It will definitely explain the problem with phonetics! At least you know now, don't go blaming yourself as children manage to "hide" it quite well by compensating. My DS6 had grommets (tubes) put in his ears when he was 4 and they worked wonders - his ears were very blocked up and his hearing was very bad, we didn't notice that the poor child had been lip-reading for quite a while. The audiologist was very impressed at how he had "hidden" his hearing loss. The tubes fell out about 18 months later and all has been fine since then. Hopefully your experience will be straightforward like ours.
XX
