Auditory and Visual therapy? Anyone's children do this?

[ChristusG]

A little background:

 

DD6 has had speech issues her whole life. She didn't talk till around 2.5 years old. She wouldn't eat solids till around 18 months. She's been in speech therapy since 20 months. First in private therapy, then in the school system once she reached preschool age (they allow homeschoolers to take speech therapy there). She's still very difficult to understand. I haven't seen a change in her throughout all the years she's been in speech therapy. Even I cannot understand her at times. As a result (at least I think), she's extremely shy and has even been diagnosed with selective mutism....she's afraid that people will not understand her, so she just doesn't talk to them.

 

Also, we're having major issues with reading, consonant blends (she can't even pronounce them), etc. She's not reading yet. She knows all her letter sounds and how to sound things out.....but it just won't all click together for her.

 

My cousin recommended a lady that comes highly praised.....she does auditory and visual therapy. So we've decided to try her out and have DD evaluated. I was just wondering if you have any advice? Stories? Tips? Any of your kids do this sort of therapy? Did it work? What was your child's issue to cause you to turn to auditory and visual therapy?

 

The downside is that it is SUPER expensive. But I don't know what else to do.

[Guest Matushka]

I'm not as familiar with vision therapy as with auditory therapy and speech therapy. My twin girls, age 6, were enrolled in ST at 17 months when they were not talking and they also received OT for feeding issues. They, too, were unable to tolerate true solid foods until closer to 2 years. They were diagnosed with verbal apraxia and were treated with the Kauffman method with great success. They continue to have difficulty with s, z, ch, r and some blends but they are usually understood even by unfamiliar people. They continue to receive private therapy. By age 4 it was also apparent that they had auditory processing problems. They could not be tested at that age because of the test's age norms and due to their poor articulation (at that time) but we started auditory training with phonemic synthesis and lots of phonological awareness activities/games. They have made huge gains since starting the auditory therapy and they are both now reading at mid first grade level. I still notice how they "mishear" things and take much longer to process what they hear so we're continuing with the auditory training/language processing therapy.

I have dabbled with some visual exercises that I found by Diane Kraft with my older daughter who did not have the auditory issues or decoding problems but had difficulty with reading fluency. I've noticed an improvement in both her fluency and in her handwriting since we implemented the exercises even though we have not been as consistent with them as we should be.

I'm wondering what the qualifications are of the therapist that was recommended. We've always used certified SLPs and an Audiologist. If you have a university near you that has a speech/audiology program, you may be able to find reasonably priced services that use up-to-date evidence based therapy.

Edited August 26, 2010 by Matushka
s-v agreement

[LizzyBee]

A little background:

 

DD6 has had speech issues her whole life. She didn't talk till around 2.5 years old. She wouldn't eat solids till around 18 months. She's been in speech therapy since 20 months. First in private therapy, then in the school system once she reached preschool age (they allow homeschoolers to take speech therapy there). She's still very difficult to understand. I haven't seen a change in her throughout all the years she's been in speech therapy. Even I cannot understand her at times. As a result (at least I think), she's extremely shy and has even been diagnosed with selective mutism....she's afraid that people will not understand her, so she just doesn't talk to them.

 

Also, we're having major issues with reading, consonant blends (she can't even pronounce them), etc. She's not reading yet. She knows all her letter sounds and how to sound things out.....but it just won't all click together for her.

 

My cousin recommended a lady that comes highly praised.....she does auditory and visual therapy. So we've decided to try her out and have DD evaluated. I was just wondering if you have any advice? Stories? Tips? Any of your kids do this sort of therapy? Did it work? What was your child's issue to cause you to turn to auditory and visual therapy?

 

The downside is that it is SUPER expensive. But I don't know what else to do.

 

If you have a speech therapist in your area who is trained in LiPS (Lindamood Bell Phonemic Sequencing), I would try that first, because if it's administered by an SLP, your insurance may cover it. Has your dd had OT? Our OT has done some visual perceptual stuff with my dd, and again, it's covered by insurance. She's also done Interactive Metronome, which was hugely helpful.

 

We drive further and bypass the therapists in our town, but it's worth it because the practice we use is amazing. I always refer to it as therapy on steroids.

