Bringing your Child's Attention to Sound

Parents want to know what they can do to help their child with hearing loss “learn to listen”. Opportunities to bring your child’s attention to sound occur all day long. The more often you help your child become aware of sounds and make sounds meaningful, the better chance your child has of developing automatic and sophisticated listening skills.

Besides using the equipment recommended by the audiologist and making sure it’s maintained and working properly, the following strategies promote listening development:

• Respond to sounds and indicate where they are coming from. You can point to your ear and say “Listen, I hear that!” and then find or point out the source of the sound; “the dog is barking”.
• Provide natural opportunities for your child to respond to sounds that she can and can’t see. Acknowledge that you hear others by responding even when you can’t see them.
  
• Imitate your child’s own sounds and noise making during play and other activities.
  
• Get close to my child (within whispering distance)
  
• Make your voice interesting by using frequent pauses, different pitches, varied intonation (singing-like) and intensities (whispering to loud levels)
  
• Meet with other families with deaf and hard of hearing children who are also developing attention to sounds; spending time with older children and adults with hearing loss is also helpful
  
• Make simple sounds that describe events, actions and objects in your every day routines: for example, putting the baby doll to bed goes with “shhhhh”, enjoying mealtime goes with “mmmm”, playing with cars goes with “beep beep”, going down the slide goes with “wheeee”.