May is Better Speech and Hearing Month

Listening skills are often effected to varying degrees depending on the amount of hearing loss present for each child.  Auditory information can be difficult to understand if you are not able to hear all the sounds in the words or the word endings (plurals, verb tenses, etc), if it is difficult to discriminate (tell the difference between) sounds, or if the words become obscured due to competing background noise. 

A child with a hearing loss may have difficulty hearing certain speech sounds. This can vary based on the type and degree of their loss. For example, a child with a mild, high frequency hearing loss may have trouble hearing soft, high pitch sounds such as 's' and 'th.' As a results, the child may not include these sounds in their own speech, thus impacting the clarity of their spoken messages.  

Voice volume and pitch are a few components of speech that could be affected by a child’s inability to hear themselves talk.  They may subsequently struggle to self-regulate when it comes to these aspects of speech and may, for example speak too loudly or mumble.  

A child with hearing loss may have difficulty with vocabulary development.  They may be slower to acquire new vocabulary, may do better with concrete vocabulary (ball, car) rather than abstract vocabulary (before, after), and may struggle with multiple meaning words.  

Children with hearing loss may have difficulty with expressive grammar. Their sentences may be less complex and they often struggle with word endings such as –ed and –s because these word endings are difficult to hear.