Loudness

ryancher said:
yes, he turns to all sounds - speech and environmental.

And yes he can discrimate... door bell and telephone.

And on occasion he has run to the door when the door bell rings.

They discharged him from AVT because he wouldn't co-operate and do what was asked of him. I thought it was a bit annoying and I was happy to be done with that AVT therapist. I'd love to persue it again though for him.
Click to expand...

Ok, so you say "ahhh" and then point to him and wait....what does he do?
 
I did not get my HA until I was 7 years old and when I was playing with my older sister at our neighbor's house , my sister would tell me to not talk too loud as people are still sleeping as it was Sunday. I spoke real loud as thought people could not hear me as I could not hear myself unless I did loud . Some people say I talk loud now. Maybe you should ask your child audiologist what they think can be done to help your child.

I had a dog , not my poodle but another one that starting bark late night and woke me up, I yelled at my dog to stop barking. A few days later my next door neighbor said her son woke up and when into her bedroom and said I woke him up! Opps, I had no idea how loud I was as I not wearing my HA.
 
Wow, I feel so bad for you, Tyler's mom! No offense or anything, I just feel like you weren't aware of a lot of those misconceptions hearing people have about HAs!

Someone already addressed that HAs don't bring up hearing to the same level as a hearing person. I love the person who described it as a small picture being enlarged and got blurrier. That's ABSOLUTELY what it is like. I grew up with a similar loss as your son did, and I had trouble with speech discrimination as well. Basically, the only way I can describe speech discrimination is the difference between 1. hearing a sentence and completely understanding what the person said, and 2. hearing what sounds like gibberish and nonsense. I know it's hard for a hearing person to imagine, but a lot of times a HOH person who tries to understand speech might only catch little bits because of differences in frequencies and such.

Because you've stressed how much you want your son to speak, I'm going to acknowledge (again), that I grew up with a similar loss as your son (though I'm not entirely sure of the EXACT decibels since I don't have my childhood audiograms) and I speak today. I'm not going to promise you that your son will be like me in any way, but I just wanted to share my similarity and maybe give you some peace. I have always been told I sound just like a hearing person. No one has ever asked anything about my deafness just from listening to my speech.

Like others said, I would go for the speech discrimination test. I don't know how that all works for children who don't speak, but I think FJ addressed that. I was undiagnosed until I was six, and I was speaking, so I was able to repeat back--someone else will have to help you out there! Don't worry so much though, because there is NO hearing aid that will make a HOH person's speech discrimination perfect.
 
For what it's worth - I've been Deaf on my right side, since birth... slowly I acquired mild/mod flux loss on my left as well...

I've ALWAYS had difficultly setting my voice at the "right" level ... I typically speak too loudly - because even with hearing aids - it's impossible for ME to know what normal to YOU is (I can only play the "this sounds a bit quiet to me, so i need to increase my voice, or this sounds loud in my head, so I should speak quieter. I can only gauge my voice against other voices and then attempt to match that volume (it's actaully very very hard to do!)

My family is used to this, and is constantly (as in 5-20times daily) letting me know that I'm either speaking loudly, or rarely) whispering too quietly compared to others.

Another thing is that I do tend to be a bit "loud" compared to hearing people ... I walk very softly (minimize walking vibrations, that in the deaf world would be an "attention getting" technique) however I tend to forget not to close doors, put cutlery away in the drawer loudly, play music etc at a hearing volume etc. When I was living on my own, this wasn't an issue - and I forgot to be "careful" about making sounds ... now that I'm living with a hearing person, I have to be intentional about being quite.

It's very hard to act hearing !! (without being able to monitor the volume of things yourself in the same way that hearing do)

Of course ... I see things in my peripheral vision, and pick up very subtle vibrations etc MUCH better than any of my hearing friends or family ... because I use my eyes as "visual ears" - if that make sense :)

The only advice I can offer to people, including parents with Hoh kids - is to be patient, understanding and find a way to help the hoh person/child monitor their voice in a discrete but clear way ... be it using a gesture of "softly" or "higher/louder" or using a consist (but not judgmental) phrases like "a bit softer voice" , or "a bit louder voice" ...

