Sensory Needs and the Small Child: Scents and Tastes that Calmed our Sweet Girl

Today my mind is wandering back to the younger years when my children were just little toddlers, and I remembered how my sweet Hailey adored smelling the fresh ginger root when we went grocery shopping.  I would take the ginger and break it at the end so that it would release its sharp, refreshing fragrance.  She loved it!


So I got to thinking about other sensory things we would do for our little sweetie when she was a toddler.  In particular, she adored smells and tastes.  As she was a little one who carried around a security blanket she lovingly (and probably mistakenly due to her auditory processing disorder) called "Nonny" after her twin brother would speak about his bunny he carried around named "Bunny", we would put scents on the corners of her blanket for her.  Some of her favorites were lavender oil, maple syrup (I know sticky but it dries just fine and retains its smell for a while), and lemon juice or lemon oil.

We actually cut her blanket into 4 small squares and she would carry one of the squares around with her constantly.  Each corner would have a smell put on it and she could rotate it so that as she sucked her fingers (she liked her index finger and middle finger) she would at the same time put one of the corners of "Nonny" to her nose to smell.  This was a way that she could self-sooth and remain calm, especially when we were in environments like the grocery store or at a family gathering and the like. (And who knows, maybe she hated the smells the world had to offer up sometimes and she chose to smell what she liked???)

Another sensory trick we had was to bring along little hot cinnamon candies called Hot Tamales that she liked.(Our occupational therapist turned us on to these little hotties.) When life was getting overwhelming, a Hot Tamale candy to suck on was like a magic pill. At home, we usually used a drop of lemon juice on her tongue, but the candies were kept in my purse for occasions that we were not at home.

So if your child has sensory issues and gets frazzled at times, you might find that some scents or tastes might just do the trick.  I mean who would ever think that giving a two year old a really hot cinnamon candy to suck on would calm her down and make her feel relaxed!

Super Ears - When Your Child with APD Can Hear Whispers From Across the Room

We jokingly say that our sweet Hailey has super ears.  With her particular aspects of auditory processing disorder, she can hear sounds far away as if they were close by.  Due to this ability, we cannot whisper anything and expect her not to hear it.

When she was just a little toddler, I remember having her sitting in the grocery cart in front of me while I strolled down the aisles.  Suddenly she would start nervously repeating "Baby! Baby! Baby!" and sucking her fingers and rubbing her "nonny" (her little blanket she carried around for comfort).  This was my sign that she was in distress and she was telling me why: some baby somewhere was crying.  So I would stop and listen and sure enough, somewhere in the distance, across the store, there was just the faintest sound of some infant crying.  It was uncanny how she could do this over and over again.

Now that our sweet Hailey is 12 years old, we forget sometimes that she can do this amazing hearing thing and we'll whisper something in an adjoining room to where she is. Of course, like most parents, we think we are speaking "privately" by doing this, but sure enough when we walk in the room with our girl, she asks a question or makes a comment that reminds us that she hears us, even when we think she does not.

Of course, with Hailey's auditory processing disorder, she hasn't always processed what she heard us whisper correctly and then we are left with either having to explain everything or say, "Sweetie, we didn't mean for you to hear that and we'd rather not talk about it with you."  To which comment she sighs, understanding and yet feeling left out.  (Then I worry that I need to talk to her because I have no idea what she thinks she heard.)

Does APD affect you or your child in this way?  Do you or he/she have super ears?

Lindsey Wagner from the 1970's television show "The Bionic Woman" (in the show her character had a bionic ear and could hear sounds from extremely far away).

Reading with a Toddler who Only Likes the Pictures (APD and the small child)

When my sweet Hailey was a toddler, she hated for me to read books to her.  Her twin brother absolutely loved it and would crawl in my lap for me to read to him as much as possible.  She, on the other hand, would crawl into my lap and put her hands on my lips to signal me to stop talking!  She just wanted to sit in my lap and look at the pictures in the books.

