Parents apathy in their deaf child's educational progress etc

I'm pondering on this question. But I'll talk before posing this ?

I went to school for the deaf, as some of you might know, and observed that only maybe a handful of kids out of 85 students has parents who signed. However, most has little or no interest in their child's progess at school. Teachers found it difficult to get them in for parents-teacher interviews or school council and such.

I know many parents doesn't know how or care about how they can be involved in communication and education for the child. My mother was not one of them, thankfully.

I know Shel90, deafBajagal and few others have put up with this in their work constantly.

So this made me wonder if those parents are apathetic about being committed or interested in reports of their deaf child's progress, has the same apathy with their hearing children's educational progress?

Would be interesting to observe if they expressed more interest in their hearing child's progress than the deaf child.

Leaving you to ponder and debate, if needed.

Part of it could be that the parents are in denial.

When a kid is found to be deaf, most parents would likely be shocked at first. Some of these shocks fade away and parents learn to accept the fact that their kid is different, but learn to live with it and do things to help the kid grow. However, there are some shocks that don't really go away... so they try to ignore it or deny it. That results in kids not getting the attention they need and the parents playing the blame game when their kids are not getting what they need.

Well....................I think that a lot of the parents might have been burnt out from fighting so hard for stuff in mainstream placements etc . In recent years Deaf schools have been the placement of last resort. So of course, they'll be a lot of oral failures there.

I believe that the fact that many children arrive at the schools for the deaf after, and only after, the oral programs have failed them offers a clue into the answer to your question. Parents are too often willing to be involved as long as the child is progressing according to their demands for that child to conform to their standards for communication. When it is apparent that the fault for lack of progress is not with what the child is doing, but with what the parent has failed to do, they are relegated to the school for the deaf, and then an academic institution is then charged not just with educating the child, but with providing the family atmosphere for that child, as well. It is the old "I've done everything I can, now its your turn" attitude. But the fact is, these parents have not done everything they can.

Too many parents seem to be willing to make extra effort in the name of having the child change to meet their needs, but are unwilling to do what is necessary to change in order to meet the child's needs. That is not to say all hearing parents are that way, because quite obviously, they aren't. But there are still too many that are.

Parents are very willing, it would seem, to have the child adapt to their needs. The problem with this approach is that the child is a child, and the parent is the adult. It is incumbent on the adult to make those changes, not the child. How often have we heard parents use the excuse of "It's too hard to learn another language." as justification for not learning ASL for their deaf child? What about the difficulty of learning oral language as the only means of communication for the deaf child? What is difficult for the parents is not the issue. What is in the best interest, and will facilitate linguistic, psychological, educational, and social development of the child is the primary issue.

Personally, I raised a deaf child as a single parent, played the role of both mother and father, as well as only breadwinner, and still managed to learn ASL and be involved in both my son's academic pursuits and volunteer for the after school activities at his school. That experience led me, once my son had completed his secondary education, to return to school to continue to be involved on a professional level. Has it been easy? No. Has it required that I make sacrifices? Yes. Was it my duty, as the hearing parent of a deaf child to do so? Absolutely. To do less would mean that I had not fulfilled my obligation to the child I created and gave birth to. Does that make me special? Of course not. I simply makes me a person that chose to do what I was supposed to do. Adapt my lifestyle to the needs of my child.

Perhaps, as parents, we need to be less concerned with whether or not we have time to go out to dinner, live in the biggest house on the block, and wear all the latest fashions, and more about providing for the real needs of our children.

I am the hearing parent of a deaf child and of a hearing child and I am equally interested in the education of both. That said, I am more concerned about the education of my deaf child because of all of the controversy surrounding educating a deaf child. Not that there isn't controversy about educating hearing kids, it's just not as much.

Jillio, I understand you view but you are putting way to much blame on the parents in my opinion.

rockdrummer said:

I am the hearing parent of a deaf child and of a hearing child and I am equally interested in the education of both. That said, I am more concerned about the education of my deaf child because of all of the controversy surrounding educating a deaf child. Not that there isn't controversy about educating hearing kids, it's just not as much.

Jillio, I understand you view but you are putting way to much blame on the parents in my opinion.

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You've made that clear to me before. But, if it isn't the parent's responsibility, whose responsibility is it? There is a difference between blaming and assigning responsibility.

jillio said:

You've made that clear to me before. But, if it isn't the parent's responsibility, whose responsibility is it? There is a difference between blaming and assigning responsibility.

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I'm sorry but there is no difference between blaming and assigning responsibility. To blame is to find fault with or hold responsible for.

jillio said:

When it is apparent that the fault for lack of progress is not with what the child is doing, but with what the parent has failed to do

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I believe the responsibility falls on many. Its a combination of the parents, the child, the educators, the scientific community, the deaf community, the medical community and all of the people that claim they have the childs best interest at heart. I would also put some responsibility on the people that hold the information that says a given approach yeilds the best results. If everyone that claims to have the interest of the child at heart truly do, then why on Gods green earth would they not choose a common path?

rockdrummer said:

I'm sorry but there is no difference between blaming and assigning responsibility. To blame is to find fault with or hold responsible for.



