Ninety-eight percent of Arizona newborns are screened for hearing loss prior to hospital discharge—and most will also have their hearing tested five to 10 days later or during the next well-baby checkup.
Hearing tests are part of the Department of Health Services Newborn Screening Program intended to discover and provide early intervention for hearing disability and 32 other conditions that can affect children’s healthy growth and development.
But even with a typical result from a newborn hearing screening, “It’s always good to keep in mind that bodies and ears change over time,” says Jennifer Scarboro Hensley, a family and youth resource specialist for the Arizona Commission for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing.
Indicators that something may have changed with your child’s hearing may include:
- Infants – Non-responsive to sudden noises or parental/familial voices.
- Toddlers – No speech, limited speech or child is frequently inattentive to environmental sounds and talking.
- Preschool/school-age – Frequently asks people to repeat themselves, often turns an ear toward a sound to hear it better, keeps asking you to turn up the volume on the radio or TV, complains of pain or ringing in the ears, rubs or tugs at the ears.
- Older children/teens – Gets in trouble for not listening (beyond age-typical attitude issues), struggles with volume control, talks too loudly, gives wrong answers to questions.
The American Academy of Audiology recommends hearing screenings in preschool, kindergarten and first, third, fifth and seventh or ninth grades.
“Often parents don’t follow up on hearing screenings beyond the newborn screening at the hospital—especially if they are told the child is testing typically,” Hensley says. “As the child grows older, many parents are rather surprised to find out their child is deaf or hard of hearing.”
Something else to keep in mind: Many parents can’t accurately gauge what is “too loud,” Hensley says, because one out of 10 adults has some sort of atypical hearing or a hearing loss.
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