So I let her take the lead on these book experiences for us.  She would point to something in the book and give me that longing look of "What is that?" and I would use a one-word answer, "Train". Together we would go through the books with her pointing and either telling me or asking me what each thing was.  This was how Hailey enjoyed books for many years, and I'm sure it aided in her vocabulary development.

Phonemic Awareness for my Child with Auditory Processing Disorder and Dyslexia

I wanted to touch on reading skills again and the immense troubles Hailey had learning how to read.  You see, I was a first grade teacher for years before I decided to stay home with my own children and I had been trained in teaching children phonemic awareness, phonics, and various approaches to reading and comprehension skills.  I used these same techniques on my own children from the beginning as I was reading to them as infants.

The trouble for Hailey started very young.  When she was just a toddler, she would get angry at me for reading to her.  She wanted to look at the pictures, but when I read the words, she would get mad and put her hand on my mouth to let me know she wanted me to be quiet.

As for phonemic awareness, she could not understand what I was asking her to do at all.  We played with sounds like identifying the beginning sounds of word: bananas, babies, bottles, etc.  I had toys to go with them; I had plastic letters; we played scavenger hunt games for them; and much more, but she just could NEVER do it.  Her twin brother loved it and picked it up like it was second nature.

No matter what I tried, Hailey just had no phonemic awareness.  To her, many letter sounds sounded all the same.  She could not tell the difference between sounds like /b/, /p/, /d/, /t/.  I was dumbfounded and had no idea what to do.  

I managed to locate a reading specialist about 40 minutes drive from our house who was a retired reading specialist from the public school system and now was offering private tutoring.  I made an appointment for her to see Hailey and give her some testing.  She had been trained in using The Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing® (LiPS®) Program for Reading, Spelling, and Speech and believed it would be the best solution for Hailey.

So Hailey and I started going to her once a week for an hour long lesson.  She would send home homework for us to do during the week.  The real key to this program which made everything finally make sense to Hailey was the way she taught Hailey to identify letter sounds by their oral motor sensations and the visual look when seeing someone make those sounds.  She could identify /p/ by the way the lips go together and a breath is formed at the front of the mouth and blown through the lips.  /b/ on the other hand, has a sound created in the throat that goes through closed lips and /t/ has the sound formed in the front of the mouth like /p/ but it goes through the teeth and the tongue goes up behind the teeth in front.  It sounds complicated, but for Hailey this made absolute sense and she picked it up incredibly quick.

This way of identifying sounds by their oral motor sensations and the way they look on others when being made brought Hailey the phonemic awareness she needed.  She finally could identify the different phonemes in words, rhyme words, and read words!

Not every child  with Auditory Processing Disorder has this same problem with phonemic awareness or the inability to hear the distinct letter sounds.  But if your child cannot rhyme, identify the beginning sound in words, or otherwise seems to think you are crazy when trying to teach them these things, it might be worth looking into.


-----I just wanted to add a link to the reading specialist we used in case anyone lives in the Detroit Metropolitan Area: Macomb Tutoring, LLC.

Pictures Of Hailey: Premature Twin to 12 Year Old Girl

I thought I'd share a couple photos of my daughter whom you have been reading about:

Premature Twin shown here at 13 days old: (She's the one on top.)

And now, a healthy 12 year old girl: (Her twin brother is in the background.)

Early Intervention Services for Infants and Toddlers With Special Needs

I thought I would take a step back in time again and tell you about getting an IFSP (Individualized Family Service Plan) when our daughter was two years old.

By the time our daughter was two years old, we really knew something was not working so well for her.  She was not speaking, didn't seem to understand what we were saying to her, was having meltdowns and staring spells a lot, and she did odd things like keep things stored in her mouth, smell everything, constantly put her head down in between her legs, and most scary of all, she absolutely panicked when she heard loud noises.  It seemed that life was just getting too difficult for her, and she was not coping well.

So I kept a notebook or her issues and started doing some research on the internet.  I also spoke with our family pediatrician who was concerned the issue might be Autism.  So we set up an appointment with our state's early intervention program.

