"I want you to raise your hand when you hear the tone." "You can't tell me what to do!"
I took Abbie in for a hearing test yesterday. This was the latest step in my never-ending quest to determine exactly why Abbie isn’t talking yet. Hearing loss would be a tidy way to explain and rectify everything. It explains why she doesn’t make sounds. It explains why she doesn’t seem too interested in attaching a label to everything. It explains why I can yell at her to quit pulling the dog’s fur, yet her fist remains tightly closed until she removes a tuft of white fur from our whimpering dog. A simple hearing aid would fix all those problems, except for maybe the dog one.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I was sure that her hearing was fine. She can follow directions, like pointing to various body parts, as long as the directions are simple and agreeable to her. She does try to mimic sounds, they just all sound like “ahh.” Most tellingly, she does on rare occasion obey when I yell at her to get off of there, but only if I sound really threatening like I’m about to cut off her supply of Goldfish if she doesn’t climb down.
We still need to eliminate hearing loss as a cause of her speech delay, so I made an appointment with our local AEA* office. AEA is connected to the public education system, which gives it all of the public school’s advantages, specifically vast human and physical resources plus it’s free to the client. It also has all of public school’s disadvantages, namely desperately under funded, which meant that I had to wait two months for an appointment.
When I finally took Abbie in for her special day, memories came back to me. I spent a few sessions in my local AEA office** for hearing tests growing up due to my ear difficulties. I, and my parents, suffered through my share of ear infections when I was young. I had tubes put in my ears several times in a mostly failed attempt to control the infections. They stopped putting them in when the doctors decided maybe they shouldn’t leave yet another scar on my ear drum. The AEA office watched me closely to make sure that my mild hearing loss stayed that way. Fortunately, I seem to be okay today, at least my hearing is okay, and none of our children have shown my ear problems.***
Several of the landmarks in the AEA office were familiar to me: The communal toys that have been chewed on by dozens of kids over the years; the sound proof, vacuum-sealed testing booth; the creepy electronic testing tones that sounded like a ’60’s progressive rock band was warming up nearby.
Of course Abbie was too young to be tested exactly like I remember, so things were a little different. They started by asking her to touch body parts from another room so she wouldn’t see any visual cues. After passing that test, they played tones from one side of the room or the other. When she looked in the right direction, they flickered a light in a shadow box to reveal a stuffed animal. I think this was meant to be a reward, but seeing a strobe light illuminating a stuffed animal accompanied by utter silence except for those Theremin test tones seemed like a big batch of nightmare fuel to me.
After verifying that her general hearing was good, they moved onto testing each ear individually with a series of increasingly invasive implements. First they used headphones, which stayed on her head for about two seconds, or just long enough to check what they needed. Then they stuck probes in the canal to check physical responsiveness, which made her scream quickly, but I could hold her hands down so they could get what they needed. Finally they used ear buds to see if she would react to sounds in individual ears, but those came out the instant I let go of her hands.
They wound up getting enough information to make a diagnosis: Her hearing is fine. She has no significant hearing loss, and won’t let them test for mild hearing loss yet, but I suspect that’s fine as well. Whatever the reason is for her not talking, it’s not due to hearing loss. That means we’ll have to keep probing until we find a reason, or until she starts talking. It also means I know she can hear me when I tell her it’s time to leave the park.
* AEA = Area Education Agency
** I went to a completely different office that the one Abbie went to.
*** I’m literally knocking on wood as I type this.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I was sure that her hearing was fine. She can follow directions, like pointing to various body parts, as long as the directions are simple and agreeable to her. She does try to mimic sounds, they just all sound like “ahh.” Most tellingly, she does on rare occasion obey when I yell at her to get off of there, but only if I sound really threatening like I’m about to cut off her supply of Goldfish if she doesn’t climb down.
We still need to eliminate hearing loss as a cause of her speech delay, so I made an appointment with our local AEA* office. AEA is connected to the public education system, which gives it all of the public school’s advantages, specifically vast human and physical resources plus it’s free to the client. It also has all of public school’s disadvantages, namely desperately under funded, which meant that I had to wait two months for an appointment.
When I finally took Abbie in for her special day, memories came back to me. I spent a few sessions in my local AEA office** for hearing tests growing up due to my ear difficulties. I, and my parents, suffered through my share of ear infections when I was young. I had tubes put in my ears several times in a mostly failed attempt to control the infections. They stopped putting them in when the doctors decided maybe they shouldn’t leave yet another scar on my ear drum. The AEA office watched me closely to make sure that my mild hearing loss stayed that way. Fortunately, I seem to be okay today, at least my hearing is okay, and none of our children have shown my ear problems.***
Several of the landmarks in the AEA office were familiar to me: The communal toys that have been chewed on by dozens of kids over the years; the sound proof, vacuum-sealed testing booth; the creepy electronic testing tones that sounded like a ’60’s progressive rock band was warming up nearby.
Of course Abbie was too young to be tested exactly like I remember, so things were a little different. They started by asking her to touch body parts from another room so she wouldn’t see any visual cues. After passing that test, they played tones from one side of the room or the other. When she looked in the right direction, they flickered a light in a shadow box to reveal a stuffed animal. I think this was meant to be a reward, but seeing a strobe light illuminating a stuffed animal accompanied by utter silence except for those Theremin test tones seemed like a big batch of nightmare fuel to me.
After verifying that her general hearing was good, they moved onto testing each ear individually with a series of increasingly invasive implements. First they used headphones, which stayed on her head for about two seconds, or just long enough to check what they needed. Then they stuck probes in the canal to check physical responsiveness, which made her scream quickly, but I could hold her hands down so they could get what they needed. Finally they used ear buds to see if she would react to sounds in individual ears, but those came out the instant I let go of her hands.
They wound up getting enough information to make a diagnosis: Her hearing is fine. She has no significant hearing loss, and won’t let them test for mild hearing loss yet, but I suspect that’s fine as well. Whatever the reason is for her not talking, it’s not due to hearing loss. That means we’ll have to keep probing until we find a reason, or until she starts talking. It also means I know she can hear me when I tell her it’s time to leave the park.
* AEA = Area Education Agency
** I went to a completely different office that the one Abbie went to.
*** I’m literally knocking on wood as I type this.
posted by Matt at
11:57 PM
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