How Can Hearing Loss Affect Your Child’s Development?

Hearing loss is often associated with old age, but it happens to children as well.

When it does, it can affect the way their speech and language skills develop.

After all, young children learn language partially by mimicking what they hear the adults around them say.

If you’re a parent who’s received a diagnosis of hearing loss in your baby, it can be frightening, but there is hope.

Pediatric speech therapy for children with hearing loss will focus on helping your child develop their speech and language skills in spite of their hearing loss.

However, it’s important to start as soon as possible.

Early intervention speech therapy has been shown to be much more effective, since your child doesn’t end up missing developmental milestones.

Let’s take a closer look at how hearing loss can affect your child’s development, and how speech therapy for hearing impaired kids can help.

How Does Hearing Development Work?

Being able to hear what’s happening around them, including other people, is important for your child’s development.

Children need to hear others speak in order to learn to speak themselves.

The first stage of language development in babies is learning to recognize different voices, like the voices of their parents.

Usually, around four months old your baby will begin to babble.

Most babies can say a few simple words like “mama” and “dada” when they’re around a year old.

It’s also around this time when parents expect their children to reach this important milestone.

However, when this doesn’t happen it can be a sign of hearing impairment and it should be addressed as soon as possible.

Hearing impairment or hearing loss can range from mild to extreme.

Children with mild cases usually have an idea of what is being communicated to them, even if they miss some details.

However, they can have trouble focusing when there’s too much noise around them.

On the other hand, children who are born deaf can’t hear anything at all.

Hearing impairment can impact your child’s life, especially when it comes to developing social skills and school performance.

How Can Hearing Loss Impact Your Child’s Speech And Language Development?

If you suspect your child has hearing loss, the first step is to have their hearing tested.

This prospect might be a little frightening, but it’s important to know.

Children with hearing loss don’t experience the world in the same way as those with fully functioning hearing.

This can cause problems later on, such as:

• Delayed speech
• Delayed language skills
• Needing learning disability therapy for difficulty in school
• Low self esteem
• Having trouble socializing and making friends

RELATED: Can Speech Therapy Improve Mental Health?

Also, there are some sounds used in the English language that children with hearing loss find especially hard to hear.

These include ‘th,’ ‘s,’ ‘sh,’ and ‘t.’

Hearing impaired children usually have trouble judging the volume of their own voices as well.

As a result, they may be too loud or too soft, which may lead others to assume they’re either overly shy or being rude.

However, there’s hope and below we’ll explain these issues in detail and how they can be managed.

Learning Words

One of the main challenges hearing loss can cause in children is their ability to learn words.

Children who experience hearing loss don’t learn words as fast as their hearing peers do.

This is because they can’t hear other people speak clearly.

Children learn language by listening to how those around them use language.

When they can’t hear the others around them properly, this can cause challenges in learning words.

Your child may end up having an easy time learning the words related to specific things, like dog, jump, cup, or blue.

On the other hand, more abstract words, like shy, dream, luck, or calm, will likely be more difficult.

They might also have difficulty understanding that words have different meanings.

For example, the word right as in correct as well as in the opposite of left.

Smaller words that give nuance to sentences are also often difficult for a hearing impaired child to understand.

These include things like:

• Conjunctions (and, for, but, etc)
• Articles (the, a, an)
• Prepositions (about, to, around, between)

Learning To Create And Understand Sentences

Children with hearing loss can also have a hard time forming and understanding sentences.

They end up using shorter sentences because they find complex sentences problematic, or they may not use clauses.

Other issues that may arise while forming sentences are:

• They may be unable to use past tense
• They may not understand plural words
• They may not use possessives

The inability to form complete and proper sentences can cause difficulty in your child’s linguistic development.

Performing In School

Children with hearing impairments usually have trouble in school, so it’s important to get them help early.

It’s common for many children to struggle with math or reading.

However, a child with hearing loss is likely to have a harder time.

Imagine trying to learn when you can’t even hear your teacher properly.

This makes it hard to retain new concepts, follow classroom discussion, and interact with teachers and peers in a learning environment.

If hearing impaired children don’t get the support they need in school, they may:

• Experience difficulty performing in school
• Fall behind in their grades
• Not advance academically past grade three or four

Getting your child help early and providing them with the support they need can help them keep up with their peers.

Learning Social Skills

As mentioned above, if hearing loss is not addressed, it can affect a child’s overall development.

However, it can also affect their social life, since hearing loss can make it harder to talk to other people.

Your child may have difficulty communicating with peers because they can’t hear them properly.

They may also have difficulty communicating with peers because their language development is behind.

It’s easier for adults to fill in the gaps when a child has difficulty with communication.

Other children, who are still learning how to effectively communicate themselves, have a much harder time with this.

Some children might even refuse to play or interact with a child that has a hearing impairment.

All this can lead to isolation and the desire to stay home from school, since children often thrive when they make friends.

How Can Speech Therapy For Hearing Impaired Children Help?

There are a few ways to manage hearing loss in children.

Getting help from a speech therapist is one of them.

RELATED: Dispelling The Myths Around Speech Therapy For Kids

It can be hard to know when to take your child to a speech therapist.

But early intervention has been shown to have the best outcomes, because it keeps your child from falling too far behind their peers.

If you have discovered that your child is having issues with speech due to hearing loss, our Washington DC pediatric speech therapists can help them develop their listening skills and instruct them on how to speak more clearly.

Here is what speech therapy can offer to you and your child:

• Early screening of hearing impairment issues
• Guidance to help your child gain confidence and independence
• Sessions in which the parents and other caregivers are allowed to be involved

After making the decision to use speech therapy to help your child, your speech therapist can help you in a number of ways.

If it’s determined that your child needs a sound amplification device, your speech therapist can help you choose the best option.

As well, it may be the case that your child needs to use sign language as a way to communicate.

If that’s true, your speech therapist will help your family learn sign language so you can teach your child.

Your speech therapist will also help you explore other treatment options, including working with an audiologist.

This might include the “total communication” method, which uses spoken language (when possible), written language and augmentative and alternative communication options.

Book Your Appointment With District Speech Today

To find out more about hearing loss in children and the speech and language problems that can develop from it, we can help.

Our licensed speech therapists can help your child understand their disability and learn ways to deal with the issues associated with it.

We also work together with parents, in order to provide you with knowledge and advice when it comes to choosing the right kind of speech therapy solutions your children may need.

Book your appointment with District Speech today.