The state we lived in was the State of Missouri and their program is called Missouri First Steps. They came to our home and talked with us the parents while just observing our daughter at first. They listened to our concerns and decided that some testing of our daughter would be appropriate.

A speech and language pathologist came to our home and tested our daughter.  She was found to be significantly behind in her speech and language development, so this qualified her for their speech services.  Our IFSP had a plan of weekly home visits with a speech and language therapist to work with our daughter and teach us things to do with her ourselves to help build her receptive and expressive language skills

Next an occupational therapist came to our home to test her.  Our daughter was diagnosed as having Sensory Integration Disorder and the occupational therapist's services were added to our IFSP.  Like the speech services, an occupational therapist came to our home weekly to work with our daughter and teach us a sensory diet to use with her at home.

Third, a special education teacher was sent to our home to do some testing to determine if it seemed our daughter had an intellectual disability.  This teacher felt she was most likely at least average intelligence and did not show any signs of an intellectual delay at that time, but as she had severe speech and language problems, she was at a high risk of having a learning disability. Therefore, our IFSP maintained that we would have monthly visits from the special education teacher to track our daughter's progress and address any concerns we had.

These services continued until our daughter aged out of that system at three years old.  All of the states' early intervention programs are only for children birth to three years.  Then children continuing to need services are sent to the school districts to be tested and provided services as determined by them.

To look up services provided by your state for children birth to three years, search for "(your state) early intervention services".

Accepting Our Child Has a Difference/Disability: It's A Process

"When our daughter was two, we noticed that not only did she not speak, but she didn’t seem to understand most of what we told her.  She has a twin brother and he was speaking in sentences, telling us stories, and in every way communicating well.  We wanted to believe that she was just a late bloomer, but when she started tantruming from frustration, screaming from noises we could barely hear, and staring glazedly into space – absolutely checking out from reality – we knew something was not right." Suspecting Auditory Processing Disorder in Young Children

Realizing that your child has something "wrong" for lack of a better term is extremely frightening and completely overwhelming at first.  I remember being so stressed by it all that I actually would have quasi-panic attacks where I would feel my heart palpitating and feel short of breath.

Thoughts would race through my head: Will she ever be able to understand language?  What if she always tantrums? Will I have a 16 year old daughter who runs around frantically screaming with her hands held over her ears whenever she hears a loud noise?

Yes, it's true.  When our children show signs of a problem, we have no real idea how significant that problem is going to be in their lives.  And it is not just us who don't know!  We go to doctors and therapists and specialists of various sorts who can tell us what most likely is going on in their opinion, but none of them can give us guarantees of what the future holds.

So the hardest thing we as parents do is learn to be patient, keep hope alive, and honor and assist our children where they are at each and every day.  We cherish the little things they accomplish and work to help them meet one goal and then the next along their path.

Then over time we realize that our own anxieties are less.  We come to understand this disability for its gifts as well as its difficulties.  We embrace our child for who she is and cannot imagine nor wish her to be any different than whom she is.

Signs and Symptoms that Your Young Child Might Have Auditory Processing Disorder

We noticed at a young age that our daughter was different.  She was easily overwhelmed and didn’t seem to understand language.  Of course, we had never heard of auditory processing disorder but in hindsight, we realize what we were observing in her were early signs of her auditory processing disorder.*

Here are some snippets of what we saw in her as well as what others (therapists and educators) noticed:

Infancy:

• Cries whenever her twin cries and won’t stop until he stops.
• Has staring spells and sensory needs (prefers to sit in her vibrating chair and suck her fingers)

Interventions:  Mom created physical therapy to encourage play, cross body movements, scooting, crawling, and walking.  I also provided visual stimulation, tactile and sensory experiences, and the usual best practices for infant development. (I'm a teacher turned stay at home Mom who likes to study and implement the best practices for raising my children.)

