TEAS

Noah has very hypersensitive hearing. This problem is most commonly associated with children diagnosed with Autism, but it is fairly frequent for children with CP as well. What it means is that little sounds that you and I would not even notice are really loud to Noah, and, therefore, going into a loud situation like a basketball game is extremely painful. When you take him into a situation like that he will either yell to try and cover the noise, or he will cry. If he knows he is going into a loud situation, he immediately tightens every muscle in his little body and begins to whine -- that's before you even get there. It makes public situations very difficult for him, which is sad because he loves to go out and be around people.

The TEAS (Transient Electronic Auditory Stimulation) program is meant to help combat this problem. Obviously, Noah's ears are no different than any other person's. The problem is that his brain is not filtering out the noise that other's brains have learned to filter out during infancy.

The TEAS program consists of a good pair of noise-cancelling headphones and music that has been recorded with noxious noise in the background. By listening to this music, Noah's brain, over time, learns to filter out the background noise. The newest part of this program is that it can be done on the computer with the added advantage of fun video games. Noah enjoys the games (as you can see from the photo), and it makes the program more pleasant for him.