Hi Diana,
Welcome to this board! It sounds like your journey has been similar to ours. I also read the symptoms and immediately felt that was the issue with our son. Our son had a history of ear infections, does yours? I would definitely follow your intuition. I followed mine against a great wave of people who told me to give up, including my husband. He now thanks me all the time that I persisted.

As for finding an audiologist, that can be tricky. I would go here: http://www.ncapd.org/php/index.php?menu … 20Listings and look up a name in their directory. They are the National Coalition of Auditory Processing Disorders. I believe their initial intention was the be a site full of information about CAPD. Unfortunately though one of their key people passed away a few years ago, and it seems the organization has since fallen to the wayside. But I'm sure any audiologist listed in their directory has to specialize in CAPD.

I'm new on this journey myself, so I'm not expert, but I'd love to share and discuss solutions. Our son did AIT (auditory integration training) which was very beneficial. Easy too consider it was only 2 weeks of therapy. We were doing Earobics with him which seemed to be helping, but the school wanted to do Therapuetic Listening (TL) with him, and asked us to suspend all other therapies in the meantime. We did not seem a tremendous result with TL, although we did some improvements in his writing and coordination. TL is geared towards OT, not language/hearing, so it wasn't meant to help in that area.

Hopefully your son has an IEP due to his language delay. The schools do not acknowledge auditory processing disorder as a learning disability (can you believe it?!). So if you don't have an IEP, or at least a 504, you're going to have to be really pushy to get services. Our son has an IEP because he's only 6-1/2 and still a long way from talking at age-level. We were able to get him an FM system for when he starts 1st grade next week. Fingers crossed it helps. I will check back and let you know.

Thanks for sharing!
Take care,
Bonnie

Diana, I’m so glad that you’re being really proactive with your son. I would investigate if there are any rules around a child who was released from an IEP but still needs special ed services. While auditory processing disorder is not recognized as a learning disability (why the hell not I don’t know!), it may be because your son HAD an IEP, he’s still entitled to services. I can tell you that our son has an IEP, and we’ve still had to fight tooth and nail with the school. We hired a lawyer last year who we didn’t get along with, and we let him go before we finished the process, but after we fired him the school started giving in. I think they were afraid we were going to get another lawyer. But before we hired them they would do nothing around the auditory processing issues.

If your son is diagnosed by an audiologist, hopefully the audiologist will prescribe an FM system. I do not think the school can deny him that if it’s been prescribed by a doctor. The FM system is an amplification system that helps to filter out noise so the child can hear the teacher more clearly. Our son will be starting with on when he starts school next week. Research has also shown that use of the FM system also improves the auditory processing, so in way it’s a form of therapy as well.

It’s very common for kids with CAPD to have trouble with word problems in math. Also issues learning to read. If your son is diagnosed, at the very least the school will have to provide accommodations (I think). They may provide him with more time, additional instructions or deliver the information in a different form.

By the way, if you think your child might have a form of learning disability, the school is required by law to investigate. They can say no, and you might have to push, but they are required to do it. If your son is struggling with writing and language, and they say CAPD isn’t a learning disability, you can always say that you suspect dyslexia. Research is showing that there may be a strong link between auditory processing issues and dyslexia. So strong some researchers think they are the same issue, just different ends of a spectrum between visual and auditory processing issues.

You sound a lot like me when it comes to taking care of your son. My husband thinks I’m over protective, but I think I’m being a good mom. Life is different than when I was a kid, and I know I have to do way more than my mom did to get help in school (not that I needed it, but my sister had dyslexia).

By the way, AIT is extremely helpful with anxiety.

HTH,
Bonnie

Thanks for the info Bonnie.  He gets tested on Sept 10th, and I'm anxious to get this done.  Believe me, I will be a pain in the behind of the entire school system until they give me what I need to help him.  I'd actually considered homeschooling him over a year ago if the district didn't help him with his needs.  I can still do that, I'd probably use unit studies to teach him.  I'm close to Washington DC and Baltimore, so finding topics for study wouldn't be a problem.  But him being an only child, I want him to make friends and have a normal social life.  But if I need to pull him out of the public school system to meet his educational needs, so be it.