Behavioral Problems in Child with CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder)

Laurie D. had great suggestions. My grandson has apraxia of speech as well as sensory processing disorders and/or other difficulties and our family has been helped thru a developmental pediatrician. She examined him and then referred him to various specialists who have been supportive as well as providing treatment.

You describe your daughter as being in constant emotional turmoil and looking for a fight. Sounds like my 7 yo grandson a few months ago and now off and on for a year or so my 10 yo granddaughter who is only troubled with ADHD. I see both children having difficulty with frustration and how to handle angry feelings. Because the 7 yo is in a special class within special ed at school he's been getting help with anger management. My granddaughter gets no special help and has the frustration of being a sib of a special needs child. She is also approaching the tween years when hormones go awry. That may be a part of your daughter's difficulty too. Anyway, it sounds like your daughter is needing help in learning how to handle frustration and anger.

My 8 year old son is ODD and while he's never been officially diagnosed with CAPD all of the red flags are there and his speech therapist thinks he has it. We've just never gotten the testing done because until now we didn't think he'd actually do it since it's so time intensive. All of the professionals that work with him do think, that for him at least, the two go hand in hand. His PSR worker has said that some of his behavioral issues (such as interacting with other people) are because of the possible CAPD simply he just doesn't pick up on the other nuances in speech that "normal" people do, etc.

My son also has most of his issues at home. Since he hasn't been officially diagnosed in this area, I can't help you. BUT, when it comes to the behavioral issues, the book that helped us the most was "The Explosive Child" by Ross Greene. I hope this helps. :)

I have a son that was diagnosed at age 8. He still struggles with it at age 22. His teachers told me that he needs to be told a couple of different ways to do the same thing. I think that because of this disorder, he dropped out of school at age 17 and his self esteem is lacking. He has a hard time getting a job, but doesn't have a hard time keeping a job when he has one. Give your daughter a lot of praise, because if she starts feeling lousy about herself, its harder for her to focus.

You don't give a whole lot of information about the behavioral problem is but I would think that it could possibly be caused by your daughter's auditory processing disorder. She may feel frustrated by not being able to hear everything and process it as quickly as maybe others expect that she should (teachers, her friends and classmates, family members, her own expectations of herself).

Even though she doesn't act out at school, it could be possible that she could be bottling up her frustration during the day and letting it out in her own safe environment: home. I'm not saying this is the case but just a possibility.

What I would do, if I were you, is start keeping an ABC chart ("A" - antecedent, "B" - behavior, "C" - consequence). Whenever you see a behavior at home, note down the day and the time, what was happening before the behavior (eg., "Little Sister asked Ann to play playdough with her three times and when Ann didn't respond, Little Sister hit her"), what the behavior consisted of (e.g., "Ann screamed at Little Sister and pushed her"), and what was the consequence, (e.g., "Ann got time out for 8-minutes"). If you track this information over the course of a couple of weeks and take a look back at it, I'm pretty sure that you will see some commonalities in the events and some red flags. This will help you better understand if there is a CAPD issue that needs to be addressed, a family dynamics issue, maybe an environmental issue (e.g., sensory overload from too much noise), or possibly a social/relationship issue that she hasn't been able to articulate to you (e.g., problem with a friend).

I would also suggest to you that, if you are not currently working with a speech therapist at this time, then maybe this would be a good time to have her re-evalauted to determine if further treatment is necessary (that's who we worked with for my son's auditory processing disorder). Or possibly a child psychologist or developmental pediatrician assessment would shed some light into what is going on.

I hope that you are able to get a handle on this soon. I know it is not easy for you when she has her behavior problems and it must not be that easy for her as well.

Best wishes.