What is APD?

From KidsHealth.org:

What is Auditory Processing Disorder?

Auditory processing disorder (APD), also known as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), is a complex problem affecting about 5% of school-aged children. These kids can't process the information they hear in the same way as others because their ears and brain don't fully coordinate. Something adversely affects the way the brain recognizes and interprets sounds, most notably the sounds composing speech.

Kids with APD often do not recognize subtle differences between sounds in words, even when the sounds are loud and clear enough to be heard. These kinds of problems typically occur in background noise, which is a natural listening environment. So kids with APD have the basic difficulty of understanding any speech signal presented under less than optimal conditions.

What I say:

APD is audio dyslexia. Just like a normal dyslexic has eyes that work, but scrambled images in the brain a person with APD has ears that work, but scrambled sounds.

The Kids Health Checklist:

• Is your child easily distracted or unusually bothered by loud or sudden noises?
• Are noisy environments upsetting to your child?
• Does your child's behavior and performance improve in quieter settings?
• Does your child have difficulty following directions, whether simple or complicated?
• Does your child have reading, spelling, writing, or other speech-language difficulties?
• Is abstract information difficult for your child to comprehend?
• Are verbal (word) math problems difficult for your child?
• Is your child disorganized and forgetful?
• Are conversations hard for your child to follow?

What I've Found:

- Child is distracted by sudden noises.

- Child responds incorrectly to questions. Example: What did you do today? Blue

- Child follows visual cues rather than verbal. Example: When instructed to pick up the red block the child will stare at you if you don't point. If you do point, they will pick up things from the floor or table at random.

- Misses small words in advanced conversation (is, of, the, and, is, it, ect)

- Struggled with spelling, reading, and learning to do either phonetically.

- Struggles with only math word problems, but does well on other portions of math.

- Tries to communicate non-verbally.

- Uses an over-loud voice to communicate. (This is my daughter's worst offense, she hates loud noises but she always yells.)