Responding to Sound

“Did You Hear Something?”

When a child focuses their attention on a sound stimulus by watching intently, or smiling, it means that they are beginning to associate the sound with specific objects, people or activities.

• Make sudden, loud noises close to your child and then farther away.
• Make noises to your child’s right side, left side, and from behind.
• Vary the loudness of the sound stimulus. Increase loudness if your child does not respond.
• Decrease the volume until it is at a level where your child consistently responds.
• Change the sounds introduced.  Use toys (e.g., rattles, whistles, bells, music, squeaky toys), and draw attention to environmental sounds (e.g., vacuum, doorbell, trains, airplanes, cars, motorcycles, blow dryers, etc).
• Combine touch and visual cues with sounds to train your child to respond to each new sound introduced.
• Reinforce responses with smiles, praise, touch and cuddling.