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Hello and welcome to Little Learners In today's video I wanted to talk to you
about something that is extremely common but can often go overlooked for quite
some time. Hearing impairment. Now that can sound very scary because often when
people hear the term 'hearing impairment' they think of just someone being
completely deaf and of course that is part of hearing impairment but just one part.
What I want to talk to you about today I suppose could be categorized
more as a hearing difficulty I suppose probably not the best term for it
but something that can go unnoticed and really needs to be addressed so as a
teacher of course I'm not a doctor but as a teacher I have come across a lot of
children with hearing problems. Children come to the school and no one is any the
wiser that this child has a hearing problem
Now I know what a lot of parents will say they will say 'Well my child can hear
me when I talk to them, they respond and so there's no problem my child had a
hearing test when they were born like all babies do in the UK anyway and it
was fine' and that absolutely may be the case but for some children hearing
impairment or slight hearing loss can happen a little bit later. It's often a
very temporary thing but even though it's temporary it can still last for
quite a long time at such a vital time in a child's life their early
development it can cause a lot of problems. So I'm going to tell you some
of the things that I look out for as a teacher. So as a teacher the kind of
warning signs of hearing loss are many but they probably start with speech
problems so a lot of the time if a child has a speech impediment or they don't
speak very much or they aren't very with their speech it's kind of muffled
or you - it's hard to understand them that is an alarm bell for me that there may
be a hearing problem and children get to the age of four or five when they come
to me in Reception having this problem without their parents ever really
noticing and that is completely normal because as a parent you know your child
better than anyone else you are around them all the time so you can understand
them often when I've spoken to parents about their child's speech difficulties
and approached the topic of a hearing problem the parents will say to me, 'I can
always understand what my child says', but then I say to them well have you ever
noticed that other people find it difficult to understand them other
children or other parents and more often than not the parent will say, 'Yeah I
usually have to say oh she said this or oh he said that' which becomes completely
normal and I completely understand why parents wouldn't even think that that
was a problem because often people especially people
without children don't understand what little children are saying so it just
becomes the norm so when your child comes to school and they start
interacting with a lot of other people and professionals like teachers who are
trained to look out for these sorts of things it can come as a bit of a shock
when this question is raised. So if a child isn't really speaking much or if I
notice that in their play with other children
they follow along with what the other children are saying and don't really
contribute themselves that can be a kind of sign that there might be some hearing
problems there. Of course it can be a sign for lots of other things as well
but hearing problems are so common that it's usually one of the first things
that will come to my mind it's so much more common than you might think
Another thing that I look out for for hearing problems is behaviour so
obviously again behaviour different behaviours can show you a range of
different needs or problems or just that child is dealing with their emotions but
if I notice that a child is having difficulty communicating and that is the
reason that their behaviour is poor that sends alarm bells for me so if a child
in Reception is ar- well not arguing but becoming physical with other children
they get frustrated very quickly and maybe lash out or they cry or get very
angry that tells me that possibly they're not able to hear very well and
therefore cannot communicate in the way that they want to. That can be extremely
frustrating imagine if you were trying to have a conversation if you were in a
room with your co-workers and you couldn't quite hear what they were
saying but everyone else understood almost like you're in a room with people
speaking a different language to you everyone else understood, laughed at the
right times when someone was telling a joke but you couldn't quite understand
everything that was going on that would be extremely upsetting and very
frustrating and for a child of four or five or even younger, they don't know how
to deal with that frustration and so that can then show in their behaviour if
they're becoming physical with other children or getting very upset or even
becoming withdrawn. Another thing that might show me that there may be a
hearing problem is when I'm reading with children. If children are having
difficulty learning to read there are of course again lots of different reasons
this might be happening but hearing issues is definitely one of them so if a
child is looking at a word and is struggling to sound it out or more often
than not they start to sound out and they're getting a bit better at sounding
out the word but then when they try to put all of those sounds together to make
a whole word they just cannot do it that tells me that there may be a hearing
problem so for example the word 'mat' even if a child has managed to learn their
phonics which may then end up fooling a lot of people that there isn't a hearing
problem if they've managed to sound out mmm - ah - t
but then putting it together they haven't got a clue that tells me that
there may be an issue with them being able to hear how the different sounds
may merge together and actually just being able to hear these sounds
certainly if a child has trouble learning their phonics that's another
thing that may show that there may be a hearing problem. Now I don't want to
scare anyone with this video absolutely not that is not my intention and as I
said hearing problems and young children are so much more common than you think
