That reminds me! My DD's grade 5 teacher tactfully suggested we had our DD's hearing tested. At first we thought: "Nah, she does't have a problem... she can hear the word "ice-cream" from the back lane if I whisper it in the kitchen!". But, when we were at our wit's end we decided to follow her advice... and sure enough it turned out that my DD has a particular type of hearing problem: an inability to distinguish important noise from background noise. So if, for example, the TV was on and I asked her to do somnething she might seem as if she was ignoring me but in reality she just wasn't able to tune into me. The doctor discovered this when he used white noise in the headphones and asked her to repeat the words that she heard which was played at the same time... she couldn't... but if he stopped the white noise and just played a very very quiet sound she could hear it! But everything else had to be silent. It's not so much a problem with her ears... it's a brain processing issue that is extremely common and undiagnosed. Most kids grow out of it by the time they reach high school... but until then they are very easily distracted in the classroom because they can't follow the teacher's instructions. I'm not saying your son has this problem... just putting it out there.