Sound of Falling Snow: Children's Stories of Recovery from Autism and Related Disorders by Annabel Stehli

Book Review for Sound Sound of Falling Snow: Children's Stories of Recovery from Autism and Related Disorders:

Historically, when a child is diagnosed with a disability, it is a diagnosis for life. Though they will grow and learn, the disability will impact them forever. People don’t recover from cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, or blindness. According to this book, some do recover from autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention deficit disorders, learning disabilities, and pervasive developmental delays.

They often recover through a method called Auditory Integration Training, based on the concept that some of these kids suffer from hypersensitive hearing—they cannot filter or modulate incoming sounds and so they experience life as an assault of noise. They react with inappropriate behavior, and are often diagnosed, like the editor’s daughter, as functionally retarded.

In Sound Sound of Falling Snow, these personal stories, told mostly by the children’s parents, follow a common pattern: an anti-social child with extreme behavioral issues responds minimally to conventional treatment, such as speech and occupational therapy. Then, after a ten-day Auditory Integration Training program, the child is profoundly changed. Some kids completely recover from autism and live typical lives. Others need help from other therapies to catch up for their lost years of development.

Auditory Integration Training was developed by Dr. Guy Berard, a retired otolarnygoloist from France.

In 1977, he cured Stehli’s daughter, Georgiana Thomas, catapulting Annabel Stehli into her life’s work. Exempt from scrutiny by the FDA and occasionally covered by health insurance, Auditory Integration Training is available because of Stehli’s dedication to making it available. The training consists basically of the child listening to a specially modulated music tape twice a day to re-teach the brain how to process sounds.

Annabel Stehli has written several previous books about raising children with special needs, including The Sound of a Miracle: A Child’s Triumph Over Autism. In this new collection, she has a light editing touch, and the stories read like conversations rather than polished pieces. James, whose mother wrote about him in Stehli’s Dancing in the Rain: Stories of Exceptional Progress by Parents of Children with Special Needs, writes his own version of how his life changed after Auditory Integration Training. He feels that his autism is a gift, as it gives him a different way of seeing and being in the world. Other stories introduce other alternative forms of treatment such as Nicholas’s special diet or Brian’s success with Applied Behavior Analysis.

Whenever there is a new treatment that works for some but not all kids, critics are quick to dismiss it. Annabel Stehli does not claim that Auditory Integration Training is a panacea for all kids on the autism spectrum, but she does fervently believe that it works for kids with hyper-acute hearing. As an anecdotal presentation, rather than medical fact, this book changes the way disabilities are defined and treated. It offers hope to all those living with differences.