Re: new -- intro

[Guest guest]

LOL...too cute. keeps telling me that she wants to dance on the big

stage so everyone can see her. Appearently dancing with her class during

rectial is not enough for her.

Debbie, mom to , 7, moderate SNHL and , 4, hearing

smail@...> wrote:

That's interesting -- Connor is very blessed musically (perfect

pitch). In fact, he wanted to go to the " opera camp " that our local

opera house holds each summer, but only if he can sing for everyone

the whole time! :-)

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were

and ask why not. G.B Shaw

---------------------------------

Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs.Try it free.

[Guest guest]

Hi ! That was probably me, but with a different group. I

posted a similar message with the APD group back in March.

But wow, what a lot of valuable info you gave me today! I suddenly

have a lot more to do tomorrow. I'm going to have my library find the

Flexer book, and I'll look into AVT. I'm trying to remember if the

avt is what a friend on this board(you there, ?)told me her son

did. And as for UF, Dr. Hall is the audiologist who eval'd

Connor in 2004 for apd. In fact, I recently emailed him and am now

waiting for his phone call regarding a 2nd eval. Anyway, thank you

for opening this door for us!

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

I'm Debbie, mom to who is 7 and has a moderate SNHL, and who

turned 4 yesterday and is hearing. 's loss wasn't discovered until she

was 2 1/2, but we are pretty sure that she was born with it.

has always had a large amount of energy and was very curious about

everything she saw. When she started preschool she had a very hard time

focusing on the teacher lead activities. By the time she began kindergarten she

was starting to be able to pay attention during activities and did quite well.

But it wasn't until last year while in first grade that her teacher's started to

think she had ADD/ADHD. I'm not 100% sold that this is the issue, and told her

school so. But they continued to give me reasons why it could be. Honestly,

the reasons could be justified by her hearing loss as well. So I have scheduled

an appointment for to be seen by a psychologist that works with deaf/hoh

kids to determine if she may have ADD. I'll be fine with it if she happens to

be diagnosed with ADD, but if the psych says that doesn't have it, then

I'm hoping that the school will stop insisting on the ADD and focus on the real

issues. Hearing loss and ADD have

such simular symptoms, that many people not familar in working with HOH kids

would think the child had ADD. So I quess to answer your question, some of

those issues can certainly be attributed to his hearing loss, but it's hard to

determine to what degreee.

Due in part to her late diagnosis and to her hearing loss, has some

social skill issues. Part of those are related to hearing...part due to her

language delay from being diagnosed late. So there are times when she has melt

downs that are definately not age appropriate. She's never tried to bite

anyone, but she definately has a small version of a tantrum every now and then.

Usually it's when we are out somewhere and I would like it not to be happening.

But I don't think this has anything to do with brain development, per se.

doesn't and hasn't picked up those subtle social cues that hearing kids

usually pick up. She has to be taught those things. So hearing loss can affect

social/emotional development in some kids.

I will try to remember to ask our psych about the brain development thing,

cause now I'm a little curious.

Debbie

My first question is this – how much of ds's behavior/memory/focus

issues can be attributed to his hearing loss?

My second question revolves around what a psychologist told me....

But how much of hearing affects one's social/emotional development?

Could all these adhd symptoms really be frustration from

hearing/lack of?

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were

and ask why not. G.B Shaw

---------------------------------

How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.

[Guest guest]

I just wanted to say thank you to for writing this message! You give

me hope that 's behavior issues may improve now that he is aided (1

month ago). Granted, I was hoping for immediate improvement (in my dreams),

but I am heartened to hear that within a year or two you saw changes in

Maggie's behavior. The past few days have been tantrum-city, full of

defiance, some hitting, and other no-nos. Certainly I realize that is

still 2 (although edging closer to 3 quickly) and is expected to be volatile

and get upset by things like whether I gave him the socks with the stars on

them or not . But my sanity hopes that his being able to hear and

communicate better will help us out soon!

