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Home › Articles › Special Needs › The Beat Goes On

The Beat Goes On

Interactive Metronome Helps

Children With Attention Difficulties Get on Track

By Emily Gorovsky

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

"I feel like I have the tools now," says Holsclaw, who would recommend using the IM in conjunction with other strategies. She feels the IM has helped her oldest son build his focus and attention span, learn more self-control and improve his internal timing. His athletic performance in golf, swimming and tennis has improved, although Holsclaw does not know for sure if that success can be attributed completely to using the IM. However, a golf study that showed IM-trained adult golfers improved their golf shot accuracy 20 to 40 percent over a control group that only read golf literature has been published in The Journal of General Psychology.

"It's low risk compared to medication," says Holsclaw. "With some kids, you're going to see dramatic results really fast, and with some, you're not going to see such huge results." Her oldest son not only has improved many attention-related skills, he independently asked to do additional sessions in order to progress more before going back to school. Holsclaw says his scores the second time around have been the same or better, and she definitely sees positive long-term effects of using the IM.

Natalie Mason-Fry, MS, OTR/L, is an occupational therapist at Emerge – A Child's Place, a pediatric occupational therapy provider in Chapel Hill, N.C. She has seen one child go from having a great deal of initial frustration and outbursts related to using the IM to gaining self-control and having no outbursts while using the program. The same child also improved his hand-eye coordination enough to hit a ping-pong ball back and forth 100 times and master musical timing while playing an instrument. Another girl who used the IM learned how to hula hoop – an activity she could not do before – after excelling at her specific movement coordination.

Time and Patience
While Mason-Fry would recommend the IM to parents, she feels the program applies to a limited population. "You have to have a reasonably high frustration tolerance and level of skill," she says. She would not suggest using the IM on a child younger than 6, because they do not follow directions as easily and lack the tolerance for monotonous activities, such as repeating specific hand and foot movements. However, if a child's initial IM score is extremely low, he or she can start with a remedial program first and then move into the regular IM program upon improving. Mason-Fry and Holsclaw both agree that the IM program, although rewarding, can be very monotonous and time-consuming, with a suggested usage minimum of three times per week.

"Towards the end, kids do 2,000 repetitions of one movement, so it's very monotonous," says Mason-Fry. "I think it helps to have some kind of movement reward." She suggests sticker charts, candy and time to participate in a favorite activity as incentives for completing the sessions. To juggle the time commitment, Holsclaw recommends doing the sessions after school, on weekends and during the summer/early fall so that kids can see their progress clearly throughout the school year. Mason-Fry adds that paying for sessions with an IM provider can be costly because parents are paying for both the therapist's time and the individual IM session time.

Greenspan, Holsclaw and Mason-Fry all have seen children who use the IM become more motivated to improve their scores, illustrating that competition often can be the best motivator.

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