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Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

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Original poster

9 month hearing test...

17 replies

Blackduck · 31/01/2004 08:40

ds has his on Monday - can anyone tell me what it involves please? I won't be there - dp is taking him....a colleague was told his son 'failed' his...

OP posts:

coppertop · 31/01/2004 08:50

If it's the one they do at the audiology unit, the baby sits on your knee facing forward. One person tries to distract them with a toy. At either side of you is what looks like a large speaker with a glass cabinet in it. The audiologist sends a sound through one speaker and the baby is supposed to look round at it. If/when they do they are rewarded with a light coming on inside the 'cabinet' which shows there is a toy inside. They try different sounds and different sides.

The problems start when the baby realises that the lights come on when they look round, and so they keep turning to look even though no sounds have been played. Sometimes they even guess which side is going to be used next and look round just before the sound is played!

twiglett · 31/01/2004 08:51

message withdrawn

twiglett · 31/01/2004 08:52

message withdrawn

emmatmg · 31/01/2004 09:05

Our DS2 'failed' the his hearing test at the 8 month check. He failed about 4-5 tests and even when we were referred to the audiology unit he still failed and was 15 months before he passed.
IMO it was a total waste of time firstly because at the first one he had a cold so thats why he failed and by the time the audiology appiontment came through he wouldn't sit on my lap for long enough to realise there was a ridiculously quiet noise to hear. Honestly some of the sounds were so low/quiet/faint or whatever that I had trouble hearing them. I knew he wasn't deaf as when we were at home I could whisper his name from the other side of the room and he'd answer me.
Don't worry about these tests, unless you suspect there is a hearing problem they are pretty much useless.

coppertop · 31/01/2004 09:06

They're starting to phase out the 9mth tests round here. All newborns now have their hearing tested within a day or two of being born, using what looks like a laptop and a small set of headphones. Ds2 missed this by a few months but as there is a history of deafness in our family he was one of the guinea-pigs in the trials for it when he was about 3 weeks old.

At his 9mth check the HV said that they no longer do the distraction test but the audiology unit sent me an appointment for a proper test becasuse of the family history.

All of these tests seem to rely on the child being in a good mood!

hana · 31/01/2004 09:59

my dd 'failed' twice too, it's quite a silly test tbh. And by that age you would have suspisions if they didn't hear properly anyways.

Original poster

Blackduck · 31/01/2004 14:59

Thanks everyone for the info/advice/comfort! I think it's just the standard test (it's part of the normal 6-9 month check they do here..)Sometimes I wonder if ds has a problem, but most of the time I think he's just far more interested in something else than in looking at me......! Anyway we'll see what happens on Monday!

OP posts:

fisil · 31/01/2004 16:23

Ds "failed" his first one too, but hv was so chilled about it all that I wasn't too concerned. He did the second one with no problem at all. Meanwhile my mother was bracing herself for dealing with a deaf grandchild. She is sooooooo ...

Bron · 09/03/2004 15:07

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

GillW · 09/03/2004 16:01

Don't worry about it Bron - chances are that he's fine. My ds "failed" twice because he was far more interested in trying to see what the person wandering around behind him was doing than he was in the person in front waving a toy at him. As he wouldn't look at it, he couldn't be distracted from it. Audiology people said that an awful lot of the bright/active ones fail when they're tested at that age, and retesting ithe same way a month or so down the line almost always gives another fail because by then they're even less inclined to sit still and ignored the interesting activity going on around them.

nutcracker · 09/03/2004 16:04

My dd2 failed her first one too. She had a cold.

lou33 · 09/03/2004 17:17

Ds2 only passed on his 4th attempt. He can hear me opening a bar of choccy from the other end of the house now (grrr).

LIZS · 09/03/2004 17:31

tbh I found it a complete waste of time. ds passed ,just, but I was still unconvinced. I only had hearing loss diagnosed once in school and due to the delay noone could definitively say what caused it or how long I had suffered from it. dd had an electronic one done at birth and it removes that element of doubt unless they suffer ear infections or other possible hearing loss triggers later on. Was painless and took five minutes.

Thomcat · 09/03/2004 17:55

When Lottie had hers, both times, she was wired up to a machine which meant she had to be asleep when she had it done and they 'fed' her noises and then told me she'd passed with 60% - ????????

Seems no-one has had a test like this one. It was done at our local hospital and is standard proceedure for children with Down's syndrome.

lou33 · 09/03/2004 18:07

We had it done for dd1 TC.

coppertop · 09/03/2004 18:13

Ds1 had a test like that. He refused to sleep though (he rarely had naps, even as a newborn) and after an hour they gave up trying. They then tried a different method which involved having loads of little sticky pads attached to his head.

Ds2 was one of the first babies to have the new-style test with the equipment that looks like a laptop and headphones. He was 9 months old and was invited for the trials so that they could train the audiologists how to use the equipment properly. It's now apparently the standard procedure to test all newborns in this way.

Tortington · 10/03/2004 08:36

my daughter passed hers and is partially deaf - it has everything to do with sound pitches and not whether they can hear you rustle a packet of sweeties from 3 miles away.

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