“Children with ADHD may be poor listeners and have difficulty understanding or remembering verbal information,” explains Teri James Bellis, author of When the Brain Can’t Hear, but “it is the attention deficit that is impeding their ability to access or to use the auditory information that is coming in,” not the processing of it in the brain. Experts continue to disagree whether APD is a manifestation of ADHD, or if they are separate disorders. Studies suggest that 50 percent of those diagnosed with ADHD may also have APD. Symptoms of the two disorders often overlap. Just as APD can affect a child’s ability to focus, so an attention deficit can affect auditory processing. Combine APD with ADHD, and a child’s abilities to listen and remember are severely compromised. It’s like listening to the radio with interference from other stations garbling the reception.Ī child with the disorder typically tries so hard to understand what’s being said that she forgets parts of the conversation or doesn’t pick up on the nuances or subtleties of the words. The echo in a gymnasium or the hum of the air conditioner in the classroom interferes with the conversation at hand. Some children with APD also have trouble screening out background noise, so they pick up bits of surrounding sounds. Rather, her brain perceives the sounds incorrectly, affecting the child’s ability to distinguish between similar sounds (da and ga, for example). An APD child doesn’t have difficulty hearing, in fact, in most cases, her hearing is good. But what is it exactly? At its most general, APD is a glitch in the brain’s ability to filter and process sounds and words. Does Your Child Avoid the Jungle Gym? Or Cringe at Loud Noises? It Could be SPD. Roughly 7 percent of children have some type of auditory processing difficulty. Henry does have ADHD, but an audiologist has also diagnosed him with something called auditory processing disorder(APD).ĭo you hear what they hear? While APD isn’t as well documented as ADHD, it is becoming increasingly common. This sounds like a classic attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) profile, right? Well, yes and no. When he’s doing homework, she says, “He uses every little sound as an excuse to delay getting down to work.” Even the dishwasher distracts him, despite the fact that the kitchen is on the other side of the house. He gets cranky and lashes out at classmates who “are yelling at me and telling me what to do.” His mother has noticed similar behaviours at home. Henry is fidgety and distractible during classroom activities, according to his second grade teacher. Could Your Child Have Auditory Processing Disorder?ĭoes your child struggle to block out background noise, follow conversations or pronounce words correctly? Is she hypersensitive to sound? She may have an auditory processing disorder in addition to (or mistaken for) ADHD.
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