12/18/2025
👂 Hearing: A Key Foundation for Communication
Hearing plays a critical role in how we learn to listen, understand, and communicate with the world around us. In speech therapy, hearing isn’t just about what a child can hear — it’s about how the brain processes sound and makes meaning from it.
How Speech Therapists Support Hearing Skills:
🎧 Auditory Awareness: Helping patients notice and respond to sounds in their environment (voices, music, everyday noises).
🗣️ Auditory Discrimination: Teaching the brain to hear differences between sounds, like /b/ vs. /p/ or similar-sounding words.
🔁 Auditory Memory: Strengthening the ability to remember what was heard, such as following multi-step directions or recalling details from a story.
🎯 Auditory Processing: Improving how the brain organizes and interprets sounds, especially in noisy or distracting environments.
Saint Xavier Ludden Therapists use engaging, play-based activities, repetition, visual supports, and real-life practice to help patients build these skills in a meaningful way. We also collaborate closely with families, educators, and audiologists when needed to ensure hearing concerns are fully supported.
When hearing skills are strengthened, patients often show improvements in speech clarity, language development, attention, and confidence — setting the foundation for stronger communication and learning.
