Using a hearing aid presents a number of advantages to a hearing impaired person. First and foremost, you will hear a lot better. Hearing aids do not restore your hearing to normal but they improve it significantly. It becomes easier to hear what other people say. Sounds you have not heard for a long time such as birds singing, door bell ringing, the howling of the wind and water running may become audible to you.

Hearing aid usually improves the user s social, psychological and physical sense of well being.

Study as well as experience shows that hearing aid generally improve the quality of life and will help you:

Get a better relationship with your family
Feel better about yourself
Get better mental health
Improve your physical well being
To concentrate better
Feel more independent and secure
Feel less tired or exhausted
Be more able to participate in social gathering
Be able to increase your social contact
Be able to do better in your job  
Hearing aid will help you to reduce tinnitus
Hearing aid will help you to avoid dementia by helping you to hear and improve cognitive functioning
As you start hearing through hearing aid, you will start socializing yourself and indirectly improve your quality of life.
Why you need to wear two hearing Aids?

Better understanding of speech
Better understanding in group and even in noisy situation
Better ability to tell the direction of the sound (Localization)
Better sound quality
Greater listening comfort
Hearing is less tiring and more pleasant
Keeping both ears active preserves speech understanding in both ears
Effective tinnitus masking
Better understanding of listening to radio and television
Speech will be clear

Advantages Of A Hearing Aid!

Sleep is the most important aspect for a healthy beign, but for kids it is of utmost priority. Lack of sleep can often have a negative impact on the brain funtioning of kids along with accidents. Listed below are the major sleep disorders in children along with their causative factors:
1. Sleepwalking: It is not uncommon for children under the age of 10 to sleep walk. Despite being harmless on its own, the effects of sleep walking can be dangerous such as stepping outdoors or hurting themselves during sleep. If the child runs into objects while sleep walking, they might wake up and hence further worsen the situation.
2. Nightmares: They might be general or result from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Nightmares, if frequent, can make falling asleep a tedious task. Nightmares in children are common and they usually begin to reduce in frequency by 9 years of age.
3. Obstructive sleep apnea: Snoring might be the result of improper respiration while sleeping and while it isn t a cause of worry, regular snoring might lead to insufficient oxygen during sleep, thus making shut eye a challenge. It might be hereditary or the result of a deviated nasal septum or blocked nose. The snoring might hamper the quality of sleep.
4. Bedwetting: This is something most children experience, but usually grow out of by the time they turn six. It doesn t need to be a cause of concern unless the frequency doesn t reduce over time and more than two instances of bedwetting take place in a week.
5. Insomnia in children: It can be due to a host of factors and coping with changes to their normal lifestyle is one of the biggest triggers. Mental disorders such as anxiety and stress due to a variety of reasons (like the death of a loved one) may also be the cause of distress and lead to troubled or incomplete sleep.
6. Excessive daytime sleepiness: Excess naps throughout the day, always feeling lethargic or experiencing trouble waking up in the morning may be symptomatic of EDS. It isn t uncommon in adults either wherein despite apparent proper sleep; energy levels seem to be low throughout the day.

6 Common Sleep Disorders in Children

High fever is common in kids and a common worry for parents as well. If you are a parent, you need to know when the fever is serious, and when you should worry about it. Fever is a defence mechanism of the body. Body temperature rises if any foreign body (or antigen) attacks your body. As a defence, body temperature rises making it an unfavourable condition for the antigen. Fever means 100.4 degree Fahrenheit. Normally for kids, thermometer is placed under the armpit to record the temperature. You need to add an extra degree for accuracy. Paediatricians recommend treatment for fever if it's more than 101 degree F.

When to Call a Doctor

If the kid is less than 4 months old and has a fever of 100.4 degree F with other mentioned symptoms as highlighted, one must see the doctor as an emergency situation.
If a kid has 104 degree F fever, rush to the doctor. Such a high fever in children could lead to seizers.

You must call a doctor if the kid has a fever along with the following symptoms:

    Looks very dizzy
    Has a deteriorated immune system or even any other medical condition
    Has a seizure
    Has symptoms such as rashes, painful throat, annoyance, rigid neck or ear pain

Medication Side Effects:

At times, if you treat your children with some medication that does not suit them, it may lead to high fever. In case fever in a kid aged less than 2 years lasts for more than one day, it's time to see a doctor. And lastly, remember that normal body temperature is 98.6 degree F.

High Fever: When It Should Raise Alarm for Parents

Thumb or finger sucking is common in infants through the first year of their lives. A child usually turns to his thumb when he is tired, upset or bored.

A child younger than five years should not be pressured to stop thumb sucking. While majority of children give up such habits on their own before they enter school, about 15 percent of children continue thumb sucking past their fifth birthday. This is an age when teasing often starts, causing difficulties for children.

Apart from this, thumb sucking can also lead to dental problems. A child who is still sucking his thumb by age five, when permanent teeth start coming in, may develop an abnormal bite. In addition, prolonged thumb sucking can cause minor physical problems, such as chapped lips or cracked skin, calluses, or fingernail infections.

