Glue ear and phonic sounds

[Karlee24]

My daughter is 4 and has just started school. She has glue ear and is waiting for grommets to be fitted and her adenoids to be removed. She struggles with hearing the difference in letter sounds and I am worried this is going to slow her down in learning to read. Has anyone any experience of this?

My daughter had similar problems in reception - she could quite happily distinguish between reading sh and ch until they covered it in class where she couldn't here the difference and came home completely confused - took me weeks to get her confident again. I asked (and had to repeatedly remind) the teacher to tell me which sounds they were covering each week so that we could look at them at home with no background noise. Also got hairy letters for iPad which helped with getting the right phonic sounds.
Letterland stories and magnets are good as letters have clear names e.g. golden girl for g which I think is easier to hear than just saying g. I'm afraid basically we ended up doing lots at home, repeatedly reminding teacher of need to be clear and undoing lots of in class confusion .... If you haven't already, have a look at the national children's deaf society website for useful info. Also ask your audiology department if your local teacher for the deaf can make an in school visit to check classroom hearing (although we only got access to them once we went down the hating aid route)

My son has just started reception and has a moderate hearing loss, he wears aids and has a radio aid. I know that I will be doing a lot of home input into his phonics, as pp said unfortunately a teacher of the deaf will only be interested if your dd has aids. The National Deaf childrens Society has some great info on glue ear and accessing phonics. What I can tell you is that a reception classroom has a decibel level around 60db, which is loud and even though the phonics sessions the class will be quiter a lot of the mid and high frequency sounds are very quiet (30db), google speech banana and this will show you the noise level that speech sounds are at. Things that can be done to help your dd are making sure she is satin front of and not to the side of the teacher so she can see lip patterns, and clearly at the front not the back! Hope this helps.

Ds has bad glue ear, he's had grommets twice so far and some pronunciation problems for which he's under SALT. He was an early reader, just turned 6 before the end of the school year and a free reader.

What I have found with phonics is that he's had no problems understanding them. However they have helped his pronunciation. He's come home and said things like "did you know mummy, that sh and ch are said differently"-and differentiated the sound for the first time in his speech. It opened my eyes to a lot of the sounds that he is missing, but in doing that it is easier to help him.

Grommets were also brilliant for him when they're in. They make such a difference in what he can hear. I've told this story before on MN but one autumn he said "the leaves didn't crunch last year"-they did, just he couldn't hear them.

Make sure the teacher knows. Ds's teacher makes sure he's sitting at the front so he can lip read (taught himself) and with his good ear towards her.

just noticed my type - sorry hearing not hating aids - we definitely don't hate them - they are fab!

One other thing that the year 1 teacher implemented was that when there was small group work dd's group got to go in the "quiet" room which I think most reception classes seem to have which cuts out some of the background noise and enabled her to focus on what the children in her group were saying. Sadly older classes in our school don't have this side room.

Thank you very much everyone, hopefully she will do just as well as your children and you have given me plenty of ideas to work with.x

Just wanted to add to the comments above - my dd1 had grommets fitted age 4 and in reception. They made an enormous difference to her. Previously she came out of school looking more than a touch bewildered and bemused, but after the grommets she integrated socially much better and was hugely happier. She is now 8 in yr 4 with a reading level expected at the end of yr 6 so it hasn't held her back. Good luck!

Is the teacher aware? Glue ear can cause real issues with learning (experience, ds1 finished reception unable to read as he couldn't hear phonics sounds - he caught up amazingly well and passed his yr 1 phonics test and was a free reader half way through yr 2 just before he was 7)

Teachers guide is good - give it to everyone in School who teaches (including TA's), seating position for group work/carpet time is key, the teachers need to know she has glue ear and how significant it is (don't use the ENT description of 'mild' if you can help it, 'mild' hearing loss is the same as having your fingers in your ears, no teacher would allow that)
It would be also good if you understood how 'bad' your dd's glue ear - there is a Speech Banana here, if you understand your dd's audiogram you could see which sounds she is likely to miss and reinforce them at home (plot a line of the results she got and she can hear everything below the line).

We learnt so much about phonics between ds1 and ds2 (2 school years) ds2 although he had more significant glue ear (a) we knew and teacher was on board and (b) we did more at home - phonics games and practise to make sure he didn't get left behind, far from it it was ORT level 5 by the end of reception. Ds3 has SALT and all of his preschool work has been jolly phonics