Does my child have auditory processing difficulties or APD?
In this blog we want to focus on auditory processing difficulties, or APD, a hearing problem that affects around 5% of school age children.
With the many Covid-19-related challenges that schools and pupils will be navigating, it would be easy to put any teething problems that your child may have when they return to school down to general anxiety and change.
However, it’s important to be alert to any potential hearing issues because, if left unchecked, these can have a serious impact on your child’s language development, confidence, social skills and performance at school.
Wondering if your child has APD?
Does your child find it hard to process information?
Do they struggle to keep up with what their teacher is saying?
Have you noticed that they have become anxious or lost self-confidence?
Do they struggle to hear in background noise, mishear or misunderstand what is being said? Do they have difficulty understanding fast speech?
If you’ve answered yes to a number of the above questions, or even if you have a slight concern, it’s important to get your child’s hearing checked out.
Come and see us at The Hearing Clinic and we will take our time to put your child at their ease while learning about them, their interests and issues at school. We’ll perform various simple auditory processing disorder tests to check their hearing and understand exactly where the problem lies.
How we help children with APD
If we diagnose a hearing loss or APD we will work with you and your child’s teachers to provide the tools, support and advice to help your child back on the road to hearing health and on their way to fulfilling their potential.
We work with many families with children who have APD, providing recommendations to teachers of ways to improve the listening environment. We can show you how to do auditory training exercises with your child and organise specialist auditory equipment – such as a personal FM system – to support your child to hear better in class.
We will make the whole experience feel like fun to your child, and we’ll answer all your questions to allay your fears. One of our clients, who brought her young daughter to see us says, “After six years with hearing loss, Annie now has almost normal hearing and can start to ‘forget about her ears’. Without you she wouldn’t have got on so well at school. We were so lucky to have had you as our superstar audiologist!”
Here for all the family
If you have any questions about APD or children’s hearing loss, please give us a call. We’ll be happy to book your child in for a hearing assessment. Click on this link to get in touch:
