Like most mums Katherine Gourley often jokes that her five-year-old son has selective hearing. But with Thomas preparing to start school next year, she was keen to find out if there were any real issues – and she discovered a fun and easy way to do it at home.

It’s incredible to think that although one in ten children suffer from hearing loss, it’s not something we think to get checked regularly. And left undetected it can impact their learning and quality of life.

Sound Scouts created an online hearing test app, in collaboration with the National Acoustic Laboratories, that gives parents an immediate report, and what to do if hearing loss is detected.

“It was great when I came across Sound Scouts, because I hadn’t seen anything that was that accessible,” Katherine explained. “It was something that we could take away and doing our own time in our own home. I was really excited to try it.”

Katherine, mum to five-year-old Thomas and three-year-old Lily, said while her son wasn’t displaying any obvious signs of hearing loss, she wanted to be sure.

“It was more for our peace of mind. There’s definitely times where I think he intentionally doesn’t listen to me. And there’s been a few times when we’ve been out where it’s been sort of loud, and we see a lot going on, he perhaps hasn’t heard us, or he asked us to repeat ourselves. So, just something I wanted to really sense check and find out. I had a little bit of a look online to see what was out there. And really, without big concerns or a referral, there weren’t too many options.”

Sound Scouts combines a hearing test with a fun game in a downloadable app and checks for three types of hearing issues:

1. Conductive hearing loss (middle/outer ear issues)
2. Sensorineural hearing loss (inner ear issues)
3. Difficulties listening in noise (potentially caused by processing issues, attention or language issues including EAL/D)

When connected to the internet it provides an immediate report once the test is complete.

“There’s a lot of information about the science behind it, which really fascinated me. It was a great, innovative new tool, disguised as a game for kids to play. It’s interactive. It’s engaging. It’s really user friendly and quick for them to jump in and play. And the science behind it actually has a great way of understanding and identifying, if there’s any hearing concerns, anything to be aware of.

“It gives you great guidance on what to do with the output of that.  It was easy to understand. It’s all up around about 10 minutes to complete. I’d be absolutely recommending it to friends to use if they’ve got any concerns or just want a bit of peace of mind about hearing as well.”

The first Sound Scouts test is a test of speech in quiet, using two syllable words. The second is a tone test and the third is a test of speech in noise.

“There’s three dimensions that that we get tested on, and the output comes back immediately. Two of them, he was great. And certainly within what is the normal range. One, he was sort of in the borderline area. And that’s probably what we expected. For us it was, it was probably really a great insight into what to be aware of, what to look out for.

“It’s something I’m conscious to continue to monitor and keep an eye on. The test itself gives you the opportunity where you are in that borderline range to retest and just validate that again. So knowing you’ve got that opportunity to do that, if there’s any concerns, you know where to go. You’ve got the language to speak to a GP or virtual to get some guidance. It was great for us to have a starting point and a baseline that we can continue to monitor.

“It was a really safe way for us to test it in our own space. And I’m really excited to try it on my daughter and recommend it. I think it’s just helped us feel that a little bit more prepared for school.”

For more information or to download, head to Sound Scouts.

This Real Mum Story was provided as part of a paid sponsorship opportunity. Katherine was chosen to share her story because she tried out Sound Scouts and genuinely loved it!