WILL RESPONDED PRO FOUNDLY TO THE listening therapy: he slept better, spoke, formed closer emotional connections, and was able to regulate his emotions. At that point he had finished his fifteen-day passive phase. Paul said that Will would need six weeks for his brain to consolidate his gains. His development would continue, but as he started to communicate for the first time, he would also develop new frustrations. Paradoxically, this change would be a sign of progress.
When the family returned to Britain, Will continued to develop. He got up to twenty-two words, his sleep was now “fantastic,” his appetite improved, and many of his unusual symptoms vanished. He was no longer squashing himself underneath weights, running around tables, looking at objects from different angles, or opening andclosing doors. Toys he had never played with were now being used appropriately.
Six weeks later, in May 2011, they returned to Toronto for a second fifteen-day visit, to begin the active phase. Will listened to filtered music again, but also to his own filtered voice while he spoke or sang. Over the fifteen days his vocabulary grew, he was able to communicate better, and he became calmer. Because he could communicate his emotions and thoughts, he didn’t rage or bite himself when frustrated, and Liz [his Mom] could now reason with him. He progressed to role-playing and pretend play, and his imagination flourished. Sound stimulation had so awakened his brain that he developed a sense of smell for the first time.
But as Paul had predicted, he was often frustrated. Two to three days into his second treatment phase, having begun communicating, he suddenly expressed intense annoyance and threw tantrums whenever his parents couldn’t immediately understand him. Having tasted communication, he wanted as much as possible. Then after a month, his frustration diminished as quickly as it had begun.
“Paul said he would be speaking in sentences by Christmas,” says Frederick [his Dad], “and literally a week before Christmas, he did.”
Paul had developed a portable Electronic Ear, called the LiFT (for Listening Fitness Trainer), and he gave Liz one to take home to England. Paul kept in touch by Skype, modifying Will’s program as needed. In late 2012 speech and language therapists inEngland declared Will’s language, speech, and comprehension to be age appropriate fora four-year-old. In eighteen months, with Paul’s help, he had moved through more than four years of language development, because in fact, at four, he read and comprehended at a six-year-old’s level. Frederick marveled the day Will read the word scientist, thinking, “Two years ago he couldn’t speak!” In September the pediatric consultant in the U.K. apologized, saying that she had “got it totally wrong,” and she admitted that Will’s progress completely blew her away and that she would now direct other children like Will to listening therapy.
[...]
Prematurity, even without oxygen deprivation, contributes to fewer connections between neurons because a rapid increase in the branching of fetal neurons normally occurs in the last third of pregnancy—the period when most premature babies are extruded from the womb. The problem is that mainstream physicians have no training in using mental activity or sensory stimulation to “hook up” disconnected neurons and help them mature, training that would take advantage of the fact that “neurons that fire together wire together.” It took experts like Alfred Tomatis and Paul Madaule to devise ways of stimulating neurons to fire and wire to connect, because everyday experience—of which Will had plenty—is insufficient to do so. Before he could make use of everyday experience to mature, he had to pass through the steps I have described: in the first few days he required appropriate neurostimulation, which turned on the parts of his brain that neuromodulate arousal. He got the neurostimulation and began to sleep properly. This state of neurorelaxation allowed him to accumulate energy so that he was soon able to make huge leaps in language development and sensory discrimination, a sign of neurodifferentiation.
