Hearing is critical for children when it comes to developing their speech and language skills. If a child has hearing loss, it can negatively impact this development and make it difficult to keep up with their peers in school.
Hearing Loss Difficulties in Speech and Vocabulary
Children may have mild to moderate hearing loss that goes unnoticed, or their struggles can be mistaken for a learning disability. Whether you’re a concerned parent or a teacher at Chase Street Elementary School, it can be helpful to know the way in which these language development struggles might present.
Children with hearing loss may:
- Understand concrete words but struggle with more abstract terms
- Have difficulty understanding words with multiple meanings
- Speak in shorter sentences
- Learn to read at a slower pace
- Have trouble both understanding and expressing more complex sentences
- Have difficulty hearing words that end in “s” or “ed”, which makes it harder to pick up on different tenses
- Be harder to understand when they speak
- Have trouble gauging the volume of their own voice
Pediatric Hearing Loss Can Make It Harder to Communicate with Others
While academics are very important, developing speech and language skills also serves to help children connect to others. Children with hearing loss can experience isolation and feel unhappy in school. They may deal with frequent misunderstandings when talking with other children or feel left out of conversations entirely.
Hearing Aids Can Help Improve Language Development
Research has shown that early intervention with hearing aids can be crucial for helping children with hearing loss meet their developmental milestones.
One study from 2016 looked at a group of young children who had severe sensorineural hearing loss. Children were fitted with hearing aids and split into two groups between those who had received hearing aids:
- Between 3-6 months of age
- Between 12-15 months of age
Researchers found the earlier intervention before six months had a significant positive effect on a child’s language development skills.
An additional study examined the language outcomes of preschool children with mild to severe hearing loss. The study found that children fit earlier with hearing aids had better early language achievement than children fit later. However, children fit after 18 months of age also improved their language with hearing aid use.
If you are concerned about your child’s hearing and wish to speak with an expert or schedule an appointment, call the Georgia Hearing Center at ENT of Athens today.