Frequently Asked Questions

I receive lots of emails every day with very good questions about specific aspects of Multi-Sensory Therapy that I do not always cover very well in current pages of this website. I hope that this section (I should have labelled it miscellaneous) helps make some things clearer for you too. :-)

Click on any question on the left to skip straight to the answer I wrote. Use the "back to top" link to come back here where the questions are listed on the left.

I don't speak English very well, will I be able to understand how to do MAPS?

Soon, we will have videos to accompany every single game. This should help with the language barrier somewhat.

Which kinds of smell should I use?

3 criteria for the smells. They should be:

• strong,
• easily identifiable and
• be presented on a neutral substract (folded tissue paper, cotton ball, anything that would not distract him from a pure olfactory experience)

Essential oils provide for the best olfactory experience.

For touching the skin with an orange - why cheeks, but not the fingers and hands?

Cheeks are only an example of parts of the skin that do not usually get used to send pleasurable touch to the brain. Hands and Mouth are usually well developed in the brain with little room for expansion. All other parts of his body will have corresponding brain zones that are comparatively less developed and, therefore, growth in these areas, which will happen as a response to pleasure through gentle touch, will result in a more visible and more useable expansion.

Another reason we recommend the cheeks is that we have observed that the face is usually the best place to start in most cases, even when there are tactile sensitivitiy issues.

For brushing - should I do same as Willbarger's protocol, when you brush with light pressure, but strong enough in order not to make it tickling (My son is under-sensitive)?

No brushing. This technique has the effect of desensitizing the brain to gentle touch. There are 5 types of touch receptors in the skin. Only stimulation of the receptors that handle texture have the effect of up-regulating production of Serotonin in the brain.

By de-sentizing this aspect of touch, you are decreasing the ability to receive the type of stimulation that would help the brain regulate its production of Serotonin.

For the touch part of the MAPS One protocol, he needs to enjoy the tactile activity. Find a part of his body that has not been exposed to brushing and that will give him pleasure through gentle touch.

Remember that each session must be comfortable, loving, quiet, soft, respectful. Imagine that you are "cuddling" his brain.

What do I do when my son recoils during a tactile activity?

Touch is a difficult area to do when there are sensitivities. For the purpose of the free trial, use parts of his body where he will enjoy gentle touch, wherever it is.

You will know it worked and he enjoyed it because he will "melt" in front of you, he will relax.

If you cannot find anywhere where he will enjoy then you will need us to help with rehabilitating his sense of touch. In that case I would recommend involving us in the process of designing the best way to do that for your son.

For the purpose of the free trial, if you prefer not to involve us, it would better to not do any touch at all than to exarcebate his sensitivity and to ruin the sessions with stress.

The principles we would follow as we would help re-habilitate his sense of touch are to start small and progress gently to larger areas, to start where he is comfortable and move slowly and respectfully to other areas of his body until there is enough skin surface on which you could do gentle touch which would make him "melt from relaxation".

Most moms would work too hard and too quickly on this. Timing is also essential in this process. Same time same day everyday does not work well. The child must be in his most receptive state, especially at the beginning when gentle touch is just not a pleasurable thing to do for him. Mom has to compensate a lot by taking extra care and extra time to make it work.

Proprioception is a big issue for some kids. I find that squeezing works great to help my son relax. He seems to crave it. This seems to conflict with your instructions about gentle touch, but it works so well for my son. What should I do?

You are right that proprioception is an issue that must be addressed. It is addressed with the MAPS program, but it is outside of the purpose of the short sample videos that accompany the free trial to discuss it into detail since it is not part of the free trial.

When Claudie recommends against giving children the kind of erroneous stimulation that they crave, which reinforces a brain mistake, she also should explain that this only works in the context of a brain regeneration program.

All brain functions are interconnected. You cannot really ignore any brain function or conversely focus on only one brain function. An effective program takes all the brain functions into account.

Until the brain gets better and finds more appropriate ways to release stress or interact with its environment to get the healthy stimulation it needs, it has no other option but to use the means of interacting with the environment that it knows and is comfortable with, even if they are mistakes.

