Do you ever feel like you speak, and your kids don’t listen? I’ve used the phrase “your ears are like ornaments” too many times to count! But why do our kids seem to ‘tune out’ when we speak to them?
There are many factors that may contribute to and/or listening, and understanding and assessing aspects of sound processing can make all the difference to a frustrated mum or dad, and on the way, one can help our little ones experience a better sound world.
“Hearing” refers to the access, reception and transfer of sound from your environment, via your ears, to reach your brain. Reduced access can be caused by temporary or permanent hearing loss, and interruption of transfer can occur when nerves that should be passing the messages through to the brain, are not managing to do that well enough. Hearing well is also a prerequisite to understanding sound, and to developing good auditory skills.
What Is Listening and Auditory Processing?
“Listening” and “auditory processing” involve active auditory and cognitive processes at the brain level, such as:
- Auditory Attention (is your child able to focus on sound?)
- Auditory Memory (can he or she store sound information in both the short and longer term?)
- Auditory Decoding (do their brains have a good pattern recognition system to derive meaning from the stream of sound they hear?)
- Auditory Separation (can a child distinctly identify meaningful parts of the pattern, and distinguish important parts of the signal – such as teacher’s speech, from unwanted noise – such as the chit-chat of other kids from behind their seat)
- Auditory Integration (can small pieces of a message be joined up in a meaningful way, from ear to ear and from different parts of the brain’s processes?)
- Auditory Comprehension (Does sound associate to meaningful information, via memory and learning?)
The Difference Between Hearing Loss and Processing Challenges
How may we tell the difference between a hearing loss and a processing challenge?
A child with a temporary or permanent hearing loss may demonstrate difficulty in the following ways:
- When sound is soft or occurs from behind them, they may not respond.
- They consistently ask for TV or other sound sources to be increased, but when it is louder, they follow information easily.
- They may not get a fright with a loud sound, such as a door slamming.
- They may not realise someone is approaching them until the person is right next to them.
- May not respond when being called, especially when a bit further away.
- They may appear to be inattentive.
- Screeching or talking too loudly and not able to regulate their own voice.
- They may become increasingly frustrated when trying to communicate.
However, a child who may have difficulty processing auditory information or listening may present with:
- Limited attention, especially to sound (even though they may be able to attend to other stimuli easily).
- Difficulty remembering auditory instructions.
- Difficulty with multi-step instructions
- Difficulty hearing in noisy environments or becoming distracted in noisy environments.
- Difficulty with reading, writing, spelling and phonics.
- Needing frequent repetition of auditory information.
- Difficulty understanding humour, jokes, sarcasm etc.
- Sensitivity to loud sounds.
Some children may also present with the following difficulties that could indicate both hearing loss and/or processing challenges:
- Speech development may be slow and unclear.
- Language development may be equally delayed.
- Difficulty understanding or following what you have said.
- Mishearing similar sounding words.
“Hearing” and “Listening” do have some cross-over, because not hearing well can impact the development of processing sound well. This is one of the reasons that parents are encouraged to reach out to a professional audiologist who can first eliminate a hearing problem, before assessing a child for any challenges in the processing arena.
Have Your Child’s Hearing Tested
It is vitally important to regularly have your child’s hearing tested. If you have concerns, let our NB Hearing and Balance team of audiologists help you distinguish between a possible hearing problem versus a possible auditory processing issue. This can make the greatest difference in your child thriving in their developmental and academic growth versus just coping and getting by. Contact us if you are in Cape Town! Our rooms are conveniently located in Sea Point, Durbanville, Hout Bay, Wynberg and Noordhoek.
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