Helping your child with glue ear
If your child has been diagnosed with glue ear, your doctor, nurse or audiologist will recommend watchful waiting to see if your child’s glue ear clears up on its own. Watchful waiting is a period of time in which a medical problem is monitored to see if it gets better on its own, stays the same or gets worse.
- 50% of children get better with watchful waiting in 3 months and 90% will have normal hearing at 1 year.
How to help during watchful waiting
- Helping your child to hear better: helping your child to listen and concentrate at home and school can help with their behaviour and reduce frustration for both you and your child (see next section for advice).
- Monitoring progress: keep a close eye on your child's hearing symptoms to check for improvements or need for further advice. You can download here a symptom diary to help you monitor your child's symptoms.
- Recognising when you need more help: if you think that your child's symptoms are getting worse or lasting longer than 3 months you may need to get more advice from the school nurse or your child's GP/nurse.
