How Do You Work With Someone Who May Have An Auditory Processing Disorder?
Hi there, First let me state that, Wow, what a great (friend) colleague you must be to her. I think many people in your position would write her off. It would mean so much to her if she knew you were so deeply concerned about her. The simplest answer to your question is, let her know you care for her and are available for her if she needs you. Your support and patience will make all the difference if she’s struggling. Good luck to you both. More Detailed Answer Follows: Your colleague has a few similarities to myself. I haven’t been diagnosed with a sensory integration disorder per se. I too have problems understanding or remembering spoken directions and processes requiring more than a couple steps. I have ADHD. ADHD can display some similarities to what you call an auditory processing disorder. The fact is, ADHD is a profound inability to attend to information in the world around you. The frontal lobe is where several important attention tasks are monitored. If the frontal lobe is sl
You say she’s hard-working and committed but she can’t cope with the workload – perhaps she would cope better with being assigned single tasks at a time, as well as the written instructions. Some people just aren’t good at task prioritising and just get confused/overwhelmed with a large workload. It also sounds like she is very eager to please/fears getting in trouble so she says she’s done things that she hasn’t then has to try to get them done as well as looking like she’s made progress in other areas. If you or her supervisor would take away that need to prioritise and only give her single tasks at a time, it would probably be a great help to her. If you give her verbal instructions, email her a copy too. I have a similar problem (I can pretty much check everything on the ‘integration’ list). But I only discovered this problem recently. The first place I worked was a very small company and we barely ever spoke (about work related stuff anyway) – if someone wanted you to do something
Read your final paragraph again substiituting “you” for “she”, “your” for “her” at every point. Have you, or has anyone, tried saying that to her? “How can we work with you more effectively and efficiently?”, particularly if its linked to the sort of praise you’ve given her here, sounds like a good start. It’s not as if she’s totally unaware there’s a problem – you’ve referred to her cover-ups – so this isn’t going to be a complete surprise. Yes, it’s going to be an awkward conversation, but if you show her in person a fraction of the sensitivity you’ve shown in your post here, you should be fine. Who knows – she might even be relieved it’s finally out in the open. You’re at your wits end. This can’t go on indefinitely. Involving her in the search for a solution has got to be a better (and kinder) way forward than trying out different suggestions from anonymous folks on the internet without broaching the subject with her. There is an “elephant in the room” already. Don’t ignore it and
