Hearing and Kids

How do we decide if a child with hearing loss needs therapy? Schools may perform speech language evaluations and psycho-educational evaluations to determine if a child is in need of any services outside of the classroom. If the evaluations are performed well and interpreted well this may be a good way to make the decision. However, it is CRITICAL that

Everyone who works with children with hearing loss knows that, even with all  the great technology that  is available  today, kids still need help.  Because the technology is so good, school staff members sometimes think that kids do not need any  help. I have had school staff tell me that now that a  child has a cochlear implant he is

Australian Hearing, the organization that provides support to children and adults with hearing loss in Australia, has just written  a document comparing the benefits of different types of FM systems. This is really important information to use in deciding what kind of FM system to recommend for a child. Research has clearly demonstrated that children with normal hearing benefit significantly

  Most of what children with hearing loss learn is learned through seeing and hearing. We talk all the time about how important it is for children with hearing loss to hear well, but we don’t talk enough about the importance of vision. For children with hearing loss, vision is critical.   What do we learn from vision testing? We

Normal hearing kids Babies who pass newborn hearing screening are usually released from follow-up. It is assumed that if the baby had normal hearing at birth the child is out of the woods, as they say. But is that so? Usually it is. But not always.   Middle ear disease Most kids develop fluid in the middle ear, with or

Connecticut just joined 11 other states when it passed a Deaf Children’s Bill of Rights. This bill assures that deaf children can receive an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) that specifically includes a language and communication plan.   Why is this a good thing? Most children with hearing loss are now educated in mainstream settings. With recent advances in newborn hearing

Harvey Dillon has just published the second edition of Hearing Aids (Thieme, 2012). Harvey is very well known and writes and speaks frequently on this topic. He is a very thorough researcher who has set a very high standard for clinicians. Harvey has written a lot about pediatric hearing aid fitting. In my text book (Madell and Flexer, Pediatric Audiology: Diagnosis,

I got an email this morning from a mom asking for advice about a new hearing aid for her teen-aged son. He has a profound hearing loss, has been wearing an AVR transposition hearing aid  that is very old and needs replacement. He relies on sign language to receive information, but communicates orally. Without the transposition hearing aid he is not hearing

I try to keep ahead of things but Hurricane Sandy interrupted my schedule. I live in the part of NYC that lost power and things just got confusing. I had been away, speaking at the Michigan Audiology Consortium conference in Lansing Michigan and arrived back on Friday night.  We drove down to our house on Long Beach Island on Saturday

It is the beginning of the school year and I am doing a bunch of school visits. I am always surprised to see that FM systems are sometimes being used incorrectly. I did two school visits this week. In both districts, a teacher of the deaf who works in the district had educated the teachers about how to use the