RoseRodent
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- Mar 12, 2010
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My daughter and I both have a hearing loss. Mine is moderate-severe cookie-bite and hers is mild to moderate flat, which she developed pre-verbally, so she's strongly affected by it. We are in the process of trying to get everything sorted out, but what we are really struggling with is communicating her needs in a way that can make universal sense to another person.
She doesn't need communication support with every word, she will get some things, but other things she doesn't, like cat/cow/camel she thinks are all the same, likewise parrot/pirate (doesn't help those normally appear together in pictures too!). I'm at a bit of a loss to explain her needs to people. At home we just sign any words we know so she gets the dual input anyway, but at nursery/school they will only pay for support she is defined to need and cannot function without. So there's no way we can have a full-time interpreter, but how to explain to people which words she is going to have trouble with? When you are hearing there is a nice clear difference between cat and camel, how can they guess what she might get wrong?
I have thought about cued speech, as it gives her those extra clues that she is missing, but again it depends on having someone who is able to produce it for her. But in general I am interested in experiences of cued speech with young children, as it seems to me as an adult that it depends on a well-developed sense of phonological awareness, to be able to understand that "t" is a distinct and specific sound and how it separates and blends from the rest of the structure. And how well do children cope with pronunciation differences? We live in Scotland, where pronunciation can be very different between accents, and I am English and my husband Northern Irish, we don't speak the same as each other or the same way as her nursery teachers. Does that come over confusing for a child being cued or do they adapt to it as easily as hearing children?
Also, does anyone have tips for times that we wind each other up totally with our communication issues? She will say something and I don't hear her, i want her to say it again or sign it, she often changes the subject completely to a word she knows I will get, but I know she didn't say that! Or she gets embarassed thinking she has said it wrongly and she doesn't want to talk any more. So she says something and I spend ages guessing what she said, then I eventually get it and ask her another question and she looks blankly at me cos she didn't hear me back!
This can go around for a long time.
She has now developed a habit of saying "mummy" pretty constantly just to check if I am within hearing range, she she'll say mummy, I say "yes darling" and she doesn't want anything. Within about 30 seconds she is saying "mummy" again, and certainly if I move or she moves she does another "mummy check" to see if I am within sound range. Of course, she doesn't understand that my ability to hear the single word mummy doesn't quite match up to ability to understand a whole 'sentence' delivered in toddler formation and half sign language! She also now says everything several times over, because she is so used to me asking for her to repeat herself, so she will keep saying "I want that one" ("I won tha-wa") over and over and over. Anything she says she now routinely says three times through. I'm not too bothered about that one, though when you've all had a tough day and no sleep and she's on your last nerve it's a bit tedious, but the constant all-day "mummy" is really getting us all down. Any suggestions, pleeeeeeease? We've tried all sorts of responses, and we don't want to say nothing in case she thinks I can't hear her, and we certainly don't want to discourage any communication she is offering, but it's mentally exhausting to have her say mummy for the whole day.
She doesn't need communication support with every word, she will get some things, but other things she doesn't, like cat/cow/camel she thinks are all the same, likewise parrot/pirate (doesn't help those normally appear together in pictures too!). I'm at a bit of a loss to explain her needs to people. At home we just sign any words we know so she gets the dual input anyway, but at nursery/school they will only pay for support she is defined to need and cannot function without. So there's no way we can have a full-time interpreter, but how to explain to people which words she is going to have trouble with? When you are hearing there is a nice clear difference between cat and camel, how can they guess what she might get wrong?
I have thought about cued speech, as it gives her those extra clues that she is missing, but again it depends on having someone who is able to produce it for her. But in general I am interested in experiences of cued speech with young children, as it seems to me as an adult that it depends on a well-developed sense of phonological awareness, to be able to understand that "t" is a distinct and specific sound and how it separates and blends from the rest of the structure. And how well do children cope with pronunciation differences? We live in Scotland, where pronunciation can be very different between accents, and I am English and my husband Northern Irish, we don't speak the same as each other or the same way as her nursery teachers. Does that come over confusing for a child being cued or do they adapt to it as easily as hearing children?
Also, does anyone have tips for times that we wind each other up totally with our communication issues? She will say something and I don't hear her, i want her to say it again or sign it, she often changes the subject completely to a word she knows I will get, but I know she didn't say that! Or she gets embarassed thinking she has said it wrongly and she doesn't want to talk any more. So she says something and I spend ages guessing what she said, then I eventually get it and ask her another question and she looks blankly at me cos she didn't hear me back!
This can go around for a long time. She has now developed a habit of saying "mummy" pretty constantly just to check if I am within hearing range, she she'll say mummy, I say "yes darling" and she doesn't want anything. Within about 30 seconds she is saying "mummy" again, and certainly if I move or she moves she does another "mummy check" to see if I am within sound range. Of course, she doesn't understand that my ability to hear the single word mummy doesn't quite match up to ability to understand a whole 'sentence' delivered in toddler formation and half sign language! She also now says everything several times over, because she is so used to me asking for her to repeat herself, so she will keep saying "I want that one" ("I won tha-wa") over and over and over. Anything she says she now routinely says three times through. I'm not too bothered about that one, though when you've all had a tough day and no sleep and she's on your last nerve it's a bit tedious, but the constant all-day "mummy" is really getting us all down. Any suggestions, pleeeeeeease? We've tried all sorts of responses, and we don't want to say nothing in case she thinks I can't hear her, and we certainly don't want to discourage any communication she is offering, but it's mentally exhausting to have her say mummy for the whole day.
