Glue Ear/Gromits

[MrsOs]

My ds is 3.5 and has had glue ear for a year. It isn't really affecting him at nursery or at home (that I'm aware of). his left ear is worse than his right and they think his right ear is compensating for the left. Every hearing test we do shows he has low to moderate hearing loss.. so it isn't majorly bad.

We went to see Dr at the hospital this week and we talked about gromits, he said we can do it or not, it's up to me.

I said lets do gromits as it would be good for the gunk in his ear to drain away and for him not to be relying on the good ear all the time.. but I don't know if I did the right thing. He hasn't got major hearing loss and so what if I put him through this operation and something happens like he end up with permanent damage to his ears. I won't forgive myself.

WWYD?

[Witchend]

Ds has had grommets three times.

I'd say that generally they tend to err on the not-grommet side, so if the doctor is recommending then he probably needs them.

Permanent damage to ears from grommets is unusual.

However you may find that it is effecting his social abilities which, as he comes up to school age will become more apparent. You probably won't realise (very common) how much he's compensating until he's had the operations.

Things that have come up with ds and have made me realise how much his hearing is effected-I wouldn't have noticed from every day things:
Aged 3.6yo (just before second set of grommets) ENT pointed out he was lip reading. He was turning my face towards him to hear. He'd done that before his first grommet op (at 20 months) and I'd thought it was a cute little habit he'd grown out of, and was surprised when he started again. Never occurred to me that he was lip reading.
He also wanted to be carried around when his hearing was bad-again so he was up near my mouth for hearing and lip reading.

When he'd had his third lot of grommets (6yo) he was jumping through autumn leaves and commented "the leaves didn't crunch last year" and I realised that was the change of hearing.

Aged about 5yo (between grommets) he came out of school really excited. "Guess what mummy, I bet you didn't know that ch and sh sound different!" He'd just done them with phonics and they told him they were different. He didn't hear them as different.