One of the reasons we choose the Oticon Ponto hearing aid, is it has less issues with feedback squeals. But my daughter’s Ponto still did squeal a bit. Friends shared videos of their children wearing a hat over their BAHS and no squealing. But my daughter’s Ponto’s squealed. Other families said their Ponto’s squeal more when using the Button Block with custom softbands.
Finally, someone shared a solution: Ask your audiologist to run the “feedback manager.” At our next audiology appointment, I made the request. But our audiologist said “no.” She was afraid that doing so would “lower the gain on important speech sounds.”
A few months later, my daughter had a head-cold. When she is not feeling well, she does not like to wear her headband. The problem is either the pressure on her head, or the noise. Either way, I do not blame her. I do not want to wear glasses when my sinus are congested.
After that head-cold, my daughter was having a hard time getting back in the habit of wearing her softband all day. She likes to wear hats, which causes feed-back squeals, so she kept taking her BAHA off. I made another appointment with audiology. Again I asked about running the feed-back manager. Again our audiologist expressed concern that doing so would “lower the gain on important speech sounds.” I shared, “she does not like to wear her BAHA for more than a couple hours a day, so wouldn’t it be better for her to wear it all day, every day, even if she is missing important speech sounds?” Our audiologist agreed, and ran the feed-back manager. She was delighted to discover that doing so had zero effect on important speech sounds. Now PipSqueak can wear hats and hoodies, with no squealing.
