Earlier this year DD10 went through an extremely comprehensive eval with a 2E specialist recommended by the Eides and we came out with a list a mile long of evaluations to follow up on. CAPD was at the top of the list. I couldn't understand why since she learns everything auditorally and matches very few things on the list above. Sure enough she was diagnosed with CAPD. I was shocked. She is not on the spectrum but I thought our experience might be helpful.
Some things I learned: Very few places in my state still evaluate for CAPD. I had to start with the ENT who said her hearing was perfect and she had no processing issue as far as he could tell. Because we have known him since before DD was born he followed through for us and gave me the names of the only 4 places in my state that still evaluated for CAPD. I called them and found out there is a high standard of review you need to pass to even be consider eligible for a CAPD eval. We had it all but it otherwise could have taken many months to gather all the documentation to even be considered.
On the day of the evaluation the audiologist was clear that in her mind this was a "rule out" assessment. She had no reason to believe that DD had CAPD but there was enough going on with her it was important to get this one off the table. She was almost as surprised as I was to get the results.
The good news is that it was a relatively easy, fast thing to address, DD had to spend 6-8 weeks training her left ear to listen through increasingly distracting sounds coming in to her right ear. She spent mornings on the school bus listening to an audio book with the earbud only in her left ear. For the first week or so she had the background noise of the bus in her right ear. As the weeks went on she progressed to music in her right ear, softly at first and then getting increasingly louder. Then she moved on to text in her right ear. The last week or so she had the same audio book in her right ear but at a different part of the book so she was listening to the same reader - same voice, same tempo, same type of language being used. Again this started low and got increasingly louder as she filtered through it to listen to the "real" book in her left ear. Relatively painless and inexpensive.
School starts next week and she will occasionally revisit the ear training on the bus but won't be doing it daily. She is in an OOD spec Ed placement so we didn't need a lot of accommodations for CAPD - already a tiny size class and responsive spec Ed teachers. We adjusted her IEP to allow for flexible seating so she can move as needed to adjust to whatever sounds she might have to work around.
I think if there is a concern it's definitely worth checking out. I had to drive a couple of hours to get her tested but it was covered by insurance and provided useful info. The audiologist also picked up on a likely motor speech issue and sent us on for a speech eval that eventually identified dysarthria which may end up being a much bigger piece of the puzzle. So all in all I'm happy we followed through.
