How to Turn Your Baby into a Little Listener and Talker

A parent who has a child with hearing loss can teach their child to become a great listener with a powerful and effective strategy - Hear It Before You See It (sometimes known as audition first). This strategy is about making ear contact before eye contact. Let’s learn what this strategy is, why it works, and how you can start using it right away, especially with your little one. 

What is the Hear It Before You See It Strategy and Why Does it Work? 

Babies do a lot of listening before they ever say their first words. Providing ear contact before eye contact is critical to growing your baby's auditory and listening skills. You can help your baby become a better listener, especially when they have a hearing loss, by focusing on building and growing those listening skills. This strategy is a great way to help your baby practice listening and using their ears to learn language every day. You can also teach this strategy to others in your family so they can use it too. 

What Does Hear It Before They See It Look Like? 

When you're playing with your child, you may talk about an object or routine before they see the object or begin the routine or activity. If you have a daily routine such as getting ready for bed, you may describe the action before the action begins to happen. Here are a few examples of how you may use the Hear It Before They See It strategy in a routine at home depending on your child’s age.

With Baby: During Diaper Change

Before you start to go and pick up your baby or make movement towards your diaper bag, you might say, "Oh, your diaper is stinky, let's go change your diaper," before you start moving towards them, bending to pick them up, or moving towards the changing table. 

What to Look For: Does your baby start to squeal or quickly crawl away from you because they don't want to get their diaper changed? That would be a key observation for you to share with your support team. Why? Because it tells us the language is now having meaning, and they're beginning to understand spoken language through their ears, which is a key auditory skill developmental milestone. 

With Baby and Toddler: Playtime and Toys

You might hide a toy under a blanket or in a bag, just out of sight of your child. Then say, "Listen, oh, I hear an airplane. Ahhhhh, I hear our airplane." Say the name of the object and then make a sound, an early beginning sound, or learning to listen sound that that object might make. Say it again,  "Listen. Ahhhhh, I hear the airplane. It's an airplane. Ahhhhh." before you bring out the toy airplane. 

What to Look For: As you play, narrate what’s happening and say, "The airplane's going up, up, up." The pause and wait for your child to provide a vocalization to make the plane go up. Maybe they say “uh, uh” or “up!” Once they do, you can make the plane fly around. Again, pause at the top, listen, and wait to see if your child vocalizes to make that airplane go down. Do they start to imitate the sound “ahh” or that beginning vowel sound?

With Any Age: While You Read 

As you're opening the book, reading, and sharing the book, talk about the page before they see it. So I might say, "Oh, you won't believe what the hungry caterpillar ate next. It's a big green leaf. Whoa! Look, he munched, munched, crunched, ate, gobbled on the green leaf. He was very, very hungry and his tummy was hurting, and now he feels better after he ate the green leaf." Then show them the pictures on the page. 

What to Look For: Observe how your baby or child is responding. Did they turn to the words? Did they anticipate the sound? Are they understanding what’s happening in the story without the pictures? These would be all indicators that your child's listening skills and language skills are developing. 

Why is The Strategy Important and How Does it Help Your Child Develop Their Listening and Spoken Language Skills? 

This strategy teaches your child that sounds, words, and sentences are powerful. It starts enhancing their listening skills very early and helps with their auditory awareness and attention. When you make ear contact before eye contact, it begins to expose them to vocabulary and meaningful language during interactions with you. And it's the foundation on which they're going to be building their receptive language skills, which is: 

• their understanding of language
• their expressive language (which is how they're going to put words together to express their own thoughts)

This is truly the beginning to get them off to a great start to be a wonderful conversationalist. 

Watch the video below to get more tips on how to turn everyday moments and routines with your baby into listening and learning opportunities. 

Hear It Before They See It: A Strategy to Use with Little Listeners