An (Autistic) Review of Vibes Hi-Fi Earplugs

Vibes Hi-Fi Earplugs. Photo from www.discovervibes.com
[image: White earplugs resting in a black box with red sides.]

Jeff at Spectrum Disordered
www.facebook.com/asdisordered

First off, I am quite sensory sensitive/defensive to noise. “Bad” sounds shut me down and hurt, even at low volumes, if it is the wrong type of noise.

My existing coping mechanisms have been playing music through in-ear headphones, and foam earplugs. I haven’t tried many stand-alone active noise-canceling products, save for a few hi-fi music headphones with noise cancelling features.

In reviewing the Vibes earplugs, I am primarily contrasting them with foam earplugs.

Unboxing

The Vibes come in an attractive small package, containing items similar to what you would expect from music earbuds: the earplugs themselves, additional small and large fit rubber earbud inserts, and matchbook-sized carrying case. For anyone who has carried foam earbuds in a pocket, the carrying case is a bonus. Though the case is fairly low-grade plastic, but the earplugs themselves feel well made and sturdy.

Comfort, Fit, Appearance

These areas are where the Vibes shined for me. The large size was the best fit for my ears, and I found them by far to be the most comfortable earplug (or music earbud) I have ever worn. This is high praise. They are very light, and unlike foam earplugs, they do not apply pressure to your ear canal when sealed.

In one case, I spent about a minute searching around my desk for one of the earplugs. I found that I still had it in my ear. I never “forget” I have stuck something in my ear. Ever.

The ear plugs are almost invisible when in. My wife, knowing I was wearing them, could not see them in my ears from five feet away. This makes them far less visible than neon foam earplugs, and over the ear devices. However, this also means people will not recognize you are wearing earplugs and increase their conversational volume to accommodate you.

Performance and Sound Quality

This is where the Vibes turn into a bit of a mixed bag.

Pros: They work about as well as foam earplugs in reducing volume. They transmit a better frequency range of sound than foam earplugs. However, take manufacturer claims of sound quality with a big grain of salt.

The Vibes website,  www.discovervibes.com/our-products, states these earplugs “lower decibel of your environment without sacrificing sound clarity.” Erm. They do much better than foam earplugs in transmitting a broader frequency range with less “muddying,” but they still take away quite a lot of higher frequencies.

I tested the sound quality by inserting the Vibes and then putting on a good pair of over the ear headphones. I chose Metallica’s Black Album to test the sound quality, as the Black Album “sound” is characterized by a heavy bass guitar line on the low end, vocals in the middle frequency, and wailing guitars and cymbal crashes on the high end. Famously, the drum mix favored the high end without booming bass drum sounds, so the result is little overlap on the soundstage.

I listened without the Vibes, then inserted the Vibes and increased the volume back to the same listening level. I found the cymbal crashes almost disappeared from the sound stage, so clearly the Vibes are filtering out more high-end frequencies than low end. “Hi Fi” is a serious stretch here, you are losing a lot of sound frequency.

Cons: For me, an immediate, visceral, “bad sound” con was the sounds that these earplugs make rubbing against my ear canal. The closest I can explain is that the sound was like that of a dry Q-tip in one’s ear: plastic-y “rubbing” noises that occurred whenever I moved my head, every step I took, every time something made my ears move. Not good. For the several hours that I tried the earplugs, this sound was present. However, the noise attenuated over time—I believe in part because of the earplug break-in process, in part because earwax “greased” the rubber of the earplugs. At first it was very unpleasant, but over time, it got to where I didn’t personally feel it was a deal breaker. However, it never went away and I doubt it will.

Effectiveness As Adaptive Tech for Autistics

It is hard to quantify this factor, as everyone has their own personal diet of good and bad sounds. While wearing Vibes in an office setting, I found that they reduced (but did not eliminate) the air conditioning droning. In a street setting, traffic noise and rustling of leaves in the breeze was very attenuated, and it was in this setting where it felt the noise reduction was most effective in filtering unwanted extraneous noise. In a vehicle, again it felt effective at lowering the extraneous engine and climate control noise.

I found it hard to carry on a conversation while wearing the earplugs. At a conversational volume I found myself pulling the plugs out to hear. Obviously that means they are effective at lowering the sound volume, but I suspect most autistics would prefer a solution that allowed them to have conversations without removing the device.

