A case study of a child with ADHD moving on to proper functioning academically and behaviourally

The above screenshot shows the sound profile of a child who had been diagnosed as having ADHD. This child was in a calm and supportive home situation there was no additional trauma around the child,

The blue curve = the child's sound processing through air conduction; the red curve = the child's sound processing through bone conduction; the X axis = Hertz; the Y axis = decibels. The blue crosses indicate the points where direction of sound on air conduction is confused; the red dashes = the points where sound processing on bone conduction is confused. The numbers at the top indicate that the child struggles to follow sound when it moves; also that the child is left ear dominant. The sound processing curves are suppressed by 20 to 40 decibels across the whole sound range.

After 4 rounds of Tomatis sound therapy the child's sound processing changed to the following.

There was still more work to be done, in an ideal world, but the child could now function in all environments and was no longer overwhelmed by sound and could understand and recall what was being said.

The child's behaviour was very much calmer.

During this period the team also worked on motor skills control including primitive reflexes, postural control, bi-lateral integration and simple eye exercises.

Eye tracking skills during this period improved and the client moved from having a reading speed below that expected for a Year 1 student to that of a functioning adult.

Eye tracking screenshots using Readalyzer eye-movement recording system. Red line = left eye movements; blue line = right eye movements. Eyes should move in an identical stepped pattern across the text. When a person reads text for meaning they are combining sound and vision processing; therefore any disturbance to sound processing will impact on vision processing. The improvements in the sound processing, combined with improvements to motor skills and simple eye exercises made it possible for the child to significantly improve their reading for meaning.

From here on the child needed emotional support to cope with all the years that they had gone through struggling to process efficiently. They also needed support to catch-up on years of missed school work. It is important to appreciate that once the physical skills to achieve a task are in place there is still work to be done to ensure that the person moves on safely psychologically and that they use those skills to go on building and developing cognitive skills.