hearing problem?

[katiestar]

worried friend has told me her 4yo DD has 15 % hearing loss, but they won't give her hearing aids/any support at school as her hearin falls within the normal range and they wouldn't intervene unless she had 25% hearing loss.I am a little worried by this as she will be starting school soon.
However I have been looking on internet and and I wonder whether it was a hearing threshold of 15 decibels and her mum has misunderstood.I haven't really noticed this child as having poor hearing
Does anyone know how they quantify hearing loss,I would really like to put this little girl's mum's mind at rest.

[BrigitBigKnickers]

I am a teacher of the deaf and have no idea how 15% hearing loss relates to what a child can hear. Does it mean 15% across all frequencies, or just high frequencies? Is this a conductive or sensorineural hearing loss? I would need to see an audiogram of the sounds a child can access to actually understand what a hearing loss like this might actually mean.

A 15dB hearing loss (if this is what they mean) is actually not a huge deal. A hearing threshold up to 25 dB is considered within normal range and a hearing aid would not be prescribed for only 15dB loss.

Some of the children I work with have what is termed a mild hearing loss (for which fairly low powered hearing aids might be prescribed) and this is usually somewhere in the 30-40dB hearing threshold range.

It will be important for the child to be monitored regularly to make sure the hearing loss does not deteriorate.
HTH!