Jane’s Speech and Hearing Progress

A few weeks back we upgraded one of our children from an analogue to a digital hearing aid. No one knows how long she has had hearing loss for, it could have been from the malaria treatment her mother was on while pregnant or her own treatment when she was a few years old. Jane’s left ear is a “dead” ear- even amplifying with a hearing aid would not bring her any benefit. Her “good” ear has a moderate to severe sloping hearing loss, which has significantly impacted on her speech development. High pitched sounds such as “sh”, “s”, “f” and “t” were absent from her speech as she simply could not hear them. After the hearing aid fitting we advised her mother on some simple speech therapy techniques she can practise at home daily.  This week we brought Jane back to our clinic to see how she is getting on with her new digital aid, and wow, we were impressed!

Her mother has noticed a big improvement with her new hearing aid and there has been progress with her speech already. Jane was able to repeat so many of the sounds that couldn’t be said a few weeks back- telling us about sugar, shoes, fish and tea. So of course she was rewarded with a “smiley star sticker” (plenty of opportunity to practise “s” and “t” sounds there haha!). The only complaint she wanted to bring to our attention is that she is 3rd place in class, not 1st! We are so proud of the hard work her and her mother have been putting into her speech and so excited about her progress so far!