how on earth do they test a 2yr olds hearing?

[tinatutor]

my 2yr old is going for a hearing test next week cos i'm concerned about his lack of speech.

am just wondering how they test a 2yr olds hearing, he's very selective about acknowledging when he hears you if you know what i mean.

how do they do it?

DS had his hearing checked at 2. They did do a hearing test where they relied on his reactions and they also did a test where they put a thing in his ears that checks the reaction of his ear drum.
The one that relied on his reactions was a big waste of time as there were time when we could see he was aware of the noise but he wouldn't look round.
When they put the things inside his ear they could tell that his hearing was impaired but not to what extent but this test did show up a problem (or not as the case may have been)

thanks, so just out of interest what are they doing to do next for your son?

I'm assuming they are aware that 2yr olds reactions to sound aren't very reliable?

My son had his hearing tested at 2 and they made a game of it. He wore headphones and sounds were fed to each ear in turn. He was given a pile of toys and had to hold each toy up to his ear in turn. When he heard the toy make a noise (ie heard a noise in his headphones) he put the toy in a box and picked up the next toy. He was found to have glue ear with some impairment to his hearing but a retest this week (4 months later) gave him the all clear.

My son had 2 hearing tests, one at 2.1yrs and one at 2.5yrs. At the first one, a bunny lit up in a box whenever they played a sound which he had to turn round to see so when they played the sounds through the headphones they were looking to see whether he would turn round in anticipation of the bunny lighting up. It mostly worked although sometimes he just turned round anyway. They also played some sounds into his ears looking for an echo from his ears which he didn't have to do anything for.

When he was 2.5yrs, they gave him little men that went into a boat and he had to put a man in each time he heard a sound (they'd tried this 4 months earlier but at that point he'd just put them in regardless, (amazing what a difference a few months can make) so the test was a lot easier. He also had slight glue ear at the first test in the winter but it had all cleared up again by the summer and was given the all clear.

My son was diagnosed with a hearing loss at 2 (he is 8 now). Most audiologists are very experienced with dealing with kids this age and they will try lots of things. The puppets that light up and the men in the boat are pretty standard. We went back lots of times and saw a variety of people to get an accurate result. Probably at the start he was seen about every 6 weeks, now he is obviously much more reliable and only gets seen once a year (unless he manages to break his aids or something).