Age 2 1/2: 

• Has staring spells
• Petrified of loud sounds (screams, digs fingernails and teeth into Mom’s skin to hold on)
• Stares blankly when spoken to or responds inappropriately (ex: wipes hands on grass when told  to wipe feet on mat)
• Complains “baby,baby” when a baby can be heard crying in the distance
• Complains “rain” and spaces out, sucking fingers with a terrified look on her face when we are in the car and it is raining
• Cannot listen to a story be read: just points to pictures and names objects, getting frustrated from   Mom trying to actually read the story
• Repeats last word said to her (echolalia)
• Doesn’t like television
• Confuses words (ex. Says “juice” for “milk”)
• Speaks only 1 word utterances

Interventions: In home speech therapy (Diagnoses of Speech and Language Delay) and occupational therapy (Diagnosis of Sensory Integration Disorder) 1x per week with daily reinforcement at home, listening therapy (“The Listening Program”), special education consultant (Diagnosis of At Risk for Learning Delays) 1x per month, a daily sensory diet was implemented, and we used picture cards to help with communication.

Age 3 1/2:  (Special Education Preschool: IEP Evaluation: Diagnosis of Young Child with a Developmental Delay in the areas of Communication and Adaptive Behavior):

• “Hailey demonstrates difficulty with sensory processing and modulation.  She received scores in the definite different range for auditory processing, touch processing, multisensory processing, oral sensory processing, modulation related to body position, modulation of sensory input affecting emotional responses, emotional/social responses, and behavioral outcomes of sensory processing.  Hailey spaces out and stares when she becomes overwhelmed.  She chooses to play with children who are calm.  She becomes overwhelmed by large groups of people and in noisy environments.”
• “Hailey’s speech is 50% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener when the context is not known and 70-80% intelligible when the context is known.”
• “Hailey does not show understanding of part/whole relationships, follow two step related commands without cues, or identify pronouns.  Hailey has difficulty understanding negatives in sentences, making inferences, and difficulty in categorizing objects in pictures….She does not tell how objects are used, answer questions logically, or use words to describe a physical state.  Hailey is very quiet and withdrawn at school.  Hailey rarely talks to peers or in a group.  She needs to be encouraged to use her words and not just nod her head.  Questions need to be repeated for her.   She has trouble blocking out background noises.  Hailey has word retrieve, decoding, and short term memory issues.”
• (I have to add that she was noticed as being "great at puzzles", "hard working", "kind", and "interested in new things".)

Interventions:  2x per week special education preschool (1/2 day) with focus on speech therapy, occupational therapy, and social skills training; continued sensory diet.

Age 4: (Special Education Preschool: IEP Evaluation: Diagnosis of Speech or Language Impairment):

• “Hailey continues to use incomplete sentences, which contribute to some of her unintelligibility….Hailey has not yet mastered her goal to initiate contact with the other children in her classroom and socialization skills are one of her biggest concerns.  She has not been observed consistently responding to other children’s initiative and chooses to play alone or alongside other children with little verbal interaction.  Hailey rarely verbalizes in large group activities unless prompted to do so and when she speaks she uses a very quiet voice.”

Interventions:  4x per week special education preschool (1/2 day) with focus on speech therapy, social skills training, and academic preparations; continued sensory diet.

Age 6: (Private Speech and Language Evaluation: Diagnosis of Mixed Expressive/Receptive Language Disorder):

