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Audiological Resources
Guide for Parents of Children with Hearing Loss
The school produces the Guide for Parents of Children with Hearing Loss, which is a resource (also available at some paediatric hospitals and clinics) intended to walk parents through the difficult audiological and educational decisions that they will have to make for their children through their early years.
Please note that some information is unavailable in the electronic version as compared to the hard copy. As such, please contact Canossian School if you need more information.
Audio Troubleshooting
To support our parents during Home-Based Learning and when their children are not in school, Canossian School has produced a series of videos to help them check and troubleshoot their children's devices.
Learning Resources for Parents – Raising Kids Who Thrive
Motivating your child to wear their devices
Children need to wear their hearing devices! The goal is device use during all waking hours, including outside of school. However, this is not always easy. The strategies outlined below serve to help improve compliance for hearing aid usage, increase hearing aid wear time, and promote positivity surrounding hearing aid usage.
For younger children:
1. Token Economy. Create a token economy chart! Token economy charts have spaces to place tokens and a reward that the child works toward. You can place it on visible areas (such as the home fridge) or carry them around with you. As your child gets more compliant with wearing their devices, you can extend the amount of time they need to wear it to get a token.
2. Positive Reinforcement. Choose something your child enjoys and associate it with putting on the hearing devices (such as after a bath) or keeping them on for some time (such as until just before bed). You can consider free time, iPad time, food/treats, privileges, praise, tickles, or high fives (each child is different). By associating positive feelings with the hearing devices, the child is likely to be more compliant with wearing them and keeping them on.
For older children:
3. Parents’ attitude. Parents who try to hide hearing loss by insisting on the tiniest hearing technology possible or by suggesting that the child not wear their hearing aids in all settings are communicating that they do not accept the hearing loss as part of their child’s life. The child can grow to believe that to be more acceptable to family and others they need to hide their hearing loss and ‘pretend’ to be normal hearing. These attitudes almost always result in the child refusing to wear the hearing aids.
4. An opportunity for individuality. Discovering individual style is part of what older children do. They can be fit with the smallest hearing aids or choose hearing aid cases the same colour as their hair hoping that the hearing aids and hearing loss will be invisible. Or they can pick bright coloured cases and accessories, and even hearing aid decals and stickers. The more your child has a say in the look of their devices, the more likely they are to wear them – if only just to show them off to their friends!
Enhancing Listening Experience when using Digital Resources
For a person with hearing loss, listening music or speech from the computer/tablet/mobile phone can be challenging as the sound source may be too soft. However, when the volume is increased, sound becomes distorted and clarity is lost. Hence, it is recommended to use direct audio input (DAI), i.e. connecting the computer/tablet/mobile directly to the hearing device via a cable or via Bluetooth or via a personal microphone, thereby bypassing the hearing device’s microphone.
Different hearing devices use different ways to enable direct audio input. Here are some examples:
For Phonak Marvel hearing aids, you may connect directly via Bluetooth.
For Oticon hearing aids, you may connect via a streamer, Connect Clip (Bluetooth) or Streamer Pro
Protecting Hearing Devices by Keeping Them Dry
When hearing devices are repeatedly exposed to moisture, corrosion becomes a real concern. In hot, humid, and rainy Singapore, how can we help devices last longer and prevent expensive repairs?
Firstly, use a hearing aid dryer every night. Electronic dryboxes (1) use air and heat to dry hearing devices. Simply place the hearing aids inside, close it, and press the start button.
Other dryers (2 & 3) use silica gel to absorb moisture. Check periodically that the silica gel is still active and change it when it is used up.
Secondly, headbands can greatly reduce the amount of sweat getting to the hearing devices when your child engages in physical activities. Make sure he/she has a comfortable and clean headband for PE in school, and encourage them to wear one when active outside of school, too.