![]() “Suzie’s a know-it-all brat!” Can this interfere with academic and social success? Absolutely! Some may also have a problem integrating the two hemispheres, thus becoming overwhelmed when too many visual and auditory stimuli bombard their brains simultaneously. Same sounds, same order – but which would you rather eat? A child with a right brain auditory processing problem won’t hear a friend’s sarcastic tone in the sentence: “Oh, sure, Suzie’s always right!”, so she’ll interpret the sentence literally: “Suzie’s correct one hundred percent of the time” instead of getting the “ real message” i.e. ![]() For example, say the words: “dessert” and “desert” (the place with lots of sand!). Can left hemisphere APD interfere with social and academic success? Absolutely! Right hemisphere auditory processing disorders involve the ability to process the intonation and the rhythm of language. Also, these children may struggle to process auditory information in the presence of background noise. For example, the child may hear “I have a pit bull” for “I have a pimple.” You can see how this might cause the child to respond inappropriately! These children are often left behind in the listening dust as they try to keep up with the conversation. In left hemisphere APD, the brain has difficulty rapidly distinguishing speech sounds in sequence. But I will also provide some great resources if you would like to learn more about APD.įirst, what is an auditory processing disorder? The official (and quite technical) definition comes from the American Speech-Language Hearing Association ( For brevity’s sake, let’s just say a good working definition for APD is: “What the brain does with what it hears.” To simplify, think of the brain’s listening system in terms of “left brain”, “right brain” and “cross-brain” skills. Our partnership was one of the highlights of my career - to this day I could spend hours chatting over coffee about this most fascinating topic! For our purposes today, however, I’d like to offer a quick APD overview: what it is, how to spot symptoms, how to obtain a diagnosis, and how to address it. But down at the clinical trench level, I collaborated closely for many years with a very knowledgeable audiologist, and together, using a variety of testing tools and observations, we were able to peer into children’s listening systems beyond the behavioral level and get to the brain level, pinpointing specific areas of difficulty, and thus suggest the appropriate strategies to help that children process auditory information more successfully. ![]() Auditory processing is a huge and complex topic experts are still quibbling about precise definitions and symptoms. The lack of awareness and misinformation about many childhood challenges is still alarmingly high, but auditory processing disorder is exceptionally misunderstood. One such disorder, auditory processing disorder (APD), may be present, but overlooked. ![]() They assume the behavior is willful, when, in fact, that child may be struggling with a delay or disorder beyond their control. But it’s far from unique, as adults still often chastise students for “not listening”. This incident happened to my son, many years ago. The teacher slams her book on the desk, jabs an index finger toward David, a student in the back of her sixth-grade classroom, shouts: “Young man, I said it once – I am NOT going to say it again! You need to listen the first time!” David lowers his head, making a mental note not to speak in Mrs. Green, could you repeat that please? I didn’t quite get that.”
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