With MAPS we help the brain repair itself. As it repairs itself and as it becomes healthier and stronger it will start using appropriate means. During the program we ask the parents to not re-inforce past mistakes while the brain is learning new healthy ways. It's all part of an all-encompassing plan.

The concern she has is with treatment programs that re-inforce the mistakes in order to stimulate the brain. It can be very effective to talk to the brain using a mode of communication it is comfortable with, but it doesn't help it learn a new appropriate way and deprives the person of the opportunity to develop the part of the brain that is connected to the mistake to repair itself.

Until proprioception is addressed as part of a holistic approach, then if your son craves squeezing and it helps him feel more relaxed and comfortable, then keep doing it.

Kids with autism seem to have a dopamine problem. They have a tough time to stay put. What is the problem exactly with autism - low or high level? in blood? in brain?

Most kids with autism have a severe Serotonin function problem, which causes low levels of Serotonin in the brain (and also often an excess in the blood, which causes a lot of other stressful problems too). Serotonin and dopamine are connected. When one is low, the other does not function well either.

This is how children with autism end up with symptoms that look like a dopamine function problem. Usually dopamine levels are OK on tests. It's just that the brain cannot use its own dopamine because of the Serotonin function problem.

About smelling, what if you have adenoids? What if your nose is blocked? What if you've got a flue - would MAPS smelling work?

So long as you breathe, odorant molecules will make their way to the olfactory bulb. Of course, a blocked nose reduces the number.

Why not give 5-HTP to help the brain produce Serotonin? It's a plant!

Any natural way to support the body is a good idea. If you are lucky, this is all you would need to do.

In some cases, however, giving the building blocks is not enough because the problem is not that the brain does not have enough tryptophan to make Serotonin with. Sometimes it's as though the brain is programmed to produce little Serotonin. It will only produce as much as it thinks it should, even if there is lots of tryptophan in the system to make lots of Serotonin with.

There are periods when my son does not stim and others when he does a lot! He stims a lot when he has infections, but he could easily take a plane, or go to new places when he's not sick! So, probably, stims are a reaction to infections. Correct?

Stimming is always when the brain is experiencing stress and it needs to "let out some steam". Stress can come in many ways. Abdominal discomfort or poor health is a major source of stress.

In one of your videos, you recommend massage. Some massages can be deep and painful. Which types of massage are good for MAPS?

With MAPS, massage is a gentle massage.

In the description of MAPS One, you say to smell what he likes - 3 deep breaths, then to look at a picture. Why a picture and not a real object?

Because looking at a real 3D object triggers activity in the motion areas of the brain. It's as though the brain gets ready to move, is planning its next movements around, toward or away from the object. This brain activity dilutes the impact of the stimulation.

When you say "Look at Art", why not at a book with nice pictures for kids? Why do we think he'd like art?

While we try to fit around what he likes, we suggest using art because we know that the basic standards of aesthetics are adhered to by the classic artists. Again we 1) do not want to reinforce what could be a mistake and 2) prefer to make safe suggestions.

Some times nice photographs work too. Small kiddie cartoons will not work as well as classic art, but occasionally we can use these temporarily if this is all he will look at, while we get him used to the purposeful activity of looking at art. We can progressively introduce the real materials into the routine.

For Looking at art, remember that there should be no text. Size matters also. A4 or Letter size as a minimum. Again, we are trying to make the stimulation as a specific as possible, as un-diluted as possible.

My son has been diagnosed with ADHD, and I dont know how to help him stay in focus and calm down. I'd like to learn how MAPS programs able to help him out. Thank you for your help.

The ability to focus and to be less hyperactive is controlled in the brain by two chemicals: Dopamine and Serotonin. Dopamine is the main agent in this case for focus, motivation and the control of movement. Serotonin plays a big role too as the chemical that helps your son stay in control and relaxed while it is focusing and staying still. Also, Serotonin helps the brain control the dopamine function.

