Developing Strong Auditory Skills
"Challenges to Changes", Submitted to the IHEA Informer for the Nov/Dec, 1998 Issue
By: Marcia B. Blackwood, Phone: 317.375.1775, E-Mail: marciablackwood@juno.com
The most important aspects of our children’s learning success or difficulty must include strong auditory skills. I am continuing to learn, myself, about the development of good auditory skills and not only how that takes place, but also how we can be sure our child has the best auditory skills possible. There are some specific things that keep our children from properly developing those auditory skills.
In the past our society as a whole was very well equipped to develop good auditory skills in our young people. Our parents spent a lot of time talking to us, reading aloud to us, discussing various topics at the dinner table (even if we were merely the listeners), and directing us as we listened to the old time radio shows (dramas and other entertaining programs, news, etc.). We learned to use our imaginations to create the characters and scenes in our minds.
Today’s child is much more oriented to developing good visual skills as we have changed our forms of entertainment, media, and communication. Television has become the one-eyed monster that presents everything under the sun, in living color, 24 hours a day. I’m sure many of you readers have severely limited, or even eliminated the viewing of television in your homes as programs have become more and more a reflection of secular values, temporal goals, and ungodly speech and actions. Yet, for many of our children, when they are in a room with a TV on, their eyes become glued to the set and they become very selective in what they hear – you could have a three-alarm fire in your living room and they would not notice if it didn’t cause a power failure that interfered with reception.
When public education began, it was designed in such a way as to teach to the auditory learner, and it worked well for many years. Unfortunately for the visual learners, our basic educational approach has not changed much and we still teach by lecture or oral presentations a great percentage of the time. The visual learner is obviously at quite a disadvantage in this kind of setting.
One of the other problems is that a large percentage of children under two years of age have ear infections, allergies, colds, etc. that can cause fluid to accumulate behind the eardrum in the middle ear. Any of these difficulties can cause a hearing loss and/or inconsistent hearing for long periods of time. This can affect the development of speech by delaying it or by limiting the communication skills that child will develop in his early years. According to some researchers, nearly half of all they ever learn will be gained by the time our child reaches the age of 5. Spending even part of that time with limited hearing could be devastating to a child’s speech development as well as to his overall auditory function. Children are frequently labeled “developmentally delayed” for no other reason than that there seems to be no specific cause for that child to be more than two years behind the development of his peers. When this occurs, an investigation could show that these children had extensive temporary hearing difficulties during their early years. Many of the infections or the nasal/sinus congestions seem to be related to an allergy to milk and other dairy products, and one can sometimes see obvious improvements by eliminating these or other allergy related foods.
Why are auditory skills so important? There is significant correlation between how well your child can process sequentially and language function. Low processing auditory can prevent a child from “getting” phonics. As auditory processing improves, speech patterns improve, reasoning skills and being able to understand cause and effect are greater, social skills begin to increase and you see a more confident child emerging.
What can we parents do to prevent and/or remediate poor auditory skills? You could try any of these suggestions:
As an infant, your baby should hear an abundance of clean, clear sounds. Classical music with lots of high frequencies (like those of violins) and very little bass (you know – the thump, thump stuff) is one good source of stimulating input. Play lots of tapes for your child, progressing from sound effects, to soft voices of the parents, to environmental sounds, etc. These can be inexpensive cassette tapes that you produce yourselves on a tape recorder. Help your child process the language by talking face to face with your child so he can see what you are doing with your mouth and tongue. Imitate his sounds to encourage vocalization. Emphasize the vowel sounds, and then the consonant sounds. Put sounds together to create initial words. Then work on couplets, three-word phrases, questions and answers, and general information. As you work with your child, Scripture memory is a good tool for improving the number of words he can hold and repeat, and at the same time you reap the benefits of hiding God’s word in their heart.
What if your child is beyond the stages mentioned above? Your public library or your church library may be a good source for simple stories you could tape for your child. You may find suitable books with recordings that beep to help your child know when to turn the page. You can even record your own favorite books on tape – let your child help by ringing a bell or tapping or clicking for the page to turn. More and more books on tape are becoming available that are classic stories suitable for children. Your local radio station may broadcast children’ programs on Saturday mornings, “Ranger Bill”, “Adventures in Odyssey”, “Your Story Hour”, and others. I have often taped them to play back at a more convenient time (and some are available for purchase from their producers). Prerecorded Bible stories or the Bible on Tape are both great for listening skills. Don’t hesitate to tape stories from family members too. Dad, or Grandmother, or Uncle Bob may be great storytellers and you may be creating some real keepsakes at the same time.
The last recommendation I will put forth takes an entire article in the May/June 1999 Informer. Use digit spans to stimulate your child’s brain to a rapid increase in auditory processing skills. If you need a reprint of that article, please call me at (317) 375-1775 and I will be happy to send one to you.
