Baby Development – Hearing

Hearing is a faculty your baby possesses since birth, that is to say, unless it is hearing-impaired. With growth, babies use their ears to condition themselves to myriad external sounds, thus stimulating their brains to develop, leading to physical accomplishments including rolling over, crawling, sitting and walking. In fact, it is a proven fact that a baby begins using the ears prenatally, accustoming itself to, and recognizing, the mother’s voice.

Hearing Development

By the end of the first month, your baby’s hearing will usually reach maturity. However, registering sounds and decoding them into meaning will take longer, as brain development and thought processing take place more slowly.

What Happens

Your baby’s hearing development begins with recognizing certain familiar sounds and responding to them. Babies will pay attention to voices, especially their mother’s voice (while reading a story for example) or high-pitched voices. When your baby starts getting startled by noise, or by unexpected sounds, you will know that its hearing is developing perfectly.

By the end of three months, the temporal lobe- the part that assists in hearing, language and smelling skills – will have developed and become mature, active and receptive. This is when babies begin responding to voices that they recognize, especially the mother’s voice, by trying to talk back or gurgle. However, since your baby still has a long way to go, if he loses concentration or gets distracted while you talk to him or read a story, do not worry. It may just be that the baby’s developing mind is saturated with stimuli. Rest assured, his hearing is developing perfectly.

By the end of five months, your baby will start locating the sources of sounds, and move on to new ones. Another beautiful thing you will notice at this stage will be the baby’s ability to recognize his own name. Try to observe how your baby looks at you when you talk about him with others or call out to him.

What Happens Next

However, though your baby’s hearing is fully developed when he is very young, it is important that you get it checked in order to be on the safe side.

What Should I Do

Babies are open to a variety of sounds. It is a fallacy that you should restrict them to kids’ songs or nursery rhymes. You can feed them with anything from nursery rhymes to Bach to the Beatles to wind chimes. Your aim is to try to get babies used to new sounds. The more the variety of what you offer, the better is the impact and the noticeable development. The baby will begin to develop a preference and will favor one sound over another.

Reading is one important step you can take to help a baby develop an ear for language; and this helps more if you use accents or singing and modulate your voice. The aural connection between you and your baby improves. Also, this helps babies take a step towards talking as they start learning words. Older infants, with their skill of locating sound-sources, start watching your mouth to try to imitate your inflexions, uttering consonant sounds like ‘b’ and ‘m’, thus getting closer to language.

Potential Hearing Problems

It is fascinating the way babies can sleep through dogs barking or the telephone ringing, which is normal since they need their regular amount of sleep. However, while most babies have perfectly normal hearing, the ones that are born extremely prematurely, or had a severe infection at birth, or were deprived of oxygen are bound to have problems. Impaired hearing is also common in babies with a family history of deafness or hearing impairment.

Except when suffering from ear infection or a cold, your baby should normally startle at sudden loud noises, and turn to you when it recognizes your voice, and otherwise react normally to other sounds around her. If you do not see this pattern in your child, you may have some reasons to worry.

Most newborns undergo a hearing test either in the hospital, at home, or at a community clinic. Later, you can also ask your doctor or health visitor to check the baby’s hearing if you are worried. Apart from these, here are a few tests to check your baby’s hearing at home: -

• Under three months: Clapping your hands behind your baby’s head. If he startles, he is fine. Repeat a few times before drawing conclusions.
• Between four months and six months: Calling the baby’s name to check whether he reacts to your voice. If he turns his eyes or head, the hearing is okay.
• Between six months and ten months: Seeing whether the baby responds to his name and familiar external sounds, including the phone ringing or the vacuum cleaner roaring.
• Between ten months and fifteen months: Asking your child to point out familiar objects in a familiar setting – for example, “Mama” or “Dada” or “Papa”. If it fails, the child may not be hearing you properly.

Now, you may still be worried if your child passes all these tests. In that case, trust your instinct and visit your baby’s doctor for advice. If there is a defect, the earlier it is diagnosed, the better. The most recent researches say that diagnosing children who need hearing aids and fitting them with the aids before they are six months old helps their language development and speech considerably.

Baby Development – Hearing

Hearing is a faculty your baby possesses since birth, that is to say, unless...