Auditory and Language Processing Disorder Information

In order to learn about your child’s auditory and language processing disorder, we must first understand and use language.  Language learning starts at the sound level. That is, we must first be able  to process the individual sounds that form words before we can apply meaning to the words in our language, understand the language we hear, and use language to express our needs, thoughts, and ideas. Speaking, reading, writing, and facial expressions/gestures are all forms of language. About 1 in every 20 children experiences difficulty with langauge. Language difficulties are not always obvious, and often go untreated. Children may have global attention deficits (e.g., ADHD) that result in an auditory processing deficit, or may have an auditory processing deficit that has been misinterpreted as ADD/ADHD. Often, language disorders can stem from underlying auditory processing deficits that go untreated. As you will see below, the characteristics of both auditory processing deficits and language deficits are very similar. Whatever the underlying cause of this language-learning difficulty,  these children are often mislabeled as “lazy,” “not applying himself,” “late bloomer,” or “doesn’t listen.” A child of normal or above average intelligence may not be able to understand and use language at their expected age levels. Some children acquire langauge normally, and some may have “gaps” in their language acquistion, which affects their ability to reach their full learning potential. At SPS, we can help find the underlying causes of the language-learning deficits, and work to permanently remediate these imperative functions  and skills.