Getting Teen tested for APD

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My 17 y.o. son has struggled in school for as long as I can remember. He was in tutoring from 2nd to 9th grade, has been in cognitive skills training, visited a psychologist for a while and I even quit my job to spend more time in the classroom with him. He's been tested for LD 1x and ADD 2x...they never found anything. We are now upon his senior year and he's still struggling. I've done some research lately because I fear that whatever issue he has will affect his job outlook (he refuses to go to anymore schooling beyond high school). He has a lot of CAPD symptoms: always struggled with reading, spelling, has trouble remembering, listens to TV loud, have to call him several times to get his attention, I can have a conversation with him and he will be talking back but having a totally different conversation, his jr. eng. teacher said he drifts off after about 10 mins. So, my question how do I get him tested for this? Will a high school do it? He was tested in elementary school and I had a difficult getting them to do it. I can imagine a sr. in high school will be harder to get testing for! Is it better/more in depth to go to a practitioner not related to the school??

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Thank you all for your insight! I was kind of leaning towards getting testing done outside of the school. We live in AZ and apparently ASU has a great center for Audiology and Speech Path. I've also been told that the school district we live in (we just moved here) is great for special needs children so I may just call them and see what they say.

FORGET THE SCHOOL TESTING FOR THIS.

YOU WILL HAVE TO GO TO AN AUDIOLOGIST WHO IS ALSO TRAINED IN SPEECH & LANGUAGE.

WE TOOK OUR GRANDSON TO AUBURN UNIVERSITY SPEECH AND HEARING CLINIC IN ALABAMA. NOT SURE WHERE YOU ARE FROM, BUT I AM SURE THERE ARE QUALIFIED CLINICS NEAR.

ALSO, KEEP IN MIND , THAT SOME PSYCHOLOGISTS AND NEURO-PSYCHOLOGISTS MAY NOT BE CONVINCED THAT A.P.D. EXISTS. THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE FOUND RECENTLY, EVEN THOUGH THE TESTING AT AUBURN INDICATES CENTRAL AUDITORY PROCESSING DISORDER.

ALSO, HAVE YOUR SON EVALUATED BY A GOOD NEURO-PSYCHOLOGIST FOR A FULL EVALUATION, THIS WAS MOST BENEFICIAL TO US. A PSYCHOLOGIST CANNOT PERFORM THE NEUROLOGICAL TESTING NEEDED TO DETERMINE IF THERE IS A NEURO BASIS FOR HIS DISABILITY.

HOPE THIS HELPS.

if you decide to get your son tested through the school system....public schools are legally required to test your son within 60 days if you put your request in writing. Request that he get comprehensive testing (so they are really checking for everything). And if he decides to pursue college, they have special resource centers there too (similar to what is available in the public schools) where kids can get special accomodations for testing like time and a half. if he has CAPD, maybe he just needs to move to another room/have the test read to him.

Also, ADD testing is subjective and the school won't be able to really help you other than to give you antedotal information (which you already have from his English teacher)...so if this is what you're trying to figure out, you may be better off working with a pediatric neurologist.

Good luck!

Have you had his hearing tested? Not just a regular doctor, but by a specialist? If he can't hear well, the words sound muffled, and he'll lose interest in who's talking and what's being said. I'd start there.

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