sensory surprises

the listening program (TLP); aka voodoo

someone, somewhere just spit coffee on their keyboard from that title.  i’m ok with that. as far as i can tell it is a type of therapy that parents either love or found to be a very expensive waste of time.  truth be told, we are a week and a half in, and while i find the whole thing to be complete and utter voodoo - voodoo doesn’t exist without a little magic.

here’s the routine: twice daily, for a half an hour at a time, the kidbot wears some of the most expensive headphones known to man.  they are essentially musically accurate (no distortion at the high/low end) and the exact opposite of noise-cancelling headphones - they are designed to let sound in.  he also wears a little neoprene fanny pack that contains a cd player. (yes, physical media.  we had to BUY a CD player.  the geek in me just died a little bit.)

the CDs (which we rent from our therapist) consist of classical music, on random, with bits of the music altered… from the program’s own website:

The Listening Program’s psychoacoustically modified music and patent-pending production techniques are designed to stimulate, or “exercise” the different functions of the auditory processing system. This enables the brain to better receive, process, store and utilize the valuable information provided through the varied soundscapes in our lives such as music, language and the environment in which we live.

for you and i - these soundtracks at first just sound fuzzy at parts and unnatural during others, and culminate in making you feel a little bit ill - kind of like wearing your great aunt’s glasses that are coke-bottle thick.

during the listening we do a number of activities that are deemed acceptable - everything from practicing fine motor skills (LEGO, ftw!) to vestibular stimulation (spinning).  for example:

(apologies for the whining.  he wanted me to spin him fast, not take video)

note that this is AN HOUR A DAY, EVERY DAY.  no one said this therapy stuff was going to be easy.  it’s time consuming, and the kidbot likes it… most of the time.  occasionally we spend the last 10 minutes with him trying to find creative ways to make the headphones just magically fall off.  ”OH-Oh!  Mama!  No more music!”

but, after having a brief plateau in his verbal skills a few weeks back, the listening therapy kickstarted him into more interaction, more complex sentences, and i would argue that his fine motor skills are improving too.  this last one is the one that i don’t get.

when we were reading the literature provided by the therapist, they had a case study that showed the writing improvement made by an (older) child who had undergone the therapy.  while truth be told, i don’t feel i entirely understand HOW the therapy works in this way (and thus the voodoo), i am pretty excited about the progress that we’ve been seeing.