Hearing Loss and Families
Hearing loss is widespread in Aboriginal communities because of middle ear disease. Children experience middle ear disease in Aboriginal communities earlier, longer, and more often.
It's been estimated that in non Aboriginal communities people experience ear disease for an average of three months during their childhood. Among Aboriginal children the average is 2.5 years. This difference in the amount of time that Aboriginal and non Aboriginal children experience ear disease results in major problems later in life.
Chronic childhood ear disease leaves many Aboriginal people with long term permanent hearing loss and auditory processing problems. This can have a great impact on families.
Research into the influence of hearing loss within families indicates that hearing loss can have an impact on communication between people from the same cultural background. There is also evidence that hearing loss can have a negative effect on family life.
Between 40-90% of Aboriginal children may have an unidentified Conductive Hearing Loss at any point in time.
Children with listening troubles can:
- be cheeky at home
- make lots of demands
- get into trouble at school
- may bully other children
- be very shy
- think they are dumb.
All these kinds of problems can make parents feel depressed, especially if they do not know their kids have a hearing loss.
Video clip about hearing loss
Stephen Torres-Carne works in an agency providing mediation and legal services for Aboriginal people.
In this video clip he talks about the stress and anxiety a person with hearing loss experiences when socialising.
Video: Stephen Torres-Carne
Duration: 6 minutes
File size: 6.5MB
Requires Quicktime or Windows Media Player