ALDAmom Panel - Part 2

Part One

The infant/toddler stage:

When Wendy lost her hearing in 1996, Abby was one and half. Not being able to hear Abby's babbling or sing the Barney song was devastating. She used a baby monitor with a blinking red light to let her know if the baby was crying. Although she has sign English skills, she had problems with the idea of teaching Abby sign language. Wendy had always followed the philosophy, "use voice when talking with hearing individuals and use sign with communicating with deaf individuals." She also couldn't figure out how she was going to hold the baby with one hand and sign with the left hand; she had always signed with two hands.

The last straw came when the pediatrician determined that Abby had development speech delay; Abby's expressive vocabulary at 1.5 years consisted mostly of pointing at object and nodding or shaking her head to communicate her needs. The county has an early parent-infant intervention program and offered therapy for babies with suspected speech delay. They provided Wendy with a sign English interpreter so she could follow what was going on during therapy.

However, as a mother, Wendy wanted to be more involved in developing Abby's speech skills. It was then that she decided to get a cochlear implant. After Wendy received her implant, she purchase a multimedia CD-ROM and both she and Abby enjoyed listening to the many sounds on the educational CD-ROM. In time, Abby learned to help her mother change batteries on the cochlear implant speech processor. When Leenie was six month old, she enjoyed pulling off the headpiece from Wendy's cochlear implant when she was being held. It took several months to break her from this habit.

Eileen stated that during the infancy stage, it was wise to invest in baby cry signalers and have visual smoke detectors installed. The mother needs to be responsive and reactive with regard to these devices. She gave the example of how daughter Joanna never touched the baby cry signaler in nearly two years, but son John had it dismantled and tossed across the room about as soon as he could stand up to reach it. Some children ignore these devices and some children want to explore them, so these devices must be put in a safe and unreachable place.

With regard to daycare, Eileen's children first received daycare from a home provider and found that having the provider and parent keep a daily log helped communication; later the log book became a special keepsake. Eileen noted that her children attended the daycare center at Gallaudet University. Eileen liked Gallaudet day care very much especially because it promoted a signing and voicing environment.

Wendy stated that Abby and Leenie attended family day care; Leenie still does. Wendy has good relations with the day care provider and can understand her with the combination of lipreading and listening. Abby has just started kindergarten and Wendy looks forward to the new challenging this stage of her life will bring. The combination of lipreading and listening has worked so far for communicating with the kindergarten teacher, school nurse, or school office secretary.

For preschool and the elementary grades, Eileen suggests getting the first names of your child's classmates so you have a chance of being able to lipread your child when he talks about friends or classmates. Teachers usually are cooperative especially if the ALDAmom doesn't ask for last names. Eileen always looked forward to getting the class photo which had all the children identified. If the ALDAmom has a party for her child's birthday, she would have the children put on name tags as they enter to help her know who is who. Eileen preferred to always have kids parties at her home as party places were too stressful for her. This may not be the case for everyone.

Eileen mentioned that she was a girl scout leader for daughter Johanna. One year she got a group of sign language interpreter students from NVCC to volunteer at troop meetings on an alternate basis to help her. This was somewhat successful as the interpreters were of varying skill levels but it was also a bit awkward at times. However, she felt it was worth it as the girls got to see diversity and learn empathy.

For emergency numbers, Eileen found people had a hard time understanding relay so she used a beeper. People understand beepers and then she would call back on relay. Once parents got to know her, they will learn to use relay to contact her. Children who come to her house are told to call moms to let them know they are at her house. She also use the caller id to recognize callers. If a local mom is calling her house and her son or daughter is there, she will have that child answer the phone. The kids know if they don't do as mom says - go home right now is the usual request - then they cannot come visit Eileen's home. They are very good at doing what their mother says and not taking advantage of Eileen being unable to use the voice phone.

Eileen noted that it might be helpful for children to have a deaf mom; it teaches hearing children to emphathize with others who are different. For example, her son became close friends with a neighbor who had little English partly perhaps because he was willing to do whatever it took to communicate and did not give up. That son eventually would go to visit the boy in Korea. Eileen asked her children about the pros and cons of having a deaf mother, and here are their responses:

Pros:

the children liked the fact that that they could make a lot of noise, use "bad" words and turn the tv loud and mom would not know. (But deafened parents need to keep check on the children's language; perhaps ask others to always tell them if they hear bad words spoken. The deaf parent must check the tv volume indicator to see what number the volume is set at and tell the children kids not to go over that number.)

Cons:

a) When the deaf Mom calls a child, the child has to stop what he or she is doing and go find mom to answer. The child felt that it was unfair that mom got to call out but child had to drop everything and find mom to answer. The child could not say "I'll be right there". So Mom needs to save the calling from other rooms for important things and go find child to talk to in person for less important things.

b) her children have a love/hate relationship with sign language. They think it was cool but it also made them different from others.

c) Eileen's children said that said Mom was just "weird" sometimes because of not hearing something or reacting strangely.

Question and Answer session:

Q: - If the child is talking under his or her breath so the Mom can't hear, what can the mother do?

A: Try to emphasize to child that it makes him/her look bad and is disrespectful. Stress that it is he/she who looks bad and not the deaf parent.

Q: My husband's family loves to go camping for the annual family reunion. How do you understand conversation your child's talking to you around a campfire, when the lips are usulaly not visible?

A: Use a flashlight.