Pediatric Hearing Care
Pediatric Hearing Care
Calgary, Lethbridge, Grande Prairie & High River
Hearing Aids for Children in Calgary and around Alberta
The team of Audiologists at Soundwave Hearing Care is devoted to family hearing services, offering pediatric hearing care in Calgary for children of all ages from infants to adolescents. Parents trust us to have up-to-date information about children’s hearing and its vital importance to their child’s language, intellectual and social development. Soundwave Hearing Care is your professional support in protecting your child’s hearing as well as identifying and treating hearing disorders. One of the few pediatric hearing clinics in the Calgary, High River, Grande Prairie, and Lethbridge areas, we partner with families, schools, health care providers, and speech therapists. Contact us for hearing services – from hearing tests to hearing aids – for children.
Important Hearing Milestones
Birth to Age 3
The first hearing test that your child should have is a newborn hearing screening before your precious new one leaves the hospital with you. Why so soon? The ability to hear is the basis of many important developmental processes that humans go through in the first 3 years of life, including emotional bonding and socialization. Your baby or toddler is not only soaking in the physical world through hearing but also interacting with you and learning a language.
Unfortunately, hearing deficits at birth can affect 1 to 3 of every 1,000 babies, and other causes – from ear infections to certain medications – account for other hearing losses in youngsters. Here are important developmental milestones parents should notice from a child with healthy hearing, with some flexibility for individual differences:
- Startled by loud noises
- Responds to your voice
- Smiles at you and coos
- Different cries for different needs – hungry, dirty, cranky
- Babbles and makes different sounds
- Looks for sources of sounds
- Responds to music and noisy toys
- Makes sounds back when you talk
- Enjoys games and social interactions
- Correctly locates sound sources
- Responds to his/her name
- Pays attention to your speech
- Follows simple directions
- Vocalizes and gestures to ask for things
- Understands and waves hi and goodbye
- Uses and puts together simple words
- Enjoys stories and being read to
- Watches your face when you speak
- Points to pictures in books and other objects when asked
- Uses 2-word phrases
- Growing receptive vocabulary – known but not spoken words
- Follows speech and interacts with others
- Forms simple questions
- Can form sentences of 3 or more words
- Answers simple, concrete questions
- Takes part in short conversations
- Follows 2-part directions – “get your shirt and put it on”
- Understands spatial concepts – location, in/on, up/down
What To Expect For Your Child’s Visit
Calgary
High River
Grande Prairie
When You Need Pediatric Hearing Care in Calgary
As you can see, hearing not only builds emotional and physical connections to the world but also helps develop learning ability and social intelligence through understanding and acquiring language. Years before children enter kindergarten or write their names, they are learning to decode and produce speech. Is your child having difficulty understanding spoken words, not speaking by age 12 months, or only responding to very loud sounds? If you suspect your child has trouble hearing, consulting an audiologist is also a first step in intervening with speech, language, and learning problems that arise from hearing loss.
Soundwave Hearing Care invites you to contact us to learn more about our hearing tests for children in Calgary, Lethbridge, High River or Grande Prairie. What if your child needs a hearing aid? Our audiologists are experienced in fitting a range of assistive listening devices for students and hearing aids for children.
