Hearing impairment and Symptoms in children?

 Hearing impairment is one of the most common diseases and this is found in children who are born to normal parents those who are not handicapped.  There are some types and various levels for hearing impairments and let’s see more about hearing loss. 

There are different reasons for this problem and people can identify the hearing problems by noticing some symptoms in infancy itself.

Moreover, there is a good speech therapist in um al Quwain who are experts in pediatric care to find a solution for these types of problems. In addition to that, there are many hearing aid devices available in the market to solve hearing problems.

Nowadays, approximately 1.9% of children face hearing problems, and 1 out of 1000 children met with permanent hearing impairment; mostly boys are dealt with this.

Furthermore about hearing loss is that the symptoms of hearing impairments are :

• limited, poor, or no speech

• frequently inattentive

• difficulty learning

• seems to need higher TV volume

• Poor ability to respond to conversation-level speech or answers inappropriately to questions

• The wrong response to his or her name and easily frustrated when there is a lot of background noise 

This can vary according to the age of children, for example, newborn babies will try to jump into loud voices and the completeness of identifying a voice will take time around 1 year of his or her life; but, this will change in case of a toddler. 

The reasons behind hearing impairments are:

• Premature birth

• Admitted to the NICU

• Newborn jaundice with bilirubin level high may enough to require a blood transfusion

• Some medications can lead to hearing impairment

• Has family members with childhood hearing loss

• Had certain complications at birth

• Had many ear infections

• Had infections such as meningitis or cytomegalovirus

• Exposed to very loud sounds or noises

The types of hearing loss are: 

• Conductive hearing loss is due to a blockage in the transmission of sound to the inner ear and this block can be because of ear infections.

• Sensorineural hearing loss is when the cochlea has damage or a structural problem, at the same time it can be caused by problems with the auditory cortex.

Sensorineural hearing loss can be in different degree like:

• mild 

• moderate 

• severe 

• Profound 

• Mixed hearing loss is that when a person has both conductive and sensorineural hearing loss.

• Central hearing loss other parts of the brain are not working well as the cochlea works and it is difficult to treat. 

Nowadays, hearing loss can be found from the hospital itself and after birth as well as there are many devices available to increase the hearing power.

Moreover, the Best speech therapy center in Um al Quwain are able to find the root cause and they can also suggest therapies for these types of problems. Parents can also become a part of this treatment, so the hearing problem can be solved.

How occupational therapy incorporates visual perceptual skills in children?

 Do you know, parents start to use the visual perceptual skills to engage their children during their infancy.

Visual memory is one of the ways to remember something like a picture or a contact number for a short time period and the  visual sequence can last  around 30 seconds. 

Therefore, teachers or therapists use some properties to teach children and it results more effectively than that of other methods. 

In total, the visual perception skills is the ability of the brain to make sense of what the eyes perceive and it is also found as a part of everyday life like watching visual presentations of fruits and vegetables, dressing up, writing or playing etc.

Thus, this technique is used in the occupational therapy sessions to help children to overcome the learning difficulties.

There are mainly seven types of visual perception skills which are useful for children to improve their abilities:

• Visual spatial relations 

Is that ability to understand the letters like p and q or b and d as it is the part of the same form which shows the determination skills.

• Sequential memory 

This needs the ability to find a series of forms and need to differentiate from other forms. For example, children copying notes from a blackboard identifies a word rather than a letter while taking it to a notebook, but, if children will skip letters or words and it shows the difficulty in sequential memory.

• Visual discrimination 

Is the ability to differentiate between objects and other properties. For instance, identifying coins or types of toys etc. children with this type problem cannot find the difference between objects or similarities in that. The same problem can also affect while learning alphabets like b or d which is similar to  visual spatial relations.

• Form constancy 

Is that the children needs the skills to choose the right forms or objects from a series of forms, which can confuse them while looking for numbers or alphabets with similar size and shape.

• Visual memory 

It indicates the memory storage for a short period of time in the brain and this is different from others. People recall contact numbers or some sequence of visual information as it is stored in the brain as some memories. Children who are dealing with these problems cannot answer the questions after showing some sort of information in a visual form.