and most often than not the children who I have taught who have had a hearing
problem have had something called 'Glue Ear'. Now I will link some information
about glue ear down below because I think it's very important for parents to
learn about. Now glue ear is often a very temporary thing and it may last not very
long at all or it could last years and children who have had glue ear from a
very early age won't be able to tell you that they can't hear properly because
they've never known any different which is why then it becomes so normal
because the child doesn't exhibit any kind of signs that they can't hear they
don't they can't tell you that they can't hear there's obviously signs that
you can notice and you've only ever known your child to be this way so you
don't notice either so that's why it's really important to know some of
the signs that you can look out for. If you suspect your child has glue ear you
should definitely visit your doctor they may say that actually it's okay it will
resolve on its own they may do a scan and it may even be that the child ends
up having grommets so grommets are these kind of little tubes that they put in
the ear to drain away some of the well hopefully all of the liquid that is by
the eardrum so once that is all drained away and the eardrum can repair itself
eventually the ear just naturally pushes the grommets out and then hopefully the
child can hear fine. Sometimes the grommets come out and the liquid returns
and children need to have grommets again but I don't think that is as common as
it actually working. All I'm saying is that if you do
think that your child may have a hearing problem or you've noticed any of these
signs that I've been talking about do go and just chat to your doctor even if
it's just have some peace of mind talk to your doctor about your concerns as I
said you know your child better than anyone else if you've noticed a change
in their behavior that you think may be linked to their hearing absolutely talk
to your doctor about that or if you're worried about how your child is
progressing maybe since they've come to school or even before school and you
think that might be linked to their hearing just go and talk to your doctor
it may be that there's no problem but I really do think that if there is
any concern ever you should definitely go and speak to them because more often
than not any kind of hearing issue will be easily solvable
I've just realised I've been filming with this light switch in the shot the
whole time. Maybe I should be talking about vision problem in this video
So to recap the main things that I look out for as a teacher which are linked to
hearing problems are behaviors which I would deem inappropriate for a child's
age so becoming very easily frustrated becoming very aggressive with other
children or becoming very withdrawn or easily upset I would look for whether or
not children are participating in play are they just playing along with other
children or are they actually speaking and contributing to the play? Can a child
learn to read? Are they struggling to say particular sounds or to blend sounds
together? Does a child have speech that is sometimes difficult to understand do
you have to really know the child very well to be able to understand what
they're saying? Do they have a particular speech impediment? The thing about
hearing problems and all of these issues that can be signs of hearing problems is
that they often lead to people thinking that a child is just very naughty which
is so sad because this poor child can't hear properly can't communicate properly
can't live the way they want to they can't exist in the world the way they
see other people existing and they can't tell you why they can't understand why they feel
that way and so of course they're going to lash out and not be able to handle
their emotions very well but then they just get labeled as naughty which we all
know I hope that a child is never just naughty there's always some reasoning
behind it you don't you're not just born naughty. So I hope this video has helped
you I've tried to raise some kind of things that I look for as a teacher that
may signal that there's some kind of hearing problem with a child if you have
any experience with this maybe your child is hearing impaired or has had a
hearing impairment in the past or you're a professional who deals with children
like this every day please comment below as it's really important that we help
each other parents helping parents and sharing their experiences as I said
before I will link in the description anything that I think may be helpful for
you if you want to learn a little bit more about hearing loss with children
and how to identify it and what to do if you suspect your child may have a
hearing problem. One thing that I really want to stress is that just because your
child has a hearing test when they are born it doesn't mean that by the age of
four their hearing is still perfect so please remember that just as it's
important to check a child's sight it's also important just to make sure that
you're checking their hearing. I also just want to stress that even if your
child does turn out to have a hearing impairment don't freak out don't worry
obviously it's much easier said than done because you're their parent and of
course you're going to worry but your child would have had that hearing
impairment whether you knew about it or not so now that you know once you know
you can do everything that you need to do to support your child if this is a
temporary issue you will be able to talk with your doctor about how to resolve it
if this is likely to be something a little bit more long-term or completely
long-term you now have the ability to support your child and do everything you
can to make life better for them because before you knew you weren't able to do
that and if you know you are able to support
child and you will now have access to lots of different things you can do to
support your child. I hope you found this video helpful if you did please give it
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icon thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time (music)
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