There may come a time when your child requires assistance with their hearing. It can be challenging for children to understand just quite what is happening to their ears. Even parents will be wondering what the area of concern might be. Speaking with one of our audiologists might just be the trick to calm your nerves. Hearing loss is nothing to be afraid of and in some cases it's inevitable. It might be due to their genetics, environments or just a deformation when they were born. If your child is worried about going to your local audiologist, take some time to walk them through the points in this article, and chances are they'll feel better!

When Should You Take Them to An Audiologist?

If your child seems to repeatedly ask you to repeat what you are saying, this is obviously a clear sign they may be experiencing hearing loss. But there are some subtle ways that you can test your child’s hearing without making them aware of it:

  • Find out where they are in the house and then try to make a unique sound away from them. Your son is in his bedroom playing, you keep his bedroom door open and when the house is quiet, drop a metal fork on the table. Go upstairs and ask them if they heard that. You could do this several times with varying distance between you and your son to see how advanced the hearing loss is.
  • You should also see if they can hear directly behind them. Our ears have 360-degree hearing and they allow us to pinpoint where a sound came from. But as we lose our hearing, the circle of hearing we once had turns into a cone. There will be some blind spots where your son can’t hear as well.

Repeating Yourself

It's pretty clear when you have to repeat yourself a few times for your child to understand what you are saying that they are experiencing hearing loss and it is time to see an audiologist. But check these out first:

  • Can your son better understand you when you make eye contact while speaking? He may be lip-reading without knowing it.
  • Does your child hear high-pitched sounds better than low-pitched? 
  • Does your child have trouble locating sounds? Playing hide and seek in the park when it's quiet, clapping to alert him of your presence while watching for his reaction could be an experiment worth trying.
  • Do you find you are repeating just the long or complex words? This could be due to the sounds being muffled or merged as they hit his eardrum. 

Taking Your Child to The Audiologist

It's vital that your child knows they are completely safe, and we will take things slow. We want to reassure parents that our approach towards children with hearing loss is different from how we treat adults. We will explain how our ears hear, what could affect our hearing and what hearing loss might mean for them. 

This helps children to engage in the process, take the needless fright out of their system and give them skills to help themselves when an adult isn’t around. Our professionals will explain every single tool or equipment they are going to use before we begin the examination. The first examination is always about gauging the extent of the hearing loss, not necessarily what could be done to massively improve the situation. 

After the cause and effect have been established, then we will begin explaining the myriad of options you and your child have. We make sure to inform the parents what types of hearing aids there are, the costs that are involved, the maintenance and features as well. We have found that children are lot more intuitive, so we like to keep the child and parent in the same room as all of this is happening. This way, the lifestyle of the child can be factored into it. Your child may want smaller hearing aids for everyday things, but more secure over the hearing type of hearing aids for when they play sports.

Feel free to speak with us about any questions you have regarding you and your child’s hearing loss. We can inform you of every type of modern hearing aid technology there is, ways you can improve communication and also when you need to consider bringing in your child for a hearing aid fitting. 

Learn more about EarTech Audiology and call us today at (866) 464-1008.