pediatrics
Hearing Impairment in Children
Symptoms and Signs of Hearing Impairment in Children
If hearing loss is severe, the infant or child may not respond to sounds or may have delayed speech or language comprehension. If hearing loss is less severe, children may intermittently ignore people talking to them. Children may appear to be developing well in certain settings but have problems in others. For example, because the background noise of a classroom can make speech discrimination difficult, the child may have problems hearing only at school. Not recognizing and treating impairment can seriously impair language comprehension and speech. The impairment can lead to failure in school, teasing by peers, social isolation, and emotional difficulties. 