Early childhood hearing loss and behavior issues

I can't speak from experience as a parent in your situation, but I can speak as someone who has hearing loss and who is a retired educator. No doubt COVID hit your son hard in a lot of ways. There is considerable research on how important it is to fit hearing aids as soon as possible after diagnosis. Especially for children. I'm sure there are other parents out there who have similar experiences due to late intervention.

I speak from experience when I say that 'listening effort' is at least tripled even for adults who struggle with hearing loss. Children even more so. Auditory fatigue sets in an whether the person wants it to or not. That leads to a back off from paying attention. When that happens in an educational setting the fatigued person simply stops listening because they are too tired to concentrate. Some people tune out and sit there until the environment changes. Others get fidgety. They are disciplined to sit still and pay attention, but they just can't. This is especially the case in young children.

It's very possible that the diagnosis of ADHD is incorrect. Maybe your son just needs some special treatment and understanding from the educators. While I don't advocate for sending a hard of hearing child to a Deaf school, I will say it's important for him to meet other kids who struggle with hearing loss. It is also important that the teacher(s) he has understand how hearing loss affects people and do not 'minimize' the condition. Hearing aids do not correct hearing loss. They help if/when they are well fitted. Regardless, ambient noise in the environment still creates problems understanding speech. There are plenty of kids in public schools who have special needs. Teachers have to understand what those needs are. Your child's special needs are invisible. Does your son's current teacher have experience with other kids with hearing loss?

Is your son using an FM system other technology that brings sound direct to his hearing aids? Is his classroom acoustically sound without noise from fans, air conditioning, heating, etc.? Background noise, no matter how subtle, can interfere with listening and understanding.

There's a lot to learn. Kids tend to accept their personal differences as norms. The parents are the ones who must advocate for their unique needs. Of course that means educating each child about what s/he needs and explaining the value of education. It's not unusual for a parent to have to do more outside of school to help a child with hearing loss stay on track on the learning curve.

I recently had the pleasure of listening to Derrick Coleman, the first deaf (hard of hearing) person to play offense on an NFL team talk about growing up with hearing loss, diagnosed at age 3. He wrote a book called 'No Excuses" several years ago that is available on Amazon. His story is inspirational and worth reading.

I am sorry to hear of your son’s classroom difficulties. Is he in a smaller size class? Does the school offer individual speech, lip reading and coping therapies? I have worn hearing aids since three years old. In my childhood experience, not every teacher is good at communicating and making sure the student is keeping up, and the number of students is too big. Is he sitting up closest to the teacher? Perhaps he would benefit from a small class environment of ten or less children or a change of teachers. As a child with severe bilateral hearing loss, and two hearing aids, I remember the spelling tests. The teacher would say the word, and then phrase the word in a sentence, which really helped. I always made an effort to sit up front row nearest teacher as I could if I was allowed to choose where I sat. I also took individual speech therapy all through grammar, junior high and high school. In my experience, the education can be easy or difficult based on how the teacher’s communication skills and patience and the classroom size were. Some teachers were not familiar with hearing problems, and that makes learning more difficult. This is was in the sixties and seventies before mainstreaming into regular classrooms became more common.