Ear Infections - Diagnosis

Determining Impaired Hearing in Infants and Small Children. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to test children under 2 years old for hearing problems. One way to determine hearing problems in infants is to gauge the baby's language development:

• At 4 to 6 weeks most babies with normal hearing are making cooing sounds.
• By around 5 months the child should be laughing out loud and making one-syllable sounds with both a vowel and consonant.
• Between 6 and 8 months, the infants should be able to make word-like sounds with more than one syllable.
• Usually starting around 7 months the baby babbles (makes many word-like noises) and should be doing this by 10 months.
• Around 10 months, the baby is able to identify and use some term for the parent, dada, baba, or mama.
• The baby speaks his or her first word usually by the end of the first year.

If a child's progress is significantly delayed beyond these times, a parent should suspect possible hearing problems.

Determining Impaired Hearing in Older Children. Hearing loss in older children may be detected by the following behaviors:

• They may not respond to speech spoken beyond 3 feet away
• They may have difficulty following directions
• Their vocabulary may be limited
• They may have social and behavioral problems

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