I have a niece who for the longest time referred to pickles as “shupet.” Like filet or valet or CABERNET. In fact, for the first five years of her life Megan spoke the most adorable make-believe FRENCH I’ve ever heard. Megan is now 13 and there isn’t A TRACE of foreign in her day-to-day speech and text-messaging. But there was a time when her mother wondered if Megan’s lagging speech development had something to do with a hearing impairment seeing as how “shupet” has but one thing in common with the word pickle: It’s a cute name for a pet hamster.

Luckily, it wasn’t her hearing. And, much to my dismay, she eventually started referring to pickles as… well… pickles.

My three-year-old Kyra doesn’t speak quasi-French the way that Megan did but, like many toddlers her age, she struggles with certain sounds. She says “queese” instead of “please.” She says “wike” instead of “like.” She totally avoids words like “bourgeoise.”But who cares, right? She’s THREE.

Well. As it turns out, there was more to Kyra’s speech impediments than we realized. Thankfully, my husband Allan put two and two together before it was too late. “Do you think Kyra is hearing okay?” he asked me as she was whispering jibberish to herself one day. It had never occured to me that she wasn’t. But he’d noticed that she was always asking for us to make the TV “wowder” and would stand so close to watch that she’d literally have to turn her head from side to side to view all the action on the screen.

Now that Allan had mentioned it, Kyra was constantly screaming, “What did you say?!” as she held your face with her little hands and stared at your mouth while you tried to repeat yourself without laughing. Kyra also seemed a lot like a puppy that hadn’t learned her name yet. We could yell, “Kyra! Kyra! Kyra!” until we were hoarse. But if she wasn’t standing directly in front of us, we could continue to yell her name into eternity and never hear a “What?!” in return. The daycare was constantly complaining about her propensity to “ignore” those in authority as well. Without fail, her daily report stated that her manners were “okay.” Which was their nice way of saying, “We’re trying to raise children here. Not barbarians.”

So we took her to an audiologist and an ENT specialist. They confirmed what Allan had suspected. Kyra couldn’t hear very well. Both ears were fluid-filled. They asked Allan to stick his fingers in his ears. THIS was what she was hearing like.

“But I always thought that fluid in the ears meant ear infection!” I said. Yes, it does. “But I always thought ear infection meant pain and fever and miserableness!” I continued. Yes, it usually does.

But, evidently, not always. I forget that we were talking about KYRA. Kyra who can fall down a flight of stairs and then try running down the very same stairs ten seconds later because, HELLO, you kissed her elbow and made it all better! Kyra who can be covered in hives and lying on a hospital bed under bright lights, her face all swollen and itchy but still smiling as she proceeds to pick her nose because, DUH, what’s there to complain about when Mommy is standing here next to me! I always thought it was such a bragging point that I bore a child who rarely let on that she was feeling pain or discomfort. BZZZ. WRONG. Face wretched with pain equals red alarms that make parents take small children to doctors.

We were told that she’d need to be on antibiotics for a month. And because it’s entirely possible that she’s had the fluid in her ears for well over six months, it was possible that her ears would not respond to the antibiotics. They said she may need tubes. And more tests.The doctors tell us that her hearing may have been permanently damaged had we waited much longer. It should be noted that our family physician didn’t have the tools necessary to diagnose this problem correctly. We only got referred to the specialists at our insistence. And I have yet to hear a satisfying explanation for the lack of fever.

So beware of the child that never cries Uncle! And if your sweet baby is habitually ignoring you and is frustrated that you can’t UNDERSTAND her and is chronically sitting too close to the TV, you might consider having her hearing checked AND THEN putting her back in time-out. Just sayin’.