I believe the responsibility falls on many. Its a combination of the parents, the child, the educators, the scientific community, the deaf community, the medical community and all of the people that claim they have the childs best interest at heart. I would also put some responsibility on the people that hold the information that says a given approach yeilds the best results. If everyone that claims to have the interest of the child at heart truly do, then why on Gods green earth would they not choose a common path?

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I don't know RD. Why wouldn't they choose a common path? While I agree that responsibility, in part, falls to the others that you have named, in the end, the it is the parents' responsibility, first and foremost, for the child.

deafdyke said:

Well....................I think that a lot of the parents might have been burnt out from fighting so hard for stuff in mainstream placements etc . In recent years Deaf schools have been the placement of last resort. So of course, they'll be a lot of oral failures there.

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In my experience, that has been the most common reason.

Well, how about different generations of deaf children?

I mean 20 years ago, most children became deaf because either of diseases and genes. So either good or bad parent can get a deaf child.

But nowadays, most children became deaf due to drugs, alcohol, premature birth, and genes.

But when you see it as that way, it's most likely parents are already not good if they used those harmful effects on a child.

So the cycle continues, they would probably not care about education at all if they bothered to use drugs while they are pregnant.

I would like to see the stats of cause of deafness in the children and compare it to the past and see if it made any difference.

That's how I view it. It's just one theory.

Silentwolfdog said:

Well, how about different generations of deaf children?

I mean 20 years ago, most children became deaf because either of diseases and genes. So either good or bad parent can get a deaf child.

But nowadays, most children became deaf due to drugs, alcohol, premature birth, and genes.

But when you see it as that way, it's most likely parents are already not good if they used those harmful effects on a child.

So the cycle continues, they would probably not care about education at all if they bothered to use drugs while they are pregnant.

I would like to see the stats of cause of deafness in the children and compare it to the past and see if it made any difference.

That's how I view it. It's just one theory.

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My coworkers who have been working in this field for 20 plus years say that today's deaf kids are different than before. I asked them was it cuz of deafness being caused by drugs and stuff and they said no cuz even back then there were kids who became deaf from drugs. They said it is cuz of LRE laws. Just quoting what some of them said. They could be wrong ..who knows?

Anyways, you do have a good point.

shel90 said:

My coworkers who have been working in this field for 20 plus years say that today's deaf kids are different than before. I asked them was it cuz of deafness being caused by drugs and stuff and they said no cuz even back then there were kids who became deaf from drugs. They said it is cuz of LRE laws. Just quoting what some of them said. They could be wrong ..who knows?

Anyways, you do have a good point.

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I agree. Silentwolfdog does have a good point. I don't have the exact stats to quote, so this is an estimate....approximately 15% is thought to be congentital, and the rest is due to congential exposure to pathogens during the preganancy. Pathogens can be viral, or introduced agents such as medications, drugs, or alcohol. Of the viral agents, CMV is the most common, and has taken over the role of rubella that we saw 35-40 years ago. It is also thought that many children exposed to CMV congentitally are diagnosed as their deafness being from "unknown etiology" because the pregnant woman often does not have symptoms, or is misdiagnosed with the flu. The remainder of the cases are listed as "unknown etiology". That doesn't mean that they aren't viral, or drug induced, or genetic. It only means that the medical history is not complete enough to determine. Mind you, I am talking about children who are born deaf, not ones that acquire deafness.

I can see where there might be some differences, especially with the CMV caused deafness. Congenital CMV deafness has also been linked to specific learning disorders and specific behavior disorders. So if you have a classroom full of kids with congential CMV deafness, you are most likely noticing patterns in their behavior and learning styles as well.

jillio said:

I agree. Silentwolfdog does have a good point. I don't have the exact stats to quote, so this is an estimate....approximately 15% is thought to be congentital, and the rest is due to congential exposure to pathogens during the preganancy. Pathogens can be viral, or introduced agents such as medications, drugs, or alcohol. Of the viral agents, CMV is the most common, and has taken over the role of rubella that we saw 35-40 years ago. It is also thought that many children exposed to CMV congentitally are diagnosed as their deafness being from "unknown etiology" because the pregnant woman often does not have symptoms, or is misdiagnosed with the flu. The remainder of the cases are listed as "unknown etiology". That doesn't mean that they aren't viral, or drug induced, or genetic. It only means that the medical history is not complete enough to determine. Mind you, I am talking about children who are born deaf, not ones that acquire deafness.

I can see where there might be some differences, especially with the CMV caused deafness. Congenital CMV deafness has also been linked to specific learning disorders and specific behavior disorders. So if you have a classroom full of kids with congential CMV deafness, you are most likely noticing patterns in their behavior and learning styles as well.

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Interesting!

I am curious if this mean we know that rubella did not cause learning disorders and specific behavior disorders while cogential CMV(herpes?) do?

Are there some specific areas of learning disorders and behavior disorders we can recognize in those deaf due to CMV, or is it accidentally?

This is interesting, Silentwolf and Shel90. I also wonder if some of this is due to the feeling many of us get that our generation was better than the new one, as I notice a difference in hearing children now and before, too?

flip said:

Interesting!