The effects of thumb sucking are usually reversible until the age of seven because children still have their deciduous (baby) teeth. If thumb sucking continues beyond that age, when the second teeth are erupting, permanent dental problems can occur.

There are various things you can do to help your child stop thumb sucking:

1. Reward your child and offer encouragement - for example, with a hug or praise to reinforce their decision to stop the habit.

2. Limit nagging - if children feel they are being nagged they will become defensive.

3. Mark their progress on a calendar - for example, place a star or a tick for each period (such as a day or week) that the child does not suck thumb or finger. Provide a special outing or a toy if the child gets through the period successfully.

4. Encourage bonding - for example, with a special toy.

5. Reminders - give the child a mitten to wear as a reminder not to suck, or place unpleasant tasting nail paint (available from chemists) on the fingers or thumb. Placing a band aid over the thumb at bedtime is another reminder.

6. Offer distractions - while a child is watching tv, have toys available for children to play with. Sit with the child during this time and give a cuddle to help them not to suck. In the car, have toys available to keep children occupied.

7. Talk to your pediatrician and your child's dentist, who may recommend appropriate treatment that prevents thumb sucking.

Preventing Thumb Sucking in Children

What Causes Early Childhood Trauma? + How to Identify this Condition?

The problem of early childhood trauma refers to disturbing experiences that take place in children during 0-6 years of age. The traumas that young children experience can be the effects of natural disaster, war or accidents or that of intentional violence like sexual abuse, domestic violence or physical abuse.

What Does this Condition Impact Childhood?

Traumatic events have a significant impact on your child's life and can break his sense of safety. The problem has been linked with a decrease in the size of the brain cortex. This is the part of the brain that controls several complex functions like thinking, consciousness, memory, attention, awareness, and language. The changes that occur as a result can affect your child's IQ as well as his or her ability to control emotions. As a consequence, he or she may harbor feelings of danger and become more afraid or it may manifest in other personality issues which are not very obvious.

How do you identify this condition?

Generally, children who suffer from traumas face problems in regulating their emotions and behaviors.

They may display signs like:

- Fear of new situations
- Being clingy to their parent(s) or somebody close
- Become easily frightened
- Display aggressive and/or impulsive behavior
- Are difficult to comfort
- Display deterioration in behavior and functioning
- Easily forget newly attained developmental skills
- Difficulty in sleeping

Depending on the age during which your child may go through a traumatic event, he or she can exhibit signs relevant to his or her age.

For instance:

Children aged 0-2 years may also display reactions like poor verbal skills, memory problems, excessive temper, experience nightmares, etc.

On the other hand, children aged 3-6 years can face difficulties in learning as well as develop poor skill and learning disabilities, face problems in social interaction, may be unable to trust people and so on.

If this condition remains unattended or unresolved for longer, it may create personality issues and can deeply impact the individual's relationships, or equations in the society, as they grow up and even after they become adults. In fact, many behavioral problems can be traced back to childhood trauma.



What Causes Early Childhood Trauma? + How to Identify this Condition?

CAKUT or Congenital Anomalies of the Kidney and Urinary Tract is a group of simple to life-threatening malfunction or malformation of the ureters, kidney, bladders, testis, penis or female genitalia. These malformations are present from the birth when the genital or urinary system of the fetal starts developing. In young children, this kind of malformations can lead to renal transplantations and kidney failures. The primary cause of this kind of congenital problem with the urinary tract is genetic while other possible cause can be due to the environment.

Some of the most common Congenital problems with the urinary tract are:

Bladder Exstrophy: One of the most common congenital problems in children is bladder malformation. In this case, the bladder is flattened in shape and not round. So it will be exposed on the abdominal walls. This, in turn, will result in widely separated pelvic bones. Thus the function of female genitalia, penis and prostate will be affected. There are different types of Exstrophy and surgeries required for correcting them.
Undescended Testes: Usually, in the abdomen area, the testicles are formed. After the formation, they pass from the abdominal wall muscles and twist to the local place. This happens in the last few weeks of the pregnancy and is seen only in 5 percent of full-grown boys. Most of the times, testicles fall to the normal place in the first 6 months of their life. Any abnormality in the testicles or missing testicles can be due to problems in the testicular blood vessels or due to loss of blood flow to that particular area. Surgical and nonsurgical therapies like hormone management can be used to treat this kind of congenital problem.
Vesicoureteral Reflux: The Ureter is the tube in the human body that carries the urine from the kidneys to the bladder. When there is Vesicoureteral Reflux problem, then the urine flows back in the ureter. When the reflux of urine takes place, then that will get detained in that area and can cause damage to the kidneys. There are basically two types of Vesicoureteral Reflux and the primary condition is congenital problems. This problem can also be treated with the help of surgical and nonsurgical methods.
Hydronephrosis: Another very common congenital problem with the urinary tract in children is Hydronephrosis. The flow of the urine from the kidney can be prevented by any obstruction. This obstruction can result in fluids getting filled in the organs. There can be many disorders or problems associated such as Multicystic Dysplastic Kidney, Posterior Urethral Valve, Ureteropelvic Junction Obstruction and Idiopathic Hydronephrosis. There can be many other problems also associated along with these.

Congenital Problems With The Urinary Tract!

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