talk to me about glue ear

[thisisyesterday]

i know the basics, as my brother had it as a child, as did my cousin, as did 2 of the children i used to look after

all of them ended up with grommets, which helped immensely

ds2 had a hearing test yesterday, referred because of his lack of speech/poor speech. they said he has glue ear, but they aren't sure if it's affecting his hearing or not and they want to do another test in 3 months, when he's a bit older (he's 2.5 now)

it WAS hard testing him, but surely the fact that he hardly talks, and what he does say is fairly unintelligible would indicate that the glue ear is causing problems??

what I really want to know is whether grommets are necessary. I remember ages ago on another forum someone being very anti-grommets, and her child did indeed grow out of the glue ear without any adverse effects
does this happen often? is it a risk i should take given that his speech is already delayed?

someone else also recommended cranial osteopathy. I have a fabulous osteopath, but he is extremely expensive so i'd rather not shell out for treatment if it's unliekly to help.

oh, the audiologist also said he had extremely small ear canals... is this relevant in any way?/??

sorry this is a bit long but i'd be grateful for any thoughts on it

DD2 had persistent glue ear problems but ended up with perforated ear drum so didn't need grommets. It does seem to be something they grow out of, due to the size of the ear canal. As they get bigger it does. I can't advise on grommets either way, but dds ear infections used to flair up very rapidly and I we had a worrying few years when we weren't sure whether the perforation would heal and she'd need an op to patch the ear drum. Also, dd2 was a lot slower to speak than dd1 but I think that was partly because dd1 used to speak for her. She's now 12 and no problems at all.

My daughter had glue ear and we did let her have grommets and also an adenoidectomy when she was a bit under three and a half.

Her speech was not delayed at all, but I noticed that she often didn't hear well. She got in the habit of walking so that she was standing in front of people and could see their face, and asking them to repeat what they said. I took her for a hearing test and they said she had between 30 and 40 decibel hearing loss. 30 is on the very edge of normal.

I would not have taken things further, until I went to her ballet recital and it broke my heart to see her standing in the middle of all the other little girls, completely unable to distinguish the teacher's voice from the music, just standing unsure in the middle of the room. She hadn't worked out that she could disguise it by copying everyone else and I thought to myself, why should she have to learn to do that to disguise it.

We are outside the UK so weren't bound by NICE guidelines to wait 3 months and test again. I liked our ENT guy and trusted him.

Dd was very brave. She enjoyed all the fuss before hand. She was a bit sore when she woke up, but absolutely fine by the next day (although VERY smelly from all the gunk and mucus and yuck in her nose and ears and throat - revolting).

Have not once regretted the decision. She was a different child, almost overnight. It was like someone switched the whole world on for her. She is bright, confident, wants to join in, and suddenly she could because she could hear and understand what was going on.

Nearly a year later, one gromet has come out, the other still in place. So far no plans to repeat the op because other than volume control she seems to be managing fine. If I think she is struggling to hear again (especially this September when she goes to school) I won't hesitate to do it again. Hope we don't have to though

thank you for the replies

yuno, you've answered another question I had actually, which was whether children with glue ear could have no speech delay!

ds2 thankfully has never had ear infections, it's just the speech delay that's thrown this up.
i'm really worried about putting him in nursery while he can't express himself as he gets frustrated really easily

great to hear both of your children are doing well now though