Friday, January 31, 2014

Doll's hearing aids

     When I was very little, my mom bought an “American Girl Bitty Baby” for me. She 
wrote to the company and asked them to make hearing aids for the dolls…. Ten plus
years later, they finally did just that.
     You can now get hearing aids for your American Girl doll. Now you do have to send
your doll in to get a hole drilled in for the hearing aids, but it is a fabulous way to
make a doll even more like you. I checked some other sites, and it is possible to get
hearing aids for “Twinn Dolls” and even “Build-A-Bear” toys.
     If you don’t want to get a hole drilled into your doll’s head or your favorite doll
doesn’t have that same offer, that’s okay too. Since this wasn’t available when I was
playing with dolls, Mom and I came up with other ways to give hearing aids to a doll.
  • First option: Ask your audiologist if they have a hearing aid shell, perhaps like one of the hearing aids on display. This way you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid for the purpose of your doll having one.
  • Second option: Use some of the polymer clay that bakes in the oven and make your own hearing aid shaped device. This way you can alter the size to fit the doll, making it smaller or bigger than real hearing aids.
     Then, add some of your old tubing to make the connection to the ear, and use glue or
a sticky tape (like a wall tape, where it is sticky on both side) and attach the hearing
aid shell behind the doll’s ear.
     If you want to design a cochlear implant, you could use a hearing aid shell and get
crafty: perhaps use a small flexible pipe or a short strand of metallicized thread
attached to a circular pin.
     Here are some links to some manufactured hearing aids for dolls:
  • http://store.americangirl.com/agshop/static/dollHospital.jsp
  • http://www.mytwinn.com/Doll-Hospital/Hospital-Accessories_2/My-Twinn-Doll-Hearing-Aid.html
  • http://www.buildabear.com/shopping/store/Plush-Hearing-Aid-/productId=prod81549