If your child is dealing with hearing loss, you want to know how you can be for them in the best way possible. Support is vital for your child’s overall well-being. This transition is challenging for adults, but children have a specific set of needs that must be met. If you’re searching for ways to help, but you’re unsure of where to start, here are five tips on how to best support your child with their hearing loss.
1. Be by their side.
An incredibly important part of helping your child through hearing loss is being an advocate for them. Make sure thatyour child knows you care by trying to speak with them about how they’re feeling or about any needs they might want or have. If your child isn’t old enough to communicate with you, be by their side at every appointment. You can also work on learning American Sign Language as a means of bettering your communication between one another if their hearing loss is severe. Overall, you must tend to your child emotionally during this time so they feel loved and comforted regardless of their hearing loss.
2. Enlist the emotional support of professionals.
As a parent, you have a lot of power in the way you emotionally support your child. However, there are therapists out there that can effectively help your child cope with these changes by providing coping techniques and other professional help. If you’re looking for child therapists in NYC, the Ross Center has a variety of highly-qualified mental health professionals that can assist young children through this dramatic transition. Their mental health professionals include child psychologists, therapists, and psychiatrists. These mental health workers know how to appropriately assist your child through cognitive behavior therapy, or talk therapy. This way, you can allow your child to release their worries, frustrations, and complicated emotions healthily and safely.
3. Visit doctors regularly.
Support your child by ensuring that they’re getting quality care. This care takes place with the doctors who can assess your child’s degree of hearing loss. If you stay on top of routine visits, you can prevent any future progression of hearing loss. Doctors and audiologists will work together to formulate some kind of plan to best assist your child’s specific type of hearing loss. If you work closely with a range of medical professionals, you can thoroughly explore the CDC recommended options like surgeries, medicines, hearing devices, and other forms of communication.
4. Keep their teachers informed.
Your child likely spends most of their days in school or virtual classes. If they are hearing impaired, classrooms with lots of combatting noises and a need to pay attention will be a challenge. As their guardian, you need to inform your child’s teachers about their difficulties. You can do so by contacting their teachers through a phone call or email. Either way, the teacher must know if your student has hearing difficulties. This way, your child can get accommodations like FM Systems. These systems use a microphone-like accessory that the teacher wears, generally on a necklace. Then, this connects to your student’s hearing aid or another hearing device. If your student is conducting virtual learning this year, make sure their hearing devices work well with their headsets or other audio devices.
5. Get them hearing aids.
The final, but arguably most important tip to support your child is to get your child’s hearing tested. If your child doesn’t pass a typical hearing screening, they’ll need to complete a full hearing test to come up with a diagnosis and determine the severity of your hearing loss. If the audiologist deems hearing loss as a big difficulty, or it’s moderate to severe hearing loss, they’ll most likely be fitted for one of many hearing devices. The audiologists at Hearing Health USA can get your child a new hearing aid or other hearing device that works to restore their normal hearing. If you’re worried about getting the best care, their clinicians are the largest group of private practice hearing clinics in the United States. They will work with you and your child via either in-person appointments or remote appointments, to come up with specialized treatment plans or device options.
This way, despite their hearing loss, you and your child can achieve peace of mind on this journey all while enhancing your child’s quality of life with your unconditional support.
