Sensory Processing Disorder is where the brain has trouble organising the information received from the senses.
Children may be over-sensitive or under-sensitive to the world around them.
Symptoms
- Resistance to change: It can take them a long time to settle into new surroundings or new activities. They may feel stressed when they need to change from one activity to the next.
- Motor skills: Playing with and manipulating objects are a crucial part of development. Children with sensory processing issues may avoid handling objects.
- Self-Control: Feeling anxious and overstimulated and have regular meltdowns (even when they are older).
- Lack of social skills: they may find it difficult to make friends and be oversensitive to others.
Auditory Processing Disorder
Auditory processing disorder is also known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) and is a condition that makes it hard for children to distinguish between sounds in words and understand what people are saying, especially in noisy locations.
The children generally have normal hearing but the brain is not processing the information correctly.
Symptoms
- Difficulty following directions, especially when they include a number of steps
- Easily distracted by background noise
- Poor musical ability
- Difficulty learning songs or rhymes
- Struggle with spoken math problems
Visual Processing Disorder
Vision is much more than visual acuity, as in 20/20 vision. This disorder is where the brain fails to accurately receive information and process the clues transmitted from the eyes.
Visual processing disorder often goes undetected because it cannot be tested by an ordinary optometrist.
Symptoms
- Poor reading comprehension when reading silently
- Below average reading comprehension and writing
- Poor maths, misreads symbols, omits steps
- Difficulty writing within lines or margins
- Reverses, misreads letters, numbers and words
- Easily distracted by visual information, e.g. pictures in a book while reading.
- Difficulty with tasks that require copying