A s e v e n -year-old boy, was diagnosed with ADHD. He was prescribed

Ritalin, but his parents were still concerned with his behavior. They

noted that he continued to have difficulties in sustaining attention,

sitting still and completing tasks.  He avoided and even resisted

activities that presented new motor challenges. For example,

when children from the neighborhood were playing soccer and

asked him to join he refused.  After a year, his parents decided

it was time to try something else.  They obtained a referral for TJ to

try Interactive Metronome (IM) at Optimal Training Functions, an

occupational therapy clinic.  Because of TJ’s difficulty with

attention and organizational skills in the classroom the SCAN-C

screening tool for basic auditory processing was performed during

the initial clinical evaluation. He scored in the low-normal range

(the 16th percentile) in his ability to process "filtered words" or

verbal information that is partially obscured due to a hand over the

mouth or the speaker turning away. TJ also had difficulty with

eyes-closed balance and stability and with coordinated limb movements,

such as: jump-turn, batting the ball while on hands/knees and

the belly crawl.  The results of TJ's IM pretest assessment

confirmed the clinical observations. He showed a severe

deficiency for a child his age, revealing difficulties with motor planning

and sequencing.  He said he often "forgot to listen" to the auditory beat and

demonstrated great difficulty in attending to tasks and adjusting

his motor activity to the auditory stimuli.

TJ returned for 15 sessions using Interactive Metronome. At the

completion of the last session, he had improved by 81% to within a

range considered exceptional for a seven-year-old. Six weeks after

TJ completed Interactive Metronome training; I was rewarded by

receiving a letter he wrote without any prompting to say,

"Metronome rily (sic) helped me so much!"

TJ's parents reported that the most significant changes were in his

ability to interact with his neighborhood peers. When I saw

him during a three month follow up, his parents noted that he

continued to try new motor activities with less resistance and

frustration and now even rollerbladed.  According to his parents,

"The physical changes have stuck.  He is more interactive and self confident

too."

As TJ's interaction and socialization increased his parents worked

with him on appropriate social rules. They also noted that he

displayed improved organizational skills in initiating and completing

tasks. During my last follow up with TJ, I observed improved

eyes-closed balance and stronger core stability. After completing the

IM program in the clinic, TJ started a daily home program of various

visual tasks to continue to support the progress he had made in his

organizational skills.