Ear Infections - Diagnosis

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• At 4 - 6 weeks most babies with normal hearing make cooing sounds.
• By around 5 months, infants should be laughing out loud and making one-syllable sounds with both a vowel and consonant.
• Between 6 - 8 months, babies should be able to make word-like sounds with more than one syllable.
• Usually starting around 7 months, and by 10 months, babies babble (making many word-like noises).
• Around 10 months, babies can identify and use some term for a parent, such as dada, baba, or mama.
• Babies speak their first word usually by the end of their first year.

If a child's progress is significantly delayed beyond these times, a parent should suspect possible hearing problems.

Determining Impaired Hearing in Older Children. Hearing loss in older children may be detected by the following behaviors:

• Not responding to speech spoken beyond 3 feet away
• Difficulty following directions
• Limited vocabulary
• Social and behavioral problems

Review Date: 05/03/2011
Reviewed By: Harvey Simon, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, A.D.A.M., Inc.

A.D.A.M., Inc. is accredited by URAC, also known as the American Accreditation HealthCare Commission (www.urac.org).

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