A question for GEEKGRRL

[eidsvold]

my dd ( with down syndrome and aged 2 1/2) looks like being a candidate for grommets - how did you cope with them and do you think they made a difference??

[JakB]

eidsvold, sorry to hijack but my little girl had grommets at 18 months. IMO they made little difference to her hearing (which we realised wasn't the problem- her 'lack of hearing' was due to the fact she is severely autistic!) and they made her ear infections worse. But that's just my experience. What problems does your dd have? I took my dd to a cranio osteopath yesterday- they can work wonders with glue ear problems. JakBX

[eidsvold]

it is difficult to say - at times she has had good hearing tests iykwim and others she has difficulty hearing very quiet low sounds on the register... the ent specialist here seems to love shoving grommets in from my feeling. We seem to think her hearing has improved since coming to aus and the drier, warmer weather - she has a lot less congestion, snottiness in general. Having a further check up in Mar to see what her hearing is like then.

So time will tell. I just worry about keeping her ears dry - she has swimming lessons every week and we take her up to another two times a week swimming - without the washing of long hair etc.

Has never had a noticable ear infection iykwim so that is a plus.

[Potty1]

Eidsvold - both my ds's had grommits (plus tonsils/adenoids removed) at about 3 years and it worked wonders for them. The older one did have lots of infections though, ds2 sounds more like your little one in that he was just a very snotty child and was more bunged up then infected IYSWIM.

I have a dd and she was due to go down the same route but as she has other health problems (heart), we decided to wait and see rather than risk her under GA. She did grow out of it by the time she was about 5 I think, and in her case I'm glad we waited. She had the loss of hearing that you describe, pitch rather than volume.

[geekgrrl]

hi eidsvold, sorry I didn´t see this earlier - my dd had grommets at 2.5 years old, they were very difficult to get in and didn´t make an iota of difference (sorry! not what you wanted to hear i´m sure...). they fell out after a year - actually one has been stuck in her ear canal for a few months now, the other one was surgically removed from her ear in the summer. i do know that they make a lot of difference to some kids though so would try it as a first resort. the best thing for blocking her ears during hair washing afterwards was blu tack. swimming in chlorinated pools is no problem, you don´t need to block her ears unless you plan on plunging her more than 1.5 metres underwater! it´s just bath water or creeks, lakes etc than can cause infection.
kids with ds tend to get grommets blocked with ear wax quickly so don´t get your hopes up too much, but apparently scarring is not an issue so I would try them rather than have periods of poor hearing.