Hearing
Hearing is our auditory sense, converting sound waves (vibrations) into electrical signals for the brain, allowing us to perceive sounds, communicate, locate sources, and stay aware of dangers.
If your child suffers from auditory difficulties they may face an array of issues in the classroom environment.
A struggle with auditory discrimination meaning the child can't tell the difference in similar sounding words. This can be extremely challenging especially when there is no hearing problem as such, but rather a difficulty with the brain processing the sounds heard. When learning sounds and learning to read in the early years at school the child may really struggle to grab the differences in certain sounds, particularly similar sounds e.g. ‘M’ and ‘N.’ The differences being subtle meaning they will really struggle with learning to read since they will not be able to easily learn the difference in them. They may struggle with similar sounding words such as “bar” and “bear” making a classroom environment very challenging.
A child may have perfect hearing but struggle with auditory processing or have an auditory delay. I.e. they may not understand what they hear or their brain may misinterpret what they have heard. The child may hear the word “cat” and the brain rearranges it in the incorrect order so what they actually hear is '“tac”. For older children with a processing difficulty they may be able to overcome some of the challenges but it will take them longer to answer a question since the brain needs additional time to process. These are the children who when you ask “Where is your coat?” they will say “What?” not because they haven’t heard but because they are trying to buy additional processing time. Before you get a chance to repeat the question they have it answered. “I already put it in the car.” This child will then get grief for saying “what” when they must have heard the question because they answered it.
Auditory confusion due to the wide variety of sounds in the classroom. The child is taking in huge amounts of auditory information from the environment, multiple conversations, background noise etc. The child may face auditory confusion as they will not be able to discriminate which sounds are coming from where or which ‘snippets’ of words are meant for them.
Some children have an oversensitivity to sound. Their ears are able to hear all sounds going on all the time and they are unable to tune anything out. The child will struggle to ‘tune out’ the children reading aloud behind him, the children whispering in the corner, while also trying to listen to the teacher and try to ignore the humming of the lights or the sound of the radiator, chairs moving, paper turning etc. This is an extremely difficult process, particularly if the brain doesn’t have the skills to do it naturally. It can take an immense amount of effort and can often lead to sensory overload.
We might get some hints that a child is struggling with auditory difficulties in the way they speak. We often have children with a flat and monotonous voice, since they cannot hear this in others so have difficulty mirroring it. A child may be hesitant to speak or have weak vocabulary. We can spot some auditory delays or processing difficulties because a child needs significant repetition. The child may struggle with sentence structure or have a delay in language development. It is interesting to note that a poor sense of rhythm can indicate some auditory processing issues. There are scientific studies to show that a strong sense of rhythm in preschoolers can predict stronger reading skills later on. You can read more about that here if you are interested. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959475225001975
For children who are, or were in early development, prone to ear infections it is worth remembering that post ear infection hearing can be impacted for up to 8 weeks. If your child suffers/ suffered from multiple infections per year that can really add up and can explain some of these difficulties.
An INPP program gently works on the systems of the body and can help to reduce or alleviate some of the auditory processing difficulties our children may be struggling with. Sound programs such as Johansen or Tomatis have also been shown to really help children struggling with auditory issues. Keep your eyes peeled for Johansen coming to Star of the Sea Neurodevelopmental Therapy in the spring, and hopefully Tomatis coming in the near future too.