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Tomatis method

3 replies

Reallytired · 02/01/2008 15:25

Has anyone used the Tomatis method with their child. Its listening theraphy and supposed to train the child to listen better.

Listening and hearing are different things. My son has a mild hearing impairment, but his listening skills are terrible, even with his hearing aids.

The Tomatis method is supposed to help children with auditory processing problems rather than hearing problems.

It is quite expensive and I am wondering if it is worth the money. Or have you used any other listening training?

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kittywise · 02/01/2008 22:56

Hi, I did this with my ds1 a few years back.

He is 'different' we could never get any official assessment, but he had, indeed has, to a degree problems with his speech.

It was interesting though, he absolutely loved going and he said that before the sessions when someone spoke it sounded very confused in his head, very fuzzy.

The people who assessed him said that he had super sensitive hearing so that he was unable to filter out unimportant sounds and just concentrate on say someone talking. So you can imagine in a classroom situation where he has all this noise coming at him.
After the first week he said he could hear things a lot more clearly and that the fuzziness had stopped.

I think it did help him, not the miracle I had hoped for.

There was a woman there whose child was autistic and had no speech. I remember her being absolutely over the moon because her daughter had started speaking during the sessions.
Then again a friend of mine with a quite severely autistic son with almost no speech saw no improvement at all.

It does help with listening skills, which as you say are different to hearing.
I don't know, my attitude was, I have to do this, what if I don't and it could really help my son. I'm glad I did. He still talks about it after all these years

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Reallytired · 02/01/2008 23:34

Thank you for your post. Where did you go for the therphy?

My son finds listening (and lip reading) very tiring. I am not sure whether the problem is a a hearing or a listening problem. Is this therphy relevent to a child with hearing problems?

I am wondering if the cost is justifed for the benefit my son would get. Thanks to his hearing aids he has good speech. Prehaps I am expecting too much.

How old was your son when he did the theraphy? How many sessions did you do?

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kittywise · 03/01/2008 08:46

reallytired he went to the "Listening centre" based in Lewes here is some info
I think he was 5/6 years at the time. But I saw adults go for therapy too!
You can never know how much benefit he will get, but he will get some, as I said I couldn't pass this by.
He did an initial intensive session which was going in for 2 hourly for 6 days , then a break of so many weeks and then another week listening I think there were about 4 weeks worth of listening iyswim?
Good luck

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