Jonathan, CAPS, me and everyone else involved.

So as I mentioned in my previous blog Jonathan has been tested by the School Psychology Services.

I need to talk about it and can't really afford a professional so you guys get to hear about it.

Way back when Jonathan was just little and I home schooled Pre School and kindergarten I could tell that my teaching wasn't getting trough to him. I thought & prayed that it was just me that I didn't know how to teach well. (Knowing full well that Josiah had 4 years of me home schooling him and he got along just fine on my skills) Anyway I decided that public school would be the route to take for Jonathan. Because his birthday was in December I decided to put him into Kindergarten when he went opposed to grade one. He was quickly refereed into Resource & Methods to help him with his weak reading and writing skills. Despite many interventions put in place at school he made little to no progress with his reading levels. So he has basically gone from Kindergarten to grade 5 with not a lot of reading and writing success. He was put on the waiting list to see the School Psychology Services and finally in grade 5 has seen them. I have been trying and trying to figure out what his learning difference was! The teachers all knew there was something and what it was not but couldn't really seem to figure out what it was. I tried to jump through hoops to get him to enjoy something anything to do with reading to no avail. So last year I was at a clients home and she was talking about her older daughter (a sibling to the child I was seeing ) and said she was recently diagnosed with CAPS. When she started describing CAPS to me I immediately said that is what Jonathan has. So I came back to work and went to see my friend Sue Pope down stairs who is a speech & language pathologist and said I think Jonathan has CAPS. She was very supportive and gave me some testing to do on him myself. Which confirmed to me that he did have CAPS. She also did a hearing test on him. She even tried to refer him to Dr Tees herself....it didn't fly but it was a very kind hearted attempt to help. So thanks Sue I appreciate you! Jonathan isn't a behavioral problem at school at all. His teachers always say I wish I had 25 Jonathans in my class! As reported he is polite, cooperative, has a great work ethic and is a pleasure to teach. BUT he has great difficulty in reading , writing and following direction and is well below average in these areas. Long story short I was right but it still breaks my heart and just seems to have mentally drained me because I want so bad to fix it for him. So he has a language-based learning disability that impacts on both receptive and expressive language. He has difficulty with letter sounds and using them to read and spell. He has a hard time orally breaking words into sounds, blending sounds into words and storing sounds in short-term memory and retrieving sounds from long-term memory. So he has a ton of recommendations and guide lines for school and home which I find somewhat overwhelming. But here are some things I need to remember....
I feel like I'm on a roller coaster of emotions This is completely normal. Feeling overwhelmed with sadness, anger and grief happens.
It's a marathon, not a race I can't do everything for him right now. I will only end up burning him and me out!
Make time for our relationship I need to make sure I'm not so wrapped up in "fixing" him that I sacrifice investing time in our relationship. Remember to celebrate the small wins and not let the set backs ruin our day! There will be days when I wonder will we get through this journey. Then there will be days when something clicks and he gets it! We need to remember to focus on those days!
I and this is an easy one need to remember to love him with all my heart He is amazing and full of potential he just gets where he needs to be differently then most. So he might not be a rocket scientist (I'll never be that either) but what ever he decides to be he'll be awesome and loved!

So I find myself exhaust in absorbing all this! I also find myself frustrated that we've waited so long and now we have to wait longer ....waiting to see our family doctor then waiting to see Dr Tees sets me off. Which I need to think it's ok we will conquer this and it will all work out I just need to remember to breathe.
To my loved ones....just remember I'm mentally exhausted, if I cry don't take it personal and I probably need a lot of hugs so offer them up!! Thank you for your support that I know you will give!

About Central Auditory Processing Syndrome (CAPS) or Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)

Auditory processing disorder (APD), also known as central auditory processing syndrome (CAPS), is a complex problem affecting about 5% of school-aged children. These kids can't process the information they hear in the same way as others because their ears and brain don't fully coordinate. Something adversely affects the way the brain recognizes and interprets sounds, most notably the sounds composing speech.

Kids with APD/CAPS often do not recognize subtle differences between sounds in words, even when the sounds are loud and clear enough to be heard. These kinds of problems usually occur in background noise, which is a natural listening environment. So kids with APD/CAPS have the basic difficulty of understanding any speech signal presented under less than optimal conditions.

Symptoms 

·       Easily distracted

·       noisy environments are upsetting

·       behavior and performance improve in quieter settings

·       Difficulty following directions, whether simple or complicated

·       Reading, spelling, writing, and other speech-language difficulties

·       abstract information is difficult for to comprehend

·       verbal (word) math problems are difficult

·       disorganized and forgetful

·       conversations are hard to follow