The Sound of Hope Recognizing, Coping with, and Treating Your Child's Auditory Processing Disorder

by Heymann, Lois Kam; O'Donnell, Rosie

• ISBN13: 9780345512185
• ISBN10: 0345512189
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-27
• Publisher: Ballantine Books

Summary

"The Sound of Hope" offers a ground-breaking manual for honing a child's auditory skills--whether they have been diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder, a learning disability, or slow language development.

Author Biography

Lois Kam Heymann, MA, CCC-SLP, is a recognized leader in the treatment of children with listening, learning, and auditory challenges. As a private speech and language pathologist, she has more than thirty years of experience working with families and also serves as a consultant to hospitals and schools, including the Children’s Hearing Institute and more than a dozen school districts in and around New York City. A noted educator, Heymann teaches auditory therapy at the State University of New York at New Paltz and has presented hundreds of seminars and workshops nationally for doctors, speech and language pathologists, teachers, and parents. She lives in Rosendale, New York.

Excerpts

Chapter One


When Hearing Isn’t Listening: 
The ABCs of APD

Margaret’s beautiful baby boy Billy Ray was six months old when she began to sense that something wasn’t right. Why didn’t Billy Ray look at her, even when Margaret took him in her arms and murmured his name? Margaret had a powerful sense that the sounds her little boy made, so different in pitch and tone from her first child’s coos and giggles were just, well, wrong. And Margaret rarely had any sense that her son was making his baby sounds in response to the things his mom said or did.

Her doctor assured her there was nothing to worry about. “Boys start to talk later than girls,” he explained. “Besides, Billy Ray is the second child in the family. His need to communicate with you is not as great.” Well, he’s the doctor, Margaret thought. Yet in her heart, she just couldn’t accept these reasonable-sounding explanations. Margaret felt deep down that Billy Ray should be responding more to her and her husband’s voices and the sounds and noises in their home. Based on her experience with her first child, she sensed that the pre-speech vocalizations Billy Ray made should be different from what they were. Reaching for a box of rice one afternoon at home, Margaret impulsively rattled it behind Billy Ray’s head. When he again failed to react, Margaret knew what she had to do. The following day, she had Billy Ray’s hearing checked, fully expecting that her child had a hearing impairment.

The results came back normal.

Undeterred, Margaret arranged for consultations with two separate pediatric neurologists. After a battery of tests and examinations with Billy Ray and a lengthy interview with Margaret, both doctors concluded that Billy Ray had pervasive developmental disorder (PDD). Margaret had never heard of PDD, a condition involving developmental delays of socialization and communication skills. She tried to be as upbeat as possible as each neurologist explained what PDD was and described a therapeutic preschool and the necessary therapy that would accommodate Billy Ray’s special needs. Margaret was grateful for the diagnosis—having one gave her something new to focus her efforts on—but worried that the doctors were sentencing her beautiful little boy to a life of isolation. Nevertheless, Margaret did the research, fought with her insurance company, and adjusted her family’s budget so that Billy Ray could attend the school and receive the therapy that both doctors recommended.

But by age two Billy Ray was still uncommunicative. Worse, as he grew from infant to toddler, Billy Ray’s inability to listen began to be an educational and social ball and chain for him. Frustrated by an invisible wall that complicated and confused nearly everything he was asked to do, Billy Ray cried and acted out a lot. Unable to state his own needs or understand what other boys and girls asked for, he pushed and grabbed for toys, upsetting his peers and testing his teachers’ patience. As his mother looked on helplessly, Billy Ray increasingly retreated into a world of his own. Instead of each new day offering a chance to grow, develop, and interact more meaningfully and happily with the world around him, Margaret, Billy Ray, and their family faced a daily struggle simply to cope.

Margaret could see how much it hurt and confused Billy Ray when he misunderstood and was in turn misunderstood, but she was at a loss as to how best to help her son. It felt as if Billy Ray was on the other side of a door, knocking for her to unlock it, and Margaret simply didn’t have the key. Increasingly Margaret worried that if she couldn’t find a way to open the door and lead Billy Ray out into the full, rich world of experience, her little boy would never be able to play and connect with his sister, make friends in school,

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Excerpted from The Sound of Hope: Recognizing, Coping With, and Treating Your Child's Auditory Processing Disorder by Lois Kam Heymann
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