InBrissy
01-01-2007, 08:14 PM
There has been quite a bit of talk and hype about how bad iPods are, specifically for our kids, for the potential of hearing damage. What you hear much much less about is all the benefits of iPods for our kids and ourselves.
My son is 5 years old and has High Functioning Autism. For those parents that have kids with behavioural and learning difficulties like Autistic Spectrum Disorder, ADD/ADHD, or any type of difficulty like this will know how stressful it is to have to look after kids like this. It is much more then a full time job.
My wife and I have been looking for ways to reduce our own stress and look for relaxation programs so that we are able to be much more available to our son and help him through this very difficult time. The lives of Parents with kids with these difficulties are often over looked. Much more focus is given to the children. But the amount of stress and hardship that can come with looking after these kinds of kids is incredible. We can’t simply get a baby sitter and go out for a nice dinner or a night out. We are looking after our kids 24/7.
We found that the more relaxed, patient, and less stressed we were, the more positive our son responded to us. Of course, kids pick up these types of feelings from their parents. So we went searching for all kinds of relaxation tapes, books, exercises to reduce stress, etc, etc.
What we came across was Binaural Beat Technology. What is Binaural Beat Technology? Well I could try to explain it, but the Wiki will do a much better job. So have a look at this link if you don’t know what Binaural Beats are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats
There are quite a number of different programs out there that use this technology, but we settled for the Holosync program. We received a double CD to start with. So as I always do (with kids around) I make a copy of the Cds so that if they get scratched, I can simply make another copy of the original. Now to use this program, you have to use a headset. The next question is where to plug two headsets in so my wife and I could use it together. The laptop! Of course that’s it! This is not a bad solution really until you want to take it to bed or in my case travelling around for work. So as an Apple Macintosh fan, I turned to Apple and went out to buy an iPod. I got the iPod shuffle. This is an excellent tiny little player, which supports aiff format, which you need. You can’t compress the audio files because it will cut out the much needed low and high frequencies.
So running the program on our little iPod shuffle for about two weeks, I really started to notice some amazing results. I am sleeping really solidly, I am much more focussed, and my ability to concentrate is increasing more and more. I should mention at this point that after my son was diagnosed with Autism that I did the tests myself and found out I also am Autistic so these improvements are immense for me. All of these benefits started to give my wife and I much more positive time with our son, and he’s been responding much better.
With the Holosync program you also get several additional tracks that are beneficial for studying and also creativity. So I’ve wanted to listen to those during the day. And after some more research and talks with the Holosync people, we also found that there is a similar program for children called Mind Stim. So of course after seeing the results in me, I wanted that program for my son. The advantage is that Mind Stim doesn’t require a headset. You can play it anywhere over normal speakers. So of course I wanted to add Mind Stim to the iPod also so I could play it at night time for my son in his room while he slept.
The problem I now ran in to was that the iPod Shuffle, being only a 1gigabyte device, ran out of room. So I had to either use my portable CD player, or start using my laptop again.
I really didn’t want to lug my laptop all over the house for this purpose, and battery life on the portable CD player is virtually non-existent so I was in a bit of a bind. Until I got in contact with Berrick and Rob from Apple. They were incredibly generous and offered me a 4gigabyte iPod Nano. This solved ALL my problems with Holosync and Mind Stim plus much more.
I can’t stress enough to people that technology makes wonderful learning aids. I never used an iPod before, and really only wanted to use it for the Holosync and Mind Stim programs. I also wanted to tell parents of kids with similar difficulties as our son about Holosync and Mind Stim.
Holosync and Mind Stim are giving us incredible results and I would encourage everyone to look into this as a relaxation and stress relieving option. And also to look into it as a potential aid in helping kids and adults with behavioural and learning difficulties.
But in addition to this, now that I’ve had some time to play with the iPod, I’ve come to realise it has much more potential then just the audio aspect of it. As most parents and teachers of Autistic kids know, Board Maker is one of the key learning aids. We use storyboards made with Board Maker in our daily lives with our son. Simple things like schedules and other routines are all made up in Board Maker. Unfortunately, you can’t always take all your storyboards with you everywhere. Or can you?
Yes people, the iPod Nano does photos! So I thought, why not make the images of the storyboards into simple jpeg files and make an album in iPhoto for each storyboard. Sync the iPod with iPhoto and all the relevant photo albums and PRESTO! Board Maker storyboards on the go! This is making life SO much easier for us.
Don’t dismiss iPods as a techno gadget people!! Seriously look at what these devices can do for our kids. Schools should be looking at funding for these devices as learning aids for the special needs kids. There is so much we can do with them!
I’m already looking at saving up for the iPod Video. This will be the ultimate learning aid. It will be like having a virtual classroom with you all the time. We can have moving Board Maker Story Boards, we can have memory games learning the alphabet, and we can have number games to learn our numbers. We can make little movies about social skills and what’s proper behaviour and what is not. Our kids can watch themselves playing and interacting with their peers. This is so important for them because it allows us to point out the things that are not proper behaviour and praise them on the things they do well.
I probably am getting carried away here, but this is so exciting for me. I just wish that access to these type of learning aids in schools was much much greater then it is. I know that iPods are not cheap, specially the ones that can do video, but I believe it would be an investment in our children that is well worth it. I am already working on making movies of our story boards and showing my son on the computer.
