Parent Feedback
Sam’s Mother when nearing the end of the Johansen IAS programme. Sam is now 7½ and started the programme aged 6.
“It took about 4 months before Sam was happy to wear the headphones and listen to his music for a full ten minutes each day.
We are so pleased that we managed to encourage Sam to wear the headphones and have been able to implement the sound therapy programme with Sam. We feel that he has really benefited from the therapy. Sam is definitely calmer and we feel that his hyperacusis is less of a problem for him. He seems to tolerate noise much better. He still places his hands over his ears at times but this is much less often and only for short periods. He seems to adapt much more quickly to changes of environment when we go out anywhere. Previously Sam could get really anxious and not be happy to stay. Visits to shops or to ten pin bowling or swimming etc could be a real problem for Sam to cope with in the past.
Sam is now able to attend an out of school club in the school holidays for 3 mornings per week while I am at work with the support of a teaching assistant. We hope that the contact with main stream children without problems will be helpful and provide good role models for Sam to learn from. Sam continues to attend a special school full time during term time so we try to get Sam mixing as much as we can with the wider community when he is out of school. Sam seems to copes much better with this. We were thrilled the other week when he signed ‘friend’ to another little boy at the out of school club as he sat next to him. Sam has never had a friend before.
Sam’s understanding of language has really improved. He follows instructions and he also follows much better generally what is happening and seem to make sense of things much better. He is now fully toilet trained and is even dry at night only very occasionally having the odd accident.
Sam was awarded a certificate of merit at school in music this term. He is a lot more relaxed around sound and the certificate was given because Sam has started to play some familiar nursery rhyme tunes on the keyboard from memory. In the past Sam would very quickly switch off any music on the radio, TV or CD player and would be anxious and unhappy around unfamiliar sound.
He is making lots of sounds. We have an echo microphone that we play with, encouraging Sam to imitate our sounds and he is doing this more and more. He will copy letter sounds. Words are still very few and far between. He does however have quite a big signing vocabulary. He manages to make himself understood and is a very happy child on the whole.
We are keen as always to do our very best for Sam and feel that he is progressing and making steady steps forward. We always keep hope in our hearts and are grateful to the people who have helped us along the way. We are determined that Sam is given every opportunity to reach his full potential and be as independent as possible.
Thanks for all your help”
How they felt their seven year old daughter had progressed over the year since starting the Sound Therapy programme.
“She has progressed extremely well in all areas of development over the past year. Her speech and language has improved dramatically. Her ability to comprehend the spoken word has come on in leaps and bounds and with it has come increased confidence and a greater desire to use speech as her primary method of communication.
She has continued to do well at school and her teachers are delighted with her progress in all aspects of the curriculum. She is quite content to be surrounded by noise and is now unaffected by sudden loud noises. Putting her hands over her ears is now a thing of the past save for occasionally during trips to the cinema. A year ago she would not enter the classroom during music lessons. Now she fully participates and even took part in a recital on stage with the rest of her year group.
In the past specialists have been divided on whether her fine motor skills required attention or not. However, she was recently seen by the Occupational Therapist who chose to discharge her, with no further action required.
I have no doubt that the Sound Therapy course augmented the support my daughter receives at home and school to facilitate the above changes.”
The following was written by a parent a number of years after her 7 year old dyslexic son completed Johansen Sound Therapy.
“Murray started JST in November 1997, aged 7, as we had found out two months earlier that he was dyslexic. He also had glue ear as a toddler which did not help the situation. Murray was used to listening to a story tape every night as his reading was poor, and getting him used to listening to his sound therapy tapes for 10 minutes each night was no problem at all. He found the music relaxing and did not object to giving up listening to his story tapes through headphones during the therapy.
He was reassessed every 6 to 8 weeks during the time he used JST, and every visit I could see the improvement in Murray. More importantly, so could he. Murray has continued to gain in confidence and his reading and maths have also continued to improve greatly since he used JST.
While Murray was on the JST programme he was also taking ‘Efalex’ (an essential fatty acid supplement) and he was visiting his dyslexia tutor once a week. We feel that JST, in conjunction with these other inputs has really made a huge difference to Murray’s confidence and expectations of life. JST takes commitment from both parents and child, but in our experience it was well worth the effort.”
M. was 3 years 2 months old when he started Sound Therapy. He had a severe speech disorder, which had been diagnosed as oral dyspraxia, making him unintelligible to all but his parents. His understanding of language was very good. He had received weekly speech and language therapy for some months prior to starting JST and continued during the JST programme. Following JST his mother wrote the following:
“Now that M. has finished his course of Sound Therapy I can report some very interesting changes both in his speech and general concentration skills.
