Curious Parents Family Health Resources

Special Child

Music to her Daughter’s Ears
By Matt Stringer

While vacationing down the Jersey shore, a motorcycle roared past in the night and Kiernan Snedden snapped out of her sleep and grabbed her ears, saying in a groggy voice, “That hurt.”

Kiernan, who is now 3-and-a-half-years-old, went right back to sleep. Sounds normal, but Kiernan has hyper-sensitive hearing and when that motorcycle rumbled by her room, it really did hurt.

Her mom, Keri of Moorestown, N.J., wasn’t content to sit by and watch as her daughter suffered time and time again from all types of noises that most people couldn’t hear or wouldn’t be bothered by.

Snedden noticed early on something wasn’t right. “When she was a couple days old I noticed a blankness,” said Snedden, a former special education teacher. “As she grew, she wasn’t developing. She wasn’t reaching her milestones. She didn’t like to be held; she liked to be by herself.”

The doctors said everyone develops at a different rate, so Snedden called Early Intervention, a service provided by Burlington County. Then she went to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and they said she may be autistic. “My world shattered. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever felt,” she said.

But, after all the tests, the hospital said she wasn’t autistic. What she does have are developmental disorder, Sensory Integration Dysfunction, Apraxia, and hyper-sensitive hearing.

Her hearing, though, was causing much of the trouble with her development and then Snedden came across a book, Sound of a Miracle, and thought “wow, there’s hope.”

She and her husband, George, both read the book within 48 hours and then Snedden researched the book’s focus on Auditory Integration Training, which uses a special type of music to correct hyper-sensitive hearing and other problems, like autism. From there, she decided to become a practitioner to help her daughter and headed off to Connecticut to receive training.

Kiernan’s problems made life at home hell and the little girl would become frustrated easily. “The simple things like sitting down at dinner were a nightmare,” Snedden said. “She could hear things we couldn’t hear. Imagine being in a place where everything is unbearable.”

But, with her certification in hand, Snedden treated her daughter with the musical training. “Her world changed,” Snedden said. “She would say, ‘What does hot mean.’ She was making connections. She would ask questions. And one day she said, ‘Mommy, am I tall enough to touch the light [switch]?’ The tiniest little things mean the world to a parent with a child with a disability.”

Kiernan even stopped complaining that the lights were to bright and Snedden said she is much more comfortable in her own skin.

Auditory Integration Training, developed by Dr. Guy Berard in France, works like this: a person receives the training for a half-hour twice a day for 10 days. Prior to the start of the therapy, an audiogram is conducted by an audiologist to determine if the person has auditory peaks. A second test is taken after five hours of the training and a final test is taken after the completion of the sessions.

The point of it is to help the person hear all frequencies on the same level, so all frequencies are perceived equally well and to eliminate auditory peaks in hearing, which are the root of the problem. Snedden said you’re basically retraining a disorganized system.

The therapy was a success for Kiernan and now she’s doing remarkably better. But Snedden decided to start a business, Snedden Enrichment ( www.sneddenenrichment.com  ), to help other children and adults who suffer from similar problems. And it is said to be able to help people with other disorders as well, like autism.

The American Academy of Pediatrics cautions that the practice is still in its early stages and even though two studies have shown the training to be beneficial to children with autism, more in-depth controlled studies need to be conducted and people should consult their pediatrician if they are considering it as an option.

One mom, Tammy, who preferred her last name not be used to protect the privacy of her daughter, Paige, 8, now and in the future, heard about Snedden through her social worker. “I e-mailed Keri about info,” Tammy said. “She [Paige] had developmental delays. She had expressive and comprehensive language problems, too.”

So Tammy took Paige to see Snedden and had the training done. It turned out Paige did have hyper-sensitive hearing after the audiogram was taken. “For Paige, there were changes almost immediately,” Tammy said. “She would go up to people and talk to them. She could hear that she was saying squirrel wrong. She would ask more questions. Since then, her eye contact is much more expressive, much more loving—not that she wasn’t loving before.”

Paige even plays with other children now for extended periods of time, something that she didn’t do before. “I’m very anxious to see how it is going to affect her going forward,” Tammy said. “She said she’s really excited to learn this year. She’s never said that before.”

Matt Stringer is the editor of Curious Parents.