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

Surviving Holidays!

Holidays are an easy time to be so busy that language time is lost. Take your child with you, and use the shopping and "ferretting" time for one on one language. The word Christmas has two S sounds which need to be placed.

Celebrate the beginning of winter, and the family. At family gatherings, make sure your hard of hearing child gets to hear all the family stories and gossip. Many times I have found that the jokes bypassed the people who had hearing problems. If the little family stories are not reinforced, and repeated if necessary, for the child along with the rest of the family, an important part of WHO the child is gets lost.

Dealing with Discrimination

There may be people there who discriminate against your child, who avoid your child, or handle the problem by treating the child exactly like all the other kids, yelling at them across the room, or upstairs, and then announcing to the family that your child is stupid, compared to the rest of the kids. You only need to have this happen once for it to be quite devastating. It is your family, and you should arrange for this to not happen, by being there in the first place and heading it off at the pass. Your job as parent of a hard of hearing child in a family gathering is to have a good time yourself, but stay around the child, making sure the acoustics are maximised for him. If there is loud music, turn it down, or off. Turn the TV off.

Most people in the family will just need a little hint, because they are not sure how to communicate with your child.

 Don't leave the child, even for five minutes, with anyone who is not going to be competent or caring.

My mother-in-law decided Reid could hear fine when he was a toddler.  Reid could never be left with his grandmother for even 5 minutes because she would start in on him. I tried to explain to her, but her mind was made up. Family gatherings became for me, occasions which required intense recooperation for a week per day.

 Tired removes social coping skills 

The driving to family makes the kids tired, and you too, but you can cope with tiredness, while it strips away the child's language and social skills. When Reid was little, when he was passed throwing himself on the floor screaming from coping in bad acoustics, especially if the hearing aids had been forgotten. Yes, I forgot the hearing aids, from time to time! He would start running around the room, quite incapable of stopping himself, not eating, not still until we left the gathering. We called that squirreling, and it was common observable behaviour for several years, around 5 to 8 years old.

Traditionally, the hard of hearing child removes themselves from social situations when they are tired, by going to a quiet room, or dominating the computer. You have to find a balance between too tired to cope, and avoiding verbal situations.

Memories are not made playing solitary games

If your hard of hearing child retreats to a bedroom with a book or solitary game, I suggest dragging him or her back to the center of things, and supporting his or her right to be there, and filling in the blanks, until the child shows that he or she is happy. The future memories of family times are not created when the child is off by himself.

Choosing your own traditions

I used to make shortbreads every year, from real butter and brown sugar with My "Auntie Win's" secret recipe. This was the first baking my kids did, at age 6 months. The beauty of the recipe was that the ingredients were good, so unless the kids actually dropped the cookies on the floor, picking up dog hair and dust, the cookies stayed quite edible, no matter how "clunky" the artistry.

Some members of the family started to complain about needing heartburn remedies after eating the shortbreads. Other members of the family complained that the shortbreads were cooked too much, or not enough. One day I figured out that this stress was all needless. Clearly the butter and brown sugar was making them crabby instead of grateful. 

I gave up making shortbreads. Now my Christmas baking consists of tons of my own secret nuts and bolts, which are so good, and addictive that they start talking about when I am going to start making them...

And that is the secret to a happy family time together. Even if you are honoured to have a traditional recipe passed down for 15 generations from the Queen of Sheba, if it is too much, it is too much. Better to have a good time with the children, for your future holiday memories.

-PAM Candlish December 2001