• “Hailey’s overall speech intelligibility is approximately 75% in a familiar context and around 65% in an unknown context.”
• “Hailey successfully completed tasks with one or two commands and location concepts.  She had difficulty when the commands increased in length, with sequence concepts (ex. second, middle, fourth), and with inclusion/exclusion concepts (ex. all but one, neither)."
• “She demonstrated significant difficulties in recalling sentences.  She was able to recall sentences of up to 5 words successfully however she was observed to paraphrase sentences (ex. The given sentence: “The rabbit was not put in the cage by the girl.”  Hailey said: “The rabbit didn’t got in the cage because the girl.”)  She had difficulty imitating sentences of 5+ words in length. “
• “It was observed that when Hailey had difficulty retrieving a word, she would often use the word “helicopter"."
• "Hailey is a great little girl who enjoys interacting with people and exploring items in her environment.  She demonstrated appropriate eye contact and enjoyed carrying on conversations with the therapist.  She was observed to have difficulty answering questions and maintaining topics.  Hailey would often look to her mom for support when answering questions, ex. “What did you do at the birthday party?” and “What is your friend’s name?”
• “Hailey has significant difficulties with working memory tasks.  She was observed to recall the last number of a 2 number sequence (ex. “3-8”, Hailey: “8”).  However, she was able to recall a number sequence of 3 numbers when movement was included (ex. she could recall three numbers accurately when she walked one step for each number). She was able to recall a number sequence backwards of 2 numbers when incorporated with walking backwards.”
• “Hailey was able to blend syllables (ex. sail   boat = sailboat) with maximum cues and model with 1/5 accuracy.  She was able to detect rhymes (ex. cake-lake) with maximum cues and a model with 3/6 accuracy.  Hailey was able to identify the initial phoneme in a word given maximum cues and a model with 2/5 accuracy.  She was unable to participate in two syllable detection (ex. starfish, take away the fish = star).  These difficulties indicate a phonological awareness deficit.”
• (I have to add that she scored really high on determining the relationships and associations of objects meaning she understands the meanings behind words: vocabulary.)

Interventions:  Private speech therapy 1x per week (utilizing movement and visuals) with daily reinforcement continued at home, listening therapy (“Sonomas Listening Program”), continued daily sensory diet.  Homeschooling for academics and small playgroups with parental support for social skills.

(From that point on we continued speech therapy until Hailey was almost 9.  She was diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder and we still continue to use strategies for accommodating auditory processing disorder.  She was further diagnosed with Dyslexia and Visual Processing Disorder.  She did visual therapy to help with the visual processing disorder and we hired a private reading specialist to teach her the Lindamood Bell LiPS program.  We pulled her out of public school after the special education preschool program ended and they wanted to mainstream her into kindergarten without support.  She has been homeschooled ever since and continues with her sensory diet as needed.)

*As you probably noticed, Hailey’s receptive and expressive language skills were noticeably problematic for her from a young age.  Not all children with auditory processing disorder have such extreme problems with language.  However, for her, we believe her extreme auditory processing problems were the reason she had such difficulties with language.

So this is NOT a portrait of what all children with auditory processing disorder look like at a young age.  It is one portrait and maybe it will help others who see similar things in their young children to find some help and start on a path to answers for them.

Preparing for Daily Transitions Helps Children with Special Needs

Back in the day when I was a student teacher in a kindergarten classroom, I learned a lot of songs and games to use to help my students transition from one activity to the next.  They were fun ways of getting the children to pay attention and do what was needed to clean up and get ready for the next thing.  Like spraying magical dust upon them, it worked miraculously!  At the time, I had no idea what I was doing was assisting the children with transitions by providing them a secure routine which they understood and knew what was expected of them.  In my new teacher mind, I was simply doing what I knew worked to keep those thirty little munchkins from chaos!

Children do not like chaos!

As a parent of a child with special needs, I truly learned that children don’t like chaos any more than anyone else.  Since their worlds are mostly controlled by the adults in their lives, they might feel like the world around them is chaotic when things suddenly seem to happen and everything changes quickly – too quickly - and they don’t know why or what is going on.  These changes are transitions.  Every day we go through multiple transitions; some go smoothly and some knock us around a bit.

It only goes to reason that if all children can feel the world around them is moving quickly and unpredictably, how much more so does the child who processes things slowly or differently.  For the child with Auditory Processing Disorder or Mixed Receptive Expressive Language Disorder, language may be less than 50% understandable at times. Noises and movement in the environment may make things seem encroaching upon a child and always worrying that they just don’t understand can make the world seem out of control – chaotic.  So when a transition, a change from one activity or place to another, is suddenly thrust into the middle of an already somewhat chaotic feeling world, it can simply be too much.  The child understandably reacts with a meltdown.

Case Scenario:

When our daughter was very little, before we realized the significance of transitions, she would cry, get scared, panic, and grab me with such intensity her fingernails would embed into my skin.  In our adult minds it made no sense.  We had told her we were going to the store.  So when we put her shoes on and put her in the car, why did she suddenly freak out?  If we had only stopped to think about how it might have seemed from her point of view, we wouldn’t have been so shocked, and we would have been able to prevent it.  Eventually, with the help of our occupational therapist, we did.

