hardofhearingchildren.com by PAM Candlish MLS
"What did you say?" "Eh?" "WHAT did you say?" "MM?" "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" oh "PARDON ME!"

September 2005. Laughing or crying?

Are you laughing or crying when your hard of hearing child heads off to school? Perhaps it depends on the child. However you feel, it is a hard time of the year.

Work up a Daily Grind Schedule

You have to figure out the schedule, leaving just enough spare time for leeway when things go wrong. The child needs plenty of sleep. The child needs a good breakfast every morning. You need a routine to get the hearing aids and FM on the child which means that you did the hearing aid maintenance the previous night. Still, as the hearing aids go in the child's ears you must do the Ling Sound Test AH EE OU  MM SH SS (and a high frequency pass word like (cat spit) If you use the Ling Sounds regularly, you know to which sounds the child responds. If the child's response is different, either the hearing aids are not working, or the child's hearing has slumped either due to  additional sensori-neural hearing loss or more likely conductive hearing loss from nasty old fluid in the middle ear. Conductive hearing loss only goes to 40 dB then bone conduction takes over. 

Keep Notes on your Calendar

The Ling Sounds were not invented to be complicated. If you have a handy big mom's calendar on the wall, or a small one in your purse, it is a good idea to write down on the date the sounds which were missed. If this keeps up, take the child to the doctor and show them your calendar.

You Deserve a Break Today...

If pre-school life with the child has been a tempestuous storm of whining and tantrums, which you have carried on, through, over, under, around...for a better life in the future, you might feel like taking a break for yourself, happy to share the load with professionals. That is a good way to feel. We hope that with much earlier diagnosis, that the hard of hearing child will be relaxed instead of frustrated, and everything will fall into place.

I'm sure that the reality of how parents survive on a day to day or hour to hour basis is quite different from the advice  from the audiologist and speech therapist or auditory/verbal therapist.

Secret...I cried.

For those you are crying, I can only say " you have to get used to it." and very quickly because "meet the creature" night is coming up.  You have earned at least one whole day to yourself, in the tub with a new book about anything but children with hearing losses. You can only enjoy your day in the tub if you have finished wailing.

He Cried.

No doubt Reid won the universal award for stinker as a preschooler. He was also my baby so I had a little more time for him. My concerns when he went to school were based on hoping the school system would try hard on his behalf. He cried every day in kindergarten. I would go into school, see him crying and the teacher telling him to buck up. This was mainstreaming, and the principal had already threatened me for asking for a TA in his class. The child who was blind also cried at school, but she had a TA to try and divert her.

If your child is crying at school, your child is not ready for school. This is one thing I would change, take Reid out of kindergarten for another year, to let him grow up at home.

Special Rules for the School and Teachers about your hard of hearing Child  the IEP

No matter how hard you think anyone has advocated for you and your hard of hearing child, you still have to be knowledgeable. There are rules and regulations for many things, and if you think a rule is important for your child's successful school career, then make sure that the rule is in the IEP (Individual Education Plan) Some usual "rules" for hard of hearing children. A scribe is provided to take notes because most children with hearing problems have great dificulties listening and writing at the same time. An overhead projector is used in every class. If the teacher is good on the overhead, you can ask that those notes be photocopied and given to all the hard of hearing children in the class. The child's name is to be used when asking something of the child. The room must either have a soundfield or a mike on the teacher. The room should be checked for ambient noise.

You should have negotiated an IEP at some point before the child went to school. However if you are not happy with the child's situation at school, the first place to start is with the teacher. For example: PM fading means the child is too tired to learn after lunch, the solution is to schedule academics in the morning. Try asking the teacher if s/he sees the same problem you do.

Meet the "Creature" Night

I have not found "meet the creature" night to be a good time to talk about the needs of the hard of hearing child. Sometimes we ended up with teachers who thought the problem had been solved just by talking about it. Of course the principal is the next step, and a formal request for an IEP meeting. It is a good time to see the classroom and the other students.

Handicapped children are much more likely to be Abused.

I considered any school which any of my children were attending as places where I could show up without warning or invitation to see how my children were coping. Some schools have so much security today that they will say "A parent cannot show up." If I were told that, my children would have been removed from the school. There are plenty of things which go on at school which should not from bullying to teasing, name calling and victimization. The parent is the child's first protector, teacher and advocate. You should always go to the school office first.

The easiest way around this problem is to volunteer in your child's class regularly. I taught over 1000 children to play the recorder, read music and sing as a parent volunteer from Reid's grade 3 to 6. If you have talents in the arts, the schools often cut the arts ( like in Mr. Holland's Opus) so you can kill two birds with one stone, see the child at school in the school environment and put the arts back.

A Tape Deck in the Pocket

Reid went to high school with a tape deck in his pocket. The tape deck was the easy way for him do projects as he was learning to use an oral computer to cope with his dysgraphia. When he was bullied by his teachers, accused of cheating with the scribe, he had the tape deck to record the bullying. The problem was that he was usually in shock when these things happened in class, and he would forget to turn it on. Several days would pass and one of his friends would tell me.

I hope all the promises being made to the hard of hearing children and their families are being carried out.

I extend my sympathies to everyone who had to survive the devastation of hurricane Katrina. Reid's Godmother loves New Orleans and was there at the end of August. I was so happy to find out that she left 3 days before the hurricane, that's how close it came.

PAM Candlish
5 September 2005