Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="RoseRodent" data-source="post: 2523872" data-attributes="member: 38395">Very late to this party, but I lived this. When my daughter was young she was back and forth, back and forth, hearing down, hearing up, hearing down, hearing up (one normal test does not a complete discharge make!!!) and hearing down. She couldn't hear me, I couldn't understand her because with her hearing loss during the language development phase she struggled to speak clearly and had very little vocabulary. She became very shy and wouldn't speak very much. The hearing people told us the loss was not worth doing anything about, the speech people saw her for a while then said her speech was "good enough to be understood" but that's by the general population, not the one person she most needed a great, close relationship with. Communication was such a frustration! I took her to the local Deaf school mum and baby afternoon and it was amazing. They actually offered her a place in their nursery, as the criteria for a nursery place are much less stringent than a place in the school, which she'd never get with a moderate unaided loss. Sadly, we just couldn't make daily attendance work as the school was a 90 minute drive each way and she wouldn't be eligible for transport assistance, but the contribution that the bilingual environment and the other kids who didn't use speech either was awesome for her confidence. In later years, we took a family sign class together (BSL cos we are in the UK) and it just gave us enough support to get things across to each other. Her speech has really come on, and her hearing was 25 at the last test, which is very close to the normal zone. But I don't make any assumptions that she can hear me OK, because it can fluctuate back down again too. We have to make sure the school understands this is a real thing, not her ignoring them, and need to give them a good facepalm every time they tell her to let them know if she doesn't hear things. She is now 11 and we are now moving on to some flashcard packs, posters and sign songs to increase our vocabulary in ways which make sense for the things we personally need and want to chat about. Our communication style is now SSE as it fits for us, even if we do get lambasted by every side for not doing "real signing" Hope there is something usable in there!</blockquote>

Verification