With the development of medical technology, especially the development of hearing and speech rehabilitation technology, hearing aids make it possible for hearing-impaired children to no longer become "deaf and dumb", and to integrate into society like normal people. So how can hearing-impaired children be dealt with? Early diagnosis, early intervention, and early recovery.
Every newborn in China undergoes hearing screening after birth. The main testing methods are otoacoustic emission (OAE) and automatic auditory brainstem response (AABR). Screening results are displayed as "Pass" and "Fail". If the newborn has signs of hearing problems, the screening results are failed and should be re-screened within 42 days of birth, and if the re-screening is also unsuccessful, it should undergo audiological and medical evaluation at 3 months of age, at 6 months Determine whether there is congenital or permanent hearing loss within a month.
Some parents do not pay attention to hearing screening. When the initial screening fails, they feel that the newborn infant is just not well developed. Audiology assessment, "doesn't know" about the cause of infants and young children's hearing loss, and "leave it alone", then the symptoms of children's hearing loss will inevitably affect the subsequent learning and development.
According to the medical diagnosis proposed by the doctor, that is, the cause of hearing loss, the location of hearing loss, the degree of hearing loss, etc., a corresponding intervention plan is formulated to help every hearing-impaired child return to the world of sound. There are two main types of most common interventions:
After hearing aid selection and cochlear implantation for hearing correction, children need to undergo auditory function training and speech-language rehabilitation training. Physicians, audiologists, speech-language therapists, special educators and psychologists are required to participate. It is important to develop a long-term relationship with the child to support the child's hearing and language development so that the deaf child can hear and understand speech.
During the recovery process, parents are prone to fall into misunderstandings. Some parents do not realize the importance of rehabilitation, and mistakenly believe that as long as hearing correction is performed, they can naturally learn to speak, and the behavior of hearing-impaired children is the same as that of normal children. This is an unreasonable idea, because the sounds heard by children after hearing intervention are different from those heard by normal people, and they cannot achieve the language development level of normal children through autonomous learning. In addition, some parents also mistakenly believe that entrusting their children to a rehabilitation class in the form of full care can be the same as normal children, which is also unreasonable, because parents play an extremely important role in the long recovery process of children.