Introducing Your Child to New Hearing Aids

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Birthday Party

Getting your child’s first set of new hearing aids is an exciting moment, an important milestone in your child’s journey to sound. It will be a very exciting time for your entire family, but it is also normal that you should have questions about child hearing aids and how to introduce them to your child. You may be feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information on child hearing aids, but here are a few tips to try to help make the introduction a little smoother.

  1. Make the situation and environment as pleasant as possible. This will help your child associate only good feelings with sound. Have a favorite or new picture book or toy on hand for him or her to play with as you insert the hearing aids.
  2. Have a planned activity in mind—reading and talking about the picture book, for example.  Once you have the hearing aids in, engage your child in the activity, taking care to place the emphasis on talking. Talk naturally, speaking in a normal conversational tone.
  3. While the eventual goal, of course, is to have the child hearing aids in during all waking moments (excepting bath and pool time, of course!), build up to this slowly by increasing the amount of time the aid stays in each day.
  4. Expect that your child will remove his or her hearing aid at least once (and possibly more).  It is natural to get frustrated when this happens, but a strong reaction could encourage your child to remove the aid again and again in search of another reaction. Try to prepare yourself for your child removing the hearing aids so that you can calmly replace the aids or set them aside until your child is in a more agreeable mood.
  5. Make sure all of your child’s caregivers know how to handle child hearing aids, including removing and inserting the aid and changing the batteries.

We hope this information helps you introduce your child to his or her new hearing aid. Remember that your audiologist can help you with any questions or concerns you have about your child’s hearing aid. If you are a parent that is concerned about your child’s hearing,contact us for an evaluation.