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Disclosure: A Vibes rep provided earplugs for the author to use in his review.

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Parents: Let's Talk About Grief and Disability

Spectrum Disordered
www.facebook.com/asdisordered

Let's talk about grief.

To be specific, let's talk about a specific way the term “grief” is used: as a suggested framework given to parents to process the news that their child has some type of disability.

I’ve encountered this outlook throughout my life. My parents, by well-meaning professionals, were set up to view my disability as a loss: I was not normal, and would have to fight against my deficits for my whole life. They would not know what my future looked like and could not plan. They should feel Very. Sad. About. This.

Having a grief mindset instilled into my parents was the single most devastating thing that has happened in my entire life. I learned very quickly that I was broken, and that there was something wrong with me. I learned very quickly—and at a very young age—that my parents would have preferred a version of me that did not have a disability, rather than the only version of me that will ever exist—the actual me. How could they not? I overheard countless conversations of how scared they were for me. How I wasn’t normal, and what they should do about that fact. How to fix me.

I’ve been actively involved in autism advocacy for just under 15 years, facilitating support groups, public speaking, ranting on the internet. You may be somewhat aware that the views of autistic adults don’t always align with the view of NT parents of autistic children (surprise). During those 15 years, I’ve also seen tremendous positive change in what people, including parents, believe about autism, but this “grief” crap JUST WON’T DIE. Several years ago I severed ties with an autism non-profit I was a founding member of. The reason? A disagreement about the value of parents “grieving” the autism diagnosis their children had received.

When this disagreement has come up, I almost always get the “parent card” thrown at me: I didn’t have kids, so I COULDN'T understand what it is like to “go through” the experience of parenting a child with a disability. I was told that parents need to “grieve.” That it is an important part of the process that allows parents to “heal.” That “if you have children, you will understand how scary it is to get ‘a diagnosis’.”

On January 12, 2018, my wife gave birth to our beautiful, amazing baby boy, our first child. I had no idea how quickly I would find myself confronting “grief.”

Our boy was born exactly one month before his due date. He was born just before 8:00 in the morning, and it was with indescribable joy that we saw him enter the world. Knowing that the lungs are the last organs to mature, we were overjoyed to hear him cry!

Our baby cried for about five seconds. Then he fell silent, as he stopped breathing.

I watched as the nurse steadily escalated breathing support for my son. I heard the anxiety in her voice as she called for another nurse to assist. I watched his color change. His lips turn blue. I watched muscles pull tight against his chest, but his chest would not compress.

Fear. Fear that resists description. Thick. Heavy. Numbing. Draining. I walked behind my son as he was wheeled into NICU, crying, wringing my hands, feeling helpless. Another family was waiting in reception adjacent to the NICU. I saw their face light up with smiles, then they saw my baby, then they saw me. Their smiles drained. They looked away, a momentary expression of horror crossing their faces. “Please don’t let that happen to us,” they had to be thinking.

In NICU, our baby was stabilized but still struggling. We were informed he needed to be transferred to a hospital across the state, and that a flight for life crew was coming to get him. Our boy was intubated and placed on a respirator. And, a mere few hours after giving birth, my wife was rush-discharged so she could sit on a jumpseat in a tiny airplane with our baby boy, who was covered in wires and alone in a plastic box on a gurney. We had not even had a chance to hold him.

Private flights are apparently how our little man rolls
[image: newborn infant in an incubator, barely visible behind tubes and wires,
inside a flight for life plane, with a medical attendant.]

His plane had no room for me. I had to drive seven hours to get to the hospital. I had been awake for 35 hours straight, and had 20 more before I would see sleep. It felt like everything in my body hurt, my blood, my teeth. Everything humming in pain.

This is the end of the bad stuff. Our baby’s vitals were great on the flight. Immediately after admittance on the receiving end, he was taken off a respirator and began only getting oxygen by CPAP. My wife texted me pictures of her finally holding her baby boy, thirteen hours after he was born. I cried in relief. By the time I arrived, he was taken off the CPAP was and just getting oxygen. The next day he was taken off of oxygen and breathing fully independently.

