[senco-forum] glue ear, listening skills and behaviour

This is not new. A child who has glue ear is at very
great risk of damage to the auditory neural pathways.
The glue ear may be temporary but the damage isn't. 
The issues you are describing here are all
manifestations of APD and apart from the
inherited/congenital cause of APD, glue ear is another
of the major causes. 

The growing number of children with glue ear means
there is a growing number of children with APD. This
can, as you say, affect acquisition of speech asd most
tofddlers are at risk of glue ear when leaening
speech, this in turn means they have not learned
phonemes properly, this has a future impact on reading
and spelling. 

Now you see the enormity of the impact APD can have.
Tghese childen at at great risk of being mistaken as
having attention deficits and behavioral issues too
and may appear to be hard of hearing. Pragmatic
difficulties are also due to a subtype of APD in many
children. Some cannot make sense of nuancesm sarcasms
or humour as this depends on understanding tone of
voice.... auditory tonal processing difficuties can
cause issues there. These are simply written texts
which may help explain although the UK does not use a
modular approach as it is too simplistic and there can
be overlaps of subtypes, some childre may have several
of them.

http://auditoryprocessing.com.au/8-apdtype.html

http://www.nswagtc.org.au/info/articles/PittelkowCAPDSubCategories.html

The therapies mentioned can help but none of them will
have permamnent gains in children who have the
intherited form of APD or the inherited form plus the
glue ear or other acquired forms becauee the brain
reverts to type as it was when the child was when
born. Any damage to the pathways can be rebuilt/might
be repaired. But the extent of the damage and the
effectiveness of the programs is purely individual

Best wishes,
Aly

Chair Auditory Processing Disorder in the UK/APDUK
www.lacewingmultimedia.com/APD.htm 
www.apduk.org

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