Hearing impairment in children: signs and causes

3 forms of hearing impairment

A hearing impairment in your child is a permanent impairment of the hearing ability. Hearing is a complex process of perception. Sound is picked up by the ear, where it is converted into an electrochemical signal that is sent to the brain. Only there does the sensory impression of hearing arise. So if there is a disturbance in the organic – the physical – area of ​​this process or an impairment in the processing in the brain, this leads to a hearing impairment in your child. The types of damage that can occur can be divided into three subcategories:

• Conductive hearing loss : This is a disorder in the outer or middle ear. Acoustic signals are heard more quietly. With a surgical intervention or technical aids, such as a hearing aid, this hearing impairment in your child can be compensated for quite well.
• Sensorineural hearing loss : This type of hearing loss in your child affects the inner ear and means that certain sound frequencies cannot be transmitted from the ear to the brain. In this case, certain pedagogical measures, such as hearing training, hearing and speaking education or an implant in the ear, can help your child with hearing impairment to hear better.
• Central auditory hearing disorder : In this case, there is damage to the processing of the speech signal and/or an impairment of hearing perception in your child’s central brain. This means that no organic malfunction can be detected, but something is wrong with the processing of the sound in the brain.

Causes of hearing impairment in your child

A hearing impairment in your child can have many causes. Because hearing is a sensitive sensory organ that can easily be damaged by illness or accidents. Around half a million people with a hearing impairment live in Germany. The following points may be possible triggers for a hearing impairment in your child:

• Viral diseases such as mumps , measles or rubella
• Damage in the womb caused by alcohol or nicotine or by viral diseases in the mother, such as rubella
• lack of oxygen at birth
• premature birth
• genetic predisposition
• meningitis
• Severe noise disturbance, especially explosive noise, rapid changes between very loud and quiet
• ear deformities
• Chronic ear infections
• tympanic effusion – a buildup of mucus in the middle ear

Signs of hearing impairment in your child

In order to detect a hearing impairment in a very small child as early as possible, a hearing test has been carried out on infants as standard since 2009. The so-called hearing screening is intended to ensure that a hearing impairment in your child can be detected by the pediatrician during the U-examinations . Because especially when your child is very small, it is difficult for you to notice a hearing impairment. These are often not recognized in babies. The following symptoms may indicate that your child’s hearing is impaired:

• Your child often suffers from ear, nose and throat infections . For example, it is very susceptible to middle ear infections.
• Your child does not react or reacts only weakly to acoustic stimuli . For example, it doesn’t startle at loud noises or doesn’t hear when you speak to it directly.
• Your child ‘s language development is delayed : The vocabulary is very small. It has problems with the sentence structure.
• Your child shows strong speech abnormalities , such as problems with the pronunciation of certain sounds, some even omit them completely.
• Your child is inexplicably aggressive .
• It has problems establishing social contacts with fellow human beings.
• It has a dyslexia .

Effects of hearing impairment on your child

If you observe these signs of hearing loss in your child, or if you suspect that your child is not hearing properly, you should speak to the pediatrician or consult a specialist immediately. Hearing impairment in your child is a serious matter as it can affect both your child’s speech and personality development. The basis of social interaction is language. If your child does not hear properly, they may have limited or no participation in social interactions and normal conversations. Because it can only absorb speech to a limited extent. That is why a hearing impairment can have the following consequences for your child:

• Your child is only able to perceive its acoustic environment to a limited extent .
• It can also only participate to a limited extent in spoken language communication with its fellow human beings because it does not understand many things.
• Your child has very limited control over their own speech . It speaks indistinctly, not according to the norm and is understood poorly or not at all.
• As a result, it is also impaired in its linguistic development .
• Your child’s intellectual and emotional development can also be affected because they are unable to absorb a lot of the important information that they hear out loud.
• In the worst case, hearing impairment in your child can even affect personality development and have psychosocial consequences, such as self-isolation or social withdrawal.

That is why it is so important that hearing impairment in your child is recognized early. Because then it can be treated or at least compensated for to a large extent with professional treatment. You can find out more about the treatment options for your child’s hearing impairment in our article “A hearing aid for your child” . It is important that you accept your child as it is, because this is the only way it can develop into a self-confident person.