Keep in mind that it's normal to have to re-adjust the hoh person throughout a conversation, when entering different rooms, or if there is background noise (I can't hear my voice at all sometimes if there is much background noise ... making it very hard to know how loud I am speaking.)

In general - Hoh people (even little kids) are working VERY hard to hear, understand and have their voice "match" other people (in articulation, modulation, volume etc).

Please know that if a you notice the Hoh person in your life is having difficulty with volume etc - it's because it is a genuine & constant challenge that is VERY difficult to manage... NOT because they are intentionally being "difficult" , trying to "act out" or "get attention" etc.



Although I was raised "oral only" (just listening and speech) I can't say enough about how ASL helped me, not only communicate in ASL with other signers, but also helped my English - having English concepts and word usage explained to me in ASL allowed me to understand in an un-inhibited way how language, and how English "worked".

While working on speech skills is certainly important ... it's absolutely critical that you don't make the mistake of thinking that your child must speak in order to be successful or happy. The earlier children learn language - ANY language, the better they will be able to acquire language(s) in the future ... this is one of the reason why so many of us hoh and Deaf recommend to parents that they start using ASL in addition to English. ASL will give the child a strong language base, on which they can build both ASL proficiency as well as English .. so while you are diligently working on speech, listening and reading skills - please consider the advantages of also using ASL signs as a means of giving him a way to connect "things" with language while he learned how to make sense of the garbled sounds of language that "is being Hoh".

For what it's worth ... my parents, who where both adamant that I NOT learn ASL as a child ... now wish desperately that I'd had that chance to learn it that young after all - they've both taken ASL classes, and now "get" that learning ASL does not negatively impact English at all. My mum, ironically has worked with many young Hoh and Deaf children in the school system since my youth, and has seen the positive difference that ASL makes in the students she works with ... she frequently says "If I'd only known that it would have helped!!" :)
 
Yes, the hearing aid increases volume, but as pointed out, it does little to aid clarity.
Additionally, at least for me, sometimes I don't trust my hearing aids. I think of the world in two different volumes:
"Real" Volume: AKA the volume at which hearing people hear/speak, and
"Deaf" Volume: The volume at which any individual hoh person hears/speaks.

Note that your voice sounds quite loud to you when you speak. My hearing aids make my voice even louder, so I may talk quieter depending on whether I'm having a good or bad hearing day.
I'll give you an example:
I'll be sitting in class, and my teacher will play a movie. Being that he is wearing an FM system, I might have a false sense that he can hear me whispering (trying not to distract anyone else) from my seat, asking if there are captions. If he doesn't respond, I will then approach him, but because my hearing aids are giving me good volume and working the way they should, I'm still going to whisper at him, but still too quietly, because raising my voice the way I should need to to speak to him seems oddly loud to me. It's almost an uncomfortable thing, needing to speak up LOL. Other times, when I can't understand something or whatever, I'll be raising my voice too much, trying to speak loud enough to compensate for my hearing.

Voice modulation is something no one tells you about when you get hearing aids. They don't tell you that you may, in fact, detest the sound of your own voice, when amplified through your hearing aids. They don't tell you, when you have a hearing loss, that what you think you're hearing isn't really the way the world sounds, the way you or your parents, friends and teachers sound.

Ideally, getting hearing aids is like listening to an FM radio frequency for your whole life, with it's white noise and scratchiness, and ever-fluctuating volume and comprehension, then suddenly, with a quick jerk of the antenna, hearing everything loud, clear, and perfect. I'd say for most people, this isn't the case.
Which is why we have this forum. :D
:ty:
 
Also, about the lipreading... I don't know about anyone else, but I found that I picked this up as my hearing got worse. The first time I realized this my audiologist noticed that I kept watching her lips. Since then I think my teachers have noticed that if I'm in a small group situation or a one on one situation, I'll tend to read lips, which indicates to them that I'm not hearing or understanding them too well.
This is why it completely annoys me when I'm riding in the car or eating lunch with a group of friends at a rectangular table. I had a group of friends that, in lieu of eating in the noisy caf, decided to eat in a small practice room. We all pretty much sat in a circle, so I could actually understand everyone. Pretty awesome.

