So tell me what I should ask and know about CAPD evaluations.

[rafiki]

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[Crimson Wife]

The AudD. who did the first part of oldest DD's CAPD eval tested her for 3 hours (including breaks). That was a screening to narrow down the area(s) of auditory processing difficulty since CAPD has a number of different subtypes. DD is supposed to go back for more testing of the specific areas of concern but she can't do that until after she's had a full neuropsych eval to rule out ADHD. That got put on the back burner because of youngest DD's ASD.

 

I got some verbal feedback from the AudD. at the appt. but since we have not yet completed the testing I didn't get the report. The AudD. did say that none of the treatments touted for treating CAPD like Earobics, Fast ForWord or AIT have good objective studies to back them up at this point. She says there is a lot of anecdotal success stories but nothing that she feels comfortable recommending right now. Her recommendations are typically geared towards classroom accommodations, which would be very important if I ever needed to put DD into a traditional school, but are less crucial in a homeschool setting.

 

I was upfront with DD about the purpose of the CAPD testing. She knew that she was struggling with certain tasks like mental math, dictation, and following multi-step oral directions in the proper sequence and it was really frustrating to her. So she was willing to comply with the testing.

[Tiramisu]

On our first visit the audiologist interviewed me at length and went over the rather long questionaires we filled out. For the screening, the first thing our audiologist did was to test for middle ear reflexes. Then she checked whether or not the middle ear responded to stimuli. Both of these tests required thingies to be put in the ear. Then an actual hearing test was conducted. Dd had to sit in a booth and with earphones on and respond to sounds that came through headphones. She could see the audiologist though glass. The entire first visit took about an hour.

 

Since dd passed the screening described above, and the discussion we had along with the questionaires gave reason for concern, we were cleared for a full CAPD evaluation. We had to return for that visit.

 

The full CAPD evaluation took more that two and a half hours, but that included two short breaks and a debriefing, where she shared with us her impressions of how the testing went. Again, dd was in a sound booth wearing earphones. She listened and responded. The results were significant so she decided to check dd again to make sure there was no fluid in her ears or anything that could be influencing the results. Again, thingies were inserted in the ear again for that brief test.

 

This is a very basic description but simple details like this may help your ds feel more comfortable going in. I've found pediatric audiologists to be very child friendly.