An Irishwoman's Diary

CHEWED cables. Ravaged ring-binders. Satanic scratches on doors. They say you don’t appreciate your parents until you have children, but maybe you don’t truly value them until you get a pup.

“Oh, we always had dogs . . . training no problem,” is about as daft a thought as the notion that newborn babes can circulate proton beams in a Large Hadron Collider. Not for nothing does the excellent Galway-based Mutts Anonymous Dog Rescue and Adoption organisation recommend that potential adoptees sign up to both a contract and questionnaire.

Whatever route one takes, there are fellow travellers who recognise the signs. The raggedy cuffs, the gnawed buttons and bag handles, the hairs that can’t quite be passed off as some sort of mohair effect. And if the Andrex Labrador seems positively lamb-like, they know you have it bad.

Many of these fellow travellers have been relative strangers, in woods, on (early morning) beaches. It only takes a collar and lead to start a conversation. There was the man who lost his job, but found some solace with a schnauzer; the mother with large red setter in tow whose adult children were about to emigrate second-time around; the teacher who tutored his retriever to open the fridge for a can of beer . . .

Then there was the not-so-strange speech and language therapist with a fondness for Volkswagen Beetles and a dog named Mozart. So attached is Karen O’Connor to her best friend that he shares her photo on the back cover of her new book. “Any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad,” Leo C Rosten once said of WC Fields; fortunately for O’Connor, she and Fields would differ on both.

Mozart, a bearded collie, is secondary only to O’Connor’s primary passion – working with children. When Clare-resident Catherine Sides heard about her over a decade ago, she had a child who couldn’t talk, couldn’t cope, and was not able for mainstream school. Now sitting State exams this summer, same child has bloomed. She is a happy teenager, Sides notes, who “can’t stop asking questions”.

At the time, O’Connor had set up her own speech and language therapy practice in Co Galway. She had become frustrated with conventional techniques which took children with speech/language issues only so far before they were then discharged; during her time in the public health service, a spark was lit when a manager introduced her to sensory integration.

Californian occupational therapist Jean Ayres is credited with this concept, as O’Connor explains in her new book. By refining “foundation” senses – as in hearing, touch, taste, vision and movement – one can help a child to digest and integrate information.

“A bit like building a house,” O’Connor says. “If the foundations are not solid, you can do all the work you want on the walls, the windows, the door and the roof – the house

will never be adequately supported.

Similarly, if the brain is not processing and integrating sensory information effectively at the base level, the child’s skills will not develop as they should at the higher levels . . .”

O’Connor travelled, undertook courses, explored the work of occupational therapist Sheila Frick, Canadian psychologist Paul Madaule and French ear, nose and throat consultant, Alfred Tomatis. The son of an opera singer, Tomatis discovered that traditional treatments for singers referred to him by his father were inadequate. He realised that many vocal problems could be traced to hearing.

And so, O’Connor incorporated music-based sound therapy into her treatments for children diagnosed with autism, Asperger’s Syndrome, dyspraxia and other developmental challenges – for “problems” are not in her lexicon. Children like nine-year-old Michael, diagnosed with high-level autism, who yearned to interact; and children like Theo, who appeared to be “lost in space” and at his happiest in the confines of a cardboard box.

When Theo was exposed to music, as part of a 30-day intensive sound therapy programme, he began to climb out of his cardboard kingdom. “And then he took off,” O’Connor recalls. “Everything became a vehicle to navigate and move through space. Boxes of all shapes and sizes became rockets, planes, even elevators.” He formed his own team of tiny co-workers and began to direct them.

“They flew aeroplanes and launched rockets to the moon, taking in the planets in the solar system, each flight involving intricate spatial planning . . .” It took time, and many of the journeys were accompanied by emotional outbursts, O’Connor says. Sometimes there were mutinies among his fellow astronauts, who were “not always willing followers of Theo’s grand scheme”.

“But with the mutiny came social learning: how to negotiate, how to reason, to engage with and motivate the others to become part of his team...His language became more complex . . . He wanted to know how electricity worked and where water came from.” O’Connor has many more stories. For parents, travelling from many counties, it involves considerable investment in time and money. As Catherine Sides notes, in a society of equals, every child with challenges would have access to such transformation.

“What singles Karen out is that she doesn’t work with labels,” Sides says. “She takes every child and creates an individual programme. It is the child she sees, not the problem.”

Music is the Key by Karen O'Connor is published by Londubh Books, in bookshops and at website www.londubh.ie