Answers, finally!

Today was an absolutely beautiful day in Maryland.  It was about 80 and everything is really, really green.  Nathan and I just took the day to relax and go to his doctor appointment.  Since we had some time to kill beforehand, we looked at some neighboring hotels and decided to stay at the Hilton Homewood for the summer.  We went on a tour and picked our room.  It is very nice.  I think we will be very comfortable.  It has a pool, spa and healthcenter, and very happily for Nathan, even a full basketball court.  It should be nice.

The appointment with the Audiologist went really well.  The doctor is really nice and took a considerable amount of time to test Nate and then discuss the results with me.  The diagnosis is a severe Auditory Processing Disorder.  This is actually a physiological disorder that Nate was born with.  Basically, as sound travels from his outer ear through his inner ear and messages are sent to his brain, there is a pretty substantial delay.  This causes his inability to differentiate between sounds, phonemes and tones.  The tests the doctor did to diagnose this were really neat.  He actually sent sound vibrations through the base of Nate's skull to bypass his inner ear, and interestingly, Nate could hear much better!  So weird!!  There is actually an enormous report with all of the findings, but the bottom line is that the muscles that are causing the delay can be strengthened.  This will take intensive, consistant and direct therapy.  This doctor will work with the Highlands School to plan Nathan's program for the summer.  These 5 weeks could completely change the way Nate learns.  After the summer session, Nate will see this doc again and we will see what progress has been made.  Ultimately, Nate will always need accomodations such as a person to take notes for him during a lecture, longer time for tests and optimal study enviroments, but we will know better how to accomodate that by the end of the summer. 

Today's testing answered so many questions for me. It makes so much sense to me now that Nate never learned to differentiate between sounds and that he often mumbles his words.  That is the way our words sound to him and alwasy have!!  Now that we have a better idea of why he suffers from Dyslexia, we can do more for him.  The Dyslexia is merely a symptom of the Auditory Processing disorder.  That was a big ah ha moment for me.  I have spent so much time and energy on researching Dyslexia that I never even considered it could be something else.  Now I guess I have something new to research!  Lol. 

Tomorrow Nate and I are coming home.  We will be flying much of the day and then dealing with jet lag.  We are ready to come home though.  It has been a really fun and amazingly informative week, but we are ready to go home and process everything.  Nathan has been involved in all conversations with doctors and teachers this week and has a really strong grasp on what is going on.  I have seen a really mature side of him the last couple of days and I am so proud of him.  I know he is ready to do the work it will take to learn to live with this disorder.  He is truly an amazing kid!