 

• Visual closure 

This needs problem solving skills like filling the blank or completion of an incomplete sentence and so on. For example, arranging puzzle cards or completing the sentence with missing words which can be in mathematics or other subjects. Children with disabilities cannot do it correctly.

• Visual figure ground  

Is the ability to determine the exact thing from a group of things. For example, picking up the right color pencil like red from a group of color variants. 

These activities help children to increase their skills with visual treatments and other occupational therapies. The occupational therapy sessions include the best session from the above list of visual perception skills.

Occupational Therapy in Ras Al Khaimah chooses the best therapy strategies for their clients and thus, fast recovery is possible in the case of children.

In addition to that, children with these difficulties can enable their skills and improve it with the help of parents and therapists.  

Tips to Halt Stuttering/Stammering in Children

 Stuttering is a common problem for children during their infancy as they are at the stage to start speaking.

This problem emerges because of certain factors like pronunciation problems, find words to express what they meant, or missing some words during their speech and it is common.

In the case of stammering, this is also rarely found in childhood, and speaking a language quickly or try to speak out something difficult.

With the help of a good speech therapist, this problem can be solved and smoothly talk with confidence. There are two types of stammering:

• Developmental stammering - this happens in early childhood when speech and language skills are developing quickly and it is common in children.

• Acquired or late-onset stammering - This will happen rarely for toddlers or adults who met with a head injury, stroke, etc. 

The common tips to avoid both Stuttering or Stammering are:

Slow down while speaking and your own time to express your feelings. Take some deep breaths before complete your sentence and speak out, so you can speak confidently.

The practice is the best way to overcome speaking difficulties. For that, the speech therapist can help you and as per the directions, parents can also support children. 

Speaking in front of the mirror can help to gain confidence and add new words to the vocabulary.

Go Electronic means that there are many electronic devices that are available in the market to aid speech therapies such as a speech monitor. 

Some hearing devices slow down the frequency of voice using the software thus the reply to that speech will be slowly produced. Thus, speech problems can be solved.

The best speech therapy center in Ras Al Khaimah ensures effective treatment for children with speaking difficulties like stuttering and stammering during their infancy.

Moreover, the speech therapist takes an effort to tackle the problem with the finest treatment sessions where parents can also involve in it if there is a need.

However, this problem cannot be cured completely, and in the long run, these problems can be slow down.

In addition to all these techniques, the most essential element is to get an environment that can make you relaxed and feel free to speak confidently. Thus, this rare problem can be overcome with the support of the parents and dear ones.

Causes of Apraxia of speech in Childhood

 The apraxia of speech is a disorder which causes in the brain and has difficulty to organize the complex oral moments.

The sound creation and syllables to word, then words to phrase formation failure are the result of Apraxia speech disorder. Nothing is common in all kinds of speech disorders, therefore here no one can blame the weakness of muscles.

The reason behind each disorder varies according to the individual genetics and human body structure. However, society sees these differently-abled children with sympathy.

A good speech therapist can help children and parents to throw out this problem and give them the confidence to do more in life with their skills.

This speech disorder is a motor speech disorder and it slows down the messages to the brain as well as the response to the muscles of the mouth of the child from the brain also delays.

The ability of speech becomes minimal and this cannot be cured completely, instead, there can be more improvement if the child gets the best treatment. 

In many cases, the cause is unknown and there might be many other genetic reasons.

The main signs for the speech disorder are:

• Contrary errors on consonants and vowels in repeated productions of syllables or words or phrases.

• Difficulty producing longer, more complex words and phrases.

• Unsuitable intonation and stress in word or phrase production.

Some other characteristics of apraxia speech disorders include:

• Delay in the development of the child's first words and sounds.

• Decreased sound inventory.

• Multiple or unusual sound errors.

• Vowel sound errors.

• Excessive movements of the mouth 

• Attempting to position the mouth for sound production.

• Frequent regression in the number of words produced.

• Variation in the overall performance of automatic speech versus voluntary speech and mostly, voluntary speech is more affected by apraxia of speech.

• Mistakes in the sequence of the order of sounds produced.

These problems can be identified and strat treatment from infancy can make a massive change. The Best speech therapy center in Umm al Quwain has experts to solve speech disorders and learning difficulties.  The treatment methods can last for many years and many children benefit from this treatment process.