Hearing and Kids

Editor’s Note: This post is written by my good friend Joseph Smaldino. Dr. Smaldino received his PhD in audiology from the University of Florida and his research areas are hearing aids, speech perception and audiologic rehabilitation, but he has focused for the last 20 years on the effects of classroom acoustics on listening and learning.  He served on the American National

For some reason, the cochlear implant guidelines for young children has always been behind the times. For a long time children with a profound hearing loss could be implanted at 1 year but a child with a severe hearing loss could not be implanted before age 2. Don’t children who are 18 months old need to hear? Audiologists and ENT’s

Dr. Dana Suskind, a pediatric otolaryngologist at the University of Chicago Medical School wrote the wonderful book Thirty Million Words – Building a Child’s Brain, She is Director of the 30 million words initiative at the University of Chicago Medical School – a program to build language and build the brains of children who are growing up in poverty who

When children read books they want to find books that they can identify with. Children of color want to read books in which there are children of color. Girls want to read books in which there are strong girls (like the Mighty Girl) series. Children with hearing loss who wear hearing aids and cochlear implants want to read books about

The world of audiology has changed dramatically since I started in this field in 1963. I was fortunate to have a wonderful mentor, David Luterman, who helped me to understand the role of grief for audiologists and for the families we work with. The work of Kris English, Johnnie Sexton, and others has made it clear than many audiologists do

Spring time and a bunch of newly minted people will graduate as audiologists. Some will even be pediatric audiologists. (Hurrah – we need as many as we can get!! ) What does it take to become a good (or great) pediatric audiologist? Pediatric audiology is different than adult audiology. For both you need to understand  all the basics of testing

I have recently started taking piano lessons again after many years and am having a wonderful time. While I have continued to sing and to play guitar but the piano is different. It is reminding me of how important music is to brain development. The Brain Volts Lab at Northwestern run by the brilliant clinician Nina Kraus has done a

Years ago, when we were only implanting one ear, there was a great deal of discussion about whether to implant the right or left ear. Sometimes the two ears have significantly different hearing. When only one ear was being implanted or one ear was implanted first, there was a lot of discussion about which ear to implant first. Some thought

I have recently gotten hearing aids and it reminded me that we need to remember that adjusting to new technology is an effort for everyone. I remember in the olden days when people moved from analog to digital hearing aids both children and adults were certain that the new hearing aids weren’t working because they just didn’t sound as loud.

We know how important it is provide support services to children with hearing loss in school. It is just as important to provide support with after school activities. There are several things do consider. Vocabulary Does the child know all the words associated with the activity? Don’t assume. In sports activities think about all the words that might come up