Hearing and Kids

When I began working in audiology (in the age of the dinosaurs) we did not think it was possible for a child with a significant hearing loss to learn a second language. When families came who were not primary English speakers, we told them they had to talk to their child in English if they wanted her to succeed in

We all know that kids can be bullies. I confess that I do not understand why, but anyone who has spent any time in schools has seen it. A group of kids pick on someone they perceive as weak and there it starts. Bullying is always  unacceptable. It seems worse if it happens to someone we know  and/or love. On

Newman, Wroblewski, Hajick and Rubenstein (2012){{1}}[[1]]Newman, A, Wroblewski, M, Hajicek, J, and Rubenstein, A (2012) Measuring speech Recognition in Children with Cochlear Implants in a Virtual Classroom, J. Speech, Language, Hrng Res; 55, 532-540.[[1]]have published a very interesting article in the Journal of Speech and Hearing Research describing a study they conducted to try and assess how children with cochlear

In my last blog I  discussed what kind of information audiologists needed to give to families and interventionists. This week I want to talk about what kind  of information families and interventionists need to give to the audiologist. We, as audiologists, cannot really do our job if we do not get information from those who see these kids more often

Best results for kids will be obtained when everyone who works with kids communicates well. So what do families, auditory verbal clinicians, speech-language-pathologists and others need to know from the audiologist? Too many families and clinicians have complained to me that they just can’t read audiology reports. They are written in some foreign language and are not intelligible. We write

The most important reasons for fitting hearing aids is to permit access to speech information. One of the most important sounds for kids to hear is “s”. Why? Well, “s” provides critical grammatical information: • pluralization (boot, boots), • present vs past (she put it on, she puts it on) • 3rd person present (she eats) • Possessive pronouns, (hers,

With early identification, and high quality technology, most kids with hearing loss have enormous potential to learn to use audition to learn language. For them to do so successfully, it is essential that they wear technology full time. This requires an active commitment on the part of families. But getting parents to accept and use technology is not always easy.

I had an extraordinary day yesterday. (Isn’t audiology fun!!) My colleague Nancy Schumann (speech-language pathologist and auditory verbal therapist) and I ran a support group for kids 9-12. We had 7 kids from 4th through 7th grade. They had varying degrees of hearing loss from moderate to profound. Some kids wore hearing aids, others cochlear implants. All were mainstreamed and

How much trouble is a unilateral hearing loss? How much does it interfere with listening, learning and literacy? Well, it varies from person to person but we cannot assume that it is not a problem. Some parents feel that unilateral hearing loss is a problem and others feel that if a child has one good ear he or she will

This issue of of Hearing and Kids was written by my good friend Dr. Carol Flexer. She is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Audiology, The University of Akron. She is an international lecturer and author of more than 155 publications, and is a past president of the Educational Audiology Association, the American Academy of Audiology, and the AG Bell Academy