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.