Many of the kids who have these symptoms need help re-balancing these two chemicals in the brain.

To help with smell is very easy. All you have to do to keep levels of dopamine up and even help the brain produce more is to smell frequently something that he likes. Could be anything as long as he really likes it. We recommend smelling about every two hours.

But, if his Serotonin production is not working right, if his levels of dopamine increase, the brain will not know what to do with all this new dopamine.

What you need to do as well as doing a lot of smelling is help the brain re-balance its levels of Serotonin at the same time.

There is one simple way to help with the Serotonin and that is through gentle touch. With gentle back rubs for example, it is possible to help the brain re-balance its levels of Serotonin.

So, every two hours, as well as smelling something he really likes, give him a gentle back rub.

One challenge with these protocols is that many children with the symptoms you describe have a problem with gentle touch. It is possible that your son will actually find the gentle back rub ticklish or irritating. If that is the case, then we first need to rehabilitate his sense of touch and that is more complicated.

If he does not respond well to gentle touch, you will need us to get more involved in your son's situation. If you can see him relax as you give him the gentle back rub, then you can do the gentle back rub and smell every two hours and you will see him able to focus more and stay more calm within a week or two.

We just completed a program called the sensory learning program. Their instructions were to NOT use earphones for at least a year and even then to deaden the left side when she does use them. Would following this be a problem with the MAPS program?

About the sensory learning program, it sounds from what you said about it that it would interfere with MAPS. I would suggest in this case that you complete this particular program before engaging her in our MAPS program. Having said that, MAPS would help her deal with any auditory processing she might be suffering from as well and therefore could take over or complete what you started.

I read your book Autism is not a Life Sentence. Good book. I'm looking at the first 2 week practice and I was wondering if everything has to match?

About the MAPS One exercises, the one you call the two-week practice, it is not essential that all the elements match. It would be better in a sense as a way to make the whole experience coherent for your daughter, but as a sensory experience it is not critical that all the elements follow the same theme. What is important, for example, is that the picture should be large enough and have no text or any other distracting element.

You mention sipping the orange juice. We would prefer if you dabbed some of it on her bottom lip and let her come and "fetch" the drop of juice with her tongue or by gathering her lips.

How does it compare to the RDI program?

I think one of the big differences is that RDI is a psychological approach. It's possibly the best psychological approach in fact. There is a lot to be said about making a child want to find out more, come out of his shell. I think all parents would benefit from some training in this area.

Both MAPS and RDI work on the principle of making something or someone want to improve. In our case, it is the brain, in the case of RDI, it is the person.

I think this is as much as I can say about RDI, knowing as little about it as I do.

I can tell you lots about MAPS and perhaps, what I would do in your situation is find out about RDI from RDI specialists. We know of a couple of good ones that we have worked with in the past that could answer some of your questions. The one I am thinking of right now serves families in the Bay area. Her name is Lori. Would you like me to put you in touch with her?

Link to more info about how RDI works

Hello, I was wondering as an adult if you can help people with anxiety and phobia's??? I have been learning about the brain and so this avenue is of interest to me.

Yes, of course, this is a treatment that has a tremendous impact on depression, phobia or anxiety. The only problem to solve with adult clients is the fact that you need to have a care giver, spouse, parent, friend, anyone ready and available to do the exerices with you every day twice. Do you have such a person that can help you in that way?

My daughter has attenuation of the basal ganglia that causes chorea and athetotic movements. She also doesn't talk and has global developmental delays. The doctors have said her delays could be a result of her seizures. Could MAPS help my little girl?

Yes, Annette, MAPS will:

- help stabilize the seizure activity, if not completely solve what is causing them,
- help recover most of the delays due to poor brain function,
- help her brain develop spontaneous and efficient verbal communication,
- help her brain control her body, including giving her body the complex instructions necessary for unassisted walk,

to only mention the specific points that you talk about in your e-mail.

I would agree with your doctors that the seizures would need to be taken care of first, in order to allow it to move on, instead of working so hard on recovering from them all the time. Only doing that would allow so much to happen already.