Language processing is what happens once the message has reached the brain, or what we do with what we hear. As you listen to someone tell a story, you automatically separate out the information you need from what you don’t need, you make comparisons between the new information and what you know already, and you categorize new words and store them for easy retrieval. All of those skills are part of language processing, giving us the ability to make sense of the messages we are taking in.

These two processes happen simultaneously and are interrelated. If a child misheard a word, he/she cannot comprehend the message. Even if a child hears all the sounds of the words, if they can’t figure out new words from context or store words efficiently in their memory in order to remember their meaning, they won’t understand the message either.

While a child with auditory and/or language processing challenges needs to work much harder to listen and comprehend, in a classroom where there is noise and other distractions, the difficulty is compounded. Imagine listening to a lecture in a language you don’t know well. It is very tiring. There are many words that you don’t understand so you try to focus on the gist of the lecture. You try hard to keep up, but there are people speaking behind you which makes it even more difficult. Then the lecturer gets interrupted. You lose the train of thought and it seems like too much effort to keep trying to understand. That is what a child with an auditory and /or language processing disorder may feel in the classroom. It becomes too challenging to continue to try to listen. And when he stops paying attention, there are valuable skills and information that he then misses which makes him fall further behind.