Are you noticing that in noisy environments, your child is struggling to really pay attention? Did they have frequent ear infections when they were a baby? They could have an auditory processing disorder. Today, I want to talk to you about ear infections and how they impact a child’s ability to process what they are hearing.
How Ear Infections Can Affect Hearing
In early development, our hearing system isn’t fully developed. It’s something that develops in the first couple of years of life. We hear when sound comes in from the environment, into the ears, and gets processed by the brain.
If a child has recurring ear infections, then the sound has to travel through that fluid in order to get into the brain to be processed. Ideally, sound will pass through the ears with no obstructions and get into the brain, and you’ll have a clear, crisp signal.
However, with fluid in the ear (which can be infected and thick), the sound has to travel through that to get to the brain. This will result in a signal that is not as crisp as you would want it to be.
Do Ear Infections Cause Auditory Processing Disorder?
We know that a history of ear infections does not cause an auditory processing disorder. However, it increases the likelihood. And sometimes children can have fluid in their ears or an ear infection without giving parents any indication. This can still impact the development of their auditory processing system if it happens when they are very young.
A known history of ear infections tells us that we have a higher likelihood that your child’s auditory processing system did not develop optimally. However, in the absence of a known history, we don’t know whether or not there was fluid or not. So sometimes children can have an auditory processing disorder even if they don’t have a known history of ear infections.
How Do We Evaluate Auditory Processing?
Auditory processing is something that develops over time. A child can have the ability to hear, their auditory system can pick up the sounds. We can measure that with a hearing evaluation. We’ll play a series of beeps, and a child is either going to hear it or they’re not.
If they can hear just fine, then we evaluate what the brain does with that sound. That’s the auditory processing system. Our audiologists can complete a comprehensive auditory processing assessment battery to identify specific areas of auditory struggle and recommend intervention(s) to help your child build their auditory processing skills. We can also conduct a comprehensive speech and language evaluation to rule out any language-based difficulties.
Reach Out to DTS for an Evaluation
At DTS, we have audiologists and speech-language pathologists who specialize in auditory processing. We can complete a comprehensive auditory processing evaluation, which would allow us to objectively measure your child’s auditory processing skills and create a plan for remediation to systematically improve that system.
Give us a call at (225) 767-5032 to schedule an evaluation today.