Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

We are having it confimed on Feb 5th, but it looks like my baby can't hear well at all in his left ear and can hear 30decibals in his right which honestly isn't affecting him a whole lot right now but we are starting to have some communication issues due to his frustration because he isn't speaking a whole lot due to the fact that his hearing loss is affecting his speech... which is also part of the reason he has started biting me.

This is a bit hard for me because all along I knew he was advanced developmentally but slow with speech and its been put off and put off since he had dances to music and keeps a beat, sings, babbles, responds and says a few words and I actually stopped doing signing with him months ago because I thought it was hurting his speech.

We are looking into tubes since part of his issue in effusion even though he rarely has infections and possibly an amplifer device to raise his right ear hearing to maximize its potential while we work on regaining hearing in his left. Also hearing tests for toddlers aren't an exact science so his hearing may not be as bad as they are predicting right now but we are jumping on the worse case scenerio bandwagon so that he gets the best care and his speech doesn't end up damaged from it.

We got early intervention in Florida involved last week and they are just awesome! And after we confirm that there is a true loss in Feb he will be put into speech classes.

As of right now we were just told to make sure we speak to him on his right ear and in front of him so he sees our mouth and can hear the annuciation properly.

Anyone else dealing with something like this or in the field?

Thanks

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

No advice, just wanted to send some hugs. Hope you get some answers soon.

You know we are kinda going down the same road with Nate. His hearing came back fine, so we going to have him re-evaluated by a speech therapist in two weeks. He is saying more words than he did when he was first evaluated in Oct. It's so frustrating bc he understands everything you tell him to do, but just doesn't speak much. People say wait, but if there is an issue I want us to start working on it now before it gets worse or he really falls behind. Our Ped wasn't too concerned bc he's not 2 yrs old yet.

Message edited 1/23/2007 5:43:54 PM.

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

I don't have any personal experience with this, but I have to give you and commend you for being so pro-active about trying to figure out what is going on. I'm a special ed teacher and so many parents wait so long to have their children evaluated --- but I firmly believe that if you catch things when they are young you can give them so much early intervention that there may not be a problem once they are of school age.

I wish you guys the best!

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

If he has a confirmed hearing loss, get him fitted for a hearing aid (speak to your audiologist about this) right away so he can start hearing the sounds in his environment better and DEFINITELY start him on speech/language therapy. He should be in one to one therapy sessions at his age, to really get his language going. Groups/classes are good too, for socialization and language exposure, but he really should be in a 1:1 environment for therapy too.

Its great that you have him in Early Intervention because the younger you start him with the services you need, the better the outcome will be for him. Good luck!

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

Laurie, I can put you intouch with my mom who's a speech and language pathologist. She is more than willing to guide you through the process if you'd like. Just let me know!

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

Thanks ladies and Rachel, I'll shoot you a FM when we get the next hearing test done or before that if I really start losing my mind.

I actually somewhat lost it this morning.
In the next week we will have Jack's hearing and speech problem confirmed, have to fight with our insurance because we feel this warrents a pediatric ENT's opinion not just the base adult ENT since, finding out the results of our testing with the RE to find out the cause of our miscarriages and get back to TTC (which right now jumping into a high risk pregnancy doesn't really seem ideal) and to top it off Dh is dealing with a new medicine for a problem that he has and he needs it to work since its the only thing he can take per his rheumatologist and the military to fly and once and they are trying to rush it since he needs to redeploy ASAP.

I'm wound up pretty tight right now.

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

Laurie, I'm a speech pathologist. I'll send you an FM later when I have more time. Right now DS is on the loose so I have to run.

Re: Has anyone dealt with a toddler with a hearing loss?

I don't have any advice on this, just wanted to send some hugs! I'm glad Early Intervention is helping!

Message edited 1/24/2007 2:00:03 PM.