I’ll be in Chattanooga on September 5th for the Chattanooga Autism Conference, presenting on sound sensitivities in autism.

I’m thinking of coming a day early for a casual meet and greet. You can try out distortion APD simulation aids and hear low-gain hearing aids in person.

If you’d like to join me for hearing aid distortion demos (feel what it’s like to have APD) or low-gain hearing aid demos (feel what it’s like to hear better!) and conversation, let me know!

I wrote to several colleagues about my change of heart about cognitive and auditory training (particularly auditory training - as it's their passion) recently, but unfortunately, my letter never reached the people I most wanted to hear it. I have a bit of a disruptor reputation of pioneering the low-gain programmed hearing aids with remote/FM mics and trialing them in nearly every imaginable scenario. This does not always go over well in audiology.

So I want to say it here.
I’m sorry.
I was wrong.

This is not a lecture. It’s a conversation.

This weekly Zoom salon is a free space where professionals, parents, and disabled adults can come together without pretense, without hierarchy, and with full respect for one another’s expertise.

We’re here to make resources accessible, not gatekept.

We’re willing to talk openly about what we know, but we also recognize that parents and people with lived experience are experts too. In many cases, they know what matters most.

Whether you’re navigating sensory or sound sensitivities, communication challenges, neurodivergence, or disability, you are welcome.

TLDR:

Just because a child passes a hearing test doesn’t mean they understand what they’re hearing. AI-powered hearing aids and FM systems can give kids and adults with auditory processing issues a huge boost in clarity, focus, and learning. But they also raise ethical questions. What happens when the tech works so well that it outperforms “typical” hearing? Do we pull support? Is it fair to let neurodivergent kids succeed when the system wasn’t built for them in the first place? This post dives into why programming matters, why real-ear isn’t enough, and why clarity is not cheating. It is access.

With regard to a post related to the disappointment of a parent to a young teen friend preferring not to attend their son’s Bar Mitzvah, I need to disagree with the sentiment in most of the comments. The idea that non-attendance is equivalent to a lack of caring or commitment to friendship is, frankly, illogical.

I can only speak from my own lived experience as an autistic and ADHD adult, but I’m also a mother to an autistic and ADHD son.

Please consider this.

Many neurotypical people say, just deal with it. But you don’t live in our experiences. You don’t feel it in your body the way we do. You don’t hear the same volume, or carry the same tension, or recover from the crash that comes after. What looks like avoidance to you is often self-protection. What you call oversensitive, we’ve been forced to mask for years.

Many religious services cause sensory overload for us.

I used a photo of my son, with his full understanding and consent, to advocate for another child. He’s autistic, nearly bar mitzvah age, and more aware than most adults give him credit for. The photo showed a valid neurodivergent sensory response, not exploitation. But instead of seeing advocacy, one reader projected harm. They accused me of endangering him. They imagined predators. They forgot that a child’s image is not the child. The real danger isn’t in using your own child’s story with care. The danger is in freezing people into a single moment and calling that protection.

I came into this field after being influenced by a follower of Dr. Jack Katz, the “father of auditory processing disorder,” while I was doing a postdoc at Gallaudet University. My very first patient flew in from out in the desert because she had been sitting on a two-year waitlist at the House Ear Institute for APD testing. Everyone had given up hope.

She was behind in everything. She had dyslexia and dyspraxia. She struggled to function with sound at all. She couldn’t hear in noise. She rarely spoke. Her mom and I had connected in a Yahoo group for parents of Deaf and hard of hearing kids, and when I heard her story, I offered to help. I invited them to fly out, and we did the full APD evaluation for free with help from my mentor.

Silence, Broken

This piece is about silence. The kind imposed by others, and the kind we break ourselves.

I originally shared my thoughts in a large therapists’ group on Facebook. I opened up about personal trauma and how I use AI as a tool for reflection and self-understanding. I wanted to connect with professionals in a field that once hurt me. I wanted to return to the space that caused harm, not to provoke, but to speak.

I never said I was an LPC. I never pretended to be a mental health counselor. I said I was a counselor, which I am. I provide aural rehabilitation counseling. I support people dealing with sensory dysregulation, language access, and listening fatigue. That’s part of my licensed audiology scope. I explained that openly. I used my real name. My profile was public.

Still, what followed was hostility.

We’ve all heard the tired refrain:

“APD can’t be treated. There’s no evidence. Kids just have to learn to cope.”

Except… that’s not true anymore.

I want to hear from audiologists, teachers of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing, speech-language pathologists, and professionals in the trenches:

Have you seen a child thrive after being fit with low-gain hearing aids?

Did their articulation change? Did they stop saying “huh?” every 5 minutes? Did their teacher email you, shocked that they’re finally tracking group directions?

I don’t just want testimonials from parents (though those are powerful too).

I want clinical stories. Outcomes. Observations. Data points that matter.

It’s time to confront the myth that auditory processing disorder is untreatable.

We know it’s heterogeneous. We know the tests are flawed.

But we also know what happens when you give a kid clear input and consistent access.

Let’s collect those stories. Let’s talk about what works. Let’s get loud.

Here are examples of some of mine (some are so grown-up now!):

https://www.drraestout.com/testimonials

Someone responded to one of my posts and said that people often seem less caring than ChatGPT, that trying to talk to them feels like talking to a brick wall. And I knew exactly what he meant.

Because honestly? Same.

And before anyone jumps in:

I’m a high-functioning person. I’m highly aware. I’m highly intelligent. And I understand the limitations of technology better than most. I know AI isn’t real. I know it doesn’t care. I know it fabricates, it reflects, and sometimes it lies with confidence. I know who built it, what it cost, and who gets hurt when we don’t think critically about it.

But I also know this:

The most painful things I’ve experienced didn’t come from machines.

They came from people.

From professionals.

From clinicians.

From the systems built to care for others that consistently punished me for noticing, for feeling, and for trying to do the right thing.