Multi tasking and IM
The ability to multi task is a very important skill that we learn at a very young age. Typically when we enter a classroom, we are required to listen to a teacher while filtering out extraneous noises or while writing notes. This skill requires a tremendous amount of good quality focus that can be held even through distractions in our environment…
I have many parents ask me right away – “How long until we see some improvement?” or “What should I look for?” In my experience, this is very unpredictable. Some of the patients who I see who I think will do really well, take much longer to show improvements and others who have more difficulty make progress more quickly. But it also sometimes happens in the opposite way.
Sometimes the children who have the most difficulty have the furthest to go – so improvement may seem to come more quickly. Sometimes its easier to see even the littlest thing – like they were able to feed themselves an entire meal instead of throwing their food or spoon – are much more obvious. In other situations, especially with my patients who have more of the ADHD/ADD type symptoms we need to look more closely at what they are doing and how they are doing it. I especially see progress first in these patients during homework time. That is when I hear that they are sticking with their homework longer or getting it done faster or even just that they can sit at their desk for 20 minutes at a time when before it was more like 5 minutes before they were up and running around or asking questions.
It’s all in the Timing…..
It’s amazing in our culture how many references there are to time or timing… “His timing was just off today”…””Time is money…”Timing is everything”…the list goes on and on. It’s “time” for us to start looking at that on a more personal level. Since time is mentioned so much, it must be important, right?
These phrases all refer to timing as something important for success. When we talk about a quarterback or a pitcher on a team, we know their timing needs to be spot on for accuracy and success. This is what we need for our children with special needs too. Even when we look as simply as our sleep/wake cycles – circadian rhythms– the importance of a sleep wake cycle can make or break someone’s day. Have you ever met a person who was excited that they couldn’t fall to sleep at night? Or how about breathing? When we are comfortable, we are breathing very rhythmically. If we aren’t, we tend to pass out! Even our heart beats out a rhythm on a regular basis.
Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy
One of my favorite groups of patients to work with using Interactive Metronome® are those affected by hemiplegia. These are my kiddos who either totally neglect one of their arms, or who only use their arm when absolutely necessary. They constantly hear “use both hands” or “use your helper hand” time and time again. There are other options for those affected with hemiplegia such as constraint-induced therapy, which can also be beneficial, but IM is a great way to get them to start using their affected upper extremity.
IM helps with reading skills
One of the things that many of the parents of the children whom I have worked with have told me while we were doing IM sessions was that they noticed some type of improvement with reading. Some of these children had difficulty with reading and letter recognition from the start, and others did not, but improvement was still observed by parents or teachers.
Are you looking for a gift for your child who is participating in IM sessions? Parents at our clinic ask me all the time what would be a good gift for their child. Something to enhance their therapy yet is fun. Below I’ve listed some games which can be found at the Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon or Toys R Us, so they are easy to find.
Erin had a diagnosis of PDD/Autism. She was verbal, but unable to have a purposeful conversation. Her voice was very high pitched, and other children turned away from her when she would go up to them and start reciting lines from various Disney movies or Barney episodes on TV. She had been attending traditional OT/PT and Speech therapy visits for 7 out of her 8 years of life and the family was reaching burn out status, as her progress seemed to be very slow.
Prior to her discharge, we decided to give one more thing a try. Interactive Metronome. Mom had been reading about progress in attention and focus with children who performed the IM exercises. She wasn’t sure how Erin would do, but since it was summertime and their schedule wasn’t as busy it would be worth the time needed to give IM a try.
There are so many children diagnosed with ADD and ADHD these days. Some kids are struggling to pay attention in class or are labeled as the class clowns or troublemakers at school or other organized events. Whether it be a hyperactivity or an inattention to task, could there be a common thread that was missing when we evaluated these children? We utilized standardized tools such as the Bruininks, VMI ,WOLD and Jebsen. They all tended to score below their same aged peers on these tests, handwriting was poor and sometimes it just didn’t seem like they heard what you were telling them.