The ling test? I swear my TotD has done this to me before. She used to do these with my back to her, a couple feet away, and make me repeat the sounds.
 
Wirelessly posted

My daughter is profound from birth and even with HAs cranked couldn't access sound in that speech banana in which the various speech sounds fall on that audiogram chart FJ shared.

We, too, moved quickly to use ASL as a family so we'd have a primary language in place during that critical learning period. Your child may be screaming bc he's hungry for words ;) .
 
ryancher said:
No, he is not a candidate for a ci... we checked into that when he was 18 months old. They said the candidacy for a ci started at 90db. Tyler is between 65-75db unaided. So, it's just hearing aids for him.
Click to expand...

This may have been the case when he was under age two, but the older a child gets the looser the guidelines become. If he is not making appropriate progress with hearing aids (and clearly he isn't) he might be a candidate, there is a huge variation in who will implant at what level. My daughter was implanted when her loss was 50-80 db. So, it was better than his in some frequencies, but she was unable to access speech. I believe the research shows that people with a greater than 71 db pure tone average do better with CI's than hearing aids.

Just a thought...
 
i dont think this has been put out there, but some hearing aids cut off loud noises because if its too loud it would damage the residual hearing that is left. :)
 
girlinggrey I thought I was the only one who speaks quietly with my aids in- my own voice sounds funny and loud, so I talk quieter. I tend to get told I'm mumbling. When I'm excited about something I get loud and get shushed. I can't hear my own voice properly with them in due to occlusion (only recently got skeleton moulds after slimtubes, no aids and several years of refusing to wear analogue ITEs). If I can't hear people on the phone I end up speaking louder as if I'm trying to get them to join in!
 
I don't if this has been mentioned yet since I didn't have time to go through all of the posts but I do want to comment...

Yes, hearing aids make things louder. However, they cannot provide the same dynamic range that natural hearing can.

To explain what I mean by dynamic range I am going to give an example.

A hearing person will hear (for example) 10 different levels of loudness.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

A person with a mild loss may hear less like...

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

A moderate loss...

5 6 7 8 9 10

A severe loss...

7 8 9 10

A profound loss

9 10

So hearing aids can bring sounds up to the lowest loudness number a person can hear, but it cannot replace those missing numbers.

As a person with a profound loss, I only have 9 and 10. Everything for me is brought up to a 9 or a 10. There is nothing past 10, nothing below 9. If you talk really quietly it will become a 9, if you talk normally it will become a 9. Where as for a hearing person quiet talking will be a 2 or 3 and normal talking will be a 4 or 5. There is that difference. With hearing aids we don't hear those differences.

For your son everything is a 5 6 7 8 9 or 10. He doesn't have the concept of a 1 2 3 or 4 like you do.

Does this make sense? At all?
 
I understand it logically... but it's still very hard to grasp... since it's beyond what I "naturally" know.

Even though I want Tyler to become Oral... I also want him to learn signs. And as a family, we have been learning signs over the past 3 years and teaching them to Tyler. Up until recently, he hasn't been doing anything... but in the last month he has made huge jumps in signing!!! We can't believe it... he still "baby signs/babble"... but he's getting there. He tries to sign "more, eat, drink, thank you, and I love you". It's amazing to see his little hands try to copy ours! :)

I've made an appointment with an AV therapist in 2 weeks... she's going to evaluate him and help us to figure out where to go from here. We still have a SLP, Resource Teacher, OT, and Teacher of the Deaf working with him as well. We dropped AVT 2 years ago due to lack of success... but I want to Tyler to try it again... with another professional. We also have an audiologist appointment next month and I'm going to bring up having an aided test done and possibility a descrimination test too.