Sherry

Mom to (2.75yrs, bilateral SNHL, recently aided)

Mom to Drew (6 mo, just passed his ABR on the right ear, but woke up before

she could verify the left)

RE: new -- intro

Hi and welcome. Glad you found us. I'm and my 14 year old

daughter Maggie was diagnosed late (3 3/4 years) with a moderate to severe

hearing loss in both ears. She wears hearing aids, used an FM until

teenagerness appeared, and is an Auditory Verbal Therapy graduate. She has

always been mainstreamed for school and activities and is a pretty typical

teenaged girl, cell phone, eye rolling and all.

Your post sparked some memories for me. I think we had a mom join the group

in months past with a very similar story, from central FL, told by a

psychologist that problems with behavior was due to unilateral loss and the

brain, qEEG done discounting ADHD. Even the supplements and neurotherapy.

I just have to say that this is all pretty far from the mainstream of how

hearing impaired kids are understood, treated etc. They could possibly be

on to something new and exciting, but as of what people know now, there is

no research to back this up. (I spent the past year researching my thesis

paper on childhood hearing loss for a Masters in Public Health - basically

spent two years tracking, following and reading all published research

relating to kids with hearing loss.)

Auditory processing disorder is really present in pretty much all hearing

impaired kids because they haven't had the quality or amount of auditory

input to properly build brain auditory centers and pathways. In true APD,

kids with normal hearing act like hearing impaired kids when it comes to

processing what they hear. When you aid a child with a hearing loss, they

will still have the effects of the hearing loss as far as auditory brain

centers are concerned unless specific intentional work (think therapy, early

intervention) to address this is done. That being said, some hearing

impaired kids do have an extra dose of auditory processing problems - kind

of at the severe end of the spectrum of auditory processing problems, not

necassarily on the severe end of hearing loss. Sometimes it is an inability

to distinguish speech from noise very well like your son. When you wear

hearing aids, this happens because the hearing aid amplifies the noise and

the speech equally. My daughter has this problem, when aided and in quiet

she understands 95+ % of what she hears. At a speech to noise ratio of +10,

she falls to 40% comprehension. She goes from the " good " end of the

spectrum in quiet to the poor end in noise. They were pretty surprised to

see that her ability to comprehend speech deteriorated in noise so

tremendously since she did so extremely well in quiet.

My first question is this - how much of ds's behavior/memory/focus

>issues can be attributed to his hearing loss?

Short answer: ALL OF IT!!!!

Longer answer:

Our daughter was diagnosed late, at almost 4 years old, and her language was

delayed. But the biggest problem we had with her was behavior. She would

have been a great candidate for the show Nanny 911. Everyday we had any

number of complete meltdowns. I spent most of the day trying to keep things

smooth to prevent meltdowns. I was nearly a candidate for the funny farm!

After she was diagnosed, as her language abilities increased and her

auditory processing issues were addressed, her terrible behaviors

decreased. She became a totally different child. Our audiologist said that

when kids can't hear well, they are incredibly frustrated, and either

become quite passive and zone out or get aggressive and act out. (She also

said that the aggressive kids tend to improve faster after diagnosis because

of the same traits so it isn't totally a negative thing!) Maggie was

definitely an aggrssive, act out kid! The new Maggie was much easier to

live with, in fact within a year she became a kind, considerate, thoughtful,

delightful child. Prior to her diagnosis it was literally dangerous to

leave her in a room with another child without direct adult supervision!

