Choosing The Right Hearing Aids For A Child
There is a wide variety of hearing aid styles and features that are designed to work for people with different lifestyles and needs. Finding the right hearing aid for a child is just a matter of weeding through the features to find the best fit. Here are some things to look for in a child's hearing aid.
Flexible Microphone Settings
Children tend to deal with many situations that will require different types of microphones. For instance, at school, your child will need a microphone setting that allows them to focus in on sound coming from a certain direction. The directional microphone is a perfect choice to allow children to narrow in on what the teacher is saying while filtering out distractions from the classmates around them. On the other hand, there are situations outside the classroom where children need to pick up sound in all directions. To cross the street safely, children need to know where sound is coming at them in all directions. The best hearing aids will have the ability to change between omnidirectional and directional microphones easily as the situation calls for it.
Compressed Volume
Another feature to look for in a child's hearing aid is dynamic range compression. Some hearing aids prefer not to distort the loudness of different sounds in the environment, so that the user can still hear different nuances in volume. However, for children, the goal may be to allow the child to hear most sounds without having to adjust the volume on their receiver. With with dynamic range compression, softer sounds will become louder, and louder sounds will become softer, so that your child can generally wear the hearing aids at one volume setting.
Programmable Settings
At the same time, it can be helpful to change the hearing aid's settings for extreme situations, such as at a loud football game. A few hearing aid models allow you to switch between different saved settings with the press of a button. This will allow you to program in the settings with ample time and then return back to them when the situation calls for it.
Getting the Right Features
You may need to do a bit of trial and error to find the right hearing aids for your child as they grow. The simplified settings that will work well for a young child may become limiting as your child develops more responsibility. By working closely with your audiologist, you can pick the settings that are appropriate for your child and adjust them when needed.
For more information, contact Advantage Hearing & Audiology or a similar company.
