therapies

It's good to thoroughly research any intervention before deciding whether it is right for your child because good impartial advice is hard to come by. I would suggest you talk to an experienced AIT practitioner about any potential behavioural side effects as this is all ancient history for me, as we tried AIT nearly 20 years ago.

Even back then we were advised before we signed up that in a few cases there could be behavioural changes after a successful course of AIT. They explained that if the AIT works then our children's perception of their auditory environment changes and for some children that could be initially disturbing or even distressing which may cause behavioural problems.

That seemed logical and understandable so we proceeded. Afterwards I do remember a few minor positive changes but my son also suddenly became frightened of the Channel 4 News theme music, running out of the room at every ad break!

He was clearly more aware of the sounds around him and when a couple of months later he demonstrated that he was now able to decypher our previously distorted speech by starting to talk everything else became irrelevent.

That was just our experience and every child that has a successful AIT course will have a different experience and different reaction.

I don't want to be accused of belittling the possible behavioural consequences of AIT so let's imagine a scenario with more serious consequences.

Pre AIT an autistic child seems oblivious to his little sister bawling her eyes out next to him.

Post AIT the autistic child hears the screaming more clearly and feels her anguish so he goes over to his little sister and kicks her because her crying has upset him. As I said before you should talk to an AIT practitioner who should be able to give you real examples of behaviour changes.

I have found over the years that as we have tried to unravel our autistic son's problems, progress is often made two steps forward one step back. Nothing is easy or staightforward, there are no magic bullets, we can only do what we think is best and we the parents are the best judge of that.

I can tell you that if the AIT is successful then,

A) The psychologists and other 'experts' will tell you that your child could have started talking at that time without the AIT

B) Your child's teachers and speech therapist will claim that it was all down to their brilliant efforts.

Only the parents know the truth.

Keep Smiling and good luck with whatever you choose to do.

Hi Xavi,

My Son also has sensory issues including sound sensitivities. I've read brief amounts on AIT but also read that for some, it can create behavioural side affects and therefore a parental choice not to be taken lightly?

I'm glad to hear that this treatment worked for your son. It's something I've thought about this last year, but based on the above, plus still pending OT, I'm a little hesitant.

Thanks

Smiling

Yes of course it could, but I was convinced from years of watching him that my son needed to watch the movement of the lips in order to better understand what was being said.

Incidently my son is labled as having SLD but I do believe that in the absence of any communicative auditory input he was teaching himself to lip read!!

You might think I'm a bit crazy to think this but a couple of years later a teacher said that she had noticed that he answered questions better if she mouthed the first syllable of the answer first.

Forgive me if I've got this wrong but many adults with able autuism or aspergers (including myself) habitually watch people's lips move - pointless since I don't lip read. It just became the response for avoiding eye contact. Could this apply to young children for any similar reason?

Parental theories and hunches are always difficult to explain.

However, like you I noticed my son watching my lips when I was talking to him and I wondered why. We had two audiology reports showing that he could hear and we knew that anyway because he often covered his ears around loud sounds. He was creating lots of echoalic noises so the only conclusion I could reach was that he was failing to understand our speech.

I suspected that our speech was muffled, blurred or distorted in some way so that he could hear it but not comprehend it. He was getting more sense from our lips than from what was coming out of them.

I will never know what specific hearing dysfunction he had but when I heard that AIT helps to tune the ears it seemed right for us.

And it was, it took two months of him being able to hear our conversations and then he started and didn't stop repeating and repeating and repeating....

Arrgh how we missed the silence!!! but of course it was for the best because he can now tell us what he wants.

A word of caution, although we see similar symptoms that is no guarentee of success but it sounds like it could be worth a try.

thanks very much for the information if you don't mind me asking what made you think he had a hearing dysfunction? my son is very sensitive to certain sounds and tries to block them out he is definately making more sounds and looks at your mouth when you are talking to him but he can't seem to form a word.He is also very frustrated that he can't communicate and bites his hand which is quite sore we've tried different methods to try to prevent this but it is very difficult when his hand is an instant point to go to. i just want to try to help him as the local authority and nhs really don't seem to know where to go not very autism knowlegable.

scrappy doo says thank you too

The real question here is, what do you think, Scoobydoo?

If you think there is nothing wrong with your son's hearing then don't waste your time on this and look for other ways to help your son.

However if you think your son does have some sort of hearing dysfunction and there are many of them, or if you think that the audiologists report stating, 'definately has no significant hearing loss' doesn't tell the full story...

Then why not give it a try and maybe it will help to make your autistic son's life a little bit easier.

The same applies for any other field of sensory therapy. You know your son better than anybody else so only you can decide whether your son might benefit from any type of sensory therapy.

Below is a link to what the NAS says about AIT and LT.

http://www.autism.org.uk/en-gb/living-with-autism/approaches-therapies-and-interventions/physiological-interventions/auditory-integration-training.aspx

For what its worth when my non verbal autistic son was five I was the convinced that he had a hearing dysfunction and I didn't believe the audiologists reports (as stated above) so we tried AIT.

We immediately felt that he was paying more attention to our speech and two months later he was talking!!!

Happy hunting Scoobydoo and my best wishes to Scrappy Doo too!