Hearing and Kids

Today’s blog is written by my good friend Don Goldberg. Donald M. Goldberg, Ph.D., CCC-SLP/A, FAAA, LSLS Cert. AVT, is a Full Professor in the Department of Communication, College of Wooster (Ohio) and a Consultant on the Professional Staff, for the Hearing Implant Program (HIP) at the Cleveland Clinic’s Head and Neck Institute. Dr. Goldberg earned his Ph.D. at the

Children with hearing loss should receive audiological evaluations on a regular basis. But what happens with the test results? Audiologic evaluations are not just an exercise – they are a critical part of planning management. In order to use the information well, it is important to be able to carefully review the audiologic evaluation and interpret the test results.  

We all know the advantages of mainstreaming kids with hearing loss and other disabilities. Exposure to typical children and typical academic expectations offers children with hearing loss the opportunity to develop better language, literacy and academic skills. Kids who are mainstreamed are not inherently smarter than kids attending signing programs in schools for the deaf but their parents have made

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The first question I ask a family when I see them – either the first time or when they come in for re-evaluation is “What does your baby or child hear with technology?” If babies are doing well with hearing aids, I expect the parents and the therapist working with the family to be able to tell me what sounds

 We are all influenced by words. Some have easy, uncomplicated meanings (book, tree, house) and others carry a lot of emotional baggage (disabled, slow, delayed etc). When talking with families and children we are working with we need to think carefully about how we describe children and test results. We do not want our words to interfere with our message.

I received an email asking for help from a mother of a little 3 year old boy who is deaf who lives in Iraq, near Baghdad. She has known that he had a hearing loss for many months but has not been able to get services for him. Why? Well, she is a Kurd and the roads are not safe

May is Better Speech and Hearing Month. What does that mean we should be doing? I want to use this opportunity to help kids understand about hearing: why it is important, what do we need to do to protect it, and what do we need to do to make things easier for our friends who do not hear well.  

I recently consulted with a family which was concerned about the educational performance of their 9-year-old son with hearing loss. He was demonstrating significant language delays, which were resulting in significant learning problems, including reading delays. Everyone, including the faculty at the boy’s school, assumed that all his problems were due to hearing loss.  As a result, they seemed to conclude

Many years ago, I had the good fortune to have David Luterman as my mentor. He had been my undergraduate professor at Emerson College and taught me how exciting pediatric audiology could be. I went off to the University of Wisconsin to earn a master’s degree in Communication Sciences and Disorders, and then returned to work as the audiologist in