Finding Answers

Our Journey: It started back when Jared was 3. His preschool teacher said that something was wrong with him, so we had him evaluated by the county. Of course, the first suggestion always seems to be ADHD or, in one case, even autism. If you knew him, you'd laugh at the autistic suggestion, as he's the most sensitive, huggable, affectionate little guy. But, his teacher could always see his intelligence and it's hard to try and figure out why a kid this smart would be acting this strangely.

Again in his 4 year old K4 class, the teacher mentioned that his social skills were lacking. He had poor behavior days, but he also didn't interact with other kids. That sounded bizarre to me, as I think of him as a social butterfly. His dad was in Iraq, so I thought that might have something to do with it. When they tested the children to move up to the next grade, Jared failed the test. The teacher said that he knew the answers and could answer them, but not in the format she was giving him. In the spring, we decided to hold him back and have a "do-over". He also went through more tests with the county.

This year, he's in K4 again. At the beginning of the year, we started to see more and more signs of him struggling. I knew something was wrong. He was becoming unhappy and really had a hard time with school. His teacher began meeting with him after school and Ray and I started spending hours and hours with him working on his numbers and letters (relearning them!).  We set up more appointments with the county. Then, we had a breakthrough. His new school administrator came from a school in Kansas who specialized in APD. She knew the signs and symptoms and she tested Jared. It was wild for Ray and me to see how our child clearly couldn't process certain things. He could hear perfectly fine, but everything seemed to be jumbled up in his brain. He had started hitting his head, a few times a week, saying, "My brain isn't working! It's not working!" He thought hitting it would help him learn.

As parents, you can imagine our pain. Our little, sweet boy was suffering so much and we didn't know how to help him. I started researching everything I could find on APD. I visited doctors, called neurologists, neuro-psychologists, audiologists, otologists, neurotologists and anyone who could help. We quit going to his playgroup, because it was just too hard to be around so many moms and kids who shared all these excelling moments of their lives while we were constantly in tears.  My research seemed to lead to roadblock  after roadblock. If there was a way we could help Jared, I wanted it to start NOW and I did not want to wait until he was at an age where it would be even harder to manage.

Finally, I had a glimmer of hope. Previously, I had disregarded all UK webpages and research on APD, because I figured they would contain a bunch of doctors that I couldn't use anyway. But the funny thing is the UK seems to have a lot more research on the subject. In fact, specialists over there believe that 1 in 10 children have APD, and they just keep being misdiagnosed with ADD, ADHD, ODD, etc. They have many "hearing clinics" that diagnose this disorder. In the US, when trying to find out who diagnoses this disorder, I've heard everything from psychologists, to speech pathologists, to neurologists, to neuropsychologists, and on and on. Frankly, it didn't seem like anyone in south Texas could tell me who diagnoses children with APD. That was, until I looked up "hearing clinics" in the area. Lo and behold, I found a hearing clinic who diagnoses APD! What a breakthrough! It is, but... the clinic doesn't allow the battery of APD tests for children under 7 years old. Jared turns six in a couple weeks.

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.  2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NLT)