I mentioned in previous articles that auditory sequential processing is probably the most significant single factor that will determine how well your child will do academically. You can do much to see that it develops well. I pray that you will help your child develop the skill of listening and understanding so he will be spoken of as in Proverbs 18:15, “…the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
Back to Hearing and Sound Therapy
By: Marcia B. Blackwood, Phone: 317.375.1775, E-Mail: marciablackwood@juno.com
The most important aspects of our children’s learning success or difficulty must include strong auditory skills. I am continuing to learn, myself, about the development of good auditory skills and not only how that takes place, but also how we can be sure our child has the best auditory skills possible. There are some specific things that keep our children from properly developing those auditory skills.
In the past our society as a whole was very well equipped to develop good auditory skills in our young people. Our parents spent a lot of time talking to us, reading aloud to us, discussing various topics at the dinner table (even if we were merely the listeners), and directing us as we listened to the old time radio shows (dramas and other entertaining programs, news, etc.). We learned to use our imaginations to create the characters and scenes in our minds.
Today’s child is much more oriented to developing good visual skills as we have changed our forms of entertainment, media, and communication. Television has become the one-eyed monster that presents everything under the sun, in living color, 24 hours a day. I’m sure many of you readers have severely limited, or even eliminated the viewing of television in your homes as programs have become more and more a reflection of secular values, temporal goals, and ungodly speech and actions. Yet, for many of our children, when they are in a room with a TV on, their eyes become glued to the set and they become very selective in what they hear – you could have a three-alarm fire in your living room and they would not notice if it didn’t cause a power failure that interfered with reception.
When public education began, it was designed in such a way as to teach to the auditory learner, and it worked well for many years. Unfortunately for the visual learners, our basic educational approach has not changed much and we still teach by lecture or oral presentations a great percentage of the time. The visual learner is obviously at quite a disadvantage in this kind of setting.
One of the other problems is that a large percentage of children under two years of age have ear infections, allergies, colds, etc. that can cause fluid to accumulate behind the eardrum in the middle ear. Any of these difficulties can cause a hearing loss and/or inconsistent hearing for long periods of time. This can affect the development of speech by delaying it or by limiting the communication skills that child will develop in his early years. According to some researchers, nearly half of all they ever learn will be gained by the time our child reaches the age of 5. Spending even part of that time with limited hearing could be devastating to a child’s speech development as well as to his overall auditory function. Children are frequently labeled “developmentally delayed” for no other reason than that there seems to be no specific cause for that child to be more than two years behind the development of his peers. When this occurs, an investigation could show that these children had extensive temporary hearing difficulties during their early years. Many of the infections or the nasal/sinus congestions seem to be related to an allergy to milk and other dairy products, and one can sometimes see obvious improvements by eliminating these or other allergy related foods.
Why are auditory skills so important? There is significant correlation between how well your child can process sequentially and language function. Low processing auditory can prevent a child from “getting” phonics. As auditory processing improves, speech patterns improve, reasoning skills and being able to understand cause and effect are greater, social skills begin to increase and you see a more confident child emerging.
What can we parents do to prevent and/or remediate poor auditory skills? You could try any of these suggestions:
As an infant, your baby should hear an abundance of clean, clear sounds. Classical music with lots of high frequencies (like those of violins) and very little bass (you know – the thump, thump stuff) is one good source of stimulating input. Play lots of tapes for your child, progressing from sound effects, to soft voices of the parents, to environmental sounds, etc. These can be inexpensive cassette tapes that you produce yourselves on a tape recorder. Help your child process the language by talking face to face with your child so he can see what you are doing with your mouth and tongue. Imitate his sounds to encourage vocalization. Emphasize the vowel sounds, and then the consonant sounds. Put sounds together to create initial words. Then work on couplets, three-word phrases, questions and answers, and general information. As you work with your child, Scripture memory is a good tool for improving the number of words he can hold and repeat, and at the same time you reap the benefits of hiding God’s word in their heart.
What if your child is beyond the stages mentioned above? Your public library or your church library may be a good source for simple stories you could tape for your child. You may find suitable books with recordings that beep to help your child know when to turn the page. You can even record your own favorite books on tape – let your child help by ringing a bell or tapping or clicking for the page to turn. More and more books on tape are becoming available that are classic stories suitable for children. Your local radio station may broadcast children’ programs on Saturday mornings, “Ranger Bill”, “Adventures in Odyssey”, “Your Story Hour”, and others. I have often taped them to play back at a more convenient time (and some are available for purchase from their producers). Prerecorded Bible stories or the Bible on Tape are both great for listening skills. Don’t hesitate to tape stories from family members too. Dad, or Grandmother, or Uncle Bob may be great storytellers and you may be creating some real keepsakes at the same time.
The last recommendation I will put forth takes an entire article in the May/June 1999 Informer. Use digit spans to stimulate your child’s brain to a rapid increase in auditory processing skills. If you need a reprint of that article, please call me at (317) 375-1775 and I will be happy to send one to you.
I mentioned in previous articles that auditory sequential processing is probably the most significant single factor that will determine how well your child will do academically. You can do much to see that it develops well. I pray that you will help your child develop the skill of listening and understanding so he will be spoken of as in Proverbs 18:15, “…the ear of the wise seeks knowledge.”
Back to Hearing and Sound Therapy