In my previous post I explained that auditory processing
disorder (APD) is like a game of “Operator” where a message is misinterpreted
when travelling between the ears and brain.
This causes problems with communicating in noisy environments, following
multi-step instructions, and wrongly hearing words, sounds and sentences. The good news is that APD can be improved
organically and through modifications to the functional environment.
Personally, my daughter was diagnosed in Grade 3 (age
8). To understand her problems, I read
several books on APD and copied some chapters for family. I disclosed fully to my daughter the results
of her testing and explained that sometimes her ears and her brain are hearing
different things. I wanted her to
understand that at times, when things people say might seem funny, confusing or
strange to her, she might have heard them wrong. She was encouraged to ask questions about her
ADP, and to never be shy about asking people to repeat themselves if
needed.
At school, the teacher started wearing an FM unit to help
best deliver instructions and teachings to my daughter who wore corresponding
headphones. The teacher and I put tennis
balls on the classroom chairs to reduce noise.
My daughter was relocated near the teacher’s desk and away from the busy
hall. The door was closed (reducing
background noise) during lectures. She
was allowed to write tests in the quiet resource room. The teacher was provided a list of other
classroom modifications to implement, including ways to breakdown instructions
into smaller chunks to improve her retention and follow-through. I talked to the teacher about the fact that
when my daughter was reading in class (when she was supposed to do other
things) to tune out classroom noise and / or because she missed the
directions.
In sports, we noticed an issue with her playing
basketball. The sound of the balls
bouncing on the floor made it difficult for her to hear her coach and the
background noise in the gym during practice was a struggle for her. At Karate, she would look around to see what
the other kids were doing as she would miss instructions. All of her coaches and Sensei’s were advised
of her APD and started speaking more directly to her, asked her to repeat
instructions, and tried to reduce background noise when possible.
We also made changes at home. We took extra time to reduce background noise
(difficult in a family with four kids), would reduce the number of instructions
we gave her at one time, had her repeat these back to us, and developed a
“roger that” mantra that she would say to indicate she got her instructions. Our audiologist recommended Fast Forward, an
online game designed to help improve APD.
While research does not conclusively confirm that this is helpful for
APD, we decided to give it a try and she found it very helpful. Ultimately, and for reasons other than just
her APD, we moved her to a small school with very low class sizes and she is
now thriving. We still notice her APD at
times, but she is very aware of this and is mature enough to understand that if
something sounds wrong (i.e. turtle twins) she should politely ask for
clarification.
No comments:
Post a Comment