At the outset of this treatment, M. was a very boisterous child who, though perfectly able to undertake various tasks such as jigsaws, lacked the concentration to really sit and complete anything. Within a week of starting this therapy I noticed that M. would sit for a long time colouring pictures and his ability to use pens with care seemed to come almost overnight. All the activities he had previously viewed negatively suddenly became his chosen occupation and within a very short time he could write his name, colour neatly and do jigsaws unaided, using a lot of concentration and time on these tasks.
Besides this change in M’s general nature, he now seemed able to copy my corrections of his mispronunciations accurately and without the frustration previously displayed. Having already received speech therapy for 6 months at this point, it appears that M was suddenly armed with the necessary tools to unravel his problematic speech and within a very short time his general speaking abilities had improved tremendously.
We now find ourselves in a position, some 10 months after the diagnosis of a very severe phonological disorder, of some very positive results. Whilst M’s speech is by no means perfect, the improvement is dramatic and sufficient to make him generally understood, and therefore add to his self-confidence.
In addition to this, M. can now do 100 piece jigsaws unaided, write and recognise numerous words and is a generally calmer child with good concentration skills. It could be argued that the natural maturity of a child of this age would lead to these results, but I would say that the speed at which these changes occurred must largely be attributed to the sound therapy.”
Following Johansen Sound Therapy, A's mother wrote the following:
“I always felt that A. was quite an able child, but had a problem spelling and was very reluctant to read. It was finally suggested that he had a discrepancy between his oral and his written work. As a parent it is often very difficult to put your finger on a problem, you just know that something isn’t working as well as it should.
When A. started the therapy he showed a little scepticism but was very willing to have a go at anything that might help him do well. By this stage A. felt that he should do better at school, he tried very hard but sometimes found it difficult to settle to a task, especially homework. Once he started I was amazed at how committed he was, almost never missing an evening listening session. In fact it got to the stage when I did not have to remind him, he just got on with it.
I do feel that A. gained some self-confidence almost immediately, just knowing that someone understands what you are going through helps.
Throughout the year A. began to become much more motivated, more organised and much more willing to settle to homework. Organising and planning homework schedules no longer seemed to be a problem, he just got on with things without any serious prompting from myself.
After a year and a bit I really feel that A. has gained a great deal from the Johansen Sound Therapy. He is very conscientious at school, works hard and now expects a high standard of work from himself. He has gained tremendous self-confidence and with that has done very well academically.”
L. was 6 years old when she started Johansen Sound Therapy. Her mother wrote the following comments eighteen months later.
“Handwriting – L. used to struggle with this and received learning support for handwriting. L. has improved greatly and is now doing joined up writing.
Reading – L. has progressed from 2 -3 sentences per page to 7-8 sentences and shows much more confidence.
Spelling – L’s spelling has also improved and she has a wider vocabulary of words she can spell. She is now managing to spell the 50 most common words.
Drawing – L’s drawing before Sound Therapy was more of a scribble and she only used one colour or limited colour in her drawings. This was a very quick change and the first thing that was seen to change, within 4 weeks of starting Sound Therapy. She now shows much more detail and enjoys contrasting lots of different colours.
Coordination – L’s coordination has improved – she is less clumsy and better at skipping, ball games etc. Her eating is less messy as this was a problem before and there are less spillages with juice.
Socialising – L. used to play with younger children, and although she still plays with younger children she has now made a lot of new friends of her own age group. Her play shows more imagination and she is a more confident child and happier as a result.
Concentration – L’s concentration has showed improvement allowing her to finish tasks with limited support only required occasionally.
School – School are extremely pleased with her progress, partly due to help from school but they are also very encouraged with the Sound Therapy Programme.”
A mother's summary immediately following Sound Therapy.
“The most significant change has been how Charlotte interacts with the world and we really believe that it must be due to your therapy! She is so much more switched on and aware of what is being said around her; happily if she doesn’t understand something now she has enough confidence to ask questions, a big step forward.
We also think that her spelling memory is better and notice that she uses a phonic approach to new words. Her spelling marks seem to reflect an improvement in how she is hearing as well as a more general improved functioning of the long and short term memories; weeks after the spelling test she sometimes remembers the spelling and sometimes does not and occasionally notices when words ‘don’t look right’ (that’s definitely new!).
In May after years of trying, her class teacher successfully helped Charlotte to read time on a conventional clock! We have not, however, seen any change in terms of the times tables and maths generally – perhaps things will start clicking there in the next year or two.
Once again we would like to thank you for all your support and help.”
Contacting Johansen IAS:
You can contact us between 8.30am to 5.30pm Monday – Friday
Telephone enquiries: 01242 539016
Email enquiries: info@johansenias.com