"My son has been receiving ICR therapy for a few months now, he is currently six years old and was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism when he was two. He has been enrolled at Leaps and Bounds treatment centre for over three years. When the opportunity to participate in a new, non-invasive treatment option presented itself, I was very excited and eager to try it. I am always looking for new and exciting ways to try and help my son along his journey in every way I possibly can.
He has been receiving thirty-six hours of ICR per week, he attends Leaps and Bounds treatment centre 5 days a week, and has three separate ICR treatments while attending his six-hour day there. The results have been incredible. Not only is he able to perform daily activities (watching a movie, eating lunch, playing with a toy, etc) while the session is taking place, but he genuinely seems to really enjoy it. We have noticed quite significant improvements since he started ICR. He is much more focused in his day to day life, he is able to retain much more information than he has in the past, his overall anxiety is visually more decreased and he is attempting to speak in full sentences. At the time of his diagnosis and for several years after, he was non-verbal. He is much more receptive towards people and he very much wants to be a part of everyday activities, whereas before he had no interest.
My family and I are overjoyed with the results we have seen from ICR, and are so thankful to be able to participate in the practice of using it. We have seen incredible results with my son, and it is beyond heartwarming to see him so happy and engaged. I'm very excited to see what else he will accomplish with the therapy."
Cheryl B.
"Our daughter has been fortunate to have been the recipient of ABA therapy with Leaps and Bounds now for almost 4 years. During that time, progress has been steady...but since adding in the ICR therapy in March, we have seen some amazing changes. Our daughter went from maybe only getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night to getting a solid 10-12 - and this change was in the first two weeks. We had tried melatonin, making sure she had no distractions, routines, anything you could think of - but nothing was working. So, because of the solid sleep, she is well rested in the mornings, eager for her therapy to start, more attentive. Within the first month we also noticed a huge upswing in her eye contact with us; and words that we always had to prompt her to say started flowing naturally, and with much less hesitation. Meltdowns have become more of an unusual occurrence. Toilet training has progressed. Her vocabulary skills (both verbal and visual) and level of understanding progressed two years in just four months, based on tests administered at the start and at the four-month mark.
Most recently, she has started to sing. In the last week, it has gone from her only singing the first few lines of the song (somewhat unclearly) to singing the full thing - clearly, and without it playing in the background. She now has 3-4 songs in her repertoire! She has also been far more interested in playing with us, rather than playing alone. It’s been a joy to have her take us by the hand, look us in the eye, and ask us to play.
I’m happy we started this. I can’t say for sure how much of her progression is due to the ICR therapy or her ABA, but there are too many positive, amazing things that have come out of the last six months that I know it isn’t just the ABA alone. The team at Leaps have been amazing too, giving lots of support and continuous follow up. Definitely would recommend giving ICR a try."
Claire W., Parent
"We have been part of leaps and bounds since 1998. Marco was 6 years old, over the years Deanna along with her team developed and refined Marco’s specialized programming. The milestones achieved were to say the least incredible. These past few months of what everyone is calling our “new normal” I reached out to Deanna. With everything on hold, I noticed a small regression in Marco, it was affecting his sleep and in turn our sleep. She suggested ICR therapy, from the moment Marco started therapy within about a week, we noticed better sleep as well as a calmer demeanour throughout the course of the day. In addition, Marco being somewhat non-verbal had more spontaneous language, otherwise known as expressive language. We wish to further continue the ICR therapy for the benefits are immensely helpful to one’s overall well-being."
Maddie & Marco D
I purchased a mat to see how it would help my son who has autism. The change in him was nothing short of a miracle. So much so, I am now doing a research project for children with Autism.
My son, at 5.5 was struggling with basic language both receptive and expressively. He could not generalize anything he was learning. He has been doing ABA therapy since he was 2.5 years old and was making small gains. At 2.5 he was deemed not eligible for the government funded ABA program in the province of Ontario, due to the severity of his diagnosis. That said with the small gains he was making they eventually allowed his ABA to be funded. Still struggling, I was looking for something. I started him on the ICR therapy in June 2019. He soon started to expand his repertoire of words he could understand and say. He was much more engaged. He was finally able to learn new skills consistently, retain them and more importantly generalize the skills he was learning. My friends and family were blown away by the difference in him. They called it “ the miracle mat” or “ the magic mat”.
Here is one example in November 2019, my son woke up saw snow outside and said to me for the first time ever “it’s snowing”, he then said Christmas, I said your right when it snows it is almost Christmas. He then looked and saw the Christmas trees, I had put up and said Christmas trees, I said your right that is a Christmas tree. He paused and then said , Santa. I said your right when we put the trees up Santa is coming . There was no talk of xmas or santa since the year before, as Halloween had just passed. Everything, I was saying to him the winter/Christmas before he was retaining, he just could not connect it or verbalize it.
Another example is; I tried for 2 ski seasons, to teach him how to stop and turn on skies, to no avail. After being on the mat for 6 months he was stopping on the first run of the season when he was shown once, how to do it. He was turning after few runs as well. The only thing that changed from one season to the next was the fact that he had been on the mat for 6 months.
The ICR mat was able to reduce the inflammation in the areas that were affecting his language acquisition, cognitive and motor skills allowing him to flourish. He continues to use the mat daily and he is thriving. From a child who could not identify people by name, recognize letters or number to reading, writing, completing math problems all in a year. ICR therapy has changed the quality of his life and that of our family’s. After 4 months of being on the mat, my son went from less than the 1% on the standardize test used in the study to the 4%. He also went up over 2 chronical age groups. Simply unimaginable results in 4 months.
I believe the results of the research we are now doing, with help so many children whom have Autism.
Deanna