From her point of view, she was sitting playing nicely with her toys in the comfort of her living room.  She heard some blah, blah, blah talking, but who knows what that was.  Then we came with shoes and put them on her feet.  She never had to wear shoes in the living room before, so that seemed weird. Besides, shoes aren’t comfortable.  Somewhere in the recesses of her mind she remembered wearing shoes before and it involved going outdoors, but maybe she sort of remembers this and maybe she doesn’t.  Suddenly we are picking her up and putting her in the car.  She was in the middle of playing and she didn’t want to stop playing.  She hates car rides because they are loud and sometimes there are weird smells.  Cars stop and go and things whiz past outside.  Moreover, she doesn’t want to go anywhere: home is predictable, usual, has the same sounds, smells, people, etc.  Other places are stressful, loud, smell funny, and may be too cold or too hot.  Even more frightening, what if people try to talk to her?  What if they touch her?  What will be expected of her?  Leaving home is always stressful and she wasn’t prepared.

Preparing for Transitions Does Wonders!

So we learned how to best prepare her for transitions.  We learned to use picture cards to show her the car and the store.  We told her we would be going in the car to the store.  We gave her time to process this information.  We helped her put away her toys.  We made sure she had her special blanket and her special chew toys.  We showed her the pictures again.  We encouraged her to repeat to us what we were doing. We reassured her that she was safe and we would be with her with our words and with pictures of us at the store with her safely sitting in the cart seat with her blanket and mommy beside her.  Yes, it took some time.  Yes, we had to plan and prepare for transitions.  It was well worth it!  They went smoother and without meltdowns – visibly she was still stressed, but they weren’t full-on panic meltdowns.

She still had to deal with the stress of being in the car and at the store.  She had to feel the panic when the cashier made eye contact and tried to talk to her.  We also learned sensory calming techniques to help with these things as well – her special blanket with scents on the corners and a vibrating chew toy or spicy candy, rubbing her hands, and speaking for her to the cashier (yes, she is a sweetheart – do I swipe my card here?) while comforting her all helped significantly.

It Gets Better With Time:

Okay, for all you poor panicked souls who are fearful that life will always be this difficult with your young, sensory sensitive child who processes things differently; I have some hope to offer.  This scenario I just described was our daughter at 2-3 years of age.  Today, at 11 years old, she is nothing like this!  She rides well in the car, she loves to go shopping, and she mostly does well responding to the cashiers.  She still hates to be rushed (she needs time to emotionally prepare she tells us) and wants to be told exactly what and when we are doing things.  Mostly we can tell her in words, but if it is a long list or complicated, we usually draw/write a flow chart or list.  And I have not had fingernails or teeth embedded into my skin for at least 7 years!

Suspecting Auditory Processing Disorder in Young Children

Lately I have come across a number of people who are new to auditory processing disorder.  These are people who have very small children who exhibit signs that might be indicative of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD).  I remember when my daughter was young and we knew something was not working right for her, but we weren’t sure what to do about it.  It was a scary, stressful time.

When our daughter was two, we noticed that not only did she not speak, but she didn’t seem to understand anything we told her.  She has a twin brother and he was speaking in sentences, telling us stories, and in every way communicating well.  We wanted to believe that she was just a late bloomer, but when she started tantruming from frustration, screaming from noises we could barely hear, and staring glazedly into space – absolutely checking out from reality – we knew something was not right. (When looking back on it, we realized that she actually exhibited signs as early as a newborn, but we didn’t know at the time what we were looking at.)

I started keeping a diary of her life.  I wrote down what she did or didn’t do that seemed unusual to me.  It didn’t take long to see a pattern emerge.  She didn’t understand what people said.  She was afraid of noises and voices.  She not only spaced out regularly, she did other odd things like smell everything, put things in her mouth, keep food stored in her cheeks, walk with her arms out at right angles, stand with her head on the ground down between her legs, play with her tongue in her mouth, constantly wiggle her fingers, not make eye contact, and try to avoid all people other than her immediate family. 

