Classroom difficulties

Is your child having difficulty in the classroom? At home even.  He/She may be one of the 25 - 40% of children that on any one day, have a "mild" hearing loss that impacts severely on their ability to understand language in the classroom. 

This type of hearing loss is not picked up by the usual hearing tests!  Audiologists are not educated to recognise the huge impact this has on the life of the child - Audiologists primary responsibility and training is to pick up significant hearing difficulties requiring hearing aids.

Classrooms are very noisy places, and it has been proven by extensive research that many factors will impact on whether your child will be disadvantaged by classroom factors - and effectively have a reduced chance to learn!

Classroom acoustics is critical - too much background noise from inside and outside the classroom - other classes, other students, traffic, construction, noisy airconditioners, reverberaton from the walls, floors.

The teachers voice qualities are important - big voices better than small voices.  When a teacher yells or strains their voice they are actually less comprehensible to students - especially those with hearing difficulties!

Teaching style is very important - too much group work increases the noise in the classroom astronomically - leaving the 25-40% of children in a classroom affected by background noise lost and confused.  

Where your child sits in the classroom is critical - those closer to the teacher will be able to hear the teacher better, however many teachers move around so their voice quality changes with their movements.

Symptoms include those attributed to children with ADHD! Misdiagnosis of ADHD instead of a hearing difficulty is well recognised.     Observable symptoms at school can include:

Doesn't contribute to class discussions, needs instructions repeated, easily distracted in class, waits and observes others before acting, needs to be reminded what to do, underachieving, fatigued, unhappy at school, poor self concept - thinks they are dumb (because they don't understand communication in the classroom).

When the child communicates in a less noisy environment they comprehend what is being asked - thus these kids are often "blamed" for not being attentive - not listening!  but they have no control over how well they can hear ... kids at particular risk include those with mild sensori-neural hearing loss; more severe hearing loss such as children who wear hearing aids; children with middle-ear infections and children from English-as-a-second-language background.

It is important to know that children with this type of hearing difficulty do not realise they have it!

Solutions

Adequate hearing tests - get several tests done, a huge discrepancy in the results can be had depending on the audiologist or audiometrician taking it - also they are very subjective tests and are prone to false results.  Take the results with you - get the printout so that the actual frequencies that your chld can hear/cannot hear are revealed this is very informative for requesting school resources and therapies.

Request Real life hearing tests of words against background nose - this is essential to understand how your child really "hears"     or "understands" in the real world.

AMPLIFICATION IN THE CLASSROOM is the simplist most cost effective way to wipe out the Discrimination that your child is experiencing - lobby your school, your politicians to get this. 

INDIVIDUAL AMPLIFICATION - for the child that needs it and the school is unwilling to be proactive.  My son has a totable soundsystem from Phonic Ear so he can hear the teacher well enough, no matter where the teacher is talking from.

Apart from the environmental changes that need to be made, there are some "sound" therapies that can help the individual with this difficulty.

AWARENESS , EDUCATION and ACTION REGARDING THIS PROBLEM IS THE WAY FORWARD TO MAKING THE CLASSROOM "FAIR" AND "EQUAL" FOR ALL IN IT.

FURTHER INFORMATION:

http://www.hardofhearingchildren.com/Great%20Information/Hearing%20acuity%20and%20background%20noise,%20and%20ADHD,thesis%20by%20Heather%20McDonald.htm

http://www.audiologycentre.com/child_faq_management.htm

http://www.marrs-study.info/marrs-study.html

http://www.phonicear.ca/resourcefiles/Classroom_Amplification_to_Enhance_Student_Performance.pdf

http://www.thedaviscenter.com/