I hope that my experiences with the iPod and also with the Holosync and Mind Stim programs will be of value to a lot of people reading this. It is certainly changing my life!
My son is 5 years old and has High Functioning Autism. For those parents that have kids with behavioural and learning difficulties like Autistic Spectrum Disorder, ADD/ADHD, or any type of difficulty like this will know how stressful it is to have to look after kids like this. It is much more then a full time job.
My wife and I have been looking for ways to reduce our own stress and look for relaxation programs so that we are able to be much more available to our son and help him through this very difficult time. The lives of Parents with kids with these difficulties are often over looked. Much more focus is given to the children. But the amount of stress and hardship that can come with looking after these kinds of kids is incredible. We can’t simply get a baby sitter and go out for a nice dinner or a night out. We are looking after our kids 24/7.
We found that the more relaxed, patient, and less stressed we were, the more positive our son responded to us. Of course, kids pick up these types of feelings from their parents. So we went searching for all kinds of relaxation tapes, books, exercises to reduce stress, etc, etc.
What we came across was Binaural Beat Technology. What is Binaural Beat Technology? Well I could try to explain it, but the Wiki will do a much better job. So have a look at this link if you don’t know what Binaural Beats are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats
There are quite a number of different programs out there that use this technology, but we settled for the Holosync program. We received a double CD to start with. So as I always do (with kids around) I make a copy of the Cds so that if they get scratched, I can simply make another copy of the original. Now to use this program, you have to use a headset. The next question is where to plug two headsets in so my wife and I could use it together. The laptop! Of course that’s it! This is not a bad solution really until you want to take it to bed or in my case travelling around for work. So as an Apple Macintosh fan, I turned to Apple and went out to buy an iPod. I got the iPod shuffle. This is an excellent tiny little player, which supports aiff format, which you need. You can’t compress the audio files because it will cut out the much needed low and high frequencies.
So running the program on our little iPod shuffle for about two weeks, I really started to notice some amazing results. I am sleeping really solidly, I am much more focussed, and my ability to concentrate is increasing more and more. I should mention at this point that after my son was diagnosed with Autism that I did the tests myself and found out I also am Autistic so these improvements are immense for me. All of these benefits started to give my wife and I much more positive time with our son, and he’s been responding much better.
With the Holosync program you also get several additional tracks that are beneficial for studying and also creativity. So I’ve wanted to listen to those during the day. And after some more research and talks with the Holosync people, we also found that there is a similar program for children called Mind Stim. So of course after seeing the results in me, I wanted that program for my son. The advantage is that Mind Stim doesn’t require a headset. You can play it anywhere over normal speakers. So of course I wanted to add Mind Stim to the iPod also so I could play it at night time for my son in his room while he slept.
The problem I now ran in to was that the iPod Shuffle, being only a 1gigabyte device, ran out of room. So I had to either use my portable CD player, or start using my laptop again.
I really didn’t want to lug my laptop all over the house for this purpose, and battery life on the portable CD player is virtually non-existent so I was in a bit of a bind. Until I got in contact with Berrick and Rob from Apple. They were incredibly generous and offered me a 4gigabyte iPod Nano. This solved ALL my problems with Holosync and Mind Stim plus much more.
I can’t stress enough to people that technology makes wonderful learning aids. I never used an iPod before, and really only wanted to use it for the Holosync and Mind Stim programs. I also wanted to tell parents of kids with similar difficulties as our son about Holosync and Mind Stim.
Holosync and Mind Stim are giving us incredible results and I would encourage everyone to look into this as a relaxation and stress relieving option. And also to look into it as a potential aid in helping kids and adults with behavioural and learning difficulties.
But in addition to this, now that I’ve had some time to play with the iPod, I’ve come to realise it has much more potential then just the audio aspect of it. As most parents and teachers of Autistic kids know, Board Maker is one of the key learning aids. We use storyboards made with Board Maker in our daily lives with our son. Simple things like schedules and other routines are all made up in Board Maker. Unfortunately, you can’t always take all your storyboards with you everywhere. Or can you?
Yes people, the iPod Nano does photos! So I thought, why not make the images of the storyboards into simple jpeg files and make an album in iPhoto for each storyboard. Sync the iPod with iPhoto and all the relevant photo albums and PRESTO! Board Maker storyboards on the go! This is making life SO much easier for us.
Don’t dismiss iPods as a techno gadget people!! Seriously look at what these devices can do for our kids. Schools should be looking at funding for these devices as learning aids for the special needs kids. There is so much we can do with them!
I’m already looking at saving up for the iPod Video. This will be the ultimate learning aid. It will be like having a virtual classroom with you all the time. We can have moving Board Maker Story Boards, we can have memory games learning the alphabet, and we can have number games to learn our numbers. We can make little movies about social skills and what’s proper behaviour and what is not. Our kids can watch themselves playing and interacting with their peers. This is so important for them because it allows us to point out the things that are not proper behaviour and praise them on the things they do well.
I probably am getting carried away here, but this is so exciting for me. I just wish that access to these type of learning aids in schools was much much greater then it is. I know that iPods are not cheap, specially the ones that can do video, but I believe it would be an investment in our children that is well worth it. I am already working on making movies of our story boards and showing my son on the computer.
I hope that my experiences with the iPod and also with the Holosync and Mind Stim programs will be of value to a lot of people reading this. It is certainly changing my life!