It’s different for hearing parents of deaf children. I recently watched the movie CODA where both parents and brother are deaf to a hearing daughter. It was interesting because the daughter asked her mom if her mom had wished she was deaf – and her mom said that she would have been able to connect with her better. This concept is so different for hearing parents because we weren’t expecting for our child to become deaf and we sure weren’t hoping for it. Sometimes, our deaf child is the first deaf person we’ve ever met.
This was certainly the case for our family with Inaara. It is human nature to want to relate and connect with your child on every level possible. In this circumstance, this has all been a learning process for us and an opportunity for our whole family to adapt to this new change that we’ve had. We’ve learned new ways to connect with Inaara whether it is teaching her sign language, spending time with her at the School of HOPE to better communicate with her verbally, and most importantly learning to communicate with cochlear implants. In general, Inaara has to pay more attention to what we are saying and use hearing as a skill that many of us don’t even realize. It is very common for deaf children who are learning to hear with cochlear implants to miss connecting words such as “is”, “the”, “if” and never hear them because they are focused on the other words. Therefore, this has been a learning curve for us on how to articulate our words differently, how to put sentences together, and how to speak to her without using as many hand gestures as we might be used too.
We are working through the challenges, we are learning every day to do things differently so we can adapt with Inaara and to give her the opportunity that our son, who is a hearing child, has. Not only are we adapting to Inaara’s needs but Inaara is adapting to her own needs which are the cochlear implants and learning to listen, focus, pay attention to the details, and scan the room and figure out who is calling her name. She is doing so amazing and I have to say: so are we.
We have this wonderful opportunity in our life where we get to learn a new culture and meet people that may have never come into our lives otherwise.
xx
