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Objective To characterise the Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) timeline and assess its relationship with psychological inflexibility among parents of children with hearing loss in Khorasan Razavi Province, Iran.Design Cross-sectional multicentre study.Setting Multiple hearing rehabilitation centres in Mashhad, Iran.Patients A total of 193 parents (71 fathers and 122 mothers) of children with documented congenital hearing loss.Intervention: not applicable (observational study).Main outcome measures The primary outcomes were the child’s age at diagnosis, age at intervention and the diagnosis-to-intervention interval. Parental psychological inflexibility was measured using the validated Persian version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire–Managing Child Hearing Loss (AAQ-MCHL).Results The mean age at diagnosis was 16.93±14.63 months and the mean age at intervention was 23.22±15.35 months, resulting in a mean diagnosis-to-intervention interval of 6.43±9.25 months. A weak but significant negative correlation was found between parental age and AAQ-MCHL score (r=−0.171, p=0.014). No significant correlations were found between AAQ-MCHL scores and any EHDI timeline variables (age at diagnosis, age at intervention or diagnosis-to-intervention interval; all p>0.05).Conclusions Despite universal newborn hearing screening, substantial delays in diagnosis and intervention persist (16.9 and 23.2 months, respectively). Parental psychological inflexibility showed no meaningful association with service timing, suggesting that systemic, social and cultural barriers likely play the dominant role in EHDI delays.