Lately I’ve been wondering if I might have a hearing problem, something like APD because I don’t really have trouble hearing people but I do have trouble understanding them.
For whatever reason I started to notice that I hear things incorrectly a lot, and after I started to notice it I began to notice it constantly. Usually at least a few times a day, I have trouble understanding people even if they repeat themselves. Most people can relate to not understanding what someone said and having to ask multiple times and then just giving up, but I never notice anybody else asking me to repeat something as often as I ask other people to.
I remember one time when I got my hearing checked a few years ago, I got confused and frustrated because I wasn’t sure if the noise was from the headphones or if it was outside noise and I wasn’t really sure what I was hearing or if there was any noise to hear at all. Apparently I passed the test though, nobody ever said anything.
Lately I’ve been telling people “sorry, my hearing is kinda bad” when I have to ask them to repeat themselves a lot and I feel a bit dishonest in saying this because I’ve never been diagnosed with any hearing difficulties. So I’d like to clear my conscience in that regard lol.
Even though I know that I struggle with it (whatever “it” is) enough for it to impact my life, I’m afraid that maybe it’s just my own fault. I tell myself that I’m just lazy and unfocused, that I just made up a hearing issue for attention or as an excuse for my weaknesses, that I couldn’t have made it this far without a diagnosis if I had a real problem, that I just wanted something to obsess over.
Sorry for the gigantic post. To reiterate: should I get tested for auditory processing disorder and would a diagnosis be worth it?
what is the down side of not testing it? I think when my kid had the testing, they also introduced noise which made my kid difficult to identify the sound…(the assessment was done six years ago)… BTW, in most cases, it is covered by the insurance…
Yes, I agree that you should be tested by an audiologist Most clinicians want description of your problem, when it tends to occur or not happen, when you first noticed it, has it changed and how, what is the impact on you academically and socially and so on. You want the clinician, not you, to make any diagnosis and provide,recommendations for trestment.
When one of my children was fitted with glasses, the processing problems that were rather obvious to the rest of us though we assumed it stemmed from an auditory problem, began to clear up almost instantaneously.
It turns out that my child had been working really, really hard at reading mouths, and putting so much energy into it, that there seemed to be nothing but a distracted mind before us.
No one, not the first ophthalmologist to treat my child (one who did a really poor job of properly assessing the vision condition), nor the hearing specialists at the school could determine that the intense work at trying to see, which my child thought was normal vision and the way everyone saw, was interfering with the ability to hear and process.
A good pediatric ophthalmologist may be one you need to see as you go forward in trying to assess the condition you are suffering. Something to consider.
@DogsAndMath23
I have auditory processing disorder, Kind of ironic how I was “diagnosed” with it. I was called in to see my guidance counselor-I think it was my junior year of high school. She had some papers with graphs in front of her. She started to talk about some test results and moving on in a competition. I was having a great deal of difficulty following what she was saying. She then turned the paperwork around and showed it to me. I glanced at it for about 5 seconds and completely understood everything as I was a very fast reader. I had made National Merit Semi-Finalist. She looked at me for a while and told me she though I had auditory processing disorder. It seems likely that I made up for it by honing my visual skills and reading ability. Hence, the high test scores I usually received on aptitude tests.
I didn’t really do anything to get further diagnosed. I think the fact that she made me aware of my problem helped me to continue finding ways of compensating for my disability. Sometimes I do tell people that I work with that I have ADP- especially if they are really puzzled because I seem very intelligent to them yet they don’t understand why they have to keep repeating everything to me.
The main thing I did in college to help me follow lectures is to be very diligent about note-taking; that way I converted the verbal to written/ visual. I also found that I was a visual memorizer and looking at the notes was way more helpful than trying to remember what to me was a rather jumbled lecture. I remember in my first courses- that when I took exams, I wouldn’t just recall the info. I would usually visualize it as if there was a photo of that page from the book in front of me. At times, this disability is a real inconvenience. However, I learned to hone my memorization skills quickly in college and found that I could quickly memorize large amounts of written material in a short amount of time. So, I guess I have just accepted that everyone learns differently and I am OK with where I am.
I used to go to many work presentations where people talked at length without visual aids in the pre-powerpoint days but now I find that I can’t follow a discussion without visuals. Ideally every conversation with me would be accompanied by bullet points. So I think my listening skills have gotten worse over time.