Rating: 
Summary: A God send
Review: Like Sound Through Water is one of the best books I have ever read on processing problems. Her journey is told in a novel like fashion so the information is easy to follow and even easier to understand. Karen Foli has taken a very challenging subject to understand added her heart and made it easily accessible. By sharing her personal expereinces Karen will inspire parents with the tools necessary to help their children to reach their highest potential. Her work has helped me both with the children I work with as an Occupational Therapist and also with my own child who has had processing challenges. What a blessing her work is.
Rating:
Summary: Easy informative read
Review: My 8 year old son was just diagnosed with APD. I am not a reader, but I read this 280+ book in 2 days. I cried most of the way through it. This is my story. Someone else went through what I am going through. She talks about the guilt about not doing enough, she did so much for her son. I feel helpless most of the time and guilty over things I have no controll over. She talks specifically about the treatments, like the Fast ForWord software as well as other things she tried. I think now I can pick my head up and keep trying to help my son.
Rating: 
Summary: Concerned Professional
Review: My only disappointment with this book is that it wasn't published 6 years ago when I was pulling out my hair going through the same heartache as the author. Ben's story is my son's story and through sheer desperation, tenacity and love we have travelled almost exactly the same path as Ben and his parents, with the same wonderful results. There is no single easy cure for APD. It's a constant chipping away with many therapies, but it can be done just as the author said. If you're struggling with APD, this book is an excellent road map to success! And for the record, APD IS NOT AUTISM!
Rating:
Summary: Loved this book!!!
Review: My only disappointment with this book is that it wasn't published 6 years ago when I was pulling out my hair going through the same heartache as the author. Ben's story is my son's story and through sheer desperation, tenacity and love we have travelled almost exactly the same path as Ben and his parents, with the same wonderful results. There is no single easy cure for APD. It's a constant chipping away with many therapies, but it can be done just as the author said. If you're struggling with APD, this book is an excellent road map to success! And for the record, APD IS NOT AUTISM!
Rating: 
Summary: Good resource
Review: My review was prompted more by the comments about
autism that were previously posted, rather than any
inspiration about the book itself. To start with the
latter, although I found the tone self-indulgent,
I am feeling generous today and decided to rate the
book 4 stars because there are so few articulate
resources about processing disorders out there.
I am the mother of an elementary school child with
a visual processing deficit that is just as murkily
understood as APD. So I could well relate to
Karen's frustrations in getting the straight story
out of the medical and educational establishments,
and the struggles to get her child help.
My comment about self-indulgence is prompted
by the sense I got from reading the book that,
perhaps because Karen and her husband were medical
professionals, they made lifestyle decisions
that may have felt right to them but were probably
not the most helpful for Ben. There is a fine line between
doing what you as a parent think feels right, versus making
personal choices that may have exacerbated Ben's
difficulties, even after they knew something
was amiss. Being a stay at home Mom in the styx
of rural Indiana may have been an idyll for Karen
and husband, but it compromised Ben's access to
medical, educational and social resources
in his critical pre-K years. I found the "this is autism" message mean-spirited
and unhelpful. However, I should say that there is
a medical cadre that postulates that developmentally-based
processing disorders of any kind belong on the mild end
of pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) spectrum.
The "PDD spectrum" is the new millenium term for what
used to be called "autism". For what it is worth, this
identification does ring true to me. Autism is, in essence,
an impaired ability to make sense of the the world around
you and your relationship to it. These attributes almost
prefectly describe the clinical apsects of audial/visual
processing deficits, and their socio-emotional consequences.
Rating:
Summary: if you aren't sure, then read this book
Review: oh my. trying to write this review brings back the fear and anger of knowing my daughter wasn't autistic but yet was not "normal" by most standards. this book was the key to the cypher for me. foli's experience was almost identical to mine--all the misdiagnoses and attending misery. my daughter is 9 now. she's ferociously smart and doing well in a regular classroom. CAPD is nothing to be afraid of or saddened by, and having a child with this problem can be incredibly instructive for handling ALL children. my younger daughter has learned so much from just being a part of the struggle to understand and help her sister. please also read the books by teri james bellis--they're excellent for a more technical understanding of the problems of CAPD.
Rating:
Summary: A MOTHER'S LOVING DETERMINATION FREES HER CHILD.....
