Re: Central Auditory Processing
Kiwi Phil<br /><br />I don't have a kid with the same issue but I do have one with a parallel issue.<br /><br />I'm going to contradict some of the previous posters about experts. <br /><br />Experts deserve to be trusted and their advice should be followed. The problem is to determine who are really experts and who are just well-intentioned drones, useless seat warmers, up-themselves pud-pullers, or just plain incompetents and fools.<br /><br />My nearly 15 y.o. son had a lot of what we, and his teachers, thought were motivation and self-discipline problems in primary school. An alert teacher picked up a speech impediment (pre-stuttering) in early primary school for which he received speech therapy, although it embarrassed him.<br /><br />He was, and is, a very bright kid as verified by rigourous IQ testing that cost us a pretty penny in primary school as part of trying to work out what was going on.<br /><br />From middle primary school he had more and more problems at school which I won't bore you with. He finished primary school on a sour note.<br /><br />Secondary school started brilliantly and we thought he was blossoming.<br /><br />Second year of secondary school it all turned to sh!t. Nothing serious on any individual issue but the cumulative effect was that he was at risk of being expelled if he continued on his downward path. <br /><br />I suspected there was something deeper. I spoke to his teachers, during the many happy times I was called to the school, about whether he might have some form of learning difficulty. Or maybe some kind of faint autism. Or something. No. Definitely not in their professional opinion. The kid was just rebellious and disobedient and needed to learn discipline. Same but less definite attitude from the school counsellors. All the educational experts had spoken.<br /><br />The kid was going down at school and at home. Give a dog a bad name. Endless conflict and problems but always over minor stuff. But very, very wearing for his mother and me, and his younger sister. And, most of all, him.<br /><br />Poor little bugger was drowning. He knew it but didn't know why and everybody else apart from me, not that most of the time I didn't feel he needed a solid kick in the arse, said he just needed to learn to swim.<br /><br />Took him to my doctor who's a rough bloke (we get on very well) and a sharp cookie. He referred us to a paedetrician. Various tests and questionnaires of us and teachers. Paedetrician says he has mild Attention Deficit Disorder. He's seen tons of kids who are brighter than average who hit the wall in early secondary school because the technical demands of various subjects exceed their ability to get by on natural ability. Oddly enough, independent research supports his view.<br /><br />Everybody we know is a bloody expert on ADD and all other disorders. They all say it's BS and the disorder doesn't exist etc etc etc. The less contact they have with their kids and the more marriages they've stuffed up, the bigger expert they are.<br /><br />Funny thing is that the medication prescribed by our expert turned our boy around in a very short time. Funnier thing is that when he's off medication he reverts to his earlier conduct, although it's getting less bad as time progresses. <br /><br />Even funnier, all his teachers who were thinking about expelling him half way through last year gave him glowing reports at year's end and complimented him on his huge improvement in conduct, attitude and academic performance.<br /><br />The kid who never finished an assignment, or even a task in class, in primary school and in the first year and a half of secondary school now comes home from school and often gets his homework done straight off. Like I've always told him: work first, play later. He hasn't got a quarter of the homework he used to have which overwhelmed him because most of that was stuff he didn't finish in class.<br /><br />He's way happier. We're happier as a family. He's doing real well, near the top of the class overall instead of phenomenal results in a few tests but failing overall because he didn't finish work, not to mention other problems.<br /><br />Our expert saved our kid. <br /><br />If you have the right expert, it's the best advice you'll get. <br /><br />Unfortunately there's no test to determine when you have the right expert.
<br />but in addition to high school I sent her to oklahoma to a horseshoing trainingschool whenshe was 17. she taveled from kitty hawk to oklahoma then on to seattle WA all by her lonsome. its about 2200miles from here to ok and about 3000miles to seattle. she was on her own allsummer and excelled, came back and finnished high school. her mom and some quack therapist had talked her intoquitting school at age 16. I had to beg on my knees to get her reenrolled but I did and now she has a diploma in horseraining/shoeing and a high school diploma.
