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    Joined: Sep 2014
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    I just wanted to reply to this post even though it's been a while because I think we figured out a big piece of my son's issues! He needed ear tubes! I feel a bit silly because he's had them twice before but we thought he was in the clear for it. We try to keep a close eye on his ears but they were full of ear wax and ironically the old tubes were in the way so no one could see is ear drums.

    In October his right ear drum burst and in November he failed the school hearing test in his left ear and we figured out that his hearing in that ear was diminished by about 30 dB. So basically, I think that at the beginning of the year both of his ears were probably full of fluid and affecting his hearing. I think that plus the big transition in schedule and expectations was causing most of the issues (although to be fair, I'm not sure why he needed to be able to hear to know that putting stuff on his and running around the classroom is a bad idea..). We got ear tubes put in over the Christmas break and also got him a chewy necklace for him to use while he's sitting and working.

    Even after the ear drum burst we've seen a ton of improvement. When I poke my head in the door while I'm helping out I've seen that he's sitting still better and more engaged with the classroom. They've also started the 'meatier' part of the school year with real leveled reading and he's enjoying that more. The teacher said he's been doing great behavior-wise and 'isn't even on her radar' for behavior right now. So hooray!! smile Homework at home is still hard, but honestly it's been a long day for him so I get it.

    I wanted to say thank you to this group, you guys are amazingly helpful and insightful and it was awesome to get support from strangers on the internet. I wanted to put this update up in case it's helpful to anyone else reading.

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    Poor kid. Sounds hopeful though. I susect when you feel like you are an outsider (because you can't hear what is going on well and miss stuff) acting like a clown seems like a good way of being involved.

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    Aww, you're much more sympathetic towards him about that than I was and I think you may be right. It was also a big shift in his schedule (from 3 days of school for 5 hours to 5 days of school for 7 hours) and I think it was just hard for him to concentrate for that long on new difficult material, especially when it took a lot of concentration to figure out what was going on. Handwriting is definitely still a bit of an issue too, but he's made some progress on that front. It's hard to find time to make him practice the thing he does all day and doesn't like.

    While I was reading about hearing loss in kids, I found all sorts of sobering information. Even having a unilateral hearing loss puts kids at a pretty big risk for behavior problems or failing in school. It definitely has a bigger impact than I had ever realized, although granted most kids in those studies have larger hearing losses than my son had (30 dB is usually on the edge of inclusion criteria). Anyways, I think it was definitely a big piece of the puzzle.

    The other thing we added over the break was a 'chew toy' in the form of a chew necklace that looks like a Lego. His teacher is loving this thing and thinks it's helping his fidgets (he ate his name tag last semester and was chewing Lego like crazy at home, so I'd imagine it is helpful).

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