FM SYSTEMS AND YOUR SCHOOL DISTRICT
by Elyse who's daughter has a moderate/severe and severe/profound loss.

 Most hearing impaired children do benefit from the use of an auditory trainer (FM system). No matter what the child's loss is hearing aids amplify all noise, and the use of an FM system will allow the child to hear the instructor's voice at a substantially louder volume especially in poor acoustic settings, ex. classrooms, gyms, etc.

 Your school district must provide the hearing impaired child with the least restrictive environment as well as an FM device. When we first learned of this we went to a hearing impaired preschool program, and saw the children wearing the Phonic Ear 471, body unit, we also wanted to run away! Why were the kids so quiet? Why were they all wearing this transistor radio type thing with wires connected to their hearing aids? Certainly OUR child didn't NEED this?!

 Our speech therapist at the time told us of a fairly new device (3 yrs. old then) that Miss America (Hearther Whitestone) wore behind her ears that did the same thing as this body worn unit. She also said our daugter should be mainstreamed with itinerant services, ie. speech therapy and ininerant teacher of the deaf. Thus began our fight with our school district to provide the device we deemed appropiate for her vs. the body worn unit they deemed appropiate for her. THREE months later with numerous phone calls, letters, reading, and testing our daughter...WE WON!!!! Although we received no support from the League of the Hard of Hearing and Mill Neck Manor. They both said the device was created for older children. The PHONAK/OTICON FREE EAR BTE FM DID PROVIDE DRAMATICALLY BETTER HEARING FOR OUR CHILD!!!! It's a behind the ear wireless system that looks a little bigger then her hearing aids. We did not know this would let her hear better, we were just afraid she'd reject the body worn unit as we had heard so many kids do by about 2nd grade. We did not want our talkative, active, popular child to suffer emotional damage in a mainstream setting do to appearing different when clearly there was something better (modern tecnology) out there!

 We had a complete FM evaluation with sound field word recognition, sound field functional gain, real ear insertion gain and real ear audibility indexing using both devices. The results revealed that the Free Ear FM provides more usable high frequency amplification as indicated on the real ear insertion gain measurements resulting in a greater speech audibility index of 90% for the Free Ear as opposed to 74% for the body aid. The significance of this difference is that the Free Ear allows her to hear words better in a background of noise as evidenced by the sound field word recognition in noise test. She scored dramatically better with the Free Ear receiving a score of 80% correct as opposed to the body aid which only let her understand 44% of the words clearly. The results of these tests indicate that she performs up to her anticipated maximum level of hearing performance for speech when using the Free Ear FM as opposed to the body worn FM. In addition she should hear her own voice better, and would have better directional hearing which the body worn aid would not allow her to have.

 It still amazes me that there are children out there who do wear the body worn unit. The ONLY advantage is for really young children (under 5), because they don't break as easily! Just think if we didn't have our child tested, she would be understanding 44% of the words instead of 80% of the words all because the school system wanted to fit her with an obsolete device that they already had, and didn't want to spend money to update their equipment.

 In closing, our little girl is going into 2nd grade now, doing great, wearing and putting on her FM'S. We did have help from other sources. SEPTA (Special. Education. Parent.Teacher. Association) was a big help, OUR audiologist, OUR lawyer, speech pathologists, and parent advocates. In any way, if I could help obtain this device for your child let me know. My e-mail is LIMOMOFTWO@aol.com. Good luck and thanks for reading our story and...DON'T take what the school district tells you as the final solution! YOU know your own child BEST!

*Note should be made that the FM unit costs more than the body unit.

A Link to Learn a little More about FM Systems!

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