On another board I frequent, a mother mentioned that her daughter has conductive hearing loss, 20 and 40 %. When she brought this to the attention of the school principal, she was brushed off and no accommodations are made whatsoever for her. He basically told her there was no way her daughter had a hearing problem. There are other things going on but this one really got me. Of course the kid is struggling if she can’t hear what’s going on in class.
My first thought was ” since when was a ph.d Ed. better than an m.d. ENT when diagnosing a medical problem?”
Anyway, they are apparently finally going to have the Big Meeting, I have given some advice such as looking into the IDEA and ADA laws, looking into finding an advocate (possibly from a local hearing impaired association) request a full psychoeducational eval.(in writing), and request an assistive technology eval. for an auditory trainer or sound field system. Also to make sure she doesn’t go alone. Does this sound like enough?
The way I am now with conductive hearing loss, there is no way I would make it in a classroom, even with the hearing aid, so I can relate somewhat to this girl’s problem.
Thanks, best wishes.
Amy
Re: sorry been out of town..
Thank you patti! I advised her about documenting it all and possibly getting some advocacy help to assist in getting her daughter help in school. You have given me some specific info to pass on. Thanks again.
off topic:
Do you know what caused yours and your daughter’s conductive loss? I have been diagnosed with otosclerosis and have loss in both ears. I don’t wear the HA they gave me, basically it just amplifies noise along with low frequency sound so I found it not as helpful as I had hoped for. Very frustrating in groups of people or the movies, now I know why some HOH folks avoid gatherings.
The way I described it to the doc is I can hear the tv show Buffy the vampire slayer (mostly female) and can’t hear Angel (mostly male). They normally play one after the other so the tv volume wouldn’t have changed.
The menieres (sp), that is a hard one on top of already dealing with some loss.
I hope for the best for you. I know of a bulletin board called Hearing Exchange, if you haven’t already been there, you might take a look at it.
Best wishes.
Amy
Re: sorry been out of town..
Our loss is genetic…it is a dominant trait that has been expressed on my fathers side for generations and I think it is on the x chromosome. Out of 4 kids my 2 sons have it and my daughter but my oldest doesn’t but I know she is a carrier…
I would suggest getting surgery to fix the otosclerosis…it is what causes the distortion. One of my professors who has otosclerosis had one of her ears done and it really helped her. She has lost the high frequencies that I can hear and now her other ear is bothering her. She needs to have it done. I noticed how much she struggles not to mention she speaks really loud and that is because she can’t hear how loud she sounds. With my hearing aid off I can hear her….I would love to see the website you mentioned. Do you have the address?
Hope you can hook up with a good ENT surgeon to repair at least one of your ears. It would help you so much…
Take care…
Patti
website
Hi Patti,
the web site is www.hearingexchange.com
As for the surgery, I am at about 40% on the left and have to be at 60% to be a surgical candidate. One of those hard place and a rock situations. If I get to 60% before the next 4 yrs the military will pay for it. After that we are retired and will pay a big chunk ourselves. So…do you wish for more loss or be thankful for what you have and hope it doesn’t get worse for a long time?
Best wishes,
Amy
Re: website
I never wish for more hearing loss because in my case I can’t have surgery to recover what is damaged…mine is a progressive/permanent sensorineural hearing loss, whereas you can have surgery and will be able to recover much of what you lose except for the high frequencies… I guarantee you will notice a big difference whenever you do elect to have the surgery. Thanks for the website…
Patti
I am back again…Does the child have an audiogram that shows a hearing loss with both air conduction and bone conduction? It is tricky with Conductive losses because they may be caused by an ear infection and once it is cleared by meds the hearing loss goes away. Now if she has a long history of ear infections that can be documented with medical records this would have a substantial impact on her auditory and phonological processing, vocabulary and language development. This parent has to build her case. I had to prove that my daughter had a hearing loss by an audiogram and medical records before she received services. The tricky part here is if she isn’t “failing” then they may balk at IEP services but technically if she has a permanent disability then she qualifies under the ADA laws for accomondations to even out the playing field in the classroom.
My daughter and I have a reverse slope hearing loss which isn’t as bad as a normal hearing loss. We hear the hghs where the consonants are so our diction is really good but have trouble with the low frequency vowel sounds. We have trouble with background noise as it muffles out what we naturally hear. But the other fly in the ointment that causes me to have a conductive hearing loss on top of this hearing loss, is Meneire’s disease. If I keep the swelling down in my right ear I can hear better and there isn’t distortion but if the Meneire’s is active my audtiory discrimination goes way down… But this conductive loss is highly variable it comes and goes…
So if your friend brings in the appropriate documentation of a permanent disability and reminds them about the American with Disabilities act (ADA) she should get what her daughter needs without too much of a fight.