Review: The author, Karen Foli, is the mother of Ben, a child troubled by sound perception. She made several pilgrimages to "experts" to find salvation for him. The "experts" became what they were by comparing what they already knew. They were of marginal help. Her child did not conform to what they already knew. Selfishly she pursued a selfless journey to find the answer to her child's needs. Driven by maternal love, she was determined to follow her intuitiion, and in the process became an "expert" herself. Her book is an autbiographical journey taking her and her son where no mother had gone before. I sat beside her, felt her anguish, anger and fear, on every trip she made to her final successful effort to free the intelligence she knew was locked within her child. The book is a witness to courage in action, driven by the intensity and determination of a mother's love and the solution found to APD, or auditory processing disorder.
Rating:
Summary: Concerned Professional
Review: The message this book brings about is simply that of a parent and the family's journey. The underlying experience is important. APD has so many components that are unique to each child, it is unjust to think this is the "typical outcome". Ms. Foli seems abrupt at times but I also think many of those who don't understand APD, but would lead a parent to believe they do, leads to much frustration. As far as APD being a motor speech disorder, not sure I whole heartedly buy that one... Autism is very different, but those who display Autism can definately and often display APD qualities. APD is not a stand-alone, rest-your-hat-on-this-one type of disorder. But many with who display mainly APD qualities are productive successful citizens, I consider myself one of them. If you have been told your child will not be, get a second opinion. It is not a cookie-cutter disorder. Each child is unique. Take this book for what it is, one mom's journey, but realize your own may take on similarities but also my have very different turns. Borrow this book, it is a good read, but only for the one time you will read it...want something to sink your teeth into?? Look up Terri Bellis...
Rating:
Summary: Different, not defective
Review: The pain and frustration of this family's journey through the maze of APD is expressively detailed in Like Sound Through Water. Helpful resources for those researching APD are listed in the end of the book (altho another good resource is the
capd list at maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/capd.html). On another level the book is disturbing in effect because of the trials and tribulations that a psychiatrist and PhD communication person went through to find help for their son. If it was this difficult for people with great educational and financial resources, what hope is there for the rest of us? Karen says as much on pg. 253-4 "...Or the parents who didn't have the time and resources to learn new techniques to help their children read and process sounds. They would have no choice but to rely on a system to help them. I shook my head and wondered how a country as rich in resources as ours couldn't offer more. There were millions of children and their parents who were suffering. I felt sad and angry. Guilty for the resources I had, and at the same time, grateful I had them."
It seems unconscionable to me that a system like Lindamood-Bell, that clearly does work, costs $50+ per hour....beyond the reach of most people. What is the answer? (Especially if some states use 3rd grade reading scores to predict prison population).
The other question I have is what would have happened to Ben had such intense intervention *NOT* occurred? Would he have developed adaptive strategies as his father, the psychiatrist did? Is our educational system creating problems by demanding that all of us be equally competent at all skills at the same ages?
Rating:
Summary: A Rare Find
Review: This book is a rare find: a memoir that reads like a novel but offers so much more to the reader than a compelling story. It shows what can happen when a mother and father keep looking for the answer to the question, Why can't our son communicate with his world as other children can? Why can't he speak? Why can't he understand what is said to him? It provides one of the best examples I've ever read of how a mother's love and belief in her child can overcome the efforts of professionals and experts to label the child, even though the label clearly doesn't fit. When I finished the book, I was filled with hope and the belief that there's so much that can be done to help these children reach their potentials. Foli brings the reader into her home and family, unfolding the story of the journey she and her son, Ben, took to find a correct diagnosis and help. One of the things I love the most about this book is how Foli brings each event in this often difficult journey to life with sometimes painful details and often refreshingly honest humor. For example, there's a heartbreaking scene early in the book in which the child's grandfather realizes that his grandson simply doesn't understand when spoken to. But the book is more than a memoir that I couldn't put down. It's also a firsthand account--the first one available--of what a child and family experience when a child has auditory processing disorder. I was especially interested in this because a nephew of mine has had similar difficulties communicating: garbled speech, difficulty understanding words. I really appreciated the author's detailed description of the programs and strategies that helped her son: Fast ForWord, Step 4Word, Fokes Sentence Builder, and the Lindamood-Bell LiPS programs. Foli also provides a basic guide to auditory processing disorder in the final chapter, along with brief case studies of other children and their experiences overcoming APD. The additional resources ending the book offer a good starting place to find more information on the disorder. All in all, this book is a refreshingly honest, well-written, and informative memoir of a mother who never, ever gave up on her son.
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