We had planned for a lot of things, but never this. Life was wonderful, we had our baby. We could hold our baby. Eventually we would leave the hospital and start our life as a family.

On the morning of the second day in NICU, we had the composure to finally discuss what had happened. My wife was not yet aware that our baby had stopped breathing. I told her about the walk down the hallway. Told her what I felt and feared. She told me the first 24 hours of our baby’s life was both the best and worst day of her life, all wrapped in one. We talked about how powerless we felt, how afraid, how unsure and helpless and paralyzed by the unknowns of what would happen and what the future looked like, if there was a future. It was awful.

The neonatal nurse practitioner walked in while we were discussing what had happened. Every day she works, she sees people processing these same experiences. She has had this discussion with thousands of people.

She told us we needed to grieve. Grieve to process what had happened. That our baby did not have a normal birth. That we needed to move through the stages of grief to acceptance. That this would help us.

I was dumbfounded. It was a surreal moment to process that I was indeed a parent, getting the advice I have been told for years I would only understand as a parent.

Bullshit! We have nothing to grieve, as we have lost nothing. The story of our baby entering the world contains an eventful day and the expectation of some epic medical bills. Telling us to grieve takes away our agency. We wanted a baby. We have an amazing baby. Sometimes babies enter the world this way. Nobody did anything to us or stole anything from us. And oh my goodness is our baby amazing! Our baby, a matter of weeks old, is already showing us he is a smartass. He’s going to run circles around us. Our baby will be equally amazing if he has atypical development. He probably will, born to an autistic dad and two older parents.

Home.
[image: Newborn baby on its belly, seen from above, lying on a
fuzzy mat on an even bigger fuzzy bear cushion.]

This experience isn’t grief. I’ve talked with thousands of parents of autistic children who are still processing what it means to have an autistic child. I hear expressions of fear. Their roadmap of expectations of what the future holds for their child has been taken away, replaced with uncertainty. Doubt. Worse case scenarios running wild. They experience the exact same types of emotions that we experienced in a very acute, very severe way on our baby’s first day in this world.

We are failing these parents by telling them to grieve. What we need to give these parents is empathy. Their fears need to be acknowledged. They need support to build a new roadmap to process their fears. To move to hope, understanding, and of course, acceptance.

Our autistic community has millions of people who have been through this process, and yet we continue to fail new parents, leaving them susceptible to subjecting their children to harmful sham treatments, to traumatic experiences, to quantifiable harm to their children that they love dearly—chasing that thing that they were told they lost, that thing that snake-oil salesman promise to retrieve—that unfortunate idea of normal.

We can do better.

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Autonomy First! Accessing Good Supports Without Sacrificing Your Independence

Spectrum Disordered
www.facebook.com/asdisordered

We’ve all heard or experienced horror stories about accessing services and supports. Often the idea of receiving services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), including autism, conjures up images of institutions—visions of Willowbrook. Or, ideas of what is “optimal” for us look like segregated lives, or “intentional” communities where the true intent is to lump us together under the guise of “keeping us safe.” Regularly, the idea of seeking supports to live in one’s daily life carries an expectation that the cost will be any and all independence and autonomy in having positive control over that life.

These fears are rooted in fact and truth, both of how things were and in some cases, continue to be. But that does not mean they are a universal truth! There are a lot of really great disability support providers out there! Unfortunately, there are also plenty of poor ones, and it can be difficult to identify which is which. Hopefully this piece helps with that—to help root out whether a service provider you are considering is going to provide support in a positive way that allows for growth and confidence, or seek to lock down a person’s life.

First, a little about me and where I work. I’m autistic. I live in Western Colorado, where the mountains run to desert. I volunteer as an adaptive ski instructor, I am newly certified as an Person-Centered Planning trainer, I run support groups, do a lot of public speaking, and am dedicated to advocacy for autistic people and the disability community as a whole.

At a party, how can you tell who the ski instructor is?  
Don’t worry, They’ll tell you.
Photo © the author
[image: A snowy forested mountain slope.]

For the past few years, I’ve been employed as a case manager for a non-profit that provides Medicaid Home and Community Based Services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) across Western Colorado. Our service area is larger than the entire state of Connecticut.

