**This list is owned and operated by Elaine Blackford and has no ties to any hospital, clinic, facility, or professionals.***
The intent of this listserve is to provide information and emotional support to parent's of children diagnosed with Auditory Neuropathy and/or Auditory Dys-synchrony. We will share our experiences, problems, successes and failures, as well as, strategies used in dealing with a child that "Is not deaf....but can't hear". Parent's often feel more isolated than the parent's of a 'typical' deaf child. This is a relatively new area of audiology where many professionals disagree on management of the condition. Many of us have received conflicting advice concerning our children's diagnosis and it's management.
Professionals that deal with children diagnosed with auditory neuropathyand/or Auditory Dys-synchrony as well as, adults with the diagnosis are also welcome to join.

Auditory Neuropathy is characterized by a pure tone loss (most cases) with poor speech discrimination in relation to the pure tone audiogram, absent or abnormal Auditory Brainstem Responses (ABR) and normal cochlear outer hair cell function when otoacoustic emissions (OAE's) are tested. Many audiologist's are simply unfamiliar with the issue's faced in parenting an Auditory Neuropathy child. Resources dealing with this problem that are written in layman's terms are limited. As parent's, we must learn all we can about the disorder so that we can become advocates for what these children need to obtain language. We have chosen varied methodologies and/or strategies to educate our children. These choices were difficult and were made based on what we, as parent's, felt was best for the family and the child. We CAN discuss our personal experiences with a methodology, in relation to how successful it has been for our children with Auditory Neuropathy. PLEASE SHOW RESPECT TO THE CHOICES OF OTHER FAMILIES.

*****Debating methodologies is NOT appropriate on this list.*