Speech pathologists use speech therapy to help patients with hearing problems improve their quality of life. They work on interventions for speech disorders related to voice, articulation, fluency, resonance and other factors. They also collaborate with audiologists to create treatment plans for patients. Speaking and listening skills are two of the most important skills I learned from my speech-language pathologists.
I did exercises that helped me to learn the individual sounds of each letter of a word and to pronounce the word correctly. I also practiced reading speeches and learned visual cues that helped me hear in situations that may not be ideal for a person with hearing problems. My hearing loss was first diagnosed when I was five years old, so I was already behind schedule in many speech-related areas. The American Speech, Language and Hearing Association (ASHA) is the national professional, scientific and accrediting association with 223,000 members and affiliates who are audiologists, speech-language pathologists, speech-language pathologists, speech, language and hearing scientists; support staff in audiology and speech-language pathology; and students.
Much emphasis is placed on parental guidance and maximizing the child's communication potential, regardless of the type or degree of hearing loss present. Good management involves learning how to use appropriate hearing molds, keeping the ear canals clean and healthy, understanding the audiograms related to your child's disability, and undergoing regular hearing tests. The hearing program at Nationwide Children's Hospital offers many speech services to meet the individual needs of your child and family. My school speech therapist advocated for my accommodations by communicating with my teachers to find out my strengths and weaknesses and informing them about how they could help me understand better in the classroom.
My speech pathologists helped me learn to identify situations where I might need additional hearing aid and taught me how to inform my teachers when I might have omitted information. The goal of today's children identified with hearing loss is to follow a developmental intervention model rather than a corrective model (Flexer & Cole, 200). By recognizing and identifying perceptual and production errors and understanding the frequency bands that may be causing the errors, the speech-language pathologist can help the audiologist determine how to adjust the technology. They focus on speech, language, hearing, learning, and emotional development through music and movement.
Sylvia is a verbal hearing therapist with a private practice in Los Angeles, with many years of practice providing auditory speech, language and listening therapy to children with hearing loss. However, because I have mild to moderate hearing loss, my family and I decided that oral communication was the best communication option for me. A behavioral listening test that uses six sounds to determine the effectiveness of a cochlear implant or hearing aid.
