Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy CAPD help....Anyone?

Hello all,

I had posted here several times a while back re DS11, trying to differentiate between a diagnosis of Anxiety/ADD/Gifted. We traveled to Kentucky in February to see Dr. Amend, got our test results, and have been working with a psychologist here in town. In a nutshell, we were working with an anxiety diagnosis with a minor secondary diagnosis of inattentive ADHD.

Things have continued a downward spiral to this point, basically DS is flunking math, (despite excellent test scores ) having continued anxiety, trouble with his teacher, and is generally pretty down on himself. We have gotten an excellent math tutor who will be working with him the whole summer to get him up to speed for middle school.

At the psychologist's recommendation, and after lots of research, we had DS tested for CAPD last week. We were somewhat hesitant "chasing" another diagnosis, but as DS is what his pediatrician says is the "poster child" for ear infections ( 3 straight years of infections, two sets of tubes, plus two hospitalizations) We felt we needed to at least rule it out. Well, lo and behold, I got the results back today and they have indeed diagnosed him with CAPD.
So my question is, is there anyone else out there dealing with this, and can you help me decipher the test results? I have read the book "When the brain can't hear" and need to re-read to clarify some things.

In addition, I meet with the school counselor, school psychologist, teacher
( grrr...) and speech therapist on Tuesday. Any suggestions, tips, tricks when formatting a 504 for CAPD that I should be aware of. I have a laundry list of suggestions from the audiologist, but was hoping to hear from a parent experienced with this.

Thanks so much for all the input,

JBR

I don't have direct experience, other than a adhd-ish child, who does not have adhd, and I thought might have CAPD, but our psychologist really thinks not. I am curious what factors/tests your dr. did which lead him to incline towards more testing in that area?

Ds did pretty well on the wisc, questions asked by the dr. himself, ds scored significally 'off' expectations on WJ achievement testing, I was told questions were given using an audio tape - which I found surprising. I didn't get to hear it, but I do wonder if it affected his test.

Our ds is also a poster child for ear infections! No tubes, but I sure wish they'd been recommended.

I believe Dottie may have some solid info for you...folks might be out of town this weekend, so give it a few days for good responses.

Good luck! It's good to have a diagnosis you can at least start to get your head around.

When we went to see Dr. Amend, we sort of tossed around the CAPD possibility, and it was really the first I had heard of it. I did most of the research on my own at home. We had a diagnosis of inattentive ADD that a psychologist from here kind of slapped on him, but it never quite clicked, and several trials of meds did nothing. We continued to have difficulty in 5th grade, with harder curriculum and a teacher who would LOVE to see him on meds. Also like I said before, given the massive amount of ear infections ( with goopy, snotty drainage in his ears for almost 3 years ), I figured that we at least owed it to to him to make sure it either was or wasn't CAPD. At the encouragement of our new psychologist, we went ahead with the testing. He does not present as what I understand to be a typical child with CAPD, so I am finding all of these results very interesting.