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Communicating
with a hearing loss
Communication
is a vital part of living. In the process of communicating we
share information with other people by talking and listening.
Children
begin to learn to communicate from the moment they are born. They
are constantly listening and very soon they are able to recognize
the voices of their mother and father. And they learn to talk
by imitating the sounds they hear.
Children
with hearing loss can have difficulty learning to communicate
because they cannot hear all or part of the sounds around them
or even their own voice.
Typically,
parents are concerned that their child might have missed valuable
information in the interim period between birth and the detection
of the child’s hearing loss. The numerous communication methods
and techniques available today make it possible to overcome your
concern.
Please
check our Find a Provider section
to see a list of the different professionals
and experts available to help you.
If a child has a hearing loss the basic development of language
will often be delayed. Nevertheless, children with mild to severe
hearing loss most often develop understandable speech.
Research
has shown that even children with profound hearing loss can learn
to speak. The earlier the hearing loss is diagnosed, the better.
Fortunately the children are often identified early, because the
signs of their hearing loss are more obvious than the signs of
milder categories of hearing loss.
Communication
is a lot more than just spoken language. In fact, there are more
ways of communicating than most of us would think. Besides speaking
we also communicate through hand gestures, facial expressions
and other kinds of body language. Children
with hearing loss use a number of techniques to communicate
and adapt to new situations.
This
article courtesy of Oticon
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