Parent-Professional Partnerships: Managing Behavior to Increase Hearing Aid Use

For development of spoken language, children need to consistently use appropriately fitted amplification. There is extensive variability in hearing aid use, particularly with younger children (Muñoz, Preston, & Hicken, 2014; Walker et al., 2013), and parents have reported challenges influencing how much children use their hearing aids including negative behaviors (Muñoz et al., 2015; Muñoz et al., 2016). Audiologists need to incorporate approaches to behavior changes with the families, which is often not a skill we have been trained to focus on. Teaching the parents a few simple steps might drastically reduce problematic actions and increase desired ones. Setting up a plan where the caregiver systematically reinforces what is wanted, ignores what is not wanted, and only punishes what is dangerous is one strategy that can be used. As part of a longitudinal case study, Muñoz et al. (2017) found that with the support of the audiologist, the parent learned how to provide positive reinforcements that motivated her child and increased the amount of time she provided individual attention. When child behavior interferes with hearing aid use, audiologists have an important role in partnering with parents to explore and address the issues in order to provide best practice.