Home >> Feedback >> Pre-school child with unintelligible speech.

Six-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder

Feedback from Sam’s mother when nearing the end of the Jjohansen IAS programme. Sam is now 7 1/2 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."

Click on any of the following to read feedback following Johansen IAS. Comments are quoted verbatim.

• Pre-school child with unintelligible speech.
• 4 year old boy with Auditory Processing Difficulties
• Six-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder
• Seven-year-old child with speech, language and attention difficulties and hyper-sensitivity to noise
• Seven-year-old dyslexic child
• Seven-year-old girl with listening, attention and concentration difficulties, and difficulties learning to read and write.
• Eight-Year Old Boy and Johansen IAS
• 11 year old dyslexic girl. A mother's summary immediately following Sound Therapy.
• Fourteen-year-old boy with literacy difficulties
• 49 year-old with listening difficulties leading to stress and anxiety.

Top