I am curious if this mean we know that rubella did not cause learning disorders and specific behavior disorders while cogential CMV(herpes?) do?

Are there some specific areas of learning disorders and behavior disorders we can recognize in those deaf due to CMV, or is it accidentally?

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Rubella wasn't thought to cause any specific learning disorders or behavior disorders, but then the rubella hump was in the 1960's, and many,many LDs and BDs weren't diagnosed then. It was simply assumed that learning difficulties or behavior problems were the direct result of being deaf. We did know, however, that rubella deafness, in the majority of individuals, follows a very specific pattern. I think it is likely, if those individuals were children today, we would see that much of what was called "deaf behavior" was really some form of neurological difficulty caused by the congenital rubella exposure. In the 1960's, dyslexia was a little recognized and misunderstood disorder. Today, it is widely diagnosed, and many adults that suffered through a childhood with the disorder undiagnosed have stepped forward and said, "Yes. That is what was wrong with me! I wasn't just a stupid kid who didn't knowhow to behave in class!" The same can be held true for other LDs. It, at one time, was very acceptable to blame the child for misbehaving when the child actually had a neurological problem that needed to be addressed. And particularly so if the child was deaf. It was an easy out to blame all the child's difficulties on their deafness without looking for other possible causes for the problems.

Baylor College of Medicine offers this brief description of congential CMV exposure:



What are signs and symptoms of congenital CMV disease?


Signs and symptoms of congenital CMV infection that are observed at birth include: small head size (microcephaly), small body size, little red spots under the skin (petechiae), enlarged liver (hepatomegaly), enlarged spleen (splenomegaly), yellow color of skin and eyes (jaundice), low blood count (anemia and/or thrombocytopenia), pneumonia, seizures, abnormal muscle tone, calcium deposits in the brain (intracranial calcifications), vision loss, and hearing loss.

Although some of these conditions may resolve, many children will have life-long disabilities of varying degrees. Possible disabilities associated with congenital CMV disease are deafness, blindness, physical and motor impairment, seizure disorder, developmental differences and learning delays.

What shocks me is how could parents NOT want to learn ASL if their child is deaf? I mean, what parent would not want to be able to communicate with their child?? I don't know... but it blows my mind how a parent can indirectly blame their child for being deaf by refusing to learn a way to communicate with them. I almost view this lack of learning as intentional neglect --- emotional neglect. A child needs to be able to communicate with his or her parents and the child has done nothing wrong by not being able to hear.

purpleagent711 said:

What shocks me is how could parents NOT want to learn ASL if their child is deaf? I mean, what parent would not want to be able to communicate with their child?? I don't know... but it blows my mind how a parent can indirectly blame their child for being deaf by refusing to learn a way to communicate with them. I almost view this lack of learning as intentional neglect --- emotional neglect. A child needs to be able to communicate with his or her parents and the child has done nothing wrong by not being able to hear.

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I feel the same too.

purpleagent711 said:

What shocks me is how could parents NOT want to learn ASL if their child is deaf? I mean, what parent would not want to be able to communicate with their child?? I don't know... but it blows my mind how a parent can indirectly blame their child for being deaf by refusing to learn a way to communicate with them. I almost view this lack of learning as intentional neglect --- emotional neglect. A child needs to be able to communicate with his or her parents and the child has done nothing wrong by not being able to hear.

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I agree. They seem to want to make a small child bear the responsibility of accommodation. It jsut doesn't make sense.

Miss-Delectable said:

I'm pondering on this question. But I'll talk before posing this ?

I went to school for the deaf, as some of you might know, and observed that only maybe a handful of kids out of 85 students has parents who signed. However, most has little or no interest in their child's progess at school. Teachers found it difficult to get them in for parents-teacher interviews or school council and such.

I know many parents doesn't know how or care about how they can be involved in communication and education for the child. My mother was not one of them, thankfully.

I know Shel90, deafBajagal and few others have put up with this in their work constantly.

So this made me wonder if those parents are apathetic about being committed or interested in reports of their deaf child's progress, has the same apathy with their hearing children's educational progress?

Would be interesting to observe if they expressed more interest in their hearing child's progress than the deaf child.

Leaving you to ponder and debate, if needed.

Click to expand...

Interesting. In the short (but feels long at times, ) six years that I've been teaching, I haven't seen a lot of parents who value education in general - regardless if it is for their deaf child or his/her hearing sibling(s). Of course there are countless types of factors that can be mentioned - socioeconomical, cultural, psychological, etc. Bottom line - I feel that many parents (not all, of course - I've worked with some AMAZING parents) just don't give a damn. More than a few seem to view me as a free babysitter, rather than a certified teacher of the deaf. Dr. Ruby Payne wrote a wonderful book about poverty - even though that doesn't sound like it applies to this discussion - it does. In her book (gosh, I think it is something like Understanding the Framework of Poverty (1995ish?) - something like that. Anyways, she talks about different kinds of poverty - which doesn't always mean money. And how poverty can shape the parent's view and value of education.

A Framework for Understanding Poverty (1995) was the title...I just checked and verified. I went to one of her workshops. It was an eye-opener for me.