How one can find out if they can hear or not
Many kids in America, three million to be exact, suffer from hearing deficiencies. What these statistics fail to mention is that specific people who suffer from it. Many times there is no one to confirm if indeed Johnny Jones or Mary Smith will require special attention. The number of children that were tested in only select areas in the US were taken and applied to the total school population of children all over the country and this is who the American Hearing Society obtained the statistic. Children that live in the rest of the states that do not require hearing tests will go on with the rest of their lives not having been diagnosed with a hearing problem.
If you only knew the many teenagers who do their best to live a normal life because they are not conscious about the hearing problem they really have, you will be surprised. On occasion people will comment and say how these kids are very inattentive, unmanageable, and even stupid. A child will either feel afraid to confide in someone what they are feeling or they will simply believe that they are normal. One usual case is this boy who did not tell people what was wrong with him because he was sensitive to the topic. Being more on the quiet said was because of the scarlet fever he has suffered when he was 3, they say.
This boy had trouble keeping up with what his parents wanted from him. His father assumed that the boy was just being hard head and would spank him to teach him a lesson. Absent mindedness was what his other called it. His mother would result to shouting just to get his work done. In the end when the son heard her shout, he did what was told of him. His mother said that once you stress things out he will be more inclined to do it.
In terms of school, the boy was not so much a team player. Since he was a bright lad he managed to do passing work in his overcrowded class. He lived in a state that left the problem of hearing tests up to the individual communities. At 9 years old the school did some audiometer tests.
The scarlet fever was the cause for the hearing impairments that was found in the boy. He can hear better due to a hearing aid. It is also promising to note that he can gain back some hearing with medical help.
Not every case has such a happy ending. There are some cases that will be hard to treat once the problem is found. The head of the educational service of the New York League for the Hard of Hearing said that the weakest point at present is not in the testing program but in the follow up. You test, you put a card in the file, and you go somewhere else to test. Neither the parents nor the school will do any follow ups on this. This can cause the problem to become worse. The mother is the logical person to notice impaired hearing. It should be done prior to the child entering school. The best way to go about it is to leave the child in another room and from a distance speak to them and she how they react. Yet some parents do not want to know the truth. Now, simple home hearing test are present that mothers can use to test their child. With hearing that is not faulty a child will react to noises like a telephone ringing, a door banging, loud clapping of hands, dogs barking. Does your baby react if you suddenly come into his line of vision, as if he hasn’t heard you enter the room? This would indicate impaired hearing. Are there discharges or odors from your child’s ear, or deformities or swellings in or about the external ear canal? These are danger signals. If your child is old enough, does he respond to spoken directions while he is out of sight in another room? He should, if he can hear satisfactorily. Talking comes when children are able to hear things around him. It also follows that not hearing things will force them into silence.
To keep learning about Hearing be sure to check out hearing tests. Deeper insights on Hearing are located at audiology.
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