What are some reactions from AIT participants?

What about afterwards? Here are some testimonials…

An e-mail message:

D [is] doing well in his articulation, much less frustration, and less of the word syntax corruption!  We’ll keep in touch, S

Another quote…

Dear Michael,

My boy S came to you many years ago 1997?  He used to wear the cap with bananas in pajamas and did his therapy with a little boy named A. Well, your treatment opened a whole new world.  He is now in second class and he can read, write, sound out – just to name a few [things]. He attends a normal state school and only ever had some remedial work in kinder (kindergarten).  He is average in his class and enjoys attending.  He still has little problems with being neat when he writes but half the population suffer[s] that.  Has an amazing memory and his capacity to retain information is amazing.  As far as history etc. this is his true love and has amazing facts sorted in his head.  He loves to go to the library and get as many books as he can about Egypt, volcanoes, earthquakes snakes, sharks, planets anything in this range.  You said to me once that you thought “the wolf was away from the door”.  I have carried that with me through the years and you were right.  His diagnosis prior to seeing you was not good.

K’s Experience…

K finished AIT 5 January 2003. He was seen by his neuro-developmental therapist on 17 January 2003.  She has worked with him for the last two years and felt his impairments were of a mid-brain nature. She saw no change in the assessment process that she uses. However, these are some of the observations she made:

  • His mannerisms were less fragmented
  • There was less “overflow”
  • He appeared more relaxed
  • He was handling multi-tasking at his job much better
  • K described himself as “his ears were waking up”
  • There was a general calmness to his affect
  • She said that there was a clear and dramatic change in his presence
  • His articulation was smooth
  • While he still had word finding problems, he was far less flustered by it and calmly searched and found the word for his assessment.

She feels that the AIT changes are more related to mid-brain, rather than pons function.

Another mom talks about AIT

Dear Mike,

Just thought I'd give you a bit of follow up on J O who had AIT with you at St Ives last October.  What we have noticed the biggest improvement in is comprehension.  He understands simple commands so well now, which has really helped at home. His sound sensitivities have also improved but there are still some frequencies (unfortunately one being his speech therapists voice when she gets excited) that seem to trouble him. The therapist running his ABA program has asked if there is anything we can to continue to improve this. For some noises, such as toilet flushing, water running for the bath, etc, we incorporate them into background noises during his sessions. We also try to use baroque music as background music. He is now toilet trained, and is having a very settled year at his preschool which is a quite large, structured environment. He has also made progress in speech development, consistently requesting certain simple things by speech alone, and only using his PECS for others. We are using a combination of cued articulation and prompt, and video each speech session so each therapist can see it. My understanding from you was that the one course of AIT is all that is necessary, although you will retest when you are back in July, and that other sound therapies (eg. Tomatis) would not be of supplementary benefit?

Kind regards
K H

One Out-of-Town organizer says…

We did the AIT with Marcy as well.  She was great!  There were people closer to me that did it, but we chose her due to people giving us really good reports.  I got together with a group of moms out here and we flew her in…

P

A mom from New Zealand says…

Q's progress to date: He was very loud an raucous the following week after treatment, then got laryngitis for a week. That did quiet him down, but his behavior has certainly improved, his reading and writing are better and he is speaking quieter now.  It is definitely starting to show a vast improvement for him since the treatment. He started school this week and the teacher and teacher aid are amazed at how his voice has quieted and that he is listening more intently. So yes it seems to have made a difference for him. His grandparents from Wellington came up last weekend and we went to visit the compass village and Q and Z (sister) pointed out the house where Mike McCarthy used to be. That was quite cute.

Thanks again.

AW