A Mother's experience with Fast ForWord 

(Tom is 6 ½ years old, and completed Fast ForWord Language in August 2006)

When Tom was 2 ½ years old he got bored with building a 60 piece jigsaw of Noah’s ark, turned the pieces face down and built it that way. We thought we had a child prodigy!! However, when Tom started pre-entry Kindergarten at aged 3 ¾, the Kindy director called us in for a chat. She said that Tom seemed unable to follow instructions of more than 1 sentence, was often confused, and lacked self esteem. She had noticed his outstanding ability with puzzles (he would build all of the puzzles at the kindy in minutes) and pointed out that, in her experience, kids who were so advanced in one area, might have a deficit in another and she suggested that we have him clinically evaluated.

Language Disorder
Tom tested out at the 97th percentile for the visual-spatial tasks and at only the 20th percentile for the language tasks. He was diagnosed with a severe Language Disorder particularly in expressive language. When I asked what this meant, they said that he had difficulties with language (go figure!) and this would continue. A speech pathologist was recommended and it was predicted that Tom would have ongoing problems throughout his schooling.

On learning this, I spent a great deal of time on the internet trying to find out what Language Disorder actually was. It seemed to me that although it was a symptom, no cause was identified, and I became increasingly frustrated by both the ‘soft’ diagnosis, and our apparent inability to do anything to help Tom. As I continued to search for more information I came across a reference to Central Auditory Processing Disorder and most of the symptoms matched Tom’s. I started to contact auditory specialists but was told that Tom could not be tested for this until he was at least 8 years of age because the tests were too difficult for younger children – however, I didn’t want to wait this long to do something to help my son.

Therapies
When Tom was 4 ½ I took him to see an Occupational Therapist who was known to work with Sound Therapies. I had read about Samonas Sound Therapy and wanted to see whether this could make a difference for Tom. For 10 months we sat down together for half an hour, 5 days a week and Tom listened to the special music while building LEGO, or jigsaws or drawing pictures. The therapy had some effects, Tom became a little more verbal, and seemed more relaxed. He enjoyed our time together, but it still didn’t seem to get to the root of Tom’s difficulties.

Fast ForWord
I had read about Fast ForWord when I first started learning about Language Disorders, but could find no-one who had tried it, and both the Speech Pathologist and OT knew nothing about it, and the specialist who had done the clinical evaluation strongly recommended against doing anything related to phonemes with such a young child. When I read the research it seemed that much of it had been done by Scientific Learning themselves (which made me wary), and the only independent studies provided mixed reports about its ability to help kids with Autism and Dyslexia (no surprise there, given the broad range of manifestations of these disorders). I was finally convinced to try Fast ForWord when I read the book Like Sound through Water by Karen Foli and read both her accounts of her son’s Auditory Processing Disorder (which was so much like our experiences) and how Fast ForWord had made such a huge difference for her son.

It was not easy to find someone who could supply us with the program in South Australia, and so I wrote to providers all over the country trying to find one who would allow me to do Fast ForWord Language from home. LearnFast in Sydney came through, offering fantastic support and good advice. Tom was 6 ¼ years old when we finally started, with his father and I sharing the approximately 2 hours of supervision every evening after school.

Changes

It has been 10 weeks since starting the course and Tom finished two weeks ago. The changes have been absolutely phenomenal! At about 5 weeks we noticed that Tom was becoming more verbal, he was gaining confidence and starting to pick up little things said around him. At 7 weeks he began asking questions about conversations that were occurring around him such as “What did Alex (his sister) just mean when she said that the rhinoceros is endangered?” He borrowed our old favorite videos to rediscover what was being said by the characters, and began singing and talking (all the time).

It is like a tap has been turned on and his confidence continues to grow. He has stopped saying “What?” when we talk to him, and he is able to identify where we are in the house. He is making new friends at school, and having little difficulty with quite complex instructions. His reading and writing have taken off and he has jumped four levels in his readers at school. Our extended family has been stunned by the changes in both his language use and confidence.

I have no reason to believe that these changes aren’t permanent. Having heard Eric Jensen speak about brain plasticity and the rewiring of neurons, I know that the kind of tasks that Fast ForWord provides, and the intensity of practise that is required, is enough to rewire the neural pathways permanently.

I'd like to thank LearnFast for their help and support and offer this testimonial to anyone else who is considering using this wonderful programme. It truly changes lives!

Kate (Tom’s mother).