with little results.

We didn’t do TLP until afterwards. That was a big mistake.

I have three children and only my middle one has had to do therapy. He pretty much accepts it, and knows that life isn’t fair. It is actually probably harder on my other two kids, who get less attention as a result.

Beth

I have to agree that if I had been the IM provider there would have been more compliance issues.

It might be good to drop it for now but don’t drop it all together. It sounds like something that he could really benefit from.

You’re right; he needs it. He’s spending recesses finding ways to amuse himself independently while his buddies play soccer. As he says, his feet are too slow to kick the ball. Mercifully, his friends don’t reject him for being non sporty, but it’s a lonely life at this time of year!

We got some good training suggestions from our audiologist. That and being settled into school have helped. He is now willing—not eager exactly, but we can work with willing, and maybe once he sees changes like those your son is experiencing…

His audiologist sometimes uses Neuronet to unstick kids stuck in IM (and conversely uses IM to unstick kids stuck in Neuronet) and was willing to get me started if he could not work up to 4 consecutive sessions of 300 reps on his best ex. (Both Hands). However, he is well on his way to meeting that target; and his hand scores have dropped to the mid 30s.

I’m planning to slowly add the rest of the hand exercises in a similar way, keep his best hand ex. and then bring on the feet exercises. It will take awhile before he is ready for the 15 session pgm. but our audiologist (an experienced provider) says 40 sessions are not unusual for LD kids.

Getting him to focus on increasing the # of reps/session, and using the terms ‘good work sounds’ and ‘bad work sounds’ to clarify the guide sounds has also helped in addition for focussing on just one ex. per session.

Interestingly, my having done the pgm. has led to benefits I am noticing—an increased ability to focus, multitask and organize. As a full-time teacher with new h.s. courses and 126 students this semester, I have just put in my most effortlessly organized first week ever. (And here I was dreading it.) It must be IM. Even by the end of the week (which I’ve arrived at relatively unstressed) my desk was still tidy, and I was the queen of messy desks! Hope the effects last.

Thanks for your feedback.

Jan

I think I need IM as well. I have considered becoming a provider. My son’s therapist thinks I should. We shall see.

That is good to know that it isn’t unusual for it to take 40 sessions because we just finished up with over 40 sessions and I was beginning to wonder if my son had the worst motor timing in the world.

My son’s final timing was 23. He got most of his scores into the mid to low teens but had one score of 50 related to the balancing exercise. That could have just been a fluke.

I have seen positive changes related to the second go around with IM. My husband took my son to a Yankee game with his clients last night. Before we started IM my husband hated to take him at all because he wouldn’t pay attention would fidget in his seat and usually spill drinks on the person in front of them. To have him take him with clients was a monumental event. I asked how he was during the game and my often critical husband said, “He was just great.”

My son’s football coach also wants to know, “What happened!”

Even though 40 sessions seems like a lot when you think about the fact that many therapies take years it really isn’t that bad.

Linda,
Can you tell me the title of the Etta Rowley book? My son has visual perceptual weaknesses (esp. visual closure); he tested negative for needing vision therapy (though I wonder if I should get a second opinion).
We don’t have time to do vision stuff now, but maybe in the Spring.

Thanks

Linda, What did your son’s football coach notice as difference? I’ve been trying to convince my husband that my non-LD son (at least non-LD in sense of academics) needs IM. He struggles so much with sports. You would not suspect he was non-athletic by looking at him - he will most likely be at least 6foot and well-built - he looks very athletic.

He has slow reactions, bad timing and no rythym. In 5th grade I gave him the PACE cognitive test. He scored at adult level in all categories except processing speed, which was barely age level. I also think he can be easily distracted and doesn’t focus when it comes to sports.

He is playing on his 7th grade football team. After 1st practice the coach had him at starting quarterback(he has a really strong arm and of course he knows all the plays - knowing and executing are 2 different things for him tho). Well after a week, he dropped down to 3rd string and in the first game, he didn’t get to play any offense at all. He was just crushed. He wants to be good at sports - it’s one of those peer acceptance situations for him.

