Dear Jacqui, Please could you advise me what auditory processing difficulties from prolonged glue ear may look like in my child?
Here are some features that may apply to your child:
- The child daydreams or is disruptive as he/she can’t listen for a prolonged period.
- The child has difficulty following instructions and often copies a peer.
- The child has difficulty listening when there is background noise.
- The child dislikes certain loud sounds or is oversensitive to some sounds i.e. the vacuum cleaner.
- The child doesn’t respond to his/her name being called and appears not to hear.
- The child’s speech can be unclear. It may appear mumbled especially on longer multi-syllablic words i.e. he/li/cop/ter.
- The child has word finding problems; he/she knows certain words but struggles to find them when wanting to say them.
- The child finds it difficult to follow a teacher talking, a conversation or answer questions as he/she is unsure of what was said and can’t get the meaning from parts that were heard. Due to this, the child has difficulties in the classroom, with social interaction and developing friendships.
- The child has difficulty with reading and spelling. He/she struggles to encode sounds into words (blend or build sounds into a word i.e. d-o-g is ‘dog’) or decode sounds in words (segment or break down a word i.e. ‘cat’ is c-a-t)). The child finds syllables and rhymes difficult too. Later, the child will have difficulty listening and writing notes simultaneously.
- The child has difficulties with reading comprehension and inference.