I'm sorry if I sound so clueluess... but please remember this is all new to me/us. I am trying to learn and do the absolute best for Tyler.
 
I am glad to see you back. I thought we scared you away! :)
 
Oh no... family week at the cottage... I am back... and not scared away! lol
 
Think about being in a large group setting. Perhaps a party, conference, concert, something like that.

You know how everyone is talking really loudly to be heard and everything just sounds loud? Nothing sounds quiet at all? That is your sons reality. Everyday is like being at that party. Does that help?

I know of a deaf AV therapist in King City. I have never met her but I have corresponded with her and she seems to know what she is talking about (we were talking because I was taking a phonetics course in University and I needed to figure out how I would do that.) Sometimes having a deaf perspective to speech can help. I know it was a deaf friend who taught me the "s" sound - something no SLP could ever do! They just know how to make it make sense!
 
JennyB said:
As a person with a profound loss, I only have 9 and 10. Everything for me is brought up to a 9 or a 10. There is nothing past 10, nothing below 9. If you talk really quietly it will become a 9, if you talk normally it will become a 9. Where as for a hearing person quiet talking will be a 2 or 3 and normal talking will be a 4 or 5. There is that difference. With hearing aids we don't hear those differences.
Click to expand...

Jenny, I don't quite understand. I have a severe-profound loss (100-110 db). I can hear, with my HAs, quite a variety of loudness and softness. At work, I talk with many, many different people all day and there's definitely a degree of difference in volume (and pitch, as well, depending on whom I'm speaking with). It really doesn't seem to me that I hear nothing below a "9" by how you explain it, unless I'm not understanding you correctly. Can you rephrase?
 
JennyB said:
I know of a deaf AV therapist in King City. I have never met her but I have corresponded with her and she seems to know what she is talking about.
Click to expand...

I think that's who I contacted... I've been corresponding with her on Facebook and we have an appointment to meet in 2 weeks. She said she'd do an initial examination. Unfortunately, she is a private AVT... so we'd have to pay out of pocket... and not sure we can afford that. I was hoping to go the IHP route. But we're meeting anyways to get some help and suggestions.

I have contacted VOICE to see if they have any AVT's in or around our area that would be able to help through IHP.

I am on a mission to get some help...
 
I personally like the speech banana to help kind of show understanding to those who are hearing...I used to be hearing and it's still sort of hard to explain to someone who still is hearing what hearing loss is like...One of my coworkes rudely said to me once that I wasn't that deaf once when I was asked to go bring someone back into their safety dep box. There is a very high pitched bell that is rung when they the customer is finished and even with hearing aids on it's hard to hear no ha's on..forget it...I showed her the speech banana and it helped clear up a lot of misconceptions and make her understand better what I can and can't hear:)

The speech and spoken language within the banana and all the sounds all over the audiogram including the banana is what normal hearing can hear. I have a severe loss and even with my hearing aids it's hard to hear within the speech banana but that is what most audiologists strive for the wearer, to hear within the speech banana. But some people only get the environmental stuff which is below the speech level like you see in the picture.

Since your son is deaf or hoh however you'd like to classify and he's never heard and deciphered these sounds before like I have it's hard to know how to sound them out. Since I didn't lose my hearing til 5 years ago I know what sounds are and how they should sound. With my hearing aids on I can "hear" but still have a lot of trouble with sounds such as "ch" "sh" "s" and "t" sometimes are hard as well since they fall closer to the 20dB level and that dynamic range is at a number that is a bit too far in it's reach...if that makes sense..goes back to what JennyB said. Some "numbers" just can't be heard even with hearing aids. So think of those letters and sounds for words in the speech banana as those "numbers" that jenny stated and some are just really hard to hear or just totally unattainable since the hearing aid doesn't have the range to pick it up if the hearing loss is greater and won't allow it.

Hope this helps a bit
 

Attachments

  • banana.jpg
    banana.jpg
    62.8 KB · Views: 7
Back
Top