I Thought My Child Was Ignoring Me But It Turned Out To Be Earwax Causing Hearing Loss
“Andrew,” I say at normal volume, trying to get the attention of my son who has his back to me.
No response.
“ANDREW,” I say louder, getting very irritated that my child is ignoring me.
Nothing.
“AN-DREW,” I shout, on the verge of anger now. He is blatantly ignoring me.
He turns around, oblivious to the fact that he has completely just tuned me out. “Yes, Mommy?” He asks with innocents in his voice. He looks up at me blinking those big doe eyes that only sweet little kids can give.
I can’t stay mad at that, but dang it! I get so utterly tired of him not freaking listening to a word we say!! It’s like he is ignoring us on purpose. When he DOES answer, it’s always, “What? What did you say?” So. Frustrating.
This happens ALL THE TIME. He can never just answer the first time. I don’t even remember a time when he has straight-up paid attention to what we are saying.
We are constantly having to repeating ourselves multiple times. I have wondered if he has some kind of disorder that is causing him to tune us out.
He is also delayed in his speaking ability. He can say, and trust me, he DOES say, every word imaginable. People just have a hard time distinguishing his words. WE even have trouble sometimes, and he gets so frustrated with us.
As a last-ditch effort, we had him go to a speech therapist at school. His teacher didn’t think they would be able to help him much, but hey, we were desperate. At this point we would try anything.
As part of the evaluation, they did a hearing screening. It came back borderline and inconclusive. They repeated the test a week later.
Guess what their findings were.
The therapist CALLED US AT HOME to let us know that Andrew has 75% hearing loss. I started to panic. I wanted to protect my baby from anything bad that might befall him.
But, then the therapist went on.
This hearing loss is caused by wax buildup in his ear canal. Ear wax. There isn’t even a fancy medical term for it. He has gross goo built up in his ears that has hardened over time, causing him to lose hearing, and maybe causing part of his speech delay.
Okay, I feel kind of bad. We have yelled at him A LOT for not paying attention when we talk to him.
How were we supposed to know he couldn’t hear us?!? And, he couldn’t tell us he didn’t hear us, because 1) we would accuse him of not listening, and 2) he didn’t know any different.
But, ear wax?
Thank the sweet lord that it’s not something permanent. We have to make an appointment with his pediatrician to have the wax removed. That’s going to be a fun trip.
Let this be a lesson to you, though. There might be an actual REASON your kid is ignoring you or acting out. Don’t just assume, like the #parentfail we had, that your child is behaving badly.
We owe the little dude some hugs and ice cream after this. Poor, sweet boy. He wasn’t really ignoring us at all!
As parents, we often make grande #parentfails, but just remember to give yourself some grace. You are doing the best you can, and that little boo LOVES you!!
