Ways to improve auditory processing skills in children

Poor auditory processing skill is an often neglected and undiagnosed problem that around 5% of children face. It has symptoms that overlap with ADHD, ADD, ASD, LD, which makes it very difficult for a parent to understand the real issue. Presence of poor auditory processing skill often leads to over-diagnosis of the other disorders mentioned above.

Typical symptoms that a child with poor auditory processes faces are:

·          Difficulty in following instructions

·          Difficulty in differentiating subtly different words

·          Over/under sensitivity to sounds around

·          Speech delay/difficulty

·          Difficulty in sound articulation

·          Difficulty in following a conversation

Activities for strengthening auditory processes:

·        Auditory reception (Comprehension: the child listens to an auditory input and responds to the relevant questions asked).

·        Auditory figure ground (list of heterogeneous words is given to the child and the child has to group the words based on some concept. E.g. tree, river, mountain, snakes, tiger ---> Jungle).

·        Auditory discrimination ( giving words like pin- pen, sake- sale, time- chime and asking him whether they are different or not. Lip reading shouldn’t facilitate the process. Recognizing different animal sounds is also very helpful).

·        Auditory sequential memory (numbers or letters are given to the child and the child repeats them in the same sequence. E.g. 2,7,4 said by the teacher and the child repeats).

·        Auditory closure (a word is spelled with certain letter missing and the child has to give the missing letter. E.g. For_st, _ne).

·        Auditory concept (giving similarities and differences between certain words. E.g. Forest and zoo, mango and banana, cat and rat).

·        List of words given for immediate recall and delayed recall.

·        Reading short stories and recalling them.

·        Repetition of sentences.

·        Word pair recall of both familiar(cow-milk, paper-pencil) and unfamiliar pairs(paper-water, spoon-eraser). Child is told all the words in pair, then one word of each pair is asked and he should say the other word.

·        Word game (first person says one word, second person says the first word and gives another word , first person says the first two words and gives another word, and so on).

This is not an exhaustive list of activities but just an idea of what can be done when you observe any auditory problem happening in your child. In fact, it is a good idea to do these activities anyways in all kids in the foundation years to strengthen their auditory focus and processes. 

Disclaimer: this write-up is not a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)

Visual skills in children

There is a difference between vision and visual skills. One may have good vision but poor visual skills, and vice-versa. Many times when child is unable to write, draw properly, his parents find themselves at their wit’s end running from one optometrist to another. With the eye-sight in place, they don’t know what to do. The underlying reason could be one or more underdeveloped visual skills.

Visual skills are of many types, like visual discrimination, visual motor coordination, visual perception, visual sequencing, visual memory, visual analysis and synthesis etc.

In any activity, many visual skills work simultaneously. But many activities have one main base skill. We need to first find out which activities are difficult for the child. This helps us in finding out the visual skills that need to be enhanced.


Few activities and their related visual skills:

Visual skill	Chief activities
Visual motor coordination	Beading, lacing, threading, cutting, pasting, coloring
Visual perception	Mazes
Visual tracking	Copy-writing
Visual closure	Completing the figure
Visual sequence	Pattern, join the dots, what comes next
Visual analysis and synthesis	Puzzles
Visual memory	Recalling written material, pictures, objects, routes Copying text/figures

While each activity involves more than one visual skill, the above mentioned ones are the chief skills. Thus if a child is unable to do beading and has proper vision, his visual motor coordination may be poor and may need to be enhanced. Similarly, if a child is unable to copy text from the board in school, he may be having poor visual tracking skills or poor visual memory.

Here are some activities mentioned to generally strengthen the visual skills of a child.

1.     Do activities that involve beading, dabbing, lacing, threading, cutting, pasting, finger printing. Sticking ‘daals’ on a line or cutting on lines is also helpful.

2.     Grid copying (of lines, shapes, figures). You make a grid with design and give a blank grid to the child for copying. It can also be used for visual memory where the child sees the grid and makes it from memory in his blank grid.

3.     Real object drawing. You give an object to the child and he has to draw it.

4.     Picture copying. You give a picture to the child and he has to copy it

5.     Activities on sequencing (what comes next, patterns etc)

6.     Odd one out. You show few objects in a row and the child has to figure out which figure is the odd one out in that row

7.     Reading with dots: write few sentences on a sheet. Each line should have only one sentence. Put a green dot at the beginning and red dot at the end of each line. The child puts finger on the green dot, starts reading by finger guidance and stops when the finger reaches red.

8.     Text copying: write words in a column on a sheet. Ask the child to copy them. Progress to sentences, then paragraphs later. You may use dot method here also to indicate the beginning and end

9.     Object memory: a)you show few objects to the child. Mix them with more objects. He has to pick only those he has seen earlier b)you give an object in his hand. You mix it with other objects. You blindfold him and ask him to pick that object from the lot

10.                        Route memory: ask the child to describe you the route from one place to another, with the left/right turns, shops, landmarks, etc

11.                        Mapping: you ask the child to look around the room carefully. Blindfold him. Now ask him to describe the room again. You may do it for those rooms/shops also where he has gone frequently.

12.                        Word memory: you show a word to the child, remove the sheet, ask him to tell the word. It can be progressed to 5-6 words in a row/column. Same thing can be done with numbers (word span and number span)

13.                        Picture memory:a)you show a picture card with 4-5 objects drawn on it. You show another picture card with 4-5 more objects drawn on it. Child has to find out those he has seen earlier b) you show few pictures drawn in a row/column, keep the paper aside and ask the child to tell the pictures in the same order (picture span)

Note: This is not an exhaustive list or a diagnostic tool.

Activities to improve sequential skills

some children find it difficult to follow multiple instructions or understand spellings, as their skill of following sequence is not adequately developed. in some cases it may require occupational therapy, while in many, it may simply need a positive trigger from your side. here is a list of few activities that you may do with your child to enhance his/her sequential skills:

1.      Picture pattern (set of alternating pictures given, child has to guess which picture comes in the end. Eg. Circle-square-circle-square-circle-____________)

2.      Number  pattern (set of alternating numbers  given, child has to guess which number comes in the end. Eg 1-4-1-4-1-4-_________)

3.      Alphabet  pattern (set of alternating alphabet  given, child has to guess which alphabet comes in the end. Eg. A-P-A-P-A-_____)

4.      Sequencing pictures (what comes first, what comes next. for example get up, brush teeth, eat breakfast)

5.      Sequencing numbers (ascending order, descending order)

6.      Sequencing alphabets (ascending order, descending order)

7.      Unscramble 3 letter words to make meaningful ones (TAC, NAV, ABD, DAL, etc)

8.      Auditory word memory (you say 2 words in an alternating manner for 5-6 times and stop at any one word. Child has to say the other word )

9.      Digit span (you say 4-5 numbers at the beat of 1 number per second. Once you finish, child has to repeat. Eg. You say 4, 7, 2, 9. Ask the child to repeat)

10.  Unscramble story (oral exercise)- you say 3 sentences in a jumbled manners. Child has to rearrange the sentences in such a way that they say a story (eg. I brush my teeth, I eat my breakfast, I get up)

11. action-reaction pictures (pictures of dirty clothes-washing machine-clean clothes or pictures of clean canvas-paints-painting can be put in a certain way only)

12. life cycle picture cards (egg-chick- hen or baby-child-man or egg-tadpole-frog etc)

13. join the dots (especially the numbers or alphabets) to make pictures