Don’t Blame Yourself: How We Flew Under the Radar for 15 Months
If you’re the parent of a deaf child, especially one that manages to avoid early detection from newborn hearing screenings, you might find yourself with a lot of guilt. Though my son did fail his newborn hearing screening, he later somehow passed an otoacoustic emission test (OAE) and was declared hearing until 15 months [...]
Your Child’s Best Advocate
“The best defense is a good offense.” These are words to live by for parents advocating for their deaf child. While the professionals—doctors, therapists, teachers, early intervention coordinators, school boards—may truly believe they have the child’s best interests in mind, it is up to the parents to digest all their recommendations and stand up [...]
Announcing Deaf Echo’s Parents of Deaf Children Information Page
Deaf Echo has begun an ongoing project to make crucial yet balanced information about deafness available for parents of deaf children. We are attempting to do a few things here that, to the best of our knowledge, are either not being done or else are not being done to the extent needed. Deaf Echo’s [...]
A Flawed System
There was a brief time when I could not have cared less if my deaf son ever knew any ASL. I wanted him only to be oral. I figured if he got a cochlear implant, he wouldn’t “need” sign language, so why learn it? As irrational as it sounds, I almost feared him becoming [...]
“Parents” Shouldn’t Be A Lot Of Talk
I want you to run an experiment with me. Go to Google. Type in “deafness.” Look at what pops up—the top five sites. As of right now, as I type this at precisely 9:00 p.m. on August 26th, 2010, those sites belong to: – Wikipedia – About.com – The World Health Organization – The National [...]