Hearing Aids amplify sound to support residual hearing. If there’s some hearing in some range, hearing aids may be the right tool. If there’s no hearing, more sound won’t help.
If you’ve ever been in an enclosed space with too much sound coming at you, you’ll recognize the importance of tuning or filtering sounds. Modern hearing aid technology can do this by amplifying sounds in specified ranges or tones and leaving other sounds out of the amplified mix.
If you’ve had this sound-overload experience, you may also recognize why some children decide to lose, flush, or otherwise discard that expensive piece of equipment.
Hearing aids may help your child hear a car pass or a bird singing, but they’ll still need to learn what those sounds mean. The same goes for speech — words that are too similar to understand without context will still get past them. Louder volume doesn’t guarantee that meaning will be clearly transmitted.
Hearing aids can be easily removed for sports, repairs, upgrades, and more. They’re not a permanent decision and they don’t alter the physical structure of the user’s ear, unless you count changes to the position of the external ear while the aid’s being worn. They’re also a tad easier to lose, accidentally or otherwise.