Therapeutic Listening for Aspies {Not Just A Fashion Statement}

    We have been going to O.T. at JD McCarty for a while now & Jayden loves it so much! His therapist started him on therapeutic listening twice a day for thirty minutes per time.  Each CD that he uses is supposed to work in a different way to help him, every two weeks we get a new CD.  I will be honest enough to say not all of them have been good, the last one we had would jack him up so much that after listening he would walk in circles & spin his finger.  The current one is Mozart & let me say WOW!  He loves it!  I wasn’t sure about the whole listening to music as a form of therapy, not to say I wasn’t sure it would work because 1. Our Therapist is super rad! 2. What the hell do I know about therapy! Before we started OT & the headphones it was not out of the norm for Jayden to bring home 20 pages of homework & that’s even with the teacher modifying the work! Now why my 2nd grader needs that much work period is a whole other blog but that being said it is what it is.  Today he brought home 2 & yesterday in the Wednesday Folder he only had 3.  Is that all from OT & the headphones?  I hope not! Because my wife & I have been crazy bustin’ butt to work with him on his trouble areas but I’m pretty sure it’s 80% or better!
     No one to what happened when I put the camera in his face to take the picture to the right!  I knew I wanted to talk a little about & praise the therapeutic listening so as we were about to take the headphones off I asked him to take a picture for me & this is the pose I got!  I’m not sure but its seemingly linked to when he said not to long ago ‘daddy…I can’t wait to be a teenager!’  We do a lot of photography shoots & I think looking at some of the poses & faces they make were translated pretty well by my little aspie. I could hardly hold the camera still I was laughing so hard!
     On a short side note, I have been so crazy excited about all the great feedback I have been getting about this blog!  It helps so much to know that some of the odd things or the day-to-day struggles we go through are shared by so many!  Its kind of funny, just a few years ago the only thing about Autism I knew was that one time I watched ‘Rain Man’  Now we are neck-deep in it!  The feedback via e-mail, comments, & most of all on my facebook!  But if you are reading this & have not “liked’ Adventures in Asperger’s on FB yet then head over that way!   Same way with twitter, I’m really going to try to tweet more because I really like it.
P.S. Parents, do your kids know they have Asperger’s or Autism? How did you tell them or they find out? Post it on the comments section or post your story on my wall, I think thats the next blog I will post & it might be interesting to hear other families stories!

2 comments:

  1. My husband and I have two asperger boys ages 4 and 2. They are both dang handsome and smart as a whip. My husband (a brilliant doctor and possible undiagnosed aspie himself joked that we should sit the boys down when they are a little older and have him say, “Look boys, you both have asperger’s. You are both handsome and smart and you’re also pretty strange so just try and use that strangeness for some good and you’ll be all set”. I swear my oldest son would be like, “alright cool. so how do you spell asperger’s anyway and does it possibly have an abbreviation?” he he. I love my boys SO much and in all seriousness I think when we do sit them down we will talk about their family tree which unfortunately has some mental conditions woven through. We will highlight their amazing talents and gifts and tell them that their struggles are a bit unique but that everyone struggles with different things so we all need to help each other and that requires everyone to be different from each other. If everyone was the same no one could help anyone else.

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  2. So I read this blog & I couldnt help but laugh at the picture of this beautiful boy staring at the camera. For a moment I had a flashback of a face just like his giving me the mean look in Orchestra! Sorry Tom but he totally can work that look & makes your heart melt while doing it. The homework, yeah I have wondered the same thing. Stephanie

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