I admit that I approached Fast ForWord with some trepidation. I have been told by professionals and parents alike that it can be incredibly challenging and frustrating for children with processing problems. Knowing that LuLu’s frustration level is very low and that triggering it leads to huge meltdowns…well, I just wasn’t looking forward to it. Consulting with her occupational therapist and speech therapist, it was recommended that we start with Interactive Metronome, proceed to The Listening Program and then follow up with the Fast ForWord. Seemed like a prudent course of action. Interactive Metronome challenged (and sometimes frustrated) her, but she had a very patient and persistent OT, and they persevered and succeeded!

The Listening Program quickly overwhelmed her senses at “full strength”, so we cut the listening back to half-time for the first round. We just completed a second course of TLP at “full strength”. In the first course of TLP, we saw gains in her being able to understand song lyrics and follow conversations. Over the last few weeks I’m watching her pick up reading material on her own to read for enjoyment! We’re anticipating Fast ForWord will ice this cake.

Oddly enough (no real surprise with LuLu as she’s anything but typical), the Fast ForWord game that seems to give most of the children fits, Circus Sequence, is not overly frustrating for her. Instead, she struggles with one called Phonic Match, which is played much like Concentration or Memory games where she clicks on different tiles, listening for two words that match. The game is supposed to develop listening accuracy, word recognition, phoneme discrimination, and working memory. I think her frustration lies in both her problems with working memory and her problem discriminating sounds.

Doing Fast ForWord means that LuLu won’t get a true break from school over Christmas like everyone else (we’ll have to do our 100 minutes 5 days a week). At first I thought this might be a problem. But watching her yesterday I realized she actually likes the program. She laughs at the little visual rewards the game gives her and has been overheard encouraging herself. “Good job, LuLu!” I heard her say to herself yesterday! What a long way she’s come out of her negativity and anxiety about these types of tasks.

So all indications are that LuLu will be in that 90% of students that this Fast ForWord intervention helps.

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