Dyslexia

Dear Jen

hey I went to walt whitman hs way back when !
I have a daughter who is dyslexic but she never had any ear infections ( though she did have her tonsils and adenoids out due to difficulty breathing and snoring ). Her brother who did have ear fluid , (not infected ), is not dyslexic does that shoot your hypothesis ? Hope this helps .

cathy

I have two children, 1 dyslexic, 1 not. Both had lots of ear infections; however the NON LD child had worse. Hope this helps.

I have 4 chidren with High IQ/dyslexia - mild to moderate

Two had ear infections age 5 (twice each) but no hearing problems.

However they all responded adversely to vaccinations (any) with temperatures within the hour and upto 104F. The worst reaction (including abscess and arm length ‘scald’ marks) was in the child with the severest dyslexia !

This child also had re-current tonsilitis (termly) with 104F temperatures age 7-9 but this has stopped completely now that the dyslexia has been diagnosed and support is in place!

I have 3 children. My oldest son ADHD; inattentive, CAPD, and dyslexia did have a few ear infections a year. He did have frequent bronchitis, pneumonia, and “colds”. My daughter who has no identified learning difference maybe had 2 ear infections in her life time. My youngest son who falls on the Autism spectrum got his first ear infection about 2 months of age and seemed to get them continually until the age of 6. He had to have tubes placed in his ears. Proir to the tube placement he had a documented 65 percent hearing loss. The oldest who had less frequent ear infections did have a mild hearing loss of 25 db in the speech freuncy. I do believe that both boys development was affected by their infections and hearing loss. I hope this helps.

My dd with CAPD/Dyslexia did not have a whole lot of ear infections, but she was very colicky and always had a cold, bronchitis, asthma. The few times she did get an infection, it was tough to get rid of (had to go thru the whole antibiotic spectrum before we found one that worked.)

I later found out that I believe she spent most of her infancy with food sensitives and most likely fluid in middle ear. When she did have the fluid - there was some hearing loss in high frequencies. (interesting, she had very poor word discrimination - esp. word endings- which are the high frequencies.)

She also has VERY tiny ears and I wonder if that contributed. My dr. says no, but my gut says otherwise.

Her older brother, however, was the one plagued with alot of ear infections. He is top student, high achiever, no LD problems. However, he did not have the bronchitis, colds, asthma that his sister did. (He also has very BIG ears :) ). When he was a baby, he could only go to sleep with Mozart playing in background - which is VERY good for auditory tonal development. My dd on the other hand, would only go to sleep with a hair dryer running!

I’ve also always wondered about the bad bump on her head as a 2 year old when she split it open on the coffee table? I always felt she has a very mild form of aphasia.

Hindsight, I would have had tubes put in her ears, and had her wear a helmet all day, and had Mozart playing in background all day long! (and not listened to those breast feeding experts who said babies can’t be allergic to your breast milk).

A recent study (I’ll try to find it) concluded that there was no relation between multiple ear infections and any LD, but other studies have found to the contrary.

Andrea

I have no doubt that my son’s problems are related to his ear infections. He had tubes put in at age 4, after it was determined he had a 20% hearing loss. In his case, he had undiagnosed ear infections. They also appear to have been intermittant, because he had regular medical care and even had his hearing tested by an audiologist 6 months earlier. I understand now that this is the worse situation from a developmental standpoint.

I do not think that his difficulties are entirely caused by ear infections but they certainly are a contributing cause.

Beth

okay,guess I put my two cents in:-)

I am a 37 yo dyslexic. Diagnosed in Kindergarten. Had severe reoccuring ear infections. ENT concluded that my ear cannels were slanted differently in which caused water to get trapped and cause infections. ALL I know it is was PAINFUL! I had no documented hearing loss as far as I know.

I have two boys. Both are dysgraphic and gifted and ADHD. Neither had any issues with reoccuring ear infections. I can not remember my youngest ever having one,he did however have a low frequency hearing loss according to the audiologist eval.

Personally the one thing that can be said about Lders,is there isn’t two exactly alike:-)

My son is dyslexic, but rarely had ear infections. I think his dyslexia is due to neurological (possibly processing) differences.

His sister (an awesome reader, in fact SAT-9 tests in the 99%ile) had constant ear infections. And, even worse, rarely felt pain from them so when I took her to the doctor for a well-check up she’d often have an ear infection which I didn’t even know she had!

I had constant ear infections and draining as a child nad was an early reader in the 99th % SAT. Both my sons are dyslexic-cause CAPD, I think. Neither had ear infections and their hearing checked out fine in pediatric tests. My first clue was when the oldest couldn’t remember letters or numbers in K.

One reason I think ear infections played into my son’s LD is that there are people in the family with auditory processing weaknesses but there is no LD on either side of the family. I think the ear infections helped turn these weaknesses (compenstated for well by others—and not impacting reading) into full blown LD.

Beth

My daughter was allergic to all milk, including human. Unfortunately she was unable to digest anything else either.
She inherits this from me honestly; family history of allergies and celiac disease. She was dreadfully underweight because she threw up most of what went down and was always moving at high speed, and I had her in to the nurse weekly for a weigh-in. At five months she weighed only ten pounds but was a cheerful, active rat who could do the breast-stroke across the living room. Finally I found one particular brand of soy milk (no substitutes) that would stay down, and taught her to drink from cup, as well as continuing nursing, and she managed to get up to fifteen pounds by her first birthday. Broccoli and peanut butter helped from then on.
She had roseola with a fever of 104F (40C) at six months, a high fever with each and every new tooth, fairly constant ear infections throughout her second year, tonsillitis a couple of times a year from age 2 to 17, two bouts of pneumonia at 5 and 8, appendicitis at 8, and one tonsillitis that was treated with ineffective antibiotics and turned into scarlet fever at 6. I’ve probably left out something.
She’s also linguistically gifted (speaks Spanish and Latin, OK in French, learning Farsi), musically gifted (learned to play clarinet and trombone with zero formal lessons, trombone good enough for U of Maryland marching band) and a top reader and writer; insisted on learning to read as a toddler when she saw all these other kids getting my attention. So there goes your ear-infection/dyslexia correlation.
She does have directionality/organizational problems and a weird visual problem that I believe may have been caused by all the fevers. The directionality/organizational problems she also inherits quite honestly from me and my mother. Not caused by the ear infections, although a geneticist might do an interesting study on correlations.

One medical fact is that some people usually boys inheret anatomically short ear canals. These children are prone to ear infections.

My son is very good at auditory skills but has motor/visual problems. The inner ear affects the vestibular system so I have often wondered if the ear infections cause some type of inner ear difficulties that left his actual hearing in inact. The vestibular system also affects vision, not eyesight.

We also had the milk problems and his appendix was removed at age 6.

Their facial structures tend to cause ear fluid build up and ear infections that lead to auditory tonal issues/vestibular problems.

That’s why I have wondered if my dd’s ears (because they are SOO small with tiny canals) tend to alter how she hears more so than my son, who had many more ear infections etc. than she did.