Listening tactics

Listening tactics can be used for children with mild hearing loss, fluctuating hearing loss and for children who have listening difficulties.

Your child may experience difficulties with:

• Following spoken instructions and conversation.
• Following fast paced speech.
• Detecting subtle speech differences or mishearing.
• Paying attention and may be easily distracted.
• Frustration.
• Difficulties at school with progress and behaviour.
• Hearing speech in background noise.
• More difficulty interacting with others.
• Road safety.

At school

Letting sound come to the ears more clearly can help. This can include:

• Sitting at the front of the class. The closer your child is to the speaker, the better the signal.
• Have a clear view of their teacher.
• Ask their teacher to try to reduce background noise.
• Ask their teacher to say your child’s name before they begin speaking to them and giving out instructions.
• Encourage them to check if they have understood their teacher correctly. Maybe tell them to have a pen in their hand so they are ready to write things down, or say it back to their teacher so they know they have understood.

At home

• Make sure the family face your child and that your child is looking at them so they are ready to listen to them.
• Ask your child to repeat back what is said to them at home.
• Work on increasing their confidence.
• Reduce background noise such as TV when talking.
• Re-phrase sentences instead of repeating them if they have not been understood.
• Break down instructions into short pieces of information.

Road and personal safety

• Before crossing a road, encourage your child to look around to check for traffic.
• Encourage your child to look around for sounds when outside to make sure where a sound is coming from.