So I started researching and found out about our state’s infant and early childhood program.  It is a program that provides services such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc. to infants and children below the age of three.  They sent an evaluator to our home and decided that our daughter qualified for their services, so we started speech therapy and occupational therapy.

From our occupational therapist, we learned about Sensory Processing Disorder and started a sensory diet for our daughter.  This included physical activities as well as special foods that seemed to calm her and help her to not space out so much.  With a strong sensory diet, she made better eye contact, didn’t tantrum or space out so much, did less odd behaviors, and in general was a much happier and accessible child.

Our speech therapist was working actively on trying to get our daughter to speak and to better understand the spoken language.  I felt there had to be a reason that she didn’t understand, so we went to an audiologist to get her hearing testing.  Her ability to hear sounds was completely normal; she had no hearing loss.  So I started to research and found a disorder called Auditory Processing Disorder.  Our daughter seemed to fit this description perfectly.

I contacted a leading specialist in APD and set up a consultation appointment.  What I found out was that she was too young to be officially tested, but he was more than willing to look over my diary of her and meet her for some informal evaluations.  It didn’t take long for him to believe that she most likely did indeed have APD and that although he could not formally give her such a diagnosis, he felt it was accurate to believe she did have it, and we should start working towards helping her as much as possible.  He gave us a lot of information as well as some techniques to use with her such as always making eye contact, speaking in clear short phrases rather than sentences, watching for signs of stress in her particularly in noisy environments, and to realize that she will most likely not be able to understand what is being said if multiple people are talking at the same time- such as in a restaurant or at a family gathering.

With this information, we informed our speech therapist and occupational therapist who immediately researched Auditory Processing Disorder and tried to incorporate their new knowledge into their therapy.  Our occupational therapist started our daughter on a listening therapy program and our speech therapist introduced us to the use of picture cards to assist with communication.  Both of these things proved to be extremely useful.

At age three, our daughter transitioned into the school district’s early childhood special education program.  She went three mornings a week where she had access to a special education teacher, speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and direct instruction and experience in socialization.  Although it was stressful for her to go, she did show great improvement by going there – particularly in socializing.

So this was our start to living with Auditory Processing Disorder (and Sensory Processing Disorder).  If I could give any advice to parents of young children who are exhibiting signs that something just isn’t right, I would say start a diary.  Write down what your child is doing or not doing that seems distressing or odd.  In time, you will see patterns.  You can use these patterns to access the services and help you need.  If you live in the United States, contact your state’s infant and early child program if your child is under the age of three; your pediatrician or local school district should be able to give you the contact information.  If your child is aged three or older, contact your local school district.  These agencies have specialists that can help get you started on the path to helping your child.

She Will Find a Way to Make Herself Heard

Today I read a blog post which reminded me of my daughter when she was about five or six years old.  Her twin brother and she were working on learning to add as well as understand the concept of basic place value.  We had a hundreds chart taped to the wall which we used as a visual reference.  Of course, we also used other items and multi-sensory approaches, but the hundreds chart ended up playing a more significant role than I ever could have imagined.

My daughter, because of her auditory processing disorder and language issues, was still having a difficult time knowing the words for the numerals.  So she could see 5 and know that meant 5 objects, but she couldn't remember how to say "five".  She also couldn't identify the numeral 5 when I said "five".  It was frustrating for her, to say the least.

One day an amazing thing happened that really showed me how intelligent and creative my little girl really is.  She started pointing to numbers on the hundreds chart in a specific way.  She wanted me to watch her, and she was obviously trying to show me something.  So I kept watching and it finally dawned on me:  she was adding!  Yes, she was pointing to numbers in a sequence such as 4, 5, 9 or 3, 10, 13 and she kept doing this over and over again until she felt I understood her.

It was one of those enlightening moments in our lives.  I'll never forget it and since then, I have always trusted that she will find a way to make herself heard.