The journal of the first sessions

Excerpt from the chapter “Our Experience” of the book TOMATIS — Une expérience à partager (TOMATIS — An Experience to Share, by Juan Antonio Timor Pineda and Chaime Marcuello Servós). An account written by the parents and reproduced in the book. Presented without naming the children, out of respect for their privacy.

Born at twenty-seven weeks, two twins weighing together less than one thousand eight hundred grams spent three months in intensive care, followed by a coming and going between specialized paediatric services. It was in this context that their parents turned to the Tomatis method. The practitioner asked them to note down what they observed; the book reproduces these notes just as they were written.

From the very first sessions, they recount, the two children had to awaken their attention and their capacity to adapt to those around them — to pass from absence to the gradual establishment of bonds with their parents and their elder brother. During the first week, both lived through the same awakening of the gaze and of attention. One of them began to point with his finger, to imitate, to recognize through his gestures everyday objects he had until then ignored.

In the weeks that followed, the parents describe a growing interactivity, a desire to express themselves, babbling that grew ever more animated. With the first sessions to the maternal voice, the bond with the mother grew stronger and the expression of emotions widened. Then came a phase of intense activity, the two children becoming more mobile and more full of life than ever. More than ten years have passed since then, they conclude — for these two children who came into the world before their time, as for the rest of the family.