Auditory Processing Disorder, Update

Since I was recently nominated for Homeschool Blogger Award, Live What you Believe, for sharing my 11 year old daughter's journey through therapy for CAPD (auditory processing disorder), sensory integration disorder and visualizing inabilities. Here is the update, straight from the therapist and mom's analysis. These have caused bunches of problems for her in school, relationships, chores, and life. Regarding CAPD, we have been doing Neuronet, with a therapist since April. We are in CD 6 of an 8 CD series. The section of therapy we are in now is English as a Spoken Language. As a mother of a child with CAPD, I did not realize my child spoke less than other children. She could narrate with the best, and she seemed engaged, but as time passed, and I had other children, I realized the words just did not come. Often a nod or grunt was all I got in response to a question. When with her friends, she just looks at them and smiles. This smile threw us off for a while, often the smile was because she enjoyed being with her friends, even if she was not able to follow conversation. Neuronet is going well, but we are not where I hoped we would be after seven months of therapy. This time her therapist is aiming to integrate therapy with her schoolwork. Also, I just began remediating with a reading program called Reading Reflex. Our NN provider feels combining Reading Reflex with NN is our best chance to produce a child who can spell and read phonetically.

As for Visualizing and Verbalizing, ME has gotten to where she seems to be visualizing on her own. Visualizing means making a movie in your mind when you read something or hear something. When I ask her if she is visualzing, she says "Yes, I think so." That is progress. I have stopped using the actual therapy materials, and am just getting her to tell me what she is "seeing in her mind," as she reads and hears. Her new flute teacher is also incorporating visualizing with musical pieces. In addition, he has developed a lesson sheet which has emoto-icons on it, and she is to circle what emotion the music is portraying.

Sensory Integration therapy is proceeding nicely. We have had many fun field trips in an effort to help all our children with sensory issues. Much trampoline jumping, swimming, hiking, playing in streams, camping and eating beef jerky, has happened this summer. I feel like all the children have improved in relation to loud sounds, funny textures and scheduling.

We are within three months of being done with Neuronet, and are waiting to see what our Pediatric Physical Therapist recommends at that point. What has your family been dealing with that is "unusual" or "special?"

Therapy Summer for Sensory Integration Issues

What do string cheese, coffee stirrers, trampolines, scooters, camping, gum, rock climbing, bubbles and hiking have in common?

They are part of our therapy this summer for our sensory integration issues. We had a meeting with our pediatric physical therapist, who has put ME on what she calls a Sensory Diet. This is made of 4 components- heavy work, mouthwork, deep pressure and movement. She is supposed to get all four "parts" everyday.

So, we spent our Saturday buying a bike, trampoline, scooter, water shoes, and shorts. Next week we plan to buy a wagon and a pool. We opted out of the zipline due to safety issues. We have plans to camp at least one time per month, and plan to go next weekend.

Some examples of heavy work are pulling brother in a wagon, combat crawling, pushing a parent in a swing, and playing rough. Some of the mouthwork is sucking yogurt thru a straw, using a coffee stirer to suck milk, eating string cheese or jerky. The deep pressure consists of couch sandwiches and sitting under a heavy quilt. For movement, we will be swimming, jumping, bike riding, hop ball bouncing, etc.

All of these things will also couple with the work we are doing on her vestibular system. One of our first goals is teaching ME how to ride a bike. We are hoping she will learn so we can take her bike camping. The good news is that everyone gets to join in on the fun. Out PPT also recommended ME taking up archery, so we are looking into that. We do live on an acre, so that is probably reasonable.

Thank you so much for the prayers for our family during this time. God is good to lead us to help now. One of our other children has SID, too, so she gets the benefits of all this therapy. Last week I was able to do 16 hours of therapy and we saw large jumps in both the Neuronet and Visualizing and Verbalizing. That is good news, but I struggle with easy discouragement, because we are looking at a year of therapy. Hopefully in a few weeks, we will just average about 6 hours of direct therapy a week, and then all the running, jumping, crawling, etc.