After Fitting

Children with hearing loss require additional support and patience. From the beginning, children’s acceptance of hearing aids is affected by those around them. The praise and encouragement of family members, educators and peers when your child consistently uses the hearing aids is essential to his or her self-esteem. Here are a few practical ways to encourage hearing aid use in the early days, as well as continue to encourage speech and language development:

Keep a hearing aid calendar. Keep track of how many hours a day your child uses his or her hearing aids as well as any information about the hearing aids themselves, your child’s acceptance or resistance to the aids, and any new responses your child has to sounds when the hearing aids are in. The calendar can even be set up as a motivator with age appropriate rewards, such as stickers.

Help your child learn his or her name. It is very important that your child recognizes his or her name. This allows you to begin communicating readily with each other. Remember when you call your child’s name, make eye contact and have a reason. If you call your child’s name just to see a response, your child may soon tire of this and stop responding.

Observe everyday sounds with your child. When sounds occur around you, put your hands to your ears, point to the source and exclaim “I hear that!” This draws your child’s attention to sounds. Later, you can extend this exercise by bringing your child to the source of the sound and identifying it (for example, “listen to the dog barking!”) Praise your child when he or she does a good job of listening.

Maintain your journal. Listen to the sounds your child makes when using the hearing aids. Changes in how your child vocalizes (for example, does your child use mostly vowels or consonants when making sounds?) are excellent indicators of how well the hearing aids are working for your child.