Auditory processing can impact day to day activities in your child's life. It is important to work with your child's team to assist in implementing strategies to facilitate progress. Here are a few ideas that you, your child, and your whole family can engage in that will target auditory processing skills:
- Be sure your child is looking at you when you are speaking to them
- Use simple and expressive sentences with your child.
- Reduce background noise as best you can when speaking to your child.
- Go for a walk with your child. While outside listen and identify the various sounds that you hear.
- Play hide and seek with a toy that makes noise, then have your child try to locate the sound.
- Read rhyming books. This helps children begin to hear the similiar sounds in rhyming words.
- Sing songs that involve repeating versus (for example, "The 12 Days of Christmas")
- Have your child close his/her eyes and identify different sounds that you make (i.e, stapler, typing, scissors, tapping a pencil)
- Have your child repeat various sound patterns with you. This can be clapping a different number of times and in a different rhythm, tapping on your legs, or playing various instruments in random order.
- Give your child multiple step directions to follow. Begin with 2-3 steps and gradually increase these steps as they are successful. You can make this even more fun by turning it into a game of "Simon Says"
- Read a story to your child and then ask several questions regarding characters, locations, plot, etc…
- There are several websites that offer computer games to target auditory processing. One such website is www.brainconnection.com (brain teasers)