ParentsPov.com

Listen. Whatever you’re hearing — the hum of a computer, your kids playing, a car going by — is thanks to your ears. Hearing is their main job, but it’s not all our ears do. These delicate organs also need care and protection, so let’s take a look at how …

Enlarged Adenoids Adenoids are a patch of tissue that sits at the very back of the nasal passage. Like tonsils, adenoids help keep the body healthy by trapping harmful bacteria and viruses that you breathe in or swallow. Although you can see the tonsils at the back of the throat, adenoids aren’t …

At just three months old, a blue-eyed boy named Sam was diagnosed with profound hearing loss. His parents, Chris and Teresa, found comfort and hope as they learned that a cochlear implant could one day help Sam to hear. Cochlear implants are devices that can restore the ability to sense …

It was the day before Sam’s implant was activated and, like most days in the month after Sam’s surgery, I spent the drive home from work imagining the moment our son would hear us for the first time. Halfway through the trip, “Here Comes the Sun” came on the radio …

The audiologist rechecked the connections and made sure the earpieces were still firmly positioned in Sam’s ears. Even as the noise being pumped directly into his head became audible to the rest of us, our infant son slept. Limp lines crossed the computer screen for half an hour, and I …

In the 9 months leading up to surgery, we found comfort in the answers to virtually every question we posed. Now we were about to hand Sam over for his procedure, so any unexpected bit of information would give us pause — even what the surgeon had for breakfast. “Coffee …

Try to remember leaving the maternity ward with your first child. There’s no owner’s manual or toll-free help line, just the weighty realization that you are on your own with the fragile little person whose car seat you can barely master. Now multiply that feeling by 100. That’s the way …

A boy in my 8-year-old daughter’s class has a cleft palate. I know that he has trouble finding friends because other kids — including my daughter — are wary of his difference. How can I encourage her to reach out to him so other kids will too? – Dalla This …

My young son has a cleft lip, and other kids have been making fun of him. How can I help him handle the teasing? – John Adults can help by letting all kids know that teasing and making fun is never OK — that it is unkind, unfair, and hurtful. …

Why Surgery? Many kids get middle ear infections (known as otitis media, or OM), usually when they’re between 6 months and 2 years old. Some kids are particularly likely to get them because of environmental and lifestyle factors (like attendance at a group childcare, secondhand tobacco smoke exposure, and taking a …