Insane, you were right--he's got auditory processing disorder

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
We did not go to an auditory training center, we went to a special education coordinator, and analyzed the results of his Woodcock Johnson. The instructor/therapist said that if there is a spread of more than 15 points between two particular areas (which I can't find right now), it showed an auditory processing disorder. difficult child's was a 20 point span.
We are enrolling him in a type of occupational therapy from the National Institute for Learning Development http://www.nild.net/ for a year.

The Special Education dir works at a private school where we were trying to enroll difficult child, but today she told me that he did not get in. She said that if he were a self-starter and put his all into everything, she would try it, but she thinks he would struggle too much and become anxious and depressed.
I know a young lady who attended this school and was not accepted freshman yr. She went through NILD and was accepted the next yr because she made huge progress.

So, for now ... the good news is, difficult child can learn new skills with-this therapy. The bad news is, now I have to figure out how to prevent him from attending the HS we are zoned for. We passed the "window" for applications and the school district will place him in the zoned area (where the druggie ex-friends will attend) and after 6 wks he will transfer. Stupid process! We've got to work some magic.

Also, in order to qualify for headphones (assuming difficult child doesn't throw a fit), I have to make sure that the public school system accepts the diagnosis based on this therapist and doesn't make difficult child go through more testing that *they* approve of.

Right now, he's at the private school, getting a tour. He just called and wants to come home. He woke up with-a roaring headache (I'll bet he didn't get more than 5 hrs sleep ... he's still on summer hrs) and since he didn't get accepted anyway, I'll pick him up.

Onto Plan B ... My head is spinning.
 
T

TeDo

Guest
Good news and bad news......yea and sorry. Aren't you allowed to open-enroll into any area school you want? We can do that here. Our kids don't HAVE to go to a particular public school. We can enroll them in any public school we want. Hmmmm. Glad I don't live there I guess. Hopefully this therapy will work and he'll be accepted next year. If you figure out which scales they compared, please let me know. I have difficult child 1's W-J results and now you've got me curious.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
TeDo, you're up, north, right? Maybe MN? We're in VA. We're still under the Voting Rights Act, we means we do bussing. Ugh.
It does no one any good. Well, maybe 3 people total will benefit from it.
The rest of the kids just waste an hour or more a day, depending upon the weather, being bussed to the other end of town, which is ridiculous. They are exhausted and it's a waste of time.

No matter what, I'll end up driving difficult child 95% of the time. When I get sick, he can take the bus.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Without an evaluation, you don't know exactly what type of Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) you're dealing with, which can affect some of the accommodations. Here... without a full Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) evaluation, you don't get any accommodations, much less equipment, but... that might just be "here".
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Okay, I found a place that does it locally. The good news is, I know the person from a church I used to attend, and her office is near my husband's office. The school system does the testing and reimbursement.
The bad news is that it is part of psychiatric testing, so it looks like poor difficult child has to go through MORE tests. Let's see if we can weed out some that I did this summer ...
now, for the phone calls ...
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
What kind of professional is going to run auditory testing??? curious, because... the only two that I know of that can screen for this are SLPs and advanced audiologists.
 

tiredmommy

Well-Known Member
Does difficult child still have court proceedings going on? If so, perhaps the judge or PO could rquest that difficult child be placed in the other school so that he isn't around those other kids.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Yes, the testing will be done by an advanced audiologist, who is apparently the only one who works together with-the school system.

The court case won't happen until Oct., and yes, we can get the judge to issue a court order, but by that time, the school admin may have already transferred him. I wanted it done NOW. Sigh.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
When you see the audiologist, specifically ask about "auditory figure ground"... if he is testing for that one, he's testing for all of them.

School... can you get a medical exemption from "home-zone" school? i.e. therapist/psychiatrist saying that for the sake of his mental health, he needs to be away from these other kids?
 
Terry - Just wanted to pop in and let you know that I'm rooting for you. I sure hope you can get difficult child transferred right at the start of the school year and not 6 weeks in. You may have to get very persistent and phone anyone and everyone who will listen.

Glad you are getting the auditory testing done! Another step in the right direction to getting him the right help. Yeah for you!!
 

whatamess

New Member
To test for auditory processing disorder you need to see an audiologist and have specific testing done with specialized equipment. It is inappropriate to make a diagnosis of Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) based on IQ/academic testing discrepancies.
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
whatamess... usually, they want some sort of "reason" in order to send you to advanced audiological testing. Here, that would be Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) screening, but things like testing discrepancies count too. "Something" is obviously a problem, and so we are now hunting down likely causes. But you are right - the tools that can flag the problem aren't the same as the tools that generate a diagnosis.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
I know, whatamess. *I* think it's obvious but that doesn't mean he's got the diagnosis yet. To be more accurate, I could have typed "Insane, you were right--he's probably got auditory processing disorder" but I don't know if it would have all fit into the subject heading on the general board, on the listings.
 

whatamess

New Member
I only say it because one of my children, I was sure, had Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) for a number of reasons including a huge discrepancy on his IQ test. But when we went to the Children's Hospital and saw the audiologist and went through the testing- it turned out he did not have Auditory Processing Disorders (APD).
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
There's something going on for sure, no matter what it's called. When I give him a multi-level task, he gets the first one or two items and zones out on the rest. At the very least, it has allowed me to be more patient. :)
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
whatamess... that depends on whether the audiologist really understood ALL of the APDs, or was just testing for the original, classical form. We were told multiple times that there was no way it could be Auditory Processing Disorders (APD)... and, when we got the right combination of tests, it turned out to definitely be Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) - over the top for bad, too, but not "classical" Auditory Processing Disorders (APD).
 

whatamess

New Member
Well, Insane, I would truly love to hear more about that because, despite the non-diagnosis of my child with Auditory Processing Disorders (APD), I definitely think he has a processing disorder.
 

TerryJ2

Well-Known Member
Whatamess, trust your gut. If I hadn't trusted mine, we wouldn't have ANY diagnosis or even 504 right now, never mind if it's 100% right~
 

soapbox

Member
Mind if I chime in, whatamess?
I know Terry won't mind if we hijack her thread a tiny bit...

The classical form of Auditory Processing Disorders (APD) involves the way the brain processes verbal language. This one is usually caught, because it affects both listening, and speech.

However, the disorder is not "speech processing disorders", it's "auditory processing disorders". I think there's something like 4 or 5 different ones - I don't have my copy of the report at hand to refer to. But... one of these other ones is "auditory figure ground" - and it is not uncommon, but not commonly tested for. Even the PhD-level audiologist who did our diagnosis, told us that she should be seeing a LOT more kids than she does... they just don't get referred.

Auditory figure ground is where the language processing works fine, but the noise processing does not. In other words, working one-on-one in a separate, quiet room works quite well with these types of kids - working in a noisy (the best ones are noisy, the rest are worse) classroom, they can't pick out what the teacher is saying. Or maybe they can, on Monday morning... definitely NOT by Friday afternoon. When you have to put so much effort into just trying to figure out what the right sounds are, you don't end up with much brain-power left to process what you heard. So... steps of instructions get missed, or misinterpretted... and that's if you caught anything at all.

If they are not testing for auditory figure ground, then they are not testing for the expanded list of APDs.

This is not caught by a regular audiologist. It takes a specialist who knows APDs inside and out.
 
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