Kids all ears in the hot seat

Kidz First Clendon's Annie Young checks 4-year-old Tanush Krishna Reddy's ears.

Auckland Airport is giving away $120,000 to NZ charities as part of its 12 days of Christmas initiative this year. The Herald is profiling each of the winning charities

Wriggling toddlers will meet their match when Kidz First Clendon Community Clinic nurses get the best seat in the house.

A $10,000 dental chair is on the way to the clinic, courtesy of Auckland Airport's 12 Days of Christmas campaign, but it's not little mouths the nurses will be looking into, it's ears.

The chair is a first. Staff currently treat patients on plinths similar to massage tables.

"When you put things in children's ears, they wriggle and move about because we have to treat them on those plinths," clinical nurse manager Claudelle Pillay said.

"The chair will support them better, keep them stable and mean we'll be able to get mum alongside them and through their procedures more quickly."

The Clendon clinic - and others in Otara, Mangere, Botany, Pukekohe and Papakura - see about 300 people aged from 3 to 18 each year.

"Most are very young, pre-schoolers. We treat them in their own communities, doing assessments, removing foreign objects and wax, dry-mopping discharges, and we do their hearing tests," Ms Pillay said.

The ability to hear well is crucial to child development.

"We see little ones people think have behavioural problems, but it's just that they can't hear properly, so they don't do well in school or with other young ones," public health nurse Annie Young said.

"But they can be different kids as soon as they hear well."

She has a special way of explaining to children about getting foreign objects, but especially wax, out of young ear canals, which is achieved using suction, probes and forceps.

"I ask them what they do when they go out with mum and dad and they get a drink with a straw in it.

"They all know about suction, so they understand what's going to happen."

Kidz First community service manager Kay Lawrie said Auckland Airport's generosity was welcome.

"It's fabulous the airport thinks of the children in the community. I had my eye on a chair like this but it didn't happen, so it's great the airport has given us a gift that's exactly what we need."