Jan,
The Etta Rowley book is I think similar to neuronet in some ways. We never did neuronet.
It is called integrating Mind Brain and Body through Movement. The phone number stamped in the book is 425 482 8000.

The changes the coach has noticed is that my son is now very focused. He plays defense and is very aware of where he needs to be and knows what is going on around him. He knows what he needs to do and isn’t on cloud nine. The coach said that he would put him up against anyone on the team now. In the beginning he would have been afraid they he would have gotten hurt. They actually moved my son up to next level partially because he did not meet the weight for the younger team by a few pounds. I was afraid to do this because the kids at this level are much bigger than my son. The coach says he will do fine.

My son does vision builder which are exercises that require he look at words for less than a split second and then find them on a list. He was stuck at a specific level and just was very frustrated. After the breakthrough to lower scores with our most recent IM sessions he more than doubled that score and maxed out the game at the fastest speed. I can’t even do it that fast. He can read a 4 word sentence with very difficult words in .02 seconds and then find that sentence in a list of very similar sentences.

I have only recently gone over skip counting 6s 7s 8s and 9s. He was much better than the last time we did it and much faster. He still isn’t automatic but I think he has adequate skills to do multiplication and division problems at the fourth grade level.

I typed the Etta Rowly number wrong. It is 425 483 8000

Dea,

One of the Catholic schools here had their whole football team go through IM. My children’s elementary school offers it in a group setting for kids fourth grade and up.

I heard the Miami Dolphins went through IM too—

I think it would be a really beneficial thing for your son. I think I need it too. I am trying to get my daughter to do it next time it is offerred at her school. Maybe I will join her.

Beth

Linda,I think you have posted about Visionbuilder before, but couldn’t remember? Can you tell me again what it is? That sounds like a good exercise for my dd. Does the reading exercise in Audiblox do something similar? The Audiblox exercises caused her to quit blending words and her LAC tests dropped 2 grade levels. But she is a stronger blender now and it may work better?

Beth, do you remember what kind of benefits the Catholic School and football teams saw?

I received Vision Builder from our dev optometrist. It is nice because it forces quick recognition and I personally believe that is required for improving visual processing speed.

Vision builder has two recognition exercises. One requires recognition of letters and one requires recognition of words. I do think you would want to have your child really decoding well because if they are a whole language victim that was taught to guess it could encourage that hideous strategy.

Since my son decodes well I think it just helps him decode faster.

The letter execise is good because you usually have to differentiate a ‘b’ from a ‘d’ and a ‘p’ from a ‘q’ and I know my son has had reversal problems.

It is similar to the audiblox exercises with the word cards except you have to pick the word from a list after you see it, the words are shown much quicker than you could do with audiblox and you have clear cut measurable results that helps you to know exactly how quick they can recognize the words.

Search google under vision builder and reading or learning. I think there is an optometry school in Maryland that will sell you the disk for about $20.

There are also some other exercises; one we are using now promotes binocular vision and others allow you to test your child’s reading speed with tests for comprehension. I have found that my own binocular vision needs work. I do the exercises for that myself along with my son. He is better at them than I am. My youngest child does them with ease. He seems to have perfect binocular vision. My dh can’t even attempt those exercises. He would probably need 6 months of vt before he could do them.

Dea,

I think there are some articles on the IM web site.
They did academic testing before and after and saw big gains. I know that isn’t your concern though.

My son’s coordination improved immen. with IM. He loves soccer. In second grade we had a lot of problems with his coach—wouldn’t let him do anything but defense, even at practice (and he was 7!). He was like a bull in a china closet. Third grade, after some Neuronet, he was much better. He didn’t stand out. But if you watched him long enough you realized that he ran well and followed the bal but hardly touched it. Last year, after IM, he was good. Coach kept carrying on about him—and told me how much potential he has. You should see him with a ball now.

IM was used originally for sports timing.

Beth