Do You Hear What I See?: I can love myself and my ears

10 Reasons Why it can be Advantageous to Have a Hearing Impaired Child

10. S/he doesn’t hear the high-pitched bell on the Dickey Dee ice cream cart that comes around every day of summer just before dinner time.
9. S/he can be summoned from across a crowded room with the "silent scream" ("GET OVER HERE NOW"!)because of lip reading ability.
8. S/he sleeps through incredible thunderstorms while camping. Children in all other campers/tents are whining, crying and screaming.
7. Working parents don't need to worry about doing housework at night while s/he sleeps. Go ahead and vacuum under the bed.
6. Opportunity to look really silly chasing your child down the beach with flapping arms, because hearing aids don’t like sand and turf.
5. No need to worry about decorating your house for years, as the walls are covered with vocabulary lists, pictures of words you are working on and object labels for those important pre-reading skills.
4. You can use the child's closed caption decoder to watch television while talking to long-winded relatives, comforting a fussy (but loud) baby or vacuuming the carpeting.
3. In the early years, you will gain the incredible ability to keep up a running monologue for hours at a time. "Do you want some juice? Yes, I want some juice. Glug, glug, glug; the juice is pouring." This is even more fun when practiced in public places. For instance, the grocery store, "Do we need some apples? Let's get some apples. Crispy, juicy apples, yummy." This Auditory-Verbal procedure will draw stares from passersby, especially if you have forgotten that the child is not with you at the time.
2. Loud party (complete with ear-splitting music) at totally rude neighbor's house doesn't wake him/her at 2:00 a.m.
1. Very close parent/child bond formed by all those hours of doing Auditory-Verbal therapy and riding to and from the thousands of ENT/audiologist/pediatrician/AVT therapist appointments.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

I can love myself and my ears

I am so amazed by how much self acceptance along with the awareness of my own needs that I have acquired since I started this blog. Writing this blog has had the most profound impact on who I am as a person and how I view myself and how I view being HoH. It has truly opened my eyes to a world within myself that I didn't even know existed. I had no idea how much my life was effected by wearing hearing aids and being hearing impaired. Almost every area of my life is effected by being HoH, and yet I had never given it much consideration, nor did I know how much help I needed.
It seems so easy now. This is who I was meant to be. Becoming aware of my limitations has, as odd as it may sound, been the most freeing and liberating experience.
I'll give you an example. The other day at my little boys baseball game, I said, without even thinking about it, to one of the other mothers, that I needed to coach Cam to play as a hearing impaired child. (to use his eyes as his ears) I was shocked that I said it so casual. Then later I said I need to tell the coach that when Cam is on second base and looking at his coach for the signal to run, he needs to stay focused on Cam, so Cam can stay focused on him. Then just as natural as could be, one of the moms commented to me about something that had been said and I asked her what had been said because I couldn't hear. Wow. In the past I would have just done the yeah, I don't know what your talking about but I'll pretend I do, nod.
Its really okay to be Hard of Hearing. Its okay to need help. Its okay to ask. Its okay to be hearing impaired and not pretend you hear everything. Because I don't hear everything, and sometimes I do need help.