[Jan in SC]

My son was having tons of reading trouble and he had several sounds he just couldn't pronounce. His reading didn't take off until after his speech issues were corrected. She is probably not articulating well enough yet to put the sounds together and be able to read.

 

I would have a different speech therapist evaluate her. There is always a chance that the one you have is not aggressive enough. I think an OT evaluation might be useful, but if she doesn't speak because of her speech issues, then it probably won't help until you've corrected more speech problems.

[Ottakee]

Here are my random thoughts that may or may not fit:

 

Has she had a full hearing test done by an audiologist to rule out slight hearing loss?

 

Has she seen an ENT to check for tongue tied, fluid in her ears, overly large tonsils/adenoids? These can call affect her articulation.

 

My nephew did vision therapy and it worked great. In one year he went from K/1st grade level to 8th grade level (he was a 4/5th grader). My daughter though tried it and we didn't see any difference.

 

You might also see a different speech therapist for more ideas.

 

My son's articulation improved GREATLY once he had his tonsils removed---he finally could move his tongue and breathe at the same time. Learning his phonics also helped him as he could SEE the sounds he had to say.

 

For reading, I love http://www.3rsplus.com for kids who struggle.

[merry gardens]

A little background:

 

DD6 has had speech issues her whole life. She didn't talk till around 2.5 years old. She wouldn't eat solids till around 18 months. She's been in speech therapy since 20 months. First in private therapy, then in the school system once she reached preschool age (they allow homeschoolers to take speech therapy there). She's still very difficult to understand. I haven't seen a change in her throughout all the years she's been in speech therapy. Even I cannot understand her at times. As a result (at least I think), she's extremely shy and has even been diagnosed with selective mutism....she's afraid that people will not understand her, so she just doesn't talk to them.

 

Also, we're having major issues with reading, consonant blends (she can't even pronounce them), etc. She's not reading yet. She knows all her letter sounds and how to sound things out.....but it just won't all click together for her.

 

My cousin recommended a lady that comes highly praised.....she does auditory and visual therapy. So we've decided to try her out and have DD evaluated. I was just wondering if you have any advice? Stories? Tips? Any of your kids do this sort of therapy? Did it work? What was your child's issue to cause you to turn to auditory and visual therapy?

 

The downside is that it is SUPER expensive. But I don't know what else to do.

 

Consonent blends are difficult for many children to pronounce--even children within normal speech ranges and who have no problems reading. My 6 yo reads with no problem except she can't pronounce blends well. I suggest you set aside blends for a while and work on other areas.

 

I agree with Ottakee to make sure her hearing is okay. And have her vision checked. Children can have both issues going on and a child with eye troubles may have difficulty with reading. If you are interested in vission therapy, ask for an evaluation from an eye doctor who does vission therapy. I took my son to both an optometrist and audiologist.

 

Are you happy with your daughter's speech therapist and your daughter's speech progress? Can you ask the therapist to administer an evaluation of her phonemic processing skills? (TAPS and others) If that therapist can't, other speech therapists can and probably for a fairly reasonable fee.

 

My son was hard to understand but did not qualify for speech therapy. I had him evaluated twice (around age 4 and 6) because he was hard to understand. First therapist said everything was within normal for his age and she gave me some ideas to help him pronounce blends and the few letters he had problems saying. (He didn't qualify for therapy because he could physically make the sounds, but he was hard to understand because he frequently left sounds off of words or substituted the wrong sound.) The second speech therapist again said his speech was within normal, but she caught that he had some phonemic processing problems. She recommended the audiologist follow up too. She mentioned at the time that she would expect that someone with my son's phonemic skills would have trouble reading. She was able to catch the problem, but she didn't know how to remediate it. (That wasn't her specialty--but I'm glad she noticed the problem.)

 

After trying a few other things, I eventually did the LiPS program with him at home that LizzeBee mentioned. I highly recommend it too. Before we began LiPS, my son could not distinguish the difference between some sounds that are similar but not the same. (Vowels particularly caused confusion.) Plus, he did not notice that words were made up of the sounds of letters. (I could sound the letters for him and he still couldn't "smoosh" them into words.) LiPS helped him a great deal. I did LiPS at home, but some speech therapists are trained in the program. It was written and developed by a speech therapist and it is well documented in scientific studies to improve children's reading. It taught my son how to recognize sounds within words. His reading progress is still slow going. My son has dyslexia. What I saw was some of the early signs of dyslexia. Once he completed a significant portion of the LiPS program, we began an Orton-Gillingham based reading program. No magic cures, just lots of hard work for slow but steady progress in reading.

