Leticia's success despite (C)AP Difficulties
"It broke our hearts when we realized our seemingly ‘perfect in every way child’ was unable to read and write as other children do. In Pre Primary the teacher was telling us how well Leticia was doing and how they believed she was the brightest child in the class. Then Year One began and she had to express herself through writing and she needed to begin to read.
At the end of her first school year, Leticia’s teacher asked the class to write a story about their holidays and it was devastating to be shown that the only word Leticia could write by herself was the word ‘On’. Leticia did not know the names of the letters of the alphabet, or the sounds that they made and she could not count to twenty. Her world, and ours, fell apart as it became apparent Leticia couldn’t process what her ears were hearing and translate it on to paper in to written words.
The reason for Leticia’s learning difficulties became clear when she was diagnosed with (Central) Auditory Processing Difficulties ((C)APD), one of the most common learning disorders amoung Australian students. (C)APD can affect children’s ability to concentrate and pay attention, they can have difficulty following instructions and some struggle to learn the letters and the corresponding sounds. All this impacts their comprehension and some have a limited vocabulary, while others have no trouble with language until they try and put ideas onto paper. (C)APD sufferers are often tired after school from having to try twice as hard as the other kids in the class.
We’re like many parents who would do anything to ensure our child’s success, and even though Leticia had a wonderful teacher, she obviously needed outside help as well.
The local audiologist we’d seen had suggested a literacy development programme called Fast ForWord, and eventually we found our way to Sonic Learning to enroll our daughter. The outcomes for Leticia have been nothing short of life-changing. The fun school or home based Fast ForWord Computer Programme uses games that are based on the science of how the brain learns, by completing tasks in a frequent intense time frame which accelerates the learning process. The gains in Leticia’s auditory processing were so significant that when we returned to the original audiologist for an official retest, he was very surprised. The 10 weeks of intensive computer games had effectively brought Leticia up to the expected academic standard for her age.
Our dreams for Leticia have never been that she would become a ‘rocket scientist’ - but that she is able to maintain average levels of education to give her a wider choice when it comes to making decisions about career paths. Leticia is now in the top maths group at her school and she hopes to do nursing at university when she graduates high school. She has just won the Citizenship Award at her Year 7 graduation and is a very happy, confident and intelligent young woman."
Mandy (Leticia's Mum)