I’m okay, I’m just hard of hearing.

One day I was with my son at the bank waiting in line.  My son was wearing his hearing aids that day since he was still just five and didn’t have any issues with people seeing him wearing them.  A woman was standing behind us in line and noticed my son’s hearing aids.  She took a tone with me and insinuated that I used to lay my son down in his crib with a bottle when he was a baby.  She basically accused me of being a bad mother and causing my son to have a hearing loss. I knew how to raise a baby.  I had taken classes and in fact I used to be a day care teacher so I knew a lot.  My son was also born premature so both my hubby and I attended some classes to learn more about how to take care of him. Anyway back to the woman who was being rude to me.  I was infuriated with her comments so I raised up my hair to show her my hearing aids and in a loud tone told her no that I have a hearing loss and that my son inherited his hearing loss.  She then realized that she overstepped her boundaries and perhaps she learned not to pass judgment so quickly.

Another day I was standing in line at the local pharmacy to pick up a prescription.  It was probably hot because I had my hair in a pony tail and my hearing aids were showing.  My son again was with me and was wearing his hearing aids.  A man was behind us and saw us both and for some reason felt sorry for us.  He actually offered me money for some reason and felt that I needed it.  I declined but he kept becoming persistent and at one point opened my hand and put the money in my hand.  I refused again and gave him back the money.  I was embarrassed because there were other people around watching what was going on.  I normally don’t try to draw attention to myself and this guy wasn’t helping.  I didn’t want my son to think that just because he has a hearing problem that he should expect handouts.  I know in the past I have been at restaurants and some will come by and drop off little key chains or something that they are selling with a note attached that they are deaf and that they sell these items as a means of living. I wonder if the man thought I was in the same situation but just because you are deaf doesn’t mean you need a handout.

 

Many deaf and hard of hearing people are in the every day work place.  I work at a pet store where I deal with the public.  I know of people who work in the schools or even in a library like Megan who writes the Hearing Sparks Blog.  Most hearing impaired and deaf people want to contribute to society just as any other person.  The only thing I would ask someone is to understand that I may not be able to hear you so you may have to speak up. 

Importance of Speech Therapy

Speech therapy is, I think , the most important part of getting a hearing impaired child to lead a normal life. In the past 37 years of my dealing with this disability, I took 13 years of speech therapy. I originally started my speech therapy classes at 5 years old not long after getting my first pair of hearing aids.

The first part of speech therapy started out by teaching me how to pronounce letters individually and then moved into joined letters such as “ch or sh”. Even though I don’t hear a huge difference in some of this it was still important for me to be able to pronounce it correctly.

When it was time for me to start school I was able to attend regular classes that the other hearing kids attended. I was pulled out of English class in order to do my speech therapy. I didn’t quite understand why they would pull me out of that class as it was an important class and figured I could benefit from attending it.

I continued to take speech therapy all the way through high school and again they continued to pull me out of English class. I would of hoped at the higher levels they would of pulled me out of social studies or some other class but English is an important class especially if you are planning on continuing in higher education.

On my senior year of high school I had decided that I finally had enough of speech therapy. I could already speak fairly well and really was just getting a little tired of it. I had already picked up other skills besides just the speech therapy. I of course had picked up the ability to read lips and the ability to read body language as well. I was often able to tell how someone felt just on their body language. It’s kept me out of trouble be avoiding situations where I could tell someone was in a bad mood or perhaps dangerous. Reading lips also helps when the hearing aids are not working as well or the environment is too noisy. I can even read lips from another room or through a window and be able to see what a couple is saying to one another. It makes for interesting dinner conversation when you are able to tell your dinner partner what someone across the room is talking about.

When I started college some people didn’t necessarily believe that I had as a severe of a hearing problem as I did because I was able to speak pretty well and able to pronounce most things. I was able to get some assistance in college eventually in which I got a note taker to assist me in taking notes while I read the teachers lips. I met some of the other hearing impaired students at the college and was able to compare the different hearing and speaking abilities. I was told that my deaf accent was not as profound as some of the others but while I had an easier time speaking verbally I really didn’t know sign language which made things more difficult in communicating with the other hearing impaired students.