 

I don't know any details of the specific super-expensive person that someone recommended to you or what methods of auditory and vission therapy she uses. If your daughter has had speech problems all her life, and the speech problems still haven't cleared up, the problems you describe with your daughter's reading don't sound unusual. They do sound like something to be pro-active in trying to address.

 

I know it's hard when your child struggles with learning to read. :grouphug:

Edited August 27, 2010 by merry gardens

[Dobela]

If your ages are right, your dd is age 5, right? Most 'average' kids are not making blends and all that in reading at age 5. A lot of reading in kids is simply brain development. When the brain reaches a certain level, it makes the connections, and that next step can occur. Brain development is why some parents will say, "I just stopped x for y months and when I pulled it out again, he could do it. It just clicked" What changed in those months? the brain.

 

That being said, I completely agree that her hearing and vision need to be thoroughly checked. I would not spend tons of money on any expensive therapy or specialist until I ruled out every thing else. I would ask for referrals to audiologists that specialize in children. I took my son to one in a Children's hospital and it was a way better experience with valuable reports than dd's visit to the local ENT dr and his hearing test. DD's was almost a waste of time.

 

When I taught in public schools, I had one student that had a severe partial hearing loss. Interestingly, he had made it until Kindergarten before it was noticed during a routine screening. His sentence syntax was off and his vocabulary was odd and that is all at first. It had been written off as cute kid speech by everyone. When he started reading though, that is when the problems really showed up. Because he wasn't hearing sounds correctly, he couldn't read correctly. What he heard for T was different than we said, but he didn't know it. Therefore, when he read and gave a sound for T in a word, the sound was incorrect.

 

Covd.org is where I found our vision therapist. For my son, correcting his vision was a critical step. Until we had his tracking, depth, and convergence issues corrected, the money/time we spent on his reading tutor would have been a total waste. He couldn't make the blends or blend words together because he never saw the same word the same way twice. Or letter for that matter. There was no connect between verbal and visual.

 

Now, back to speech... I assume your therapist is good... Just what is she doing with your dd in therapy? My dd has low muscle tone and poor oral motor control in general. While her speech is ok, it has seriously effected her eating and drinking ability. A lot of her therapy time is spent in activities that stretch her cheek muscles, encourage her to move her tongue properly, to use her lips properly,and more. As they have worked on all of that, her speech has improved a great deal. If your therapist is not doing all of this, I would ask for a referral to another center. We found out that some therapists who only work with the ps population are not as familiar with what our dd needed as the therapists who work with kids who have more severe needs. Our dd is one of the less severe clients on the therapy role now and she is making more improvement because this therapist is more familiar with different techniques than the other therapist (where my dd was one of her most severe clients). If she is not making much progress, I would seriously consider finding therapy somewhere else.

 

In the meantime :grouphug:. It can be overwhelming trying to find what works for our kids.

[dcurry]

My son also was delayed in speech (& other areas), and we did the speech therapy through the public school in our area, and the occupational therapy, etc. They (the public school) wanted to put him in their special-ed preschool, to which I said, "No, thank you".

 

It was frustrating to me that everyone only wanted to help me with a small part of him. The occupational therapist wouldn't work on potty training issues (though he was 4 years old) because it wasn't "related to education", but *would* work on fine motor skills because he'd need to hold a pencil in school. I wanted someone to look at *all* of him and help us with his issues. I didn't like driving around to 3 different appointments each week.

 

We found a neurodevelopmentalist (at a homeschool conference):

 

http://www.help-with-learning.com/ (click on "links" to find the different ones that work in different areas of the United States)

 

She is not a doctor, but helped us tremendously with his issues. She did a full evaluation (It was around $600 for the evaluation plus a home program to do intensive therapy with him at home PLUS a complete homeschool program for him, AND support (email & phone) for about 4 months until he needed to be re-evaluated. The supplies were extra, and probably cost us around $100 the first time, and less thereafter. (Probably not covered by insurance at all).

 

His speech improved tremendously that first year. In fact, he went from having very autistic behavior, to interacting almost normally. As of today, he has no label, and the only serious issues we have with him are sensory issues (which make him a very picky eater), and some attention issues. (He is 9 now). But we also haven't been doing his program for a couple of years.

