Every parent worries about the development of their child. They’re constantly watching for development signs like when they start walking, their first words, and how quickly they learn how to read and write. Even so, identifying health issues in infants, toddlers, and even older children can be a challenge for attentive parents.
Hearing loss in children can be remarkably common. About four children in every 1,000 are born with hearing loss. According to Boston Children’s Hospital, by age 12, about 20% of children experience some kind of acquired hearing loss. Common causes of acquired hearing loss in children include head trauma, exposure to loud noises, overexposure to headphones, illness, and even certain medical treatments.
Identifying Hearing Loss in Infants
Early identification of hearing loss in infants is critical to your child’s development. With the help of an audiologist like Toronto Hearing Consultants, your child can get appropriate treatment to help them hear and avoid development delays.
Some of the most common signs of hearing loss in infants tend to be developmental delays. Typically, at three months, infants should recognize your voice and be making noises. By nine months, they understand simple words and can babble syllables. By 12 months, they can start making real, recognizable worlds. By 18 months, toddlers should be able to understand simple phrases and have a vocabulary of about 20 to 50 words. By 24 months, that should expand to be around 200 to 300 words.
It’s important to know that there is no deadline for when a child should meet these stages. However, delays can identify an issue in their hearing and lead to appropriate treatment.
Hearing Loss in Toddlers and Young Children
Acquired hearing loss in children can be harder to identify than hearing loss from birth, especially if your child has already developed their speech skills. Even at a young age, children will develop coping techniques to compensate for their hearing loss.
These are some of the signs that your toddler or young child may have hearing loss:
- Your child turns the television up louder than anyone else.
- Your child frequently asks you to repeat yourself or says “what?” more often than they did in the past.
- Your child says that they didn’t hear you. While some parents instinctively think they’re just being ignored, it could be an indication of hearing loss.
- Your child seeks out visual cues when you are speaking to them. Visual cues are a coping mechanism that can help people with hearing loss understand your meaning, even when they don’t catch your words.
Hearing Loss in Older Children
As children get older, they can start to communicate health issues, but they also do not understand that they have hearing loss. Signs indicating hearing loss in older children can be failing grades, trouble following conversations over the phone, telling the difference between certain consonants (such as “s” and “f” or “p” and “t”), and experiencing consistent ringing in their ears.
Hearing loss can be treated with the help of a hearing aid. Identifying these signs in your children can help you take the right to steps correct the issue.