She used a soundfield in school for 5K through 2nd grade. She excelled in

school and was always well behaved. When 3rd grade started, we started

getting daily frownie face notes from the teacher regarding Maggie's

behavior. She was aggressive to other children, didn't follow directions,

and was defiant, even defaced school property. We couldn't figure out what

had happened. My husband mused " she hasn't acted like this since she got

her hearing aids! " and the light went on. We asked the teacher and sure

enough she wasn't using the soundfield because she thought Maggie " didn't

need it. " She thought we were just indulgent parents that didn't discipline

our child and wanted to use the hearing loss as a crutch. After numerous

meetings, I basically said " This is how she behaved before she got hearing

aids. Then this behavior went away completely until now. THe only

difference we see is that you are not using the soundfield and up to this

point, all the teachers have used the soundfield 100% of every day. And I

asked her to try it " our way " for a week. (We are in a private school). She

called me a day and a half later and said she had to admit, she now had a

totally different Maggie in her class. So yes, behavior issues can SOOOO

be due to hearing - or not hearing well!! There is a terrific book by an

audiologist named Carol Flexer that is called something like Facilitating

Listening and Hearing in Young Children. This book will really help you to

see how the hearing loss affects nearly every aspect of the child's

development - social, emotional, focus, etc. You can find the book on

Amazon, it's kind of expensive so you can also try getting it through

interlibrary loan. Here's a link to an article she wrote about minimal

hearing loss. I give this to Maggie's teachers every year because it lays

out the problems a child with minimal or unilateral loss can have - I tell

them Maggie's loss is much worse than this, but she will have the same

problems. http://www.totalhearing.net/child_faq_management.htm I'm not

sure where it is published, but I've heard Dr. Flexer speak a number of

times and she actually has a chart that shows all the ways that hearing loss

mimics ADHD. (Of course there are kids who truly have hearing loss AND

ADHD. My middle child has ADHD but no hearing loss). Forgot to mention

that Carol Flexer is the main GURU and advocate for kids with unilateral and

" minimal " hearing loss!!

The other thing we did was auditory verbal therapy. AVT addresses the

hearing loss by teaching the child to listen - which means building their

auditory processing abilities by directing therapy to those issues and

actually building the chld's brains' auditory and language centers. They

learn to process language through hearing it. So simultaneously, in a

developmentally appropriate sequence, you are building the child's brains's

auditory centers, auditory pathways, language centers, language pathways, as

well as speech production and output pathways. You are simply intentionally

recreating what would happen in brain development had there not been a

hearing loss. There is a lot of research that backs this up, and now

auditory verbal (and auditory oral) is considered the standard of care for

kids with cochlear implants - because it has a proven track record of

teaching the child's brain how to process and use the auditory information.

Many implant centers won't implant a child unless the family commits to

intensive auditory therapy of some kind. Maggie had tremendous problems with

auditory memory and auditory sequencing. We worked on this alot in AVT. If

you told her 3 things, she would remember the first or the last. Then she

improved to remembering the first and the last thing she heard. Finally,

she got to where she could remember 4 things in the right order. She also

could add and subtract before she could count to 10 and could read before

she could sing the alphabet song correctly. All of this is due to auditory

memory and sequencing issues.

Another thing that is based on research is a computer program called

FastForWord. It was developed for kids with language based learning

disorders and it too works on auditory processing issues. It is a computer

game that manipulates speech so that sounds that are usually very soft and

quick (which are the same sounds hearing impaired kids have the hardest time

hearing) are slowed down and emphasized. The child plays the computer game

and does what the computer manipulated voice tells them to do and as the

child improves on the game, the program goes to the next steps

automatically. The sounds that were slowed down and emphasized are

gradually brought back to normal. Kids improve their language skills because

their auditory processing has been improved. You usually have to do this

through a specially trained SLP though they may have a home version now. It

isn't marketed to hearing impaired kids but several parents on this list

have used it successfully for their kids and several cochlear implant rehab

people have used it. http://www.scilearn.com/

>My second question revolves around what a psychologist told me.

>Connor appears to react like a toddler when he gets angry/frustrated

>(bit my dd `cause he thought she cheated at tag). The psych said that's

>because he can't hear via his left ear. He went on to say that a lack

>of hearing on the left affected the right side of his brain (in charge

>of social/emotional). The psych also said that ds will remain soc/emo

>behind unless we get his hearing fixed on that side. Hogwash, right?

>But how much of hearing affects one's

>social/emotional development?

You hit the nail right on the head - HOGWASH! (this other mom must have

gone to the same psych because she too was told her son's behavior was due

to the unilateral hearing loss and the sidedness of the brain!) Kids with

hearing loss are commonly delayed socially and emotionally and it is because

they are unable to hear well enough to absorb the unspoken, untaught rules

of the social realm. And because they might not have heard what was going

on so they do or say something inappropriate to the situation. Plus they

are frustrated so they can act inappropriately. And they are often fatigued

from the effort it takes to listen so they act inappropriately. So just

like you have to " teach " auditory processing to a hearing impaired child,

you need to intentionally teach the rules of socializing and how the world

works. You probably can't " fix " the hearing on that side (does he have a

cochlea?? Some kids with microtia due to GS do, some don't) - but you can

address the very common social/emotional delays that are found in most kids

with hearing loss. Maggie was also at both ends of the spectrum here - went

from hellion to " perfect " child (what the middle child calls her!) in about

18 months.