 

I won't go into all of his successes with the program, but if you want to PM me, you can. I'd highly recommend this program for speech, vision, motor skill problems, reading problems, or any issue that is keeping the child from learning well. This neurodevelopmentalist is also the one who caught his "lazy eye" and referred me to a doctor, who then was able to treat him for it. I didn't notice that he wasn't seeing out of one eye at all, and the doctors hadn't caught it yet, either. The eye-doctor said it was good we caught it early, and there is a good chance of full recovery of that eye.

 

What I liked, was that she asked me how much time I had to work with him at home, and made me a program that addressed the most important issues first. That was our homeschool day... like having an IEP through the school system. But once the issues are taken care of, then they will be on track to do a regular school schedule. If you only wanted to work an hour a day with her on these issues, you could, or I knew someone with a severely autistic child who worked about 5-7 hours a day with her son and he was like a new child. When I first met him, I didn't know he was autistic at all.

 

I hope you find something that works for you. (Our speech therapist was quite impressed, noticed the changes in him, and said he actually had met the goal before she even got to it each week. She asked for the information so she could refer this lady to someone else who was looking for help for her child). I did tell her it was a Christian woman, and she works with homeschoolers mostly, but that she would work with anyone, even someone in public school who wanted to spend an hour or two after school with their kids.

 

Anyway, sorry to ramble, but I'd recommend looking into it.

[moriah]

my son did auditory therapy and it helped him quite a bit. It was through a clinic that worked with developmental problems. The advice I have is to make sure if you do an auditory therapy that you know they do audiograms. They should be able to show you an initial audiogram which is usually covered by insurance. This clinic showed me where my son heard on the scale and where verbal language is heard (he was not in that range so there was the problem) they did home therapy which was having him listen to specially recorded music. The therapy was something like 500 dollars for all the sessions that we needed and they did 3-4 audiograms through that time. If they don't do audiograms, they don't know where your child is and where you child needs to be. They could do more harm than good. Some OT offices give you altered music and don't ever do an eval on your child. Yikes! There are some private therapists that do special programs and make all kinds of claims. One was going to have my son sit for 2 hours every day for 10 days in her office. I smiled. :willy_nilly: 2 hours sitting? I don't think so. As far as speech therapy, I was really frustruated because my son had clear issues but they said that since it is within one standard deviation from normal (which is a huge range) that insurance wouldn't cover it. I ended up finding stuff on superduper.com and doing it myself. I wish you luck! Moriah

[gardenmom5]

My youngest was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder last summer, so I've learned alot. I'm on SPD groups and these are very common SPD symptoms and are subjects that come up regularly with both new parents, and those who've gone through it all already. You might want to read up on it.

 

First off, there are several different types of auditory therapy - some are better than others. What tests are done by this provider to determine exact treatment for a given child? or is it a one-size fits all approach? (I'd stay away from that, and find something else. You want treatment tailored to your child's needs.) Does she do both AT & VT at the same time? or consecutively?

 

After my son's VMI results were 4/20, I took him to my ped OD for visual therapy evaluation. Because of his auditory issues (hypersensitivity, auditory discrimination), she recommended Tomatis also telling me he might not even need visual therapy when it was over. It is the original listening therapy developed in the 60's by French ENT Alfred Tomatis. Just about every LT out there can trace it's origins back to him. It is expensive, but it is cheaper (and more productive) per hour than the OT I've been paying for out of pocket. You wouldn't think auditory therapy would affect vision, but it does. (the provider actually has treated herself for her astigmatism)

 

Tomatis does standard auditory - what volume can a child hear the frequency at, as well as bone conduction testing. It was amazing what can be determined by that. She also does VMI testing with younger children, and focus/attention with adults.

 

We have completed phase 1 and are in the two-month "resting" phase before two more, shorter, phases. I have seen amazing results already. He wen't from struggling to discriminate differences in all but the most basic pictures, to doing so more quickly and easily. Those changes were very sudden, about half-way through phase 1.

 

Oh, (my mind went blank - I can see his face) there is a French actor who did Tomatis to help him with his speaking ability.

[wapiti]

Even if you are getting this "auditory and visual" therapy from a good OT - I'm assuming that's what this lady is - I'd want a separate vision evaluation from an experienced optometrist. IMO, auditory therapy and vison therapy are distinct, separate things.

