Hi, I had suspected that my 5 year old had APD for a couple of years now…we haven’t been diagnosed by an audiologist yet…but we have been through some auditory testing with a wonderful ST and have been told that ds does have moderate APD.
I am just wondering if a 5 year old child is still young enough that the auditory system is still being worked on naturally?? Does that make any sense?
We have done TLP for 30 weeks and will continue using it, I feel like we have seen noticeable progress with it…mostly ds isn’t saying, “What?” as much when we say something.
DS talks much younger than a 5 year old though-more like a three year old…leaving words out of sentences…instead of saying, “Where are you going?” DS will say, “Where going” but ST said that is normal with APD.
Ds is also having a difficult time with fine motor skills…especially with tracing and ds still can’t write letters.
Is there anything else I can be doing…I know that 5 is young and I am not sure what other therapies I can be doing right now? We are doing TLP, ST and I have earrobics too, but we haven’t started it yet.
Thank you so much for any thoughts or help you can offer!
5 year old with APD
The auditory system will continue to develop but it can be really frustrating in school for those with APD. I think you are on the right track with TLP and Earobics. We used both programs with my daughter and they helped tremendously. Your son might also benefit from other forms of speech therapy because there may be other language issues, too.
A lot of 5 year olds have difficulty tracing and writing letters. That is fairly age appropriate and something they will continue to work on in kindergarten. It’s always good to practice at home as well as at school. If he isn’t making progress in the next few months, then you may want to see if there is something more going on. Writing can not only be effected by fine motor skills but also by visual issues.
5 year old with APD
There is anecdotal evidence to suggest links to autistic spectrum disorder, middle ear infections and lack of oxygen at birth, among other conditions. APD can manifest as problems determining the direction of sounds, difficulty perceiving differences between speech sounds and the sequencing of these sounds into meaningful words, confusing similar sounds such as “hat” with “bat”, “there” with “where”, etc. Fewer words may be perceived than were actually said, as there can be problems detecting the gaps between words, creating the sense that someone is speaking unfamiliar or nonsense words.
I don’t know anything about this disability but, it sounds like your child isn’t speaking through a sentence or though but is jumping from 1 end to the other. Or whatever, the only thing i can think of is get yur child active in music. It makes the brain think in terms of both language and sound a bit differently than simple conversation does. I don’t know if this suggestion helps you at all, but just tossing it out there just in case it could help.
Good luck