So to answer both questions, your dear little guy is showing all the usual

and common things you'd expect to see in a child who has never had typical

hearing. Nothing to do with one side of the brain. You have described a

very typical child with less than perfect hearing, plain and simple. All of

the issues you described are the ones common to hearing loss. Could

something else like ADHD be going on? Sure. But for sure the hearing loss

related issues are gonig on.

Got a question? Did anything change in your son's life around the time the

behavior changed?? I'm thinking environmental things - like did you

exchange carpeted floors for terrazzo or tile or hardwood?? Or did school or

day care change - the trigger for the change could have been a change into

an unfavorable acoustic environment for a big part of his day. Acoustics

are VERY important to a child who can't hear well. It can have an immense

effect on how well they can hear and understand.

Oh, I forgot to say, I'm a former Floridian! My parents moved there and I

was 13 so I had no choice. So I went to high school in Ft. Lauderdale and

married a boy from Boca. We have family all up the east coast and

Tallahassee and Ocala. There used to be a terrific professor at UF who

wrote a book or two with Carol Flexer about acoustics and hearing loss named

Carl Crandell but he died a year or so ago. Not sure if anyone in audiology

at UF has picked up the acoustics torch. (Forgot to mention Carol Flexer is

also a huge advocate for acoustics for kids with hearing loss - it all goes

together, acoustics, auditory processing, language, behavior)

Boy this was a long post even for me who is typically long winded! Hope it

is helpful as you try to sort out what is going on with your little boy.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

I've been such a slacker about posting for several months now, but just had

to say how much I appreciated your response. Thanks for taking the time to

explain things so well.

Our daughter was diagnosed a couple years ago (LVAS) and I've gotten really

involved in a local group that's advocating for kids with hearing loss. So

many kids here (in El Paso, TX) fail the newborn screening and never receive

follow-up care till they start kindergarten. Anyway, we're planning a

Pediatric Symposium on Hearing Loss for November and Carol Flexer is coming

to speak - I'm looking forward to hearing her speak so much!

Thanks again for the info and the links!

Margaret Schroeder

In El Paso, TX

[Guest guest]

Hi -

My older son, Tom, is 14. He has a severe/profound hearing loss, has a

CI in his right ear and wears a hearing aid in the left. He also has

ADHD that's been diagnosed by a neuropsychologist who specializes in

deaf/hard of hearing kids so we're pretty confident of the diagnosis.

I don't want to be a wet blanket but want to point out that while

ADHD/ADD behaviors can be attributed to hearing loss, once the child is

" settled " into their communication methodology and still exhibiting

those behaviors, it could well be ADHD/ADD. There came a point with Tom

(he was in first grade) where we all realized that hearing loss just

wasn't explaining everything - he was aided well, in a good program in

school, etc. That's when we started pursuing attentional issues.

To this day, his focus/memory/attention problems most days are far more

challenging than not being able to hear! We joked with Tom's surgeon

when he got his CI that the surgeon should move over to the focus part

of the brain and tweak it a little (just kidding...). But knowing that

Tom has ADHD/ADD has helped immensely with how we approach his IEPs in

school, etc. He's an interesting kid - funny as all get-out, brilliant,

goes a mile a minute and definitely looks at the world at times with

different eyes. He's very aware of his ADHD and works very hard when it

comes to focus, etc.

So just automatically accept a diagnosis of ADHD - I'm so glad we had an

evaluation from a neuropsych with expertise working with deaf kids - but

on the other hand, don't think it can't happen either.

Good luck!

Barbara

>

>

> My first question is this – how much of ds's behavior/memory/focus

> issues can be attributed to his hearing loss?

>

> My second question revolves around what a psychologist told me....

> But how much of hearing affects one's social/emotional development?

>

> Could all these adhd symptoms really be frustration from

> hearing/lack of?

>

>

>

>

> Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never

were and ask why not. G.B Shaw

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> ---------------------------------

> How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.

