At Last, Some Helpful Facts

Finally, some good news that's providing a measure of comfort and relief to our family.

We've been wondering if our son is dyslexic, and over the past year it's become increasingly apparent that he has some kind of learning difference. However, with a Slingerland reading tutor, his ability jumped from below-Kindergarten to 2nd-grade-level in one school year, and with Handwriting Without Tears, his penmanship is among the best of the boys in his class. (The girls' handwriting ... well, they're all WAY ahead of the boys in fine motor. No comparison at this age.) We fully credit his school for having the vision to use these methods in the classroom with all the kids since everyone benefits from them, irrespective of individual ability.

So over the last year, his symptoms and behaviors fit less and less into the dyslexic arena, but persisted and became more evident. He struggles to get words out quickly, has difficulty following multi-stage instructions (especially if they are spoken quickly), and has begun to have more noticeable challenges in his social skills and peer communication as interactions require more subtlety and accurate reading of fleeting auditory cues.

Through plain old luck and a lot of reading about language/neuropsych disorders, I started to think he has something called CAPD -- central auditory processing disorder. This is a condition where the person usually has excellent hearing acuity (possibly even hyperacuity), but their brain cannot effectively translate incoming sounds into useful meanings. Do you remember the Charlie Brown movies when the grownups talk? "Wha wha wha wha wha....." That is what conversation (or directions, or instructions, or a classroom lecture) sounds like to someone with CAPD. They do very well 1:1, but when even 2 people are talking (or giggling, or whispering, or there's background noise such as construction) their brain can't suppress the background noise AND translate the primary conversation at the same time.

Well, yesterday I took him to a pediatric audiologist who specializes in assessing (and ruling out) CAPD. She has a ton of incredibly fancy acoustic sensing equipment in her office/lab. Exhaustive medical history intake + home/school behavior descriptions. 90 solid minutes of testing my son -- he was a champ. As soon as she finished the last test, she called me into her office and said, "Well, whichever clinician sent you to me, they were spot on. Your son has CAPD and he can really benefit from speech/language therapy." I burst out laughing and told her NO DOCTOR sent him; in fact, the 40-page assessment we received from a team of neuropsychs last year was only notable for completely failing to point at CAPD as a possible diagnosis, despite the fact that they administered some of the same tests that she just did. It was all because my husband and I kept thinking, 'there's something not right here....' and seeing his behavior compared to his younger sister's highlighted specific gaps that were only growing over time.

This diagnosis doesn't rule out dyslexia, as the conditions may co-occur, but it appears less likely (symptomatically) and we finally have something concrete to go on. Now we're onto the next stage -- developing and launching a successful intervention plan. Finally, so much of my head-scratching, watching and worrying have a constructive place to go. I don't pretend to think this is the end of the sleepless nights or heartache -- I think that's part of the package of raising children and not being able to take all of the bullets for them. I do realize that I'm lucky to have taken the last 9 months off from work. The free time enabled me to observe him closely on the school playground on many many days, spend more time with him 1:1, and gave me a factual basis for research which brought us to where we are today.

Did I mention that the audiologist had a last-minute cancellation and that's how we got yesterday's appointment? I called her on Monday, we saw her on Tuesday. Her next available appointment was in August. How lucky is that? There are very few pediatric audiologists in the area who are qualified to assess for CAPD.

In the last year I've relied heavily on supportive listeners and friends. This is no road to travel on alone. Thank god for each and every one of them.