In our rural, isolated, rugged (and very snowy) area, we are the sole provider for most IDD related HCBS-based services. We have no institution. We have no ranches thirty miles from the nearest town. We have no sheltered workshops. We have no group homes. Everyone we support lives in their communities—in either their own homes, with family, or in host homes, where a person or family provides 24-hour residential support to the person.

Our Neck of the Colorado Woods
Photo © the author
[image: Snow-capped mountain peaks seen through a forested valley.]

The employment rate for people we support is far, far above the National average for people with disabilities, yet depressingly low compared to the general population :(. The agency I work for is not perfect: We don’t get everything right every time, but as somebody who has experienced the trauma of losing my autonomy due to my disability, I can work for my agency and still look at myself in the mirror.

We reject the notions that institutional living, sheltered workshops, and segregation are anything other than relics of the past; we reject that that these practices serve any needed role, and believe they exist as historical appendages like the appendix in our own bodies. Our agency doesn’t need them, we support everyone, and WE AREN’T SPECIAL OR MAGICAL.

It is worth noting that Colorado is in the bottom five of the 50 states in Medicaid HCBS funding, so we definitely don’t have extra resources that allow us to avoid old-style segregated supports that others defend as “critical” and “necessary.” This is because, believe it or not, providing community based services actually costs less than warehousing people in institutions.

We provide services to live in your own small, snowy community.
Photo © the author
[image: A snow-covered small town downtown street.]

Without any more long-winded intro (my autistic superpower is giving 15 minute answers to 5 second questions), here are a few things I have learned that people should look out for when seeking services. (Note that this is written for an audience of both people seeking services themselves, and family members helping somebody line up support, so my word choice alternates between “you” and “the person.”)

Without further ado, this is my advice for things to notice when looking for service providers, of which I use agency interchangeably.

1) Reject agencies that expect or require the person to turn decision making authority over to them, in the form of guardianship, powers of attorney, or (to a lesser degree) representative payee agreements.

This is a HUGE red flag. If the agency/service provider as a matter of course expects to be given the authority to override the person’s wishes and decisions, they are showing no interest in supporting autonomy whatsoever. For parents of minor children, this can also take the form of the parents being asked to sign over guardianship of the child to the service provider.

A less-extreme variant are service providers that assume a person has a guardian, or they make blanket recommendations that people with IDD should have guardians. I hear parents told frequently to “make sure you have guardianship when your child turns 18 or you will have NO SAY in anything they do!” If a service provider is encouraging people’s right to make decisions be taken away as a blanket recommendation, it is pretty clear they are not interesting in respecting a person’s wishes when providing services.

Representative payee arrangements are similar. A representative payee arrangement establishes that another entity, in many cases the service provider, can manage your Social Security income and use it to pay bills on your behalf. If the representative payee is your service provider, this means they could be using your Social Security income in some cases to pay themselves for services, like housing. This isn’t automatically inappropriate (we provide representative payee services to many people we support) but it should be a CHOICE for the person who best to handle their finances—themselves with or without support, a third party rep payee, or the agency. An agency that is pushy about wanting to handle rep payee duties themselves should be regarded with LOTS of suspicion.

Positive signs to look for: The agency looks to exhaust all other avenues to support a person’s decision making (such as supported decision making). The agency refuses to consider having decision making authority for a person they support vested in themselves.

2) Ask the service provider how they support your rights!

In every state I am aware of, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have specific additional rights, due to the awful treatment we have been subjected to in the past. By way of example, see this easy-language version of California’s rights for people with IDD.  For your state, Googling “[State Name] rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities” should bring up documents reflecting rights enshrined in law for your state.

A service provider should have these rights memorized, should be able to educate you about your rights, should be able to provide you documentation of what those rights are, and should be able to provide you with specific examples of how they uphold these rights and how you can report if you feel your rights are not respected.

Be very concerned if a service provider shows a limited awareness or hesitancy on any part of the above. It is impossible for an agency to respect your rights if they aren’t well-aware of them. If the response you get to this line of questioning is “Oh yeah, we have a handout on that somewhere,” be concerned.

Positive signs to look for: The agency shows a deep understanding of the rights of the people they support, has resources to train and educate you about your rights, encourages advocacy, and has effective processes for you to report violations.

3) For adults, ask the agency about providing supports for adult lives.

