Will’s specific diagnosis is Auditory Processing Delay, which is related to Auditory Processing Disorder, but not exactly the same thing. Auditory Processing Disorder is not diagnosable until age seven due to the testing methods (lengthy and intricate and not possible with active small children). So until that point, and if we feel that Will should go through the formal diagnosis, his diagnosis will remain as Auditory Processing Delay. It’s widely acknowledged that Auditory Processing Delay/Disorder is a broad umbrella term for a lot of different stuff. But it basically all comes down to two things: Your hearing is fine, but yet, you still don’t understand the language. In Will’s case (and I ONLY know how APD affects Will, I have no idea if his case is a normal or abnormal case of APD, or other common forms of APD affecting others), his mind basically shuts off for words other than nouns and very simple verbs. He has very little grasp of prepositions, adverbs, adjectives, or other modifiers. We could only ever give him very simple instructions: “Go get your shoes.” If we said, “Go get your shoes by the door” he was clueless. If he heard one or two things he didn’t understand, it cancelled out everything that he did understand and he would just give up.
A few weeks ago, St. Kathryn started working with him on pronouncing “L” sounds. When we would practice saying, “Light”, “Log”, “Lemon”, etc. the “L” sound always came out as a “no” sound. I asked St. Kathryn why this happened, thinking that surely the answer was somewhere along the lines of Will not having developed muscles in his mouth to pronounce the sound. But she said, “It’s because that’s the sound that he hears.” My jaw dropped. So maybe APD can include something along the lines of dyslexia in sounds? Truly, I don’t know. I haven’t encountered more “missed” sounds like that, but I haven’t asked her if there have been any others. Sometimes I prefer ignorance. Since then, we spend time practicing “L” sounds in front of the mirror so Will can see the shape of his mouth when he touches the tip of his tongue on the roof of his mouth to say, “Lamp”. It’s the only way he will learn to make these sounds correctly—he has to visually see his mouth and mentally remember how to shape his jaw and lips. A little weird, but it works!
Here is a list of questions that if you asked Will, he wouldn’t be able to answer, or answer correctly.
1. How old are you?* What is your last name?
2. Who is holding the most/least apples in the picture?
3. Do you want to go to the park today, or tomorrow?
4. Which building is the shortest/tallest?
5. How did that boy get hurt?
6. Which person in the picture is ready to go swimming?
7. What do you use to hit a baseball?
8. Go get your red coat on the couch.
9. This little girl is wearing a blue hat, what color is his hat?
10. Which person in this picture is a girl?
11. What flavor of juice do you want?
You might be wondering why I just listed all of these, but it’s a good measure of where Will is at and how he can easily improve. Because his auditory processing has developed so slowly, Will has little comprehension of simple concepts because when you don’t understand the question, you’re likely not going to understand the answer. So that being said, Will doesn’t understand concepts with modifiers like tallest/shortest, most/least, and brightest/darkest. Or concepts of time like later or tomorrow. He seems to have no recognition of differentiating between boys and girls. He knows colors and shapes really well, but does not understand “who”, “where”, and “what” types of questions. So if you said, “Who is wearing a pink dress?”, he would point to anything that is pink because the only think he understood in that sentence is the color.
Will goes to speech therapy with St. Kathryn every Tuesday and Wednesday from 1-1:45 and has been going for two months now. He has improved SO much! He is obviously still delayed, but I’m amazed at his progress so far. We even occasionally hear him use simple verbs ending in “ing”. And last week he came running in the house and said, “Where’s Mom?” I seriously thought I might cry. Simple things that pretty much every other kid can do, but for us, it’s the most amazing powerful thing on the planet. And we are so proud! We hug him so tight when he spontaneously says things like this—he probably thinks he just cured cancer, but we know he understands that he is growing and developing and that he just did something really awesome too. It’s a cool moment.
