World Children’s Day is marked annually on 20 November, with the goal of advocating, promoting and celebrating children’s rights. The theme this year is “Listen to the future”. By listening to children, we can fulfil their right to self-expression, understand their ideas for a better world and include their priorities in our actions today.
The theme is also an important reminder of how our sense of hearing plays a pivotal role in a child’s development and the cognitive formation of their young minds. In this sense, the ability to perceive stimuli in one’s surroundings and environment is how children “listen to their future”.
With hearing loss or impairment, children lose the ability to communicate their wants, needs and desires with those around them. By not empowering them with appropriate and adequate hearing care, we are effectively denying them the right to express themselves.
Communication is crucial for a child’s development
Children’s communication development begins at birth as we start to develop our language and communication skills from the moment we are born. Hearing plays a crucial role in the formative years of a child, influencing and impacting crucial developmental milestones, including their capacity to learn to read and write and the development of their social skills.
Hearing loss can impact children in many ways throughout their early years, the impact lasting well into adulthood. Early identification is the key, and the earlier hearing loss is detected and treated, the better for a child’s development.
Importance of early identification of hearing loss in children
Studies show that when infants with hearing impairment cannot access language stimulation early in life, their overall development can be impacted. At later ages, children with untreated hearing loss may also have poorer academic outcomes.
Research also shows that children with undiagnosed and untreated hearing loss may experience delayed speech and language development, which is likely to continue into adulthood. According to the World Hearing Report, when compared with normal hearing children, children with unilateral hearing loss lag behind in their sound discrimination, sound identification and preverbal vocalisation, as well as their early prelingual auditory development. Early identification is critical – those children identified with hearing loss as infants (before six months of age) were found to have better outcomes from hearing care interventions.
Benefits of implants
The provision of newborn hearing screening protocols and widespread testing in school-age children should be thought of as essential so that prompt intervention can be provided and the best outcomes achieved for children to reach their full potential.
One form of hearing care that can be very beneficial is a cochlear implant. The electronic device does the same job as the thousands of tiny hair cells in the inner ear, responding to sound by turning it into an electrical response. This response stimulates the hearing nerve which sends a signal regarding the sound to the brain.
These implants are well-established well-tolerated solutions for newborns and children who are hearing impaired. One study shows that the self-concept levels of children with profound hearing loss who use cochlear implants are at the same level as or higher than normal hearing children. The same study found that in scholastic competence, athletic competence, physical appearance and behavioural conduct domains, the proportions of high perceived competence levels are even larger in the group of children with cochlear implants than those in the normal-hearing group.
Call to action
Hearing screenings in newborns, when followed by prompt and appropriate interventions, are highly effective in ensuring that those born with significant hearing loss do not experience unnecessary adverse impacts as they age.
Therefore we must listen and learn: ongoing screening is important and necessary. School screening programmes are known to be a useful tool in mitigating the effect of unaddressed hearing loss and ear diseases and may help to identify those with minimal hearing loss in infanthood. With the appropriate referral system in place, and access to hearing care provided promptly, screening programmes will achieve the maximum benefits.
