My son was diagnosed with severe APD. We did AIT listening therapy, primary reflex integration and Neurofeedback.
The AIT fixed a conductive hearing loss he had and fixed the strapedius muscle in the middle ear. He was 6 and for the first time was hearing normally and his auditory system was getting proper stimulation. We saw massive improvements in his speech and comprehension of language.
We did primary reflex integration because he never crawled and exhibit many symptoms of unintegrated ATNR. This greatly improved his attention and ability to request assistance when he did not understand language. He was 7.
At 8 we began neurofeedback with a QEEG brain map. It confirmed that his auditory cortex was still underperforming. We did 40 sessions of neurofeedback after which he was reassessed by an audiologist when he was 9. He had NO symptoms of auditory processing disorder.
Our son had excessive ear infections as a baby so he had acquired type APD, not hereditary APD. The first audiologist who diagnosed him said he would probably improve with therapies since the ear infections likely caused the problem to begin with.
I don’t know about techniques, but there are definitely therapies that can help. It really depends on the cause of your APD and how bad it is.
There are two origins of APD: genetic and acquired.
Genetic APD can sometimes be helped with therapies, but since the brain is wired that way, it is not always something that can be improved. In that case coping strategies will have to be employed.
Acquired APD means the person’s brain was born with a normal auditory cortex. So the wiring is in place for normal auditory process. Somewhere along the line it did not develop right or was disrupted. Excessive ear infections are the most common cause of an under developed auditory system in toddlers. Head injury, vaccinations and some antibiotics can also damage the auditory system causing auditory processing disorder.
There are many therapies that can help improve a damaged auditory system. I have found listening therapies, like AIT and The Listening Program to be hugely beneficial. It’s important to also investigate primary reflex integration and make certain all neurological development is in place. Neurofeedback is the best approach to helping APD, although it is expensive and time consuming.
There are online computer programs, like Fast ForWord, that say they can improve auditory processing, but in my experience they only help 50% of the time.
My experience comes from recovering my son from APD and being an admin of an APD support group on Facebook for over 15 years.
