DEAFNESS/HEARING LOSS

By: Belinda Armstrong

Adjective: 1. Having a diminished or defective

sense of hearing, but not deaf; hard of hearing.

2. Completely incapable of hearing; deaf.

n. (used with a pl. verb)

Persons who are deficient in hearing or are deaf.

HEARING IMPAIRED DEFINED

A child who is hearing impaired can often be identified by his or her lack of vocabulary and overall delays in language development compared to nondisabled children. They may only speak a few simple words.

SPOTTING HEARING LOSS

A child with moderate hearing loss will also have trouble in large group situations. This child has a limited vocabulary. To understand the child’s speech, you should stand face-to-face to. This will allow you to read the child’s lips.

MODERATE HEARING LOSS

These children have little understandable speech. These children must rely largely on their vision, body language, and contextual clues to communicate.

SEVERE O R PR O FO UN D HEARIN G LO SS

To make up for alleviate hearing losses, many children will wear either a hearing aid in their ear or a Y-shaped hearing aid over their chests. The advantage of the ear hearing aid is that it can be adjusted to compensate for the hearing loss in each ear. The Y- shaped aid is the most popular. It has one hearing aid with tubes going to both ears.

HEARING AIDS

HEARING AID STYLES

When approaching a child who is hearing impaired, get down to the child’s eye level. Then get the child’s attention before speaking. Sometimes this can be done by lightly touching the child’s hand or arm. With practice, you will learn how close you must stand in order to be understood.

TEACHING SUGGESTIONS

SuggestionsSpeak in a normal volume and speed.

Use the same sentence structure as you would

for other children.

Pause and wait for a response after you

speak.

If the child does not understand you, repeat,

rephrase, or demonstrate.

Encourage other children to imitate you when

they communicate with the child.

Visual skills are important for children who are hearing impaired. Finely tuned visual skills help compensated for their lack of hearing. Hearing impaired children do not automatically acquire acute visual skills. To provide for their needs, stress visual activities.

VISUAL SKILLS

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hearing-impaired

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Working With Young Children Book. Chapter 30 page 464-465

SOURCES