Hearing and Kids

Tanya Saunders has written a series of books in which animal characters have a cochlear implant. The books also deal with feelings. Two books are about Ling Ling Bird who has Magic Ears. In the book Ling Ling Bird Hears with his Magic Ears the book goes through lots of animal and environmental sounds around them. It is for very

When children get technology for the first time, or when they move from one piece of technology to another (changing hearing aids or moving from a hearing aid to a cochlear implant), families often assume that since the new sound is better, they will just adapt. “Now they are hearing so they will just learn by listening”. Research has shown

I have received a lot of questions about managing children with unilateral hearing loss, who wear a cochlear implant on the ear with hearing loss. What do we need to do to build skills the cochlear implant ear? Two ears have significant benefit in the ability to localize sound and in hearing in noise. This is a critical so we

It is good for us all to be reminded periodically about what is involved in building baby’s brains. We know now that babies learn even earlier than we thought possible. Hearing babies are listening to their mothers for at least the last 20 weeks of pregnancy. They recognize their mother’s voices. Babies cry in the languages they hear. The melody

In the olden days, when I started to work in this field, we used to think that parents where having trouble using hearing aids with their children because they were not comfortable with technology. That might have been true 50 years ago, but it is not true today. They all have smart phones, smart TVs etc. So now, when parents

I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut, but I give up. The Sound of Metal is getting lots of press, but I am concerned about the message it is giving about cochlear implants. Yes, when CI’s get turned on they may not sound like speech but, with practice, it gets better and most adults who lost hearing feel that they

There has been a lot of research about the Hearing Aid Effect with adults. What does that mean? It means how do people with a hearing aid think others react to them because they have a hearing aid. How does it make them feel? Does it make them feel less competent? Whether or not people have negative opinions of people

Anyone out there sick of hearing about Covid? I certainly am. I am one of the lucky ones who has had both vaccine shots. It is a great relief. But what is happening to people with hearing loss? Adult friends who have hearing loss talk about how difficult it is for them to manage in many situations. Masks distort the

When children are little, parents explain about their child’s hearing loss. When someone asks “What are those things in his ears?”, parents say something like “those are his hearing aids, they help him hear better.” If children ask more questions, we might add something like “Some people wear eyeglasses to help them see better and some people wear hearing aids

As part of helping kids understand the need for good communication it is important to talk about the people they need to communicate with. Especially as kids get older, they need to realize that the world is bigger than it was when they were little. They need to know that they will need to be able to communicate with a