What Parents Need to Know: Auditory-Verbal Therapy and Their Child with a Hearing Loss

1. Parents are critical to success; and must have high expectations.
2. Listening must be integrated into the child's personality and this cannot happen with an hour per week of listening experience (the typical length of a formal AV Therapy session) nor if the parent does not believe that their child can hear, listen and learn to speak
3. Parents have opportunities to provide meaningful experiences for language learning through routines (repetition) and daily interactions. -ie. Dressing, eating, baking etc.
4. Parents are taught to become their child's case manager.
5. Parents enrolled in an Auditory-Verbal Program are educated to understand audiograms, what their child can/cannot hear, hearing aids (including electroacoustics), earmolds, FM systems, use/care/troubleshooting (many have used FM systems in the home or in a preschool/daycare setting), and endless strategies to facilitate listening and learning spoken communication.
6. Once their child reaches school, parents are very educated and can serve as a resource to educational professionals.

One-on-one teaching - the key to AV Therapy:

Intensive auditory teaching:

Amplification is the first critical step:

• the child must learn to attach meaning to incoming sound
• the greater the degree of hearing loss, the more repetition is required and the greater the need for more formal teaching

The child is taught based on a hierarchy for audition, speech, language and cognition goals and skills which are based on normal developmental models. These goals are demonstrated and developed according to the child's levels of development with special attention to auditory development.

Why Choose the A/V Approach for My Child?

by Christopher D. Brown & Pam Campbell
CSHC Parents & Board Members

A parent choosing the Auditory-Verbal therapy approach for their child with a hearing loss is a parent that wants their child to learn to listen and speak. A parent choosing the A-V approach is making a choice for their child consistent with that preference.

In 1990, an Ontario Ministry of Education survey of 689 parents reported that 681 parents would prefer that their child learn to listen and speak. Only 8 said they would choose other forms of communication for their children.

Parents are not alone. In "A Critical Examination of Different Approaches to Communication in the Education of Deaf Children", researchers from the University of Manchester's Department of Audiology state their convictions:
 

"Our examination of the communication options available for use with deaf children confirms our conviction that for the majority, the overwhelming majority of deaf children, the oral-auditory approach offers the best chance of developing language and providing a means of communication."
Lynas, Huntington, Tucker

But what does the future hold for an Auditory-Verbal child? A bright future indeed! A recent study* of 157 newly graduated men and women from Auditory-Verbal programs in the US - 94% who had a severe-to-profound hearing loss- had this to say:

- 152 had completed high school.
- 95% of those went on to post-secondary education.
- 72% see themselves as part of the hearing world.

Why choose the Auditory-Verbal approach? The answer is clear!

*Goldberg, D.M. and C. Flexer. (1993) "Outcome Survey of Auditory-Verbal Graduates: Study of Clinical Efficacy". Journal of the American Academy of Audiology,Vol. 4: 189-200.