Understanding the Hearing Loss, Part 2

After I posted the last entry on our ongoing understanding of what it's like to live with a hearing loss, Hadley read it. After quibbling over some of the details, she simply said, "Some kids think I'm weird because I wear hearing aids." Being slightly addicted to reading parenting books, I knew to wait and hear her out. Her complaint? That in her school, she is the only kid of three hard of hearing students who wears hearing aids (the other two children hear with cochlear implants). As far as she is concerned, "normal" for her school is being a cochlear implant user. We talked it out and she went to bed feeling like she didn't need to wish for a greater level of hearing loss that would qualify her as a CI candidate.

I can appreciate her feeling of being alone in a world of cochlear implant users. When we first investigated therapy options, I met all these families with kids who used CIs. In two programs, Hadley would have been the only hearing aid user (although we ultimately chose the Auditory Verbal Communication Center for other reasons, a nice bonus was the mix of kids with hearing aids and CIs). Over the years, the majority of the families that I have met and most connected with are those who live in the CI world. Where are all the hearing aid users??!

Rarely does timing occur as perfectly as this. Yesterday, I picked Hadley up from her morning summer activity and she was beaming over making a new friend. As the details emerged, I found out that a new girl had attended the class and Hadley saw-- TA DA!!-- her hearing aids. I couldn't have planned it out better even if I had tried.