I once heard someone describe raising a child with hearing loss as dancing in the dark, and I have carried that with me.
I knew nothing about hearing loss until my own son was born with moderate to severe bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, and I still struggle with the knowledge that he is experiencing the world in a way that I never have. Raising Max has been a dance in the dark as I have tried my best to advocate for him without truly understanding his needs or his challenges.
Thankfully, early intervention for Max also included training and information for his parents. Through First Steps, we qualified for an online therapy called iHEAR through the St. Joseph Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. For 2.5 years, we met with a speech language pathologist every week to learn new ways to incorporate language into our normal play.
Max was battling a cold one week early in our iHEAR journey, and I didn't want to wake him from his nap. Instead of skipping the session, our iHEAR coach asked, “Have you ever heard of the speech banana?”
She shared her screen and showed me an audiogram with a yellow band highlighted in the middle. It looked like a banana.
An audiogram is a graph that represents a range of sounds, with Decibels (loudness) on the vertical axis and frequency (pitch) on the horizontal axis. A person with normal hearing will have a line that is mostly flat and close to the top of the graph, while a person with hearing loss will have a line that dips down at certain frequencies, indicating that they have difficulty hearing those sounds.
A dog barking, which is generally low-pitched and loud, would be plotted on one corner of the graph while a bird chirping, high-pitched and quiet, would be on the opposite corner. Any sound we encounter in the world can be plotted on an audiogram, including the individual sounds that we us when speaking words and sentences.
When the most common speech sounds are plotted on an audiogram, the narrow band takes the shape of a banana. It's called the “speech banana,” and it is the single most helpful tool I have found to understand hearing loss.
Our iHEAR coach pulled Max's most recent audiogram from his file and drew a green line across the chart and through the banana.
She explained that without hearing aids, Max has difficulty hearing any sound above the green line. Half of the sounds that makes up language was above the green line.
While Max was responding to our voices and most sounds, he was missing the individual sounds that help us decipher words. His brain would be on overdrive to compensate, trying to fill in the gaps and use other context to comprehend what was being said.
Hearing aids aren't like glasses. They don't magically make sound clear, but they can be programmed to amplify the most important sounds and help fill in the gaps.
Recent research has shown a strong link between hearing loss and dementia. Studies have found that older adults with hearing loss are more likely to develop dementia than those with normal hearing. This is thought to be because the brain has to work harder to compensate for missing sounds, which can lead to cognitive decline over time.
Research has not yet been published to show whether hearing aids can slow or prevent dementia, but there is plenty of evidence to show that they will help Max develop language and learn to communicate.
Hearing aids are rarely covered by insurance, but I'm hopeful the new research will change that.
