(Minc)

Hiya!

Lacey has been on a constant progessive movement ever since we began Sara's Diet, so it's actually pretty tough for me to say what did what, you know? However, there are some major things that I noticed and I do attribute directly to the EASe cd.

When we attended the Option Institute in May their staff noticed that there was some sort of a delay in Lacey's ability to respond to requests. We guessed that she was experiencing a lag between what her hearing received and the time it took for her brain to process what that sound was. I thinkthere were even times when this appeared to be as long as 30 seconds.

Now the reason I had wanted the EASe was because Lacey had what I called "selective hearing" - she would tune out all other sounds. Funny, now I've got a teenaged boy who is beginning to do the same thing <grin>.

Another thing that we noticed is that Lacey was speaking, but she was only saying half the words - "cla" for clock, "ti" for tick. So when I got home at the end of May, I got pretty serious about implementing the EASe cd program on a regular basis.

I started playing the EASe cd on speakers attached to the ceiling that were mounted porportionately spaced to Lacey's crib. I turned it on at naptime and also at bedtime (it would take her at least 30 minutes to fall asleep, so I figured that is a confined area and she would be forced to listen to it <grin>. Never did I see it interfer with her ability to nap.)

Pretty soon (I'd say after about 3 weeks), I was able to tell that a vast improvement in her response time had occurred. I have a little song I sing and at this point in time what I would do is to stop in the middle and not
continue until Lacey would touch my lips first. Previously I had not recognized it to be a lag in her auditory processing response time (I thought it was taking her some time to think about whether or not she really wanted to hear more of my singing <grin>).

Once I recognized that was what it was, I was able to measure the improvements. Pretty soon it got to where she would touch my lips as soon as I had quit singing.

By the way, during this little game we play, she is sitting astride on my lap, being held close to my body and she cannot see me singing. This is how I know that the auditory processing response time improved and during this particular time period the only thing that we changed was implementing the EAse.

I was so pleased with the results that I decided to investigate AIT as well and met a therapist who needed some logo design work, so we bartered. This therapist told me that she always has a tough time with 3-year-olds and that usually the mothers force them to the ground and pin back their hands to make them keep the headphones on (don't know if she was actually exaggerating or not, but I did get the idea that most of the younger kids do not cooperate or sit quietly, so I prepared myself for what I thought would be a traumatic event....)

What I did was take my highchair and the night before we started the AIT sessions, my husband and I built what we call a "fingerboard". It is a piece of wood that is cut to fit the highchair's table and it has all sorts
of wild stuff that has been stapled and glued to it. The idea was to get her to feel a lot of different textures to feel and to play with.

We strapped her into the highchair, placed the fingerboard in front of her to play with, and held our breaths after we put the headphones on. Lacey did not fuss or cry or even whimper. She was happily examining the
fingerboard and every once in a while I noticed she would look off to the side as if listening intently.

I think that acclimating her to the type of sounds she would be hearing was beneficial to us (and recently wrote a post to this effect.)

In our case, although the EASe cd seemed to be doing the trick, I'm in a hurry and the AIT was free, so this worked well for me.

It's a funny thing, actually, but when I first received the disk I remember my bloodpressure sort of rising with each "zzzzttt" that I heard. It was so annoying! After playing the cd for awhile, though, I noticed that I began to lose the ability to distinguish those sounds. Why is that? Did I need auditory therapy as well?

Dr. Robert B. Clayton, a geneticist specializing in autism, diagnosed my husband with auditory dyslexia and claims that one out of every two parents has this problem (in 90% of all cases). Now, when I say he diagnosed this, I mean that he assumed it was Carroll that had the slight tendency towards ADD and the auditory dyslexia, simply because he had spent five minutes speaking to me and had determined that I was experiencing these problems. I do not mean that he ran any sort of tests because he did not. He claims he does not need to - he's been watching the same couples walk through his door for over 30 years. Interesting, eh?

So my next science project is my husband, although there isn't anything discernable going on with his hearing. Dr. Clayton says that if auditory dyslexia is not diagnosed in childhood, what basically happens is that as adults they've already learned to compensate. Rock and roll was mentioned as having had a theraputic effect ...

My plan is to administer the EASe on my husband and see what happens. One thing that I have noticed, since Lacey's crib is in our bedroom and my husband frequently goes in to lay on the bed to keep her company before she falls asleep ... Carroll seems to be enjoying books. I used to claim he hated to read and amazing as this sounds, the only thing that was changed was having played the EASe cd in our bedroom each and everynight for the past four months. Is this possible, Bill?


Thanks, Bill!

Minc