Speech therapy has helped me a lot with my job as well since I work retail and have to speak a lot with customers. The customers usually don’t have any issues understanding me but I have been known to having issues not understanding them. I sometimes have to ask folks to repeat things and some will respond well and some loose their patience. I have been known to respond to the rude ones by showing them my hearing aids so that they understand that I cannot hear them correctly. They are usually more sympathetic then and speak a little louder. My only request is that they don’t try to speak slower and stretch their lips wider. I can read them just fine if they speak normal.

Since I knew that I benefited so much from speech therapy I made sure that my son started receiving speech therapy at an early age. If you were to talk to him you wouldn’t believe you were talking with a hearing impaired kid. Part of that is ability to pronounce things well, part of it is from his reading which gave him a strong vocabulary and some of it is him being stubborn and pretending like he doesn’t have a problem.

So as a final comment I would suggest for anyone in similiar situation to go ahead and get the speech therapy. It will give you confidence when communicating and help you feel better about yourself. If you know of someone who could use speech therapy find a nice way to suggest looking into it. I’ve been known to suggest it to friends and family who have benefited from it. It could be for you or for someone you love.

The many benefits of closed captioning

Back in the days we didn’t have closed caption, it was the most frustrating thing to deal with, I keep increasing the volume on the TV louder and louder until my parents would yell at me”Turn it down!”.

I couldn’t help but to want to turn the volume up and up since I didn’t want to miss anything that they were saying on the TV. Just before I graduated from high school I went to the local community deaf and hard of hearing center and they helped me apply for a voucher to get a new closed caption box to connect to the TV. I was so excited the day when my magic box arrived and it was time to connect it to my TV. Within a matter of minutes I saw words coming out on the bottom of my screen and I was able to read what they were saying. I said “finally, now i can watch TV!” Over time I started to decrease the volume on my TV and get used to closed captions. Closed captioning is the most wonderful to thing to have in the hard of hearing and deaf world. I actually felt l that i can be part of the world again.

Over time I learned there were many benefits to closed captioning. For one you can actually watch TV in the living room and if other people are talking you are not interrupting them. It also helps when someone is trying to talk on the telephone and now you are not blaring the television so they are able to hear clearly on the telephone. Our son has watched closed captioned television from birth and it appears that he is very strong in reading comprehension. Teachers have told us that he is able to read at multiple grade levels above him and are surprised at some of the words he is able to understand. My husband is a huge movie geek and loves to hear every word. With closed captioning he is able to tell what is going on in even with the actors are whispering. We were even surprised on our first film where even the swear words would spelled out in closed captioning

One day we decided to upgrade our television to a new flat screen and my husband bought a HDMI cable to hook up the DVD player to the new television. We started to play a movie and to our shock there was no closed caption. We started fumbling through the book on the television and through DVD player to see what the issue was. Later through some research on the internet we found out that the HDMI signal does not pass by the Closed Caption convertor that is internal to the television set. If we were to watch something over the air waves it would but for some reason the HDMI signaling bypasses it and therefore there would be no more closed captioning for us. If you used standard Audio/Video jacks those signals do pass by the closed caption decoder so our VCR actually works still. For DVD’s though the movie industry has figured out that this is an issue and now makes sure that there are always English subtitles on new movies. Subtitles do not have everything in them that closed captioning did such as environment sounds and a lot of time you will not see the words to a song in subtitles even though you would in closed captioning. I think the song lyrics has something to do with licenses that subtitles are regulated by but closed captioning was exempt to.

We are now pleased with our new television, and we recently got digital cable and made sure our box would convert the closed captioning and transmit it through our HDMI cable. Overall closed captioning has made life easier on me and my son and I’m glad it’s around.