What Is The Connection?

Do you ever feel like ‘Why doesn’t that kid listen to me?!’ There is a reason your child acts like they are not listening to you. They may also come across as if they are ignoring your command or getting only part of a multiple step request.

Many children with Dyslexia are slower at processing verbal information than typical readers. This is because over 50% of children with Dyslexia also have some Auditory Processing Disorder or weakness. Their ears work just fine, but they are slow to completely understand what is being said. They also:

• Have difficulty understanding long sentences.
• May act like they were not spoken to sometimes.
• Whispers sentences as they write them.
• Stops in the middle of reading a sentence and loses their spot easily.
• Can sound out a word like ‘b-a-tt-le’ but fails to see the text is talking about a battle.
• Has difficulty fusing syllables into whole words. Choppy reading and missing syllables. Example:  Reads ‘com-pre-hen-sion’ like ‘compression’.
• Has to sound out simple site words over and over again.

Check out their Auditory Skills by giving them a multiple step command.  ‘Go upstairs, get your shoes and coat and come back down so we can leave’. They may hear the first step or the first and last step. They go upstairs and don’t come down. Or,  they go upstairs and come back down without their shoes or coat. As a result, parents get frustrated and feel the child is just not ‘listening’ to them. The truth is they hear it fine, but it does not process and sink in to meaning for them. Check out our list of other Symptoms of Dyslexia.

Can it Be Helped?

The good news is that you can help a child struggling with Auditory Processing and Dyslexia. My son improved much in his reading and comprehension when we did Auditory Processing Exercises with him about four times per week. And the best part is they are easy enough to do right at home. Get our List of Auditory Processing Types or learn more from our short Dyslexia Video Training.

Other Symptoms Affected By Auditory Processing?

• It takes effort to get their attention.
• Look straight at parents when being spoken to, but acts like they didn’t hear them.
• Drops part of the steps of verbal instructions.
• Struggles to hear the person speaking to them in a busy room.
• Acts confused when asked to do something.
• Easily agitated during longer conversations.
• May have been taken for a hearing test with suspicion of a hearing impairment.
• Gets offended easily by misreading sarcasm or inflection in others voices.
• Has problem recalling information recited to them, like a phone number.
• Cannot repeat something back word-for-word.
• Or, can repeat instructions back perfectly, but does not comprehend them.
• Has to whisper sentences as they write them.
• Stops in the middle of reading a sentence and loses their spot easily.
• May have articulation problems.
• Stalls when trying to say simple words when speaking. Struggles to find the word to use.
• Problems organizing words into a clear thought when speaking and writing.

How Does Auditory Affect Reading?

This is super frustrating to many parents that think their child is just ignoring them. Some even think their child has a hearing problem and takes them for additional hearing tests just to find out their ears work fine. As a result, they can get misdiagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder.

In addition to following commands, Auditory Processing has a big impact on a child’s ability to read fluently. It is not the child’s ability to hear, but to process the language coming through the ears to the brain in an efficient amount of time. It becomes more of a language processing problem for Dyslexic children. These problems go unnoticed for years. The child is tagged as lazy or slow to respond.

Therefore, they start school. But, without a firm foundation in language processing, it is very hard for them, when reading, to combine letters into words, then words into sentences, then sentences into meaning. This is part of the breakdown with reading fluent sentences and gaining comprehension of the story.