Possible Hearing Problems 2 Year Old

[Twinklefuck]

Dd has just turned 2. She's a very spirited, happy and independent little whirlwind, she's a clever little cookie too in that she picks things up quite easily (puzzles, small world play, games), but, her speech is non existent. She babbles, says mama, dada, nana and signs with her hands when she wants something, when greeting people etc. she intermittently actions our requests, eg please close the door, come upstairs (which I can't discount she may just follow cues for these). She doesn't answer to her name, or anything unless she looks and happens to see and follow her brother to the kitchen for dinner or a snack. I rarely shout but she seemingly ignores this, same when she's doing something she knows she shouldn't and is told to stop, she hides her face when she sees me coming over and then shouts when I remove her.

All this has led me to ask to be referred for hearing tests and speech therapy, we're waiting on these. She has a virus so go couldn't see what she needed to tell me anything other than wait on the appointment but I'm just feeling so bad. She's my baby and I should have known sooner.

Today whilst she napped I shouted, banged pans and played loud sounds behind her head and she didn't flinch I had my hairdryer on under the bed earlier but she didn't so much as glance over. I've been banging remote controls behind her head where she couldn't see and she turned, took them and started banging them herself which was good right?

I'm so worried, she's been playing with her ears lately so wondering if it may be glue ear? I just do t know what to think! Anyone have any experience with similar? Sorry it's long.

She sounds like my DD. I knew from day 1 she had significant hearing loss. No-one else believed me. Pans banged behind her head, smoke alarms going off, nothing made her react. But she was very engaged with us. I had to wait until she was 20 months before the HV agreed she should respond to her name by now. I got the audiologist apps very fast - she had two. Then she went under GA for grommets. So by the time she was 22 months, she got her hearing. Turns out she had been almost totally deaf.

She's now 4.9. She's been slow to catch up with her peers, but the main trouble hasn't been word acquisition (as I'd anticipated) but word processing. She learned a huge amount of vocabulary very quickly, but struggled to keep up with conversations because she wasn't used to having to decode all the sounds into sensible language. In noisy or distracting environments it was 10 times worse. I'd say it's only been this last fortnight that she's keeping up in a natural way.

Please don't worry. It's so frustrating, but you just have to wait for people to take you seriously. DD was my first, so I just got 'paranoid first time mum' chucked at me. Just kept fighting it. And she WILL catch up. Help her by reinforcing requests with gestures (guess you're already doing this!), be face to face when talking with her, and once she gets her grommets (assuming she has glue ear), work hard to use proper words - not baby talk.

Good luck!

Agree with everything above.

Have they said how long you will have to wait for these tests? If it is glue ear there is some useful information here and it's free to join the NDCS.