My son is 6yrs old and has a severe speech delay. He has been recieving therapy now for 3yrs but has not made any significant gains. He has been tested and found that receptivley he is above his age but expressively he is behind by 3 and 1/2 years. His speech therapist has talked to us about Brandon having an Auditory Processing disorder and that is what he will be tested for. He had a full hearing screen last week and found there are no hearing problems so no will have to see if this is our answer.

Brandon has been a severe refluxers since birth which caused chronic ear infections and sinus infections. At a year he had his first sinus surgery and first set of tubes,then at 2yrs had a gtube placement due to complications from a fundo and second set of tubes. then at 21/2 he had his second sinus surgery and third set of tubes. So up to now docs all thought his speech problems were due to all of this but his speech therapist feels that there is more to it and I have to agree. He has not had an ear infection now in 3yrs but continues with sinus infections but have decreased.

I am really happy that we are testing him for this so that we now may beable to get some answers. I know that he is so fustrated at times becasue no one understands most of the time. I just hope that testing will help so will have to wait and see on Wed.

I am wondering if anyone here has deal with an auditory processing problem?


Melanie.

I have a son named Brandon, too, but it's my 3 1/2 yo. (Evan) who has all of the delays, with speech and feeding skills being our huge priorities these days. I'd love to hear more about a possible auditory processing problem and how they'll test him for it? We still have no diagnosis and are going for our last possible genetic test on Monday.

Yea, Janette, I am glad you found someone to talk to about this stuff!

Melanie, sorry I am no help, Eli is 2 1/2 and had problems with ear and sinus too but I dont think he has any probs as of yet with speech, I did, but it took off right after fundo. I was going to mention Janette to you but she beat me to the post.... :D

Shae is now 5 (well next month) and she had severe speech delays for a very long time. Her first real word wasn't until she was about 3.5 yrs. She also had all the hearing tests, but she's been 100% tube fed she was 3 months old so we all just figure that her speech issues were from lack of oral motor skills. She is actually now above average in expressive language although some of her pronouncation is still behind. I used sign language with her in the first few years when she wasn't talking. It was a really big help.

Anyway, sorry, I guess I don't have anything constructive to add to your question, just wanted to also share our experience with speech issues. Your poor little guy certainly has been through the ringer with his reflux! ((HUGS))

Yea, Janette, I am glad you found someone to talk to about this stuff!
Me too!

I was going to mention Janette to you but she beat me to the post.... :D
:wink:

Roni,

Thanks for the encouragement for all of us with Shae's speech story! It really gives me hope that Evan's speech will still come!

Hi Melanie,
Sorry about all the problems that your son has gotten throught. My son has speech delays as well and he will be three next months. we were just told that he had a mild form of autism. I hope that he will started to speak soon. It is hard to see kids fruatrsted b/c they can't talk or no one understands them. I didn't know about audtory proceesing disorders. I hope that you can tell us more when you learn more.

Hope you can get some answers soon.

Shannon

Sorry for all the trouble your son has been through.

My son is severely delayed with speech and language at the age of 5, but they have no idea what has caused it. He tests very low for verbal and exceptionally high for non-verbal. Apparently, only 5.5% of the population have such a difference between the two and Walker is one of them. Our hope is that the difference will be less as time goes on. Unlike your son Walker is actually improving. I have no experience in what your son is being tested for, but I can ask a friend about it.

Please be sure to let us know how the testing is done and how he does.

Leigh