Your newborn’s hearing begins to develop in utero and is the most developed of all their senses at birth. Infants begin to hear your heartbeat, your voice, and even your music choice before they are born. From the beginning, hearing plays an important role in how infants and toddlers learn, connect, and communicate.
In the early months, your baby begins to recognize familiar voices and responds to sounds by startling, turning their head, or calming when they hear a caregiver. As they grow, hearing helps to support language development and by toddlerhood children are listening, understanding, and experimenting with language.
Protecting your child’s hearing is important for supporting this development.
Keep volume levels low on TV’s, music, and devices, and avoid prolonged exposure to loud sounds when possible. When loud environments can’t be avoided, consider using child sized hearing protection, such as protective earmuffs. Activities that may be loud enough to damage hearing include auto races, firework shows, music concerts, motorcycles, dirt bikes, and ATVs, and exposure to discharging firearms.
May is recognized as the National Speech-Language-Hearing Month.
If you have concerns about your child’s hearing, don’t hesitate to talk to your child’s primary care provider.
Strengthening Families event
Thank you to everyone who attended our Strengthening Families Kickoff Event earlier this month - over 200 people showed up for connection and community. It was a joyful event and the weather was gorgeous. Lots of fun was had!
Lilly Brooke Annual Kids Fair in Sandpoint
Parent Connect in Sandpoint
Early Learning Fair
Policy Council updates
From our meeting on April 2nd
Catie presented the winter HELP Checkpoint, an ongoing assessment that helps identify children’s unique strengths and needs, identifies school readiness, and allows us to better plan home visits, playgroups, etc.
Over 83% of children met or exceeded age expectations across all domains - Language and Communication, Cognition, Approaches to Learning, Social Emotional Development, and Perceptual, Motor, and Physical Development.
Our EHS Policy Council parents recently completed the annual Policy Council parent-led project. This year, the project focused on encouraging and uplifting other families in the program. As parents of young children themselves, they wrote brief kindness notes offering words of encouragement to all enrolled families. The notes, and other small tokens of wellness, will be distributed to each family by their home visitor in the coming weeks.
Policy Council Elections for the 2026-2027 program year will be coming up May 4th-15th. Please talk with your Family Consultant if you are interested in serving on Policy Council and would like more information.
We're enrolling families now
We are currently enrolling families! If you or someone you know is expecting a child or has a child up to 36 months, reach out to learn more about our free home-based program in Bonner, Shoshone and Kootenai counties.
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