Many agencies will talk a good game about how much they care and how hard they will try to support the person to do what they wish to do. But what are they really prepared to do? I’ve found a really good way to “peer behind the veil” is to ask about “adult” support and evaluate the response.

Some examples include asking if a person can be supported to go to a bar and have some drinks while listening to their favorite type of music. Or, that the person wishes to date and would like support to setup and manage an online dating profile.

A bad response is one that makes it clear the provider/agency has not considered the possibility of adults being adults. If a provider is dumbfounded by the line of questioning or indicates they would not support somebody to do “unsafe” or “unhealthy” things that are the full prerogative of adults to do, red flag. The conversation should revolve around what supports the person needs to do what they wish with their lives AND manage potential risks.

A mediocre/poor response is one that shoehorns the person’s interests into “safe” group or segregated activities. Examples would be “We have dance night at the day program site and serve non-alcoholic beer!” or “ You can join our “dating group” with your “peers” to “learn about relationships” and “maybe find somebody!”

A good response to these questions is one that works out logistics, showing the provider is well-versed in real adult-support needs. Does the person have a favorite bar? Favorite band? What online dating service do you use, and what is the best way to support?

4) Watch for possessive language.

Be wary when a service provider uses possessive language towards the people they are paid to support. Some examples are “On this day, OUR people do this activity” or, “We LET OUR folks do this thing this many times a week” or, “OUR guys usually don’t want to…”

There are several issues.here. This attitude indicates that the agencies views themselves as principal in the power dynamic—that they have the power to “let” people do things, instead of the individual person having authority and agency over the support they wish, and what they wish it to do.

Possessive language perpetuates an “us vs. them” culture, and the idea that people with disabilities can be treated differently than the “rest of us.” It exposes paternal/maternal ideas about having power over somebody.

Possessive language of this type may indicate the agency is structured with more regimented group activities established by the agency rather than the people supported.

Positive signs to look for: The agency focuses the conversation on what YOU are interested in and what YOU want. Discussion should focus around what YOU want to do, instead of what “OUR PEOPLE” do. Discussion of support should be based on your interests and wishes. If you want to join with other people that also want to take an art class, great! If everybody that gets support on a given day is expected to either be idle or take an art class, less great.

5) How does the agency match staff with the person?

A good match between you and the person hired to support you is CRITICAL. Support staff that match your personality result in better services and supports. Better matching helps prevent “getting in a rut” with services. A good match with support staff means it will be easier for you to direct and drive the services you receive, because the person will be more open to respect your wishes.

Conversely, a poor match with support staff makes it tougher for you to assert your authority to drive services. A poor match often makes the support staff unhappy too, resulting in more turnover—putting you in the cycle of repeatedly training people on how to best support you. Worst, a poor fit between a person and their support staff make it much more likely that abuse will occur.

The worst case is no attempt to match. Be wary if a service agency uses a “pool” of people to support you based on who is available. Providing support to somebody is an intimate endeavor. The person needs experience to effectively support you, and needs to develop trust with you. An agency that arranges staffing as if you are a commodity rather than an individual person seeking individual supports should raise concern,

Positive signs to look for: Look for providers that arrange for you to meet and interview the primary staff that will be supporting you. Look for agencies that ask you about your personality and preferences, and provide details of the personality, preferences, and interests of potential support staff. If a new staff person will be hired to support you, will the agency include you in the job interview process? What if you don’t get along with a support staff? Look for agencies that support you to stop getting support from a staff person you don’t like, even if they don’t see the issue the same way.

What if none of the providers in my area have many of these “Positive signs to look for?”

Advocate for change! Talk with your local service providers, and engage them in a discussion of ways they can improve. Many non-profits are looking for board members—apply and drive change from within.

At the Federal level, Medicaid rules require agencies to provide person-directed services, and will shortly require that Medicaid services be selected using Person Centered Planning guidelines, much of which require provider agencies to consider the above issues. Much of this is included in what is referred to as the “Home and Community Based Services Final Regulation,” details of which are available here: https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/hcbs/guidance/index.html.

Finally, talk with your State elected officials and advocate for increased community-based support! As mentioned, costs of providing community-based supports are often far less than institutional-based services.  Partner with advocacy groups in your State to educate lawmakers on the benefits of increasing community based services.

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