As soon as he was born it seemed as if Tyler were super-sensitive to sounds.  If my husband would open up a can of soda, he would wake up and cry.  A car going by would wake him up.  It seemed to get better after the infant stage but when he began to be verbal he would sometimes say a sound was “Too loud for my ears”.  And they weren’t, they were normal sounds, such as the t.v. being on at a normal or low level and a toilet flushing or a sink running in a public restroom.  At first we thought he was doing it for fun because he was directly quoting from a DVD that he loved.  But as it became more apparent it wasn’t going away, we knew we had to get his hearing tested.  

Before we started the test, the Audiologist explained that some children are just very sensitive to sounds, including her own son who couldn’t stand being in a movie theater or seeing fireworks until at least age five.  She also told me what I had already researched, that some people who are losing their hearing claim that sounds are too loud.  

I sat in the hearing booth with Tyler in my lap because he wouldn’t go in without me.  There were mechanical animals that played drums hidden in the booths over the speakers and the light would go on to show them when he turned his head.  It was a weird scene and at one point Tyler told me he “wanted to be left alone”.  As he reacted to each beep or wind sound, I got more and more relieved.  The audiologist also tested his sensitivity by having the animals play their drums and he was okay with that too.  

She told us that he did very well with the hearing test, he was consistent with all of the sounds. She wanted to do a test to see how his eardrums were working which he wasn’t too crazy about.  I volunteered to show him how it worked and how it doesn’t hurt.  Tyler did well in both ears, everything normal.

The problem is she believed that Tyler was too immature to take the most precise test, a hearing test with headphones. He had never worn headphones and once when Grant tried to put ear buds in his ears he freaked out. She did not believe he would react well to the headphone test and told us we would have to wait six to nine months to do it.

So right now, he hears, except we don’t know if he is hearing with both of his ears or if one ear is dominating to compensate for any hearing loss in the other.  There is nothing to do now but wait six to nine months…and to try to put it out of our minds.