Kyleigh Schatz' hearing was driving her to distraction.

The 7-year-old would be in class, but out of her seat almost a dozen times by 9 a.m.

It wasn't attention deficit disorder, although her inattentiveness would make some people think otherwise. She has an auditory processing disorder.

"She has normal external hearing," her mother, Linda Schatz said. "Her brain doesn't recognize what she hears."

Kyleigh does have some hearing loss in her left ear, but it's not what is causing her to confuse words like feet and feed or not hear the person behind her talk to her.

It took time for her family to get the correct diagnosis, ending with a trip to an auditory specialist at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. When Kyleigh was 3 or 4, her family started noticing she had difficulty with communication.

At home, Kyleigh would mix up or forget instructions from her parents. Her family learned different ways to communicate with Kyleigh. They give her directions in short sentences and a few parts at a time, and they make sure they have eye contact when talking. When they go to places like the zoo and basketball games, Kyleigh gets anxious because of the noise.

Kyleigh's parents tried treatment for other disorders, including ADD, that matched some of her symptoms. It didn't work. A neuropsychologist suspected the auditory disorder when she was 5, but it would still be two more years for a definitive answer. Children must be 7n years old before they get a central auditory processing disorder diagnosis.

The disorder affected Kyleigh's grades at school. She couldn't hear the teacher over the background noise of the classroom. Her test scores varied depending if she heard and comprehended what the teacher said.

"It is difficult with background noise," Linda Schatz said. "She will try to focus in and catch every other word. She missed part of the lecture."

But then she ended up in a classroom at Prairie Rose Elementary School where the teacher spoke into a microphone and her voice was amplified through speakers. For Kyleigh, she needs the teacher's voice 20 percent louder than other noises.

Several schools in Bismarck Public Schools have these specially-equipped classrooms to help students with auditory disabilities. The Bismarck Sertoma Club donated a $1,300 amplification system, including speakers and microphone, to the Bismarck School District to enable another classroom to be amplified. They presented it to the district at its club meeting Wednesday at the Kelly Inn.

"Our purpose is speech and hearing," Sertoma Club member Anne Bry said. She is a speech language pathologist at the Children's Development Center in Bismarck. The club has given other speech and hearing device donations in the past to the school district, and some to private individuals found through the school district, she said.

The classroom teacher tested how well the system worked for Kyleigh by placing rubber bands on her wrist. Kyleigh started with 10 rubber bands each day and the teacher took them off Kyleigh's wrist every time she got out of her seat.

"At the end of the school year, she had four rubber bands left," Linda Schatz said. For her, that was a success, she said.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)