Auditory Processing Disorders
Auditory Processing Disorder is the inability to attend to, discriminate among, or understand auditory information. This disorder negatively affects a child's education in many ways that will be discussed.
#1: Make sure that your child's teacher understands what auditory processing disorder is and how to work with your child. This disorder can negatively affect reading in many ways as well as other areas of academics. Your child's teacher may require special training in this area, to be able to effectively work with your child.
#2: Make sure that your child is receiving preferential seating near the person that is giving the instruction. A distance of three to four feet is best, and will allow your child to receive the most benefit not only from auditory communication but from visual as well. Ask your child's teacher not to put them near a noise source such as bathroom, equipment etc.
#3: Make sure that your child's teacher is giving visual cues, which will make it easier for your child to understand what the teacher is saying.
#4: A peer partner may be helpful in keeping your child on task and helping them to understand verbal directions and instruction.
#5: Ask that your child's teacher provide a separate work area for your child to limit distractions.
#6: Ask for FM amplification to improve access to auditory information. The recommendation for this system is usually made by an audiologist, who is especially trained in this area.
#7: Ask your child's teacher to speak in a clear modulated voice to increase the chance that your child will understand what is being said.
#8: Ask your child's teacher to break down verbal directions to small steps. Also ask that the directions be repeated and perhaps used with visual cues.
#9: Your child can repeat the verbal instruction or the directions to ensure that he or she understands them.
#10: Children respond better to positive feedback than negative feedback or punishment. Work with your child's teacher to put in place positive supports that will help your child.
#11: Have your child's teacher review, preview and summarize a class lesson.
#12: If your child needs more time on assignments ask their teacher to allow this as a accommodation.
#13: Long complicated directions could be tape recorded so that your child could listen to them several times.
#14: Open classrooms are very difficult for children with auditory processing disorder. Doors and windows should be closed as much as possible to reduce or eliminate distractions.
#15: Ask your child's teacher to allow them to use special organizational materials such as organizers, notebooks to write verbal directions down, etc.
Interventions:
First, a few words about interventions in general. Interventions need to be aimed at the specific needs of the child. No two children share the same set of strengths or areas of weaknesses. An effective intervention is one that utilizes a child's strengths in order to build on the specific areas in need of development. As such, interventions need to be viewed as a dynamic and ever changing process. Although this may sound overwhelming initially, it is important to remember that the process of finding successful interventions becomes easier with time and as the child's learning approach, style, and abilities become more clear. The following examples provide some ideas regarding a specific disability. It is only a beginning, which is meant to encourage further thinking and development of specific interventions and intervention strategies.
The following represent a number of common interventions and accommodations used with children in their regular classroom:
Do not rely solely on an area of weakness.
If instructions are given orally, try to supplement this with written or other visual cues. While it is important to address the area of need directly and try to build up areas of weakness, it is also necessary that the student be able to function successfully in the classroom. A simple accommodation like backing up verbal directions with visual or written cues is one way to facilitate this.
Keep the area of difficulty in mind.
Simplifying verbal directions, slowing the rate of speech, and minimalizing distractions can make a big difference to a person with auditory processing difficulties.
Plan specific activities for the areas of difficulty.
There are many activities that can help build auditory processing skills, whether it be in the area of phonological awareness, auditory discrimination, or any of the other areas in this realm. Rhyming games, for example, can help build phonological awareness as well as discriminating between similar and different sounds. Sorting games can help build auditory memory, as the number of variables and steps involved in the sorting can be easily controlled to adjust the level of difficulty