Curious Nana

We finally took my 4 year old grandson, Drake, for his hearing evaluation last week. We ended up with good and bad news. Hearing tests are interesting because there are different things that can be measured. Drake has "normal" hearing by the standards measured on a regular hearing test. Problem? One of the issues with autistic kids is that their hearing may be too good. The idea was to check him, by the use of headphones, for a wide range of frequencies in each ear with the goal of determining in which frequencies he was hearing too well. This can often be determined by how the child reacts to the different frequencies. (registering pain, screaming, etc.) Once the bothersome frequencies are identified, a 10 day program of desensitization is planned with the use, again, of headphones. The child listens to his/her identified frequencies along with others to retrain the brain to get used to them. In Drake's case, when he heard frequencies that did not bother him, he likened the tones to pleasant animal sounds. But when he heard ones that were painful, he ripped the headphones off yelling that he couldn't do it. He would then protect his ears by covering them up so we couldn't get the headphones back on him. After a few attempts, we realized that this was not going to work. The goods news is that we learned he is sensitive to some frequencies. The bad news is that the treatment involves the use of listening to sounds that would be unpleasant to him through headphones. The doc we went to gave me phone numbers and email address for the author of the book, Sound of a Miracle , so I could contact her to see if she has any suggestions. She is currently out of the country, but I will contact her when she is back. It is frustrating to know that we have identified that there is an issue here, but Drake won't tolerate the treatment. In the book, they did mention that it could be hard with younger kids. But, if you have a child who is older, and covers his/her ears up a lot to block out noises that he/she finds intolerable even though you barely noticed them, read the book and seek the treatment! It could be the miracle for you that it was for the author and her daughter. Her daughter was VERY SEVERE, and was not treated until she was in her early teens. She graduated at the top of her class from college.