 

Two of my kids did listening therapy (a la Tomatis) in combination with OT for SPD and we were pretty happy with the results, though there tends to be an issue with whether the gains are permanent or temporary. It's hard to tell. At any rate, I don't regret doing it. Be aware that listening therapy is very controversial, and I'm not sure whether all programs are created equally in that respect (how closely they follow the research of Tomatis, etc.). It's a Buyer Beware sorta thing. But it can't hurt, except for the cost.

 

One of my kids has also done vision therapy, and the OT helped with the VT. But we did the VT through an optometrist's office www.covd.org. If you think there is a vision issue - unclear from your post - I'd want a thorough evaluation from an experienced optometrist.

 

just my two cents - good luck! :)

[gardenmom5]

I have SPD with both auditory and visual discrimination too. (btw- speech therapy improved my speech, but it was still years before reading "clicked". I went from struggling to high school level in mere months.)

 

You are correct in that LT and VT are two distinct therapies. I've actually been pretty unhappy with the OT I had, and am changing. I also take him to a chiropractor. We are not doing LT and VT "together", nor using one as a replacement for the other. I'm doing Tomatis/LT first, and then we will do another series of evaluations to determine his needs. If he still needs VT and no longer needs LT, we will do VT then. My (pediatric developmental) optometrist (I've known her professionally for over 20 years) is the one who suggested the Tomatis first, stating he might then not *need* VT. She should know - she administers VT. In the meantime, she made a number of suggestions for activities that would help his visual discrimination. Those "helps" are not a replacement for VT if it's truely needed.

 

The structural systems for vision and hearing are much more interconnected than most people realize. (I had an incredibly nasty eye-infection that went into my sinuses, and from there into my middle and inner ears. I've also *spit out* eye drops :ack2: administered by my opthlal.) My 18 yo does not wear glasses, but does have a very slight astigmatism. Not enough to warrent correction, and my son does not think about it. The Tomatis provider picked up on his *astigmatism* while doing his auditory evaluations.

[emonline]

I know a little bit about auditory therapy, and quite a bit about speech issues. They are different. Children with auditory problems often cannot hear sound differences (sound discrimination). For this, depending on how severe the problem is, some start with The Listening Program, and then move on to Fast Forword (very expensive) or Earobics (not very expensive). Some children can start with FF or Earobics and be successful.

 

The LiPS program by Lindamood Bell is a little more broad, in my opinion. (We did FF and then LiPS.) This program works to show the child how sounds are made as well as teaching them phonemic awareness and reading.

 

However, there may be issues other than auditory processing that are causing the speech difficulties. She could have apraxia or oral motor issues. That is, she can hear the sounds just fine; she just cannot get her lips and tongue in position to say the words properly. In that case, intensive speech therapy (perhaps using the Kaufman system or Prompt) would be more successful.

[cyndi60]

In our family my daughter who is now 13 had fluid in her ears and they wanted to do tubes when she was 3. She hadnt had any bad colds etc. She could hardly communicate with us. She walked at 16mo. too.

We do things more naturally and did not do tubes but used some stuff that took the bacteria away that was causing the inflammation to begin with. He said that normal medical type antibiotics dont take it away. We tried some powerful natural to the body stuff that worked.

In our family we have Central Auditory Processing or APD. It is to expensive to have them tested. Our insurance wouldnt cover the highly specialized testing from a "specialist audiologist and I never wanted to go through the "public" schools. I raised 3 children with this and 2 or 3 children I believe may have had ADD. I bought The Listening Program which was expensive and it didnt help our son. We live in a rural area where many of the "programs" such as Linda Moode are not available.

I bought Brain Builder from Timberdoodle.

Look up CAPD or APD and you can find the symptons. It does get confused with ADHyeractiveD but none of us have this. My husband has a touch of ADD. He will work on a project for 1/2hr. and have to go onto something else and finishes nothing and me...I miss conversations, anything auditory I forget almost immediately, etc. but can stay focused....to the point of absolutely no multi tasking. Dont ask how I homeschooled since 1986 with 6 children ages 28-11.

I dont know if any of this will help.

Cyndi

Wife to dh of 29yrs.

Homeschool since 1986 6 Children 28-11