PipSqueak has Connective Hearing Loss, so wearing Big Sister’s “normal” headphones does not work very well. Usually she turns the volume up really loud, and can hear in her good ear. Or sometimes she wears her Pontos and the headphones. She ends up wearing the headphone crooked, with one in front of her ear and the other headphone behind the opposite ear. The volume is loud enough that I can hear it sitting next to her, so I’m guessing her Ponto’s are picking up the sound from the headphones.
Fortunately someone invented Bone Conductive headphones. Everyone recommends getting AfterShokz, but they are $80! My daughter has a small head. AfterShokz does make a mini version, which might fit her, but it’s BlueTooth, and I’d prefer a wire, so I don’t have to charge her headphones.
So I found this pair of Vidonn kid’s headphones on Amazon for $20. Worth a try, right? As it turns out, they still need plugged into an outlet to charge them for some reason, which is kind of obnoxious, that the can’t charge from the device. You don’t have to charge “normal” headphones, do you? I didn’t understand how these things work.
These Vidonn headphones are supper flexible / stretchy, probably so kid’s don’t break them. However, they don’t fit snuggly on her head and they don’t stay on very well. Bone Conduction headphones need to press firmly on the bone in order to conduct sound, so loose-fitting headphones is rather pointless.
I tried putting them over the top of her head. My husband also has conductive hearing loss, and he says these sound better when the ear-piece is on the bone behind his ear (the same place the Baha/Ponto sits), but our daughter seems to prefer trying to put the ear piece in her ear, but kind of in front of her ear.
She ends up using her hands to hold the ear pieces snuggly to her head, to be able to hear well.
I took a sweatband, cut a couple slits in it, put the headphones in the sweatband, and put that on her head. Using the sweatband to hold the headphone snug to her head.
I asked if she can hear well, but she’s lost in her own little world singing, “Let it go! Let it GOOOOO!” So I’ll take that as a “yes”
Overall, I’m not super impressed, but these were $20 (instead of the $80 name-brand ones), so you get what you pay for. I wouldn’t send her to preschool with these headphones and expect her teacher to figure them out. But we only use headphones on the rare occasion that I need her to sit quietly through a meeting or my chiropractor appointment.
As far as sound quality, my preschooler doesn’t have strong opinions about these things, so I asked my husband to try these headphones and tell me what he thought. His response is: “the sound quality is not based on the device itself, as much as on your ability to put it on the correct spot on the head. Once I put it on the bone behind my ears and held it tight to my head, it sounded great.” So these are great… if you can figure out a way to keep them held tight to the head.
