Doctors and Understanding Deafness

Lau2046

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I'm going through my room trying to get rid of clutter and I came upon some old medical documents that I saved. Basically it's the communications between the school and Mass General's Pediatric Neurologist.

One letter I found from my kindergarten teacher, described me having "language development below normal, her speech required great help, her hearing difficulty was present and her general health was fragile." She described the new school term and her concern of my "lack of language development and her withdrawing into her own world, thus I had several conferences with her parents. Unfortunately it was not until May that I was told that she was only wearing the hearing aid in school and only for three hours. (I had one at that time, all my parents could afford). She continues:

"Much to my disappointment, I spoke and have continued to speak and reward Laura for wearing the hearing aid at home. Since then she has shown more interest in all aspects in school and seems to be back in the real world. Laura has had speech therapy in school twice a week with the school therapist. She also noted Laura's withdrawal to a fantasy world of monters and then her return."

What the heck does that really mean? Is it not common for deaf children to tune things out? How much would I have heard with only one hearing aid, needing two? Has anyone had teachers make this criticism?

Edit to add: my mother read the report from the doctor which she dismissed as "BS." For whatever reason, no one seemed to connect my lack of development with my deafness. I just did a quick check and the two hearing aids I would later have were the Unitron 960P. Judging from the link, they don't look that strong:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_nkw=Vintage+Unitron+Hearing+Aid+Model+960P+Original+Box+AS+IS


Laura
 
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