*Marne* or anyone else - Therapeutic Listening Programme.

[Voidka]

I have seen this around and been on a few of the websites.

DS is 5 and has real problems with the noise at his school - he is in a reception unit with 48 other children and he hates the noise. Is this something the TLP could help with?

He used to wear ear defenders but the teacher has said that she doesnt think its a good idea as he is missing any teaching.

Yes. Listening program's help with hypersensitive hearing.

There are many of them:

• theureputic listening
• listening program
• Johanson
• auditory integration training.

And probably some others I've forgotten.

Allof the ones based on the tomatis method work to some extent.

They vary greatly in price - and some work a lot better than others.

I've had very good success with AIT and done it on all 3 of my kids. It is however very expensive.

I think theureputic listening and listening program are fairly cheap (my OT offers one of them at £15 per month)

I think the cheap ones work, but don't work as well as the expensive ones.

And there certainly is no consensus as to which is the best.

Yes, it's Therapeutic Listening that my OT offers for £15 per month.

Hello, we have done Therapeutic Listening 4 times on the NHS and whilst it was good when DD2 was on the program once off she didn't always retain the new skills. This was free.

We then did AIT with the Sensory clinic and that did absolutely nothing, money down the drain. This cost about £500 but can't quite remember.

We are now doing the Listening program with bone conduction and we are seeing really nice changes and we're very pleased with it. This cost us £1100.

DD2 (4.9) has a long history of severe sensory difficulties, we started various sensory therapies on her at just 11 months, and I can honestly say she now has extemely mild, if any sensory difficulties. It's now mainly vestibular, visual and proprioceptive. The auditory and tactile is sorted.

HTH

Hi, we did the theraputic listning programme through our OT (NHS), we were offerd it for free, in return we were videod to help train other therapists. The therapy lasted 3-4 months and involved going to the hospital to see OT once a week at first and then every 2 weeks (to change the CD and to see if she was making progress).

Before we started the therapy Dd2 was struggling at school, would spend most of the day with her hands over her ears, would not go into assembely, would not eat her lunch in the hall and could not join her class in there weekly visit to church, he response time to follow instructions was very slow, she would not sit still and would stim a lot (flapping, humming etc).

We finished the therapy 2 months ago, she's now going into assembely, eating lunch in the hall and rarely covers her ears (we are still working on church but she goes for a short time). Her responses are alot faster, she can sit for longer periods of time and is more verbal.

The therapy was hard work, 20 minutes of listning to the cd's twice a day whilst doing OT exersizes with her (with the gym ball, bending, heavy sensory work) and at times dd2 got really fed up and refused to wear the head phones, but we stuck with it and got very good resaults.

I would highly reccomend giving it a go, it doesn't work for everyone but for us it has changed our lifes, we still need to wait and see if there is reggresion now the therapy has stoped but so far so good.

Oh, and we were told to hang up the ear deffenders , apparently the more you block the sounds out the more sensitive you make the ear, we now only use them when we use public loo's (to make my life easier) as both dd's freak out at the hand dryers.

We did a Listening programme which was free of charge. It was 3 weeks for 2 hours each day Monday to Friday, then a break for a few weeks then a repeat of the 3 weeks. It was based on Tomatis and used bone conduction. Listening tests showed an improvement and we certainly noticed one.

As others say, it doesn't always work for everyone, but it did for us.

DD is on the NHS waiting list to do the Listening Programme - two hours a day for two weeks! It sounds similar to the programme creatvator did.

We should be at the top of the waiting list sometime during the summer holidays so obviously cannot give you any feedback at the moment. DD complains of noise in the school playground and just wants to be on her own at break times so we are hoping it may help with this.

Is your DS under o/t - if so, it might be worth asking if they do the programme. I had no idea our borough did listening therapy on the NHS I just happened to mention it to DD's o/t on the off chance.

We are under an OT - but they dont offer the Listening Programme :(.

indigo - when you say expensive, how much are we talking about? Thousands?

AIT at the sound learning centre in London costs £1,200. So very expensive.

It only takes 10 days. You have to go their office in London every day for 10 days in a row.

Clearly (by the fact I'm doing it with my 3rd child) I think it's worth the money.

But then I live in London, and earn a decent wage.

I don't really think there's anyway to tell which one is better, or more worth the money.

I think all of the other therapies take a lot longer than 10 days. For us that was a huge benefit.

If you want to talk to my OT about the £15 per month program it's 'leap children's therapy' in high Wycombe.

I do highly recommend the sound learning centre - but they are so expensive (partly because they're based in London) that I feel guilty about recommending them.

voidka- what area are you in?, there are programmes online (where they send you the cd's) but not sure if these are as good.

We are in the midlands - but we dont mind travelling.

Ah, i'm down south, our OT works for NHS and private but probably too far as the therapy we did lasted 3 months with visits to the ot every week or every other week.