We get homework every week from St. Kathryn and right now we have been working with “Who”, “What” and “Where” questions. There are various ways of doing this—worksheets, computer games, etc—but the form I like the best is just talking in the car. Everyone is there, and no one is inconvenienced. So when we drive to and fro from all of Will’s things (and there are a ton of “things” for this kid), I ask questions like, “Where is there something red?”, “What is that person doing?”, or “Who is going into the store?” At home, I try to make a conscious effort to highlight prepositions. We’re still working on differentiating between “in” and “on”. I usually pick one day to work with “in”—putting Duke IN the car, the bat is IN the backyard, we put the milk IN the fridge. The next day we work on “ON”—the plate is ON the table, put your shoes ON before school, sit ON the couch, etc.
One of the ways APD has significantly affected Will is in his ability to have a two-way conversation. Will hears you ask, “What did you do at school today?” and he responds with “Anfiien fneuvr play fnwi golf eurnfiew outside.” Essentially what happens is he doesn’t understand the question, but he knows someone is trying to have a conversation with him, so he just starts talking about whatever he wants to talk about. Kids dominating conversation are not abnormal, of course kids want to talk about what they want to talk about. The difference is that Will wants to talk about whatever he wants to talk about because he doesn’t understand what you’re saying.
Cortney’s company gave everyone the new iPads and I have to say, its been such a wonderful tool for Will. There are so many great apps out there for speech and we use it as part of our nightly homework about five times a week. The downfall of this scenario is that we only have one iPad, but we have two kids. We’ve decided that we need to buy another tablet of some kind for Duke because it seems slightly discriminating that Duke doesn’t have a cool electronic toy because he’s developing at a normal rate.
On Sundays after church, we come home and we try to get the boys to take naps. If this is successful, I either spend the time writing, or researching things for Will. I quickly learned that I needed to be incredibly brave before I would go to Google for medical journals for APD and Sensory Processing Disorders. Within a few hours I learned that in boys specifically, a large majority of APD kids are later diagnosed with ADHD. Another large majority are later diagnosed with dyslexia. And I stopped researching after that. Basically my son has the two gateway drugs (APD and SPD) in the world of learning disabilities.
And I decided at that moment, that I would take care of Will with all of the knowledge I had, but I’d leave receiving new knowledge to the Dream Team, including all of Will’s teachers and therapists. They are incredibly capable and if they see something to be worried about, they’ll tell me. In the meantime, I’ll keep his two disorders at just that—two. My heart and mind can’t afford any more “disorders/delays” and my wallet definitely can’t pay for any more therapy.
But the highlight of all this is that Will truly is flourishing. So we have every reason to believe that he will be at grade level within the next 1-3 years. The chances that these things will affect him for the rest of his life are strong, but because we’ve starting working so specifically on these things so early, he will already know how to cope and learn in spite of them.
One of the ways Sensory Processing Modulation Disorder has affected Will's auditory processing is that he is very easily distracted by faint noises. A hum of a computer or the ticking of a clock can really bother him, but louder noises don't affect him nearly as much. This obviously makes it difficult for him to concentrate on verbal communication. Sometimes kids with this set of struggles will wear headphones in class and the teacher will talk into a microphone, for the student to hear through the headphones. This allows them to eliminated outside noise and focus just on what the teacher is saying. This is something we might consider for Will in the future.
One of Will’s strengths academically is his memory. The kid can remember everything. Once he learns something, it’s there forever. For instance, I took Will to the pediatrician shortly after we moved here, more than five months ago. Last week, we got in the car, didn’t tell him where we were going, and when we pulled up to the pediatricians office, Will was screaming that he didn’t want to go to the doctor. This happens frequently. I’m positive the kid still knows his way from our house in Columbus to Luke’s house, making sure to make the correct turn so we can stop at Graeter’s on the way.
Will’s emotional outbursts have steadily subsided in the last few weeks and I’m sure that is mostly attributed to the progress he has made in speech therapy. It’s amazing what communication (and lack thereof) can do for a kid.
I’m so proud of him. He’s my hero.
*As of last week, Will finally knows how old he is! It probably helped that we sang happy birthday to him about 6 times (candles and all) about four times in two weeks.
I saw this book at St. Kathryn's and immediately thought, "this is why we come to a speech therapist." who knew swallowing needed to be managed? I sure didn't. Apparently St. Kathryn is an expert on speech therapy with people who have had feeding tubes and tracheotomies.
Cool, freakishly talented, lady.
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