My 2yo had chronic fluid in her years and finally got ear tubes about 2 months ago. She had previously failed 3 hearing tests. Yesterday she had another hearing test and the audiologist didn’t say she passed. He said she did much better this time. So ENT is not concerned about her hearing.
However, despite following directions pretty well she is severely speech delayed. And most importantly we notice she mixes up some words with close sounds. For example these words in Portuguese sound the same for her: “Asa” and “Casa”. Is it possible she is not hearing well and the test wasn’t able to pick that up?
Thanks for reading!
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Ideally they would have given you a copy of the audiogram. It is difficult to make suggestions without that information.
Some practices specialize in pediatric audiology. Ideally you have seen one of them.
If your child has had fluctuating hearing loss due to middle ear fluid for, say, 22 months and her ears have only been clear now for the past two months, then it makes sense that she is speech delayed. Consider taking her to see a speech language pathologist for assessment and possible speech therapy to catch her up.
Can’t say much about the hearing without seeing the test results. In my less urban Canadian area, ENTs often employ techs to do their hearing tests, or the audiologist is not familiar with pediatrics or has very limited time, and I’ve seen some pretty rough tests out of ENT clinics. 2 year olds can be tough to test. Additionally, often our ENTs don’t seem to worry about mild losses that pediatric audiologists DO worry about. But other places are different. Our larger centres seem to have better ENT/audiology teams, and I gather America is maybe more like that. So . . . hard to say. How did you feel about the test? How do you feel your child is hearing? You typically do not need a referral to book a hearing test with a pediatric audiologist (in North America?), so you can get a second opinion if you are worried.
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I remember when my daughter was that age and whenever I took her to the doctor, for whatever reason, I made sure I didn’t leave until all my questions were answered. You need to pay the ent another visit. And while you’re there get a copy of her latest audiogram
We are in Canada and saw a pediatric ENT. Good to know that they sometimes don’t care about mild loss as I had the impression this was the case. I think she hears well but maybe not so well as she is mixing up words. During the test I thought it took her a while to look at where the sound was coming. And I’m still not convinced she is hearing everything because the audiologist didn’t want to say “pass” just that she did much better this time.
We will repeat the test in a different place. Also she had some government funded speech therapy. We are know looking into private options.
Thanks!
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