Pediatric Hearing Service

Hearing Development

• By 24 weeks of pregnancy, babies are sensitive to sounds
• Around 3 months of age, babies begin to produce cooing sounds
• At 6 months of age, babies can babble
• At 12 months of age, babies can imitate familiar sounds
• By the age of one, babies can understand simple vocabularies, e.g. “mama” and “ball”

Babies start to understand speech before they begin to speak. Our sense of hearing provides the basis for speech and communication skills. Only through hearing and imitating speech can children learn to speak. Undiagnosed and untreated hearing loss can have a negative impact on children’s developments.

Impacts of Delayed Intervention

Hearing ability helps a child to develop speech and language. Children learn to talk and understand by listening to the others. A child with hearing loss experiences greater difficulties in perceiving sounds. Delayed intervention can cause the following problems:

1. Delayed speech and language development: Children with hearing loss often cannot hear soft sounds, including daily conversations, and thus the natural acquisition of communication skills is hampered by their hearing impairments
2. Poorer school performance: A child may miss half of the lesson with both ears experiencing mild hearing impairment. Hearing impaired children experience greater difficulties perceiving speech in noisy environments. Therefore, their learning progress may be badly influenced.
3. Social and psychological effect: Communication fosters social interaction. Communication difficulties caused by hearing loss may result in feelings of anger, stress and loneliness

Signs of Hearing Loss in Children

Although the Hospital Authority in Hong Kong routinely performs newborn hearing screening on infants, a child can develop hearing loss later in life. It is important for your child to receive regular hearing checks. In order not to slow down your child’s future development, you must pay attention to child’s hearing ability and condition. It is possible that your child is with hearing loss if he/ she shows below signs. If so, you may need to arrange appropriate hearing assessment as soon as possible: