Is Your Child Bright Yet Struggling In School?

nIt is possible your child may be experiencing auditory processing issues. Auditory processing disorders (APD) are prevalent and can be a significant factor or the entire reason that some children struggle with schoolwork. In fact, dyslexia is a combination of visual and auditory disorders although many people are only aware of the visual component. nnWhat is an auditory processing disorder? APD is a disruption in the auditory nervous system that interferes with the processing or understanding of auditory signals such as sounds and speech. Auditory processing can be looked at as an umbrella with a variety of skills beneath it. One of those skill areas is auditory discrimination. Auditory discrimination is the ability to hear sounds and sound changes in words. If you hear the word “pop” you need to recognize that there are three sounds and the first and third sound are the same. If you change the word “pop” to “pup” a person with good auditory discrimination skills will hear the middle sound changed and can repeat the exact sound that was taken out as well as the sound that replaced it. This skill is also referred to as phonemic awareness and correlates directly with listening, reading and spelling skills. nnChildren with auditory discrimination difficulties do not always hear sounds in the correct order or as individual units. For example, if they are asked to spell the word “plan” they may write the word “pan” because they heard the ‘pl’ as ‘p’ and therefore did not hear the ‘l’. This can obviously impact spelling skills. It affects reading skills in the same way and therefore children with this issue will sometimes reverse or omit letters. Problems occur with listening as well. As an example “Go read a book” or “Go read a pook” are the same sentence with one sound change. However, one sound changed a meaningful sentence to one that is not meaningful. Children that do not discriminate well often have difficulty listening because they mishear words which affects their comprehension and understanding while learning. These children are sometimes misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) because they learn to stop paying attention as they don’t understand what is being said. Medication for this type of attention problem will not be effective because the root cause is in sound discrimination. Multiple ears infections and genetic predisposition are the two main causes of this issue. nnAnother auditory processing skill is the ability to understand speech and language when different auditory information is presented to both ears at the same time. An example of this would be a student talking on the right side of the child while the teacher is talking on the left of the child. Having different stimuli coming in at the same time is very confusing for some children and they will have trouble grasping any of it. nnFiltered speech relates to listening to muffled words. A person with adequate processing skills that hears part of a word should be able to “fill in the blanks” and know what the word is even though they didn’t hear it in its entirety. Some children with poor auditory skills can’t do this and situations like teachers that don’t speak clearly or teachers that face the white board with their back to the students while talking can significantly impact a child’s learning. Communicating on the telephone can also be difficult for these students because the auditory signals are not always clear and parts of the words may be missing. nnAuditory figure ground is the ability to hear and process adequately in the presence of background noise. Students with auditory figure ground difficulties have a great deal of trouble learning in a noisy environment. These children learn better in a quiet environment but unfortunately most circumstances in life are not quiet and this can include homeschoolers. Even in the home environment other siblings, pets, the dishwasher or washing machine and the telephone can all be disruptive to learning. nnListening and reading comprehension fall under the umbrella of auditory processing skills as well. These specific areas may also be referred to as language processing skills. The premise for comprehension is the left side of the brain hears or reads words and the right side pictures the information. If the left side is not adequately perceiving information then the right side cannot effectively picture it which leads to comprehension, direction following, organization and memory issues. In addition to not discriminating well many children do not picture while listening and reading which further affects learning. nnStudents must make a movie in their head while reading in order to comprehend and remember what they have read. Children that think reading is “boring” or that have to reread information several times to understand it are often not picturing adequately. These children typically don’t perform well on tests either although some will do well on shorter quizzes because there is less information to retain. Children that have difficulty writing sentences, stories or reports are often not visualizing well either. In order to effectively write students must see the sentence or story in their head prior to writing it. The same applies to organization. Children cannot be organized if they cannot see in their head the progression of steps or tasks that are expected of them. nnAPD is not outgrown and can be confusing to parents and teachers alike as often students exhibit inconsistencies in schoolwork. They are often labeled lazy or unmotivated. It is important to understand that students with APD must work two or three times harder than the average child and still sometimes or often receive poor grades that do not reflect their true effort. Sometimes children will attend to a task at school and do very well in the morning. However, because they have to exert so much effort they may be unable to perform well in the afternoon making it appear as if they are unmotivated. These children are often extremely tired at the end of a school day.nnChildren that have this issue tend to be high average to above average in regard to intelligence but it can span the range of intelligence levels. Sometimes students will do well in school until somewhere between first and seventh grade and then at some point their efforts, motivation, grades and self-esteem can plummet. It appears as if the issues are becoming progressively worse but in actuality the schoolwork is becoming progressively harder with less hands-on and visual cues. Children with auditory deficits perform much better when they can learn with kinesthetic (hands-on) and visual cues. The performance of these students will dramatically drop when they find themselves with a teacher that lectures the entire class period and they must rely solely on the auditory channel for learning. These students also perform very poorly in second language classes such as Spanish or French. nnMany students with APD have received regular tutoring services which is not recommended for them prior to receiving learning therapies specifically for APD. A case in point is a student we will call Darren. Darren was tutored since the first grade because every year he needed a boost. When he began receiving grades he always earned C’s regardless of the amount of time he spent studying. He was not an independent learner even after receiving tutoring services for six years of his young life. When Darren was in the sixth grade he received therapy services that specifically treated APD. Darren completed therapy in a few months and received straight A’s independently for the first time in his life. He went on to seventh grade and he continued to receive straight A’s independently. Not all children that receive treatment earn straight A’s but the high majority of them do significantly better in school if they receive the correct treatment. nnDepending on which treatment is chosen those age two through adult can receive services for APD and exhibit great benefit. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of awareness in many areas about APD and its symptoms. Therefore, many people suffer and go undiagnosed. Many students are put on medications for attention, anxiety and depression which do not address the root cause of the issue. Others suffer with consistently poor grades for a condition that is treatable. Children that are two or three years old and exhibit delayed or disordered speech and language skills are often dealing with APD issues. Addressing these issues early can reduce or eliminate learning problems and self-esteem issues down the road. For children with APD the correct treatment can be life changing. nnn