William has always been quirky, even as a baby. He met his early milestones but always in his own way. When William was three years old, our health visitor raised concerns about his expressive communication and his pre-school highlighted his behavioural issues.

William mainly struggles with his auditory processing issues. He finds noises at certain frequencies painful and instinctively wants to react. Unfortunately, some of these noises are common ones – e.g. coughing and laughter. He is very scared and sad much of the time, due to his emotions and behaviour relating to his auditory processing issues.

We have arranged a lot of support for him from other experts over the years, implementing their recommendations and seeing some improvement. We were particularly keen to help him with his auditory processing difficulties, which had worsened with age, and only one suggestion was outstanding by the time he was eleven years old: Johansen Individualised Auditory Stimulation Therapy (JIAS). We had tried it when he was approximately five years old and he didn’t enjoy it, so we stopped it on the advice of the therapist overseeing the Programme at the time. We decided to wait until he matured enough emotionally to request it, which he did at the age of eleven.

We heard about bibic from a parent carer group and were interested because bibic looks at the whole person. Other charities and professions look at aspects of a condition and we wondered if this was the right route. We wanted to be sure that JIAS was appropriate for William.

We contacted bibic in February 2020 and explained our situation. William first came to bibic for a two-day assessment with Chelsey in September 2020. Chelsey asked him to complete various tasks and initially gave the same recommendations, including JIAS, as every other expert. We explained that he had done all but one of them, with limited improvement. Chelsey then consulted with the rest of the team and recommended we research retained reflexes and reflex integration before committing to JIAS. We followed her advice and thought it worthwhile to pursue this angle before JIAS.

After William had completed reflex integration exercises, we contacted bibic again in April 2021 to book a JIAS assessment. William returned to bibic for this appointment with Chelsey in July 2021 and began JIAS. His ability to manage his auditory processing issues has improved dramatically as a result and he has also made progress in other areas due to JIAS. He improved so much, because of JIAS, that he agreed to Chelsey’s recommendation of continuing JIAS with an optional, sixth CD.

William has insisted on persevering with JIAS because he recognised the positive impact on his auditory processing difficulties.

The real test of JIAS’ effect came at the end of September 2022, when we all caught a cold. The symptoms were mild overall but we had terrible, lingering coughs. Before JIAS, William would have hidden under his duvet and been reluctant to emerge even for food and trips to the bathroom. This time, he could cope much better with our coughs. He still found them painful but led his normal life.

We finished JIAS in December 2022 and returned to bibic for an optional re-assessment, to measure his improvements. We are all delighted that our opinion the progress was supported by the results of the re-assessment!

bibic supported us so much through their expertise, kindness and subsidising assessments/JIAS. We are really grateful to bibic for their help between 2020 and 2022 and would recommend bibic to other families seeking a holistic approach to the needs of children.