APD and phonics

[Scottie04]

Hi
My 5yr old DD has just started yr 1. At the end of last term the teachers told me she was doing ok, but some test they carry out, she 'failed' the auditory processing part. (Not sure what the test was).
Having read up on APD, I recognize a lot of the traits in her.
She has had her hearing tested, its ok.
She has just had a speech assesment and will need speech therapy, her speech is quite poor, but she does not follow any pattern with her sounds, she says some at the beginning of words and some at the end and there are some sounds she does not say at all!
Her reading is poor, she knows all the letters and some sounds like th. She does not seem able to blend words ie DOG she will say doll!
Is there a reading scheme I can do with her? I've read of apples and pears, The Hornet Literacy Primer, dancing bears.
Can anyone recommend anything, I can do and what if anything should I be asking her school to help with?
Thanks

I'm watching for a response to this thread with interest as it could have been written by me. I'm just starting Hornet Literacy Primer with my son so that i can list the sounds he finds difficult to distinguish between. He leaves out bits of words too - for example he might say "It's going to be sunny today, it said so on ver wevver 'cast, I 'member it so I 'cided to wear a t shirt to rudby". His reading is below average but not awful - he's just started y2 and is on 'orange or green' books. His writing is poor and his spelling dreadful. He can't encode well. But I feel most of his problem lies in poor auditory processing. He can't hear the difference between certain sounds and like you I've had his eyes and ears tested and they are fine. His maths and other things are all 'average', not really bad but not disastrous and certainly not 'above expectation', he takes a bit longer to 'get it'. I have no idea what to do, where to go or how to help him.

My dd has ADP, she is in y4 and still cannot blend words. The teacher more or less gave up and we ended up teaching her words by sight rather than phonics. She is behind on everything really and it's very disheartening. I'm sure if she had the option to do a reading scheme earlier it would have helped her. I think indigobell or mrsz are the ladies to help you out.

She has auditory problems so you need to start with a listening program.

There are many, and they vary hugely in price. From £15 per month. To £2000

Ones I know of are:

Auditory Integration Training
Listening Program
Johansson
Tomatis Method
Theureputic Listening

I've used AIT with all my 3 and it's helped tremendously.

Hearing tests don't check for auditory problems, they only check if your child is deaf or not - which she isn't.

She probably does have auditory discrimination problems and hypercaucus (sensitive to certain frequencies)

AIT cured most of the hypercaucus, which stopped my child being in pain when he was in the class room.

Here's an Auditory Discrimination Test so you can see if your child does have that problem.

After she's done a listening therapy, do Dancing Bears with her. But not before.

Hi
Thanks for the info - I did the test with her and she got so many of them wrong! I will look into the listening therapy, but I have just looked up one of them and I have no idea how she will sit for 30 mins - I can't get her to sit for 5 mins to read a book! lol!
Do schools have access to the listening therapies or is it something I need to access?
Thanks

You can sometimes get it on the NHS from an OT.

But it's far easier to pay for it yourself. (ie it's very hard to get on the NHS)

She doesn't have to sit still while doing it, only wear the headphones.

I did that auditory discrimination test with him sitting with his back to me and he got the following wrong - as in he thought they were the same words which seems v typical of him and he got the sounds wrong that I already knew he'd struggle to distinguish between.
tin pin
dim din
clothe clove
sheaf sheath
fie - thigh
vow - thou
sought - fought
Do you really think auditory integration would make a difference? It IS super expensive....

I do think it will help, and it is super expensive.

However it is also possible cheaper alternatives would help - but because I haven't done any of them, I can't personally recommend them.

I know my OT offers Therapeutic Listening Programme for £15 per month.

But I have no idea how good it is.

I certainly think it will be better than doing nothing.

Yep it's better than doing nothing, just wishing it was definitively the answer. It's so frustrating that there is so little support on offer and little that doesn't take months/years of waiting for or such a fight to receive. The amount of "oh we don't do anything till they are x age" - surely earlier the better. I will look and think on re the Auditory thing. But I'm instinctively thinking it's probably the way to go.

You might find this helpful, from the APD UK website. Dilys Treharne is, I beleive, one of the foremost researchers in the field in the UK

Management of Auditory Processing Disorders: Dilys Treharne

arrgh, saw the typo just as I pressed 'post'... 'believe'

Thank you. I'll look at those. Thanks for the useful links all.

Interesting that he recommends the listening program.

I have no idea how much that one costs.

All 3 of my kids have done AIT, and I have before and after audiograms of them. So I know it works. As well as the audiogram showing how much their hearing has improved, all 3 of them have had noticeable improvements in school.

Before treatment DS1 used to walk out of class up to 5 times a day because it hurt his ears. After treatment he no longer walked out of class.

Before treatment DD had been stuck on CVC words for over a year and she couldnt spell a single word correctly. After treatment she made the
most amazing leap. Learnt most of her sounds, started to learn to spell. Her memory and slow processing improved a lot.

She went from being unteachable, to being very hard to teach :)

The improvements in DS2 were t so noticeable, because his problems weren't so noticeable in the first place. He reads well and doesn't walk out of class. But he def hears better now, talks more and better, and doesn't get so stressed by noisy places.

One thing u can try yourself (even if u want to explore the second opinion route) is to get your dc to look at your mouth while u pronounce very clearly the sounds which they have trouble with.
Saying them together in front of the mirror can also be fun. It helps to make them more aware of how we produce speech sounds.

Thanks for the links, I will do some research and speak to the school to see if they have any experience!
She is being retested by audiology later in the year and is on a waiting list (NHS) although I may go down the private route if needed. I have told them both I wondered if she had APD, but neither of them seemed overly concerned (maybe they just don't know about it)
What is the best way to get referrals?
Thanks

A standard NHS audiologist won't pick any of this up.

They don't test for auditory discrimination or hypercaucus.

All they test for is hearing loss - which she doesn't have.