Little Heroes Pediatric Hearing Clinic

By Dr. JJ

During listening therapy for children with auditory processing disorder, one of the most common topics discussed with parents is this idea of a compounding emotional reaction when attempting to listen in complex listening environments. For today’s blog, we’re going to breakdown what this “compounding emotional reaction” means and looks like and what we can do to help alleviate that burden.

The Emotional Struggle of Listening with APD

Recent research shows that children with auditory processing disorders experience elevated negative emotions when attempting to listening in noisy (complex) places compared to quiet. In particular, children show higher levels of anger, disgust, and frustration. The trickiness to all of this is unless a listening environment is controlled to be quiet, almost all listening occurs in noise.

When we think of listening in noise, we might automatically think of a large party or restaurant and assume our child should be fine in a school setting; however, in school, noise can include a full range of otherwise “quiet” things. This can include shuffling feet, the scratching of pencils while writing, page-turning, or other students walking quietly in hall. Not to mention the sounds of traffic or yard care coming from the windows. Noise is everywhere.

In many cases of auditory processing disorders, the listening brain is showing a deficit in its ability to tolerate these noises while attempting to also decode speech. The result is children feel confused/upset or experience listening fatigue – a cognitive overload and exhaustion that comes from attending to what we are hearing while enduring these auditory processing barriers.

Compounding Emotions

The biggest issue with these negative emotions that arise from listening difficulties is a compounding emotional effect that occurs from the associated social consequences of not understanding what was said. For example, a child may already feel frustrated or confused when listening to their teacher give them a multi-step instruction; however, their teacher also becomes frustrated with the student thinking they are not listening or being insubordinate. The teacher then disciplines the student, which makes the student feel misunderstood or otherwise mistreated. So, now the student is not only upset over the listening experience, but they may feel shame or other insecurities. They don’t know how to handle these emotions, so they act out. Which makes the teacher even more frustrated, which makes the student even more upset . . .

You see where I’m going here? It’s a cycle.

So, then going forward, in addition to feeling frustrated with listening, the child has this fear/anxiety over what the social reaction is going to be to their misunderstanding, and they may even preemptively react (e.g., they don’t attempt to listen, they fidget, they may even become aggressive).

Breaking the Cycle

The first step in breaking the cycle is getting an exam for auditory processing disorders. Understanding that your child’s listening behaviors are linked to a clinical diagnosis can be a great way to get teachers or other school personnel on board to provide quality services or accommodations in school. A clinical diagnosis can also help parents and teachers begin to reshape their own thinking about and perceptions of the child with concerning listening behaviors. Children with auditory processing disorders aren’t trying to be bad. They are struggling and showing that struggle through a variety of outlets that can include acting out.

The second step is to enroll the child in listening therapy. We’ve harped on this topic a lot here at Little Heroes, but we’re big believers in the power of helping to retrain the listening brain to handle complex listening environments through coached listening activities. By using listening therapy, we can help children learn to identify the emotions they are experiencing when they are needing to decode the sounds they hear or recall information they are being told. By identifying their feelings, we can help children learn healthy strategies for communicating those feelings and asking for help in a way that deescalates some of the parents’/teachers’ negative feelings.

Words can be empowering or demeaning. When working with any child, empowering words will go a long way in helping to build a child’s confidence. For the case of concerning listening behaviors, here are some examples of what parents and teachers should or shouldn’t say to a child with concerning listening behaviors:

By using empowering words, we can help create a space for the child to experience difficult listening without fear of the repercussions of misunderstanding. At the same time, we can bolster the child’s confidence by celebrating what they did understand and showing them that their listening brains are do a lot more than they (or we) think.

Do you want your child tested for auditory processing disorder? Call today!