How Life Experience Breeds Identity
Having witnessed how far Charlotte has come from birth to six-years-old, one thing is evident - it takes hard work for deaf and hard of hearing people using technology to learn to hear and speak.
It always blows my mind when I meet or watch a video of an adult who is further along in their journey than Charlotte.
Click the above image of Caroline to watch her Brief interview on pbs.org.
(PBS also interviewed a Deaf woman who uses ASL. If you are interested in watching - click here.)
This gorgeous young lady, Caroline Clark, was diagnosed with hearing loss at 2 years old. Her interview with PBS is thoughtful and inspiring. I love how her identity resides more with being a woman and gay than deaf.
She works for a nonprofit that helps the deaf and hard of hearing community get access to hearing technology. It’s great to see how she’s sharing her personal experience with others on their hearing journey and how this probably led her to her current career.
My oldest daughter and son have volunteered at Camp TALK through VCU Audiology for the past few summers. They loved helping the kids of all ages with “special ears.” One of the first things Lola, 12 at the time, said after camp finished for the week was, “I think I want to be a speech pathologist and help kids learn to listen and talk, when I grow up!”
You never know how your life will be molded by the experiences you encounter.
Camp TALK
On the final day, 2017, there was a petting zoo. Since animal sounds are some of the first “learning to listen” noises kids learn to hear and make, it was neat watching the kids interact with the live animals.
I think there is an awareness hurdle when it comes to hearing technology and the path between getting access to hearing, learning to listen and speaking.
In some ways it seems straight forward: give the human brain access to sound, and they will learn to speak by mimicking noises and voices around them. And yes, it is that simple, BUT it is not that easy.
Caroline, in the video above, didn’t have any hearing until she was two. You can still hear what she refers to as her “deaf accent.” She very eloquently references it and makes light of it when people question her where her accent is from. So mature and confident in who she is... Hats off to her parents for instilling that self worth!!!
11 month old deaf and hard of hearing baby learns "woof woof" through bilateral loaner hearing aides and practicing Auditory Verbal Therapy.
Most of the kids I’ve met like Charlotte have been implanted within the first year and have zero “deaf accent.” That said, the majority of the hearing loss kids we meet are through our Auditory Speech Therapy group.
If you haven’t already, check out this young lady in my other blog post who is going to college. She has beautiful speech and references the years of practicing in her interview, even though she was seven when she got implanted.
Clearly every child and home is different, but so are the resources the families and kids have access to. I’ve been working the past few years in Virginia to help get more kids access to language support, as our state seems to have a problem supporting the needs of deaf and hard of hearing kids, for all languages and communication options. (Click here for more info)
One of the hardest parts along our journey has been the sheer dedication to weekly speech therapy. It’s exhausting for both the child and the parent. Everyone is working hard to listen and speak, then go home and take what you’ve learned and practice it in your day-to-day lives.
It’s also expensive, if your insurance doesn’t cover it, you need to get extra resources or your school district doesn’t have hard of hearing speech teachers or you want to get a babysitter for your other kids, so you can focus. It takes time away from the rest of your family and you have to miss work for the appointments sometimes.
BUT the gift of knowing she will one day no longer need it and be able to speak clearly to anyone, learn any language (including ASL, if she desires) and have any career she can dream of is worth every problem solving, self motivating moment I’ve had and will have as we continue this journey.