Given below are few ways a hearing loss affects children:
- Delay in speech and language development
- Language disorder causes learning problems
- Social isolation and low self-esteem
Specific effects on development
Vocabulary
- Slow vocabulary development
- Concrete words like jump, five, cat are easy to learn than abstract words like equal, before, after.
- With age the gap, the vocabulary between children with hearing loss and children with normal hearing widens.
- Children with hearing loss are not able to understand at once while teaching them
- Difficulty in understanding words that has multiple meaning. For e.g Bark ( bark of a dog, tree bark )
- Academic progress falls
- Parents, teachers, hearing professional should support children with hearing loss to level up their achievement.
Sentence Structure
- Children with hearing loss understands and creates simple sentences than children with normal hearing
- Have problems in understanding and constructing complicated sentences
- Cannot hear the words ending with as or ed.
Speaking
- Cannot hear quiet speech sounds like s, sh, f, th as the sound level of these quieter speech sounds is on the order of 40-50 dB.
- Children with hearing loss are even not able to hear their own voice when they speak cause either they are too loud or too soft.
Academic Achievement
Academic achievement is low overall, especially in mathematical concepts and reading
Social functioning
Feel isolated as they feel they have no friends in school.
What can be done?
A child who is struggling with hearing problem needs to start their treatment at the early stage to improve their academic performance which also improves their quality of life.
The sooner the treatment is given the faster overall development can be seen in child.