Hearing loss in children can negatively affect the children’s speech, education, and social skills. Hearing loss in toddlers and young children can cause difficulty in speech development. Elementary age children with hearing loss may have trouble hearing in the classroom setting.
Permanent hearing loss in newborns can be due to normal heredity, deformity, prenatal infection, drug exposure, or genetic mutation. A genetic mutation can cause a chromosomal syndrome. Several chromosomal syndromes cause hearing loss or deafness.
Other causes of hearing loss in children include ear infections, viral infections, and bacterial infections. Children may develop hearing loss from an injury to their head or ear. Acoustical trauma is damage to the ear, often to the eardrum or cochlea, caused by sudden, loud noise like a gunshot. Acoustical trauma or exposure to loud noise like music causes noise-induced hearing loss.
When a toddler has a hearing loss, the hearing loss can impair the child’s language development. The hearing loss may be detected while the child is a baby if the baby does not have age-appropriate language development such as cooing. The infant may show signs of hearing loss by not responding to sounds.
Early, effective treatment of the hearing loss is important to limit the negative effects on language development. Some hearing aids are made for infants and children. These hearing aids often have child-proof battery doors.
Children with hearing loss may struggle to hear their teachers while they are in school. Some hearing devices can improve the child’s ability to hear in the classroom. Many children with hearing impairments tend to be socially isolated. If the hearing loss is causing difficulty communicating with peers, the child with hearing loss may not interact with their peers as much as those without hearing loss.
Hearing loss in children may make the children feel different than the other children. Differences at the childhood level are often labeled as bad or wrong by the child or the child’s peers. This is detrimental to the child’s early self-image since the self-image develops from comparing oneself to other children. Parents are encouraged to involve their children with hearing loss in sports and group activities to foster peer interaction.