>

>

[Guest guest]

I'll look into AVT. I'm trying to remember if that is what a friend on

this board(you there, ?)told me her son did.

Yes. We did AVT with a cert. who came to the house for about a year.

Unfortunately, she's unavailable now.

We are still practicing many of the overall skills she taught us in that

year, and applying AVT techniques to learning new material. We are

/still/ ( it's been like two years now :-( ) on the waiting list for the

Bolesta Center. They specialize in AVT.

from Orlando area

[Guest guest]

Hi Barbara,

> I don't want to be a wet blanket but want to point out that while

> ADHD/ADD behaviors can be attributed to hearing loss, once the

child is

> " settled " into their communication methodology and still

exhibiting

> those behaviors, it could well be ADHD/ADD.

As to your being a " wet blanket " , don't worry. I never accept one

person's view as the gospel. :-) One of Connor's eval's was by a

neuropsych at Shand's who said that he " needed " medication. If I

had listened to her, then I might have put Connor on some drug years

ago. Whoa! What a mistake that would have been for us. Actually, I

always check out everything pretty well and pray about it to see if

it's meant for us.

What tx, if any, is Tom doing to assist with the adhd? We've been

working with Brain Builder for memory/concentration. I'm going to

look into 's suggestion of FastForward. Have you tried that?

[Guest guest]

Hi - sorry I'm late responding. It's been so busy at work! If

one more faculty member tells me " oh - you must be less busy now that

it's summer " I swear I'm not responsible for my actions! :-) but I

digress...

We do several things with Tom. He does take strattera. It's helped to

some degree, although I don't think there's a magic bullet with regard

to ADHD meds. We started him initially on ritalin and its cousins -

that didn't do much - then went to adderall. Adderall worked well but

the side effects made it not an option for Tom (he had involuntary

tics). So he's been on strattera for awhile now and it settles him. We

also talk - a great deal - and work on strategies that help Tom. For

example, in math he would see the page with 100 multiplication tables

(or division problems or...) and just freak out. So he now knows to

cover up all but the line he's working on and that helps so much.

Actually this year was his best year ever with math - he's skipping over

8th grade math and going to algebra. He's really feeling good about

that as are we...

I've found Mel Levine's books to be helpful. They're not about deaf/hoh

kids but I like how he breaks down behaviors into subsets. So rather

than telling a parent that their child has ADHD (and what does that mean

anyway?), he looks at memory and the 11 components of it. Or looks at

attention and its components. So for Tom, we do know he learns from

mistakes so we can cross that off the list re: things to work on. Dr.

Levine wrote a kids book called " All Kinds of Minds " that Tom read cover

to cover. It was a real epiphany for Tom when he realized there are

other kids like him who take " mind vacations " (I love that phrase!).

certainly the hearing loss doesn't help the focus and attention but it's

not why he's not paying attention, if that makes sense.

Tom asked me awhile back if having ADHD is a bad thing. I told him " no "

because it's some of what makes Tom who he is and I'd never say that was

a bad thing. That it makes him funny (he's hysterical - I know I'm

raising the next Robin ), smart, spontaneous - the trick is to

know when to be that way and that perhaps English isn't that place?

it's been a real interesting journey!

Take care!

Barbara

wrote:

> Hi Barbara,

>

>

>> I don't want to be a wet blanket but want to point out that while

>> ADHD/ADD behaviors can be attributed to hearing loss, once the

>>

> child is

>

>> " settled " into their communication methodology and still

>>

> exhibiting

>

>> those behaviors, it could well be ADHD/ADD.

>>

>

> As to your being a " wet blanket " , don't worry. I never accept one

> person's view as the gospel. :-) One of Connor's eval's was by a

> neuropsych at Shand's who said that he " needed " medication. If I

> had listened to her, then I might have put Connor on some drug years

> ago. Whoa! What a mistake that would have been for us. Actually, I

> always check out everything pretty well and pray about it to see if

> it's meant for us.

>

> What tx, if any, is Tom doing to assist with the adhd? We've been

> working with Brain Builder for memory/concentration. I'm going to

> look into 's suggestion of FastForward. Have you tried that?

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

> All messages posted to this list are private and confidential. Each post is

the intellectual property of the author and therefore subject to copyright

restrictions.

>