Partial hearing loss in children overlooked, parents say

Children with partial or mild hearing loss can encounter challenges in everyday environments that go unnoticed due to their diagnosis, parents say.

Arlo, eight, from Cottingham, has unilateral hearing loss, or single-sided deafness, which wasn't picked up by healthcare professionals until she was two.

She uses a hearing aid, but busier environments such as a classroom can make it difficult to concentrate, or pinpoint individual speakers, according to her mum Ali.

"It can definitely take it out of her after a school day," the 38-year-old explains.

"She says: 'my ears are aching now, I'm very tired'.

"People can wrongly assume if you're not fully or profoundly deaf, then everything's okay and you can just carry on your day as normal."

Arlo is one of more than 53,000 deaf children and young people in the UK, according to the National Deaf Children's Society (NDCS).

48% are reported to have mild or unilateral hearing loss.

Despite this, the charity says there are still "gaps in understanding" around the impact this type of hearing loss can have on children, following a recent survey.

Just 36% of respondents agreed that mild or single-sided deafness can have a great impact on a child's daily life, with one in five believing it to have little or no impact.

If an environment is too loud, such as a music concert, Arlo can end up turning off her hearing aid entirely, which can make it difficult to communicate.

"If people do talk and it's noisy, they cover their mouth," Ali says.

"She doesn't necessarily lip read, but she'll watch what they're saying."

Ali praises Arlo's primary school for adapting to her needs, including assigning her a seat closer to the teacher, and holding an assembly to educate other children.

However, she believes more could be done to raise awareness for one-sided deafness or mild hearing loss.

"Say a child or even an adult is struggling to hear, as long as they're hearing a little bit, I think they just think, 'oh, well, that's good enough'," she says.

"So many people still need the extra support on a daily basis in classrooms or workplaces."

Ali adds that when Arlo talks about her hearing aid, she calls it "her superpower", and love "jazzing it up" with stickers.

"It hasn't stopped Arlo doing anything, having one-sided deafness."

Like Arlo, Naomi's son, one-year-old Lembe, has unilateral hearing loss, which was discovered during a newborn hearing screening.

He wears a bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA), a device that sends sound to the inner ear by vibrations to the skull.

Naomi, 30, from York, says she has seen how certain environments or situations, such as cafes, play areas or classrooms, can be trickier for her son to manage.

"Children with single-sided hearing loss or mild hearing loss can find it difficult in busy environments.

"They can find it hard to locate where that voice might be coming from, which side of the room, and filtering it out from the background noise."

NDCS launched its "what you see, what you don't" campaign earlier this month, highlighting the challenges facing children with mild and single-sided deafness.

It aims to help families access support and educate them on how to spot signs of hearing loss, according to Emma Motherwell, the charity's community activism lead.

"The thing about mild and single-sided deafness is that children can often be seen as coping.

"They might be taking part in conversations and getting on with everyday life, but that often masks a lot of what's going on underneath."

Motherwell adds that a greater awareness could lead to "really simple adjustments" being made to better accommodate children with the specific type of hearing loss.

"That might be in the classroom where that's a noisy environment by nature.

"So if a child isn't too far away from the teacher and can see them clearly, they have the opportunity to check information that they might have missed.

"We really want families to be able to know that they're not alone."

Naomi is one of 40 NDCS community connector and coordinators across the UK, connecting families with deaf children to each other and to available resources.

Finding a like-minded community was "a huge benefit as a parent", she explains, especially when Lembe was first diagnosed.

"You do feel quite alone when you first hear that news," she says.

"Meeting other families that are either at the same stage as you, but also parents of older children that can share their experience and some advice for as your child gets older, is really helpful.

"If you are finding it difficult, it's good to have those honest conversations with other parents who understand what it feels like."

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