any other parents of deaf children?

[mamabeetle]

i dont really view it as a disability per se, but there isn't a parenting deaf children forum....lol

my hub has a genetically dominant disorder, a neural tube defect, that causes deafness, among other things. its called waardenburg syndrom (type2). we have 2 sons who also have the syndrome. that said, we are obviously a signing family. i'm the only hearing person in our home actually. my youngest also happens to have a spectrum disorder, though due to being at a school for the deaf with an iep and super small class sizes, we have been able to meet his needs with little emphasis on the asd. i am glad and my expectations for him are sky high. he is a bright little guy. my oldest is like rocket scientist smart with a super witty sense of humor that i just adore. both boys make life super rewarding, i adore them.
anyways, just curious if anyone else is in a similar boat?

[2boyzmama]

Hi!

We are a signing family, although not because of deafness. My middle son is hearing impaired, but his loss is mid-moderate, fluctuating, and purely conductive. We sign because he has other craniofacial issues that cause oral motor problems, and he also has apraxia (a neurological condition affecting his motor planning).

Sign has been wonderful for us!! His signing vocabulary is much higher than his verbal, especially when you take into account articulation and intelligibility. He attends a public school with an interpreter, and it's working out well. I do wish we could have him at a school with other signing peers, but the School for the Deaf is over an hour away, and our district is refusing to send him to a nearby district with other ASL using students. Unfortunately, because he is not medically deaf, we don't have the ammunition to fight the placement (although we're trying anyway!)

[~cassie]

Our 34 mth old is what we like to call a "hearing-deaf child" lol. He was born with bilateral severe to profound hearing loss due to Auditory Neuropathy. He hears with bilateral cochlear implants. He does use some sign but mainly as a bridge to spoken language. I want him fully verbal but having a base of ASL in case he wants to spend time with the deaf community as well as for those times when his "ears" are off, like bath/swim time. He still has at least 9-12 mth delay in both receptive and expressive language but he does very well!

[Cinder]

None of my kids are deaf but Kincaid has an auditory processing disorder. He was also very cognitively delayed for the first 3 years of his life(he has caught up now!!!), and no matter how hard we tried he never picked up on ESL or PECS. Now at 6 it is obvious to everyone that he reads lips more so than he hears, if he can't see you talking, he doesn't know what you said. He has a diagnosis of global dyspraxia as well and has horrid articulation.

Travis has failed all of his hearing tests thus far...but it's obvious that he can hear something cause if we tell another kid to go get xyz, he will do it instead. He has to do a hearing test while under to see how is his brain is reacting to sounds...but the most likely diagnosis is an auditory processing disorder just like his brother. He has 1 word (water) and about 30 signs, he is picking up on signs really well, which is very relieving for us...he still doesn't "get" the concept of communication though... He also has an autism diagnosis.

[hdirks]

My 13 month old is profoundly deaf. Actually getting bilateral CI in two weeks!!! We are working on ASL but struggling a bit. I want her to be able to sign as well as speak so she can decide for herself later on what she wants. It's definitely been an experience. Her deafness is not genetic. Noone in either of our families have ever had hearing loss. Hers was caused from her traumatic birth (vacuum extraction) which also has caused her other issues that are still undiagnosed.

[fairejour]

My daughter is Deaf with a progressive loss. She also had birth trauma/NICU meds, and that caused her loss. She started losing her hearing at 15 months, received her hearing aids at 20 months. She has ASL as her first language, as she could not access spoken language with her aids. She received her first cochlear implant at age 5. She is now learning spoken language, but we continue to use ASL and she is a part of the Deaf community as well. She will be recieving her second implant in July. She currently attends an oral deaf school, but ASL is her first language.

[Thistles_in_Snow]

My 11-month-old has a mild-to-moderate hearing impairment in both ears. With hearing aids, she hears in the normal range. So we sign a little bit, but not more than we did with her normally-hearing sister.

It has been a struggle keeping those hearing aids in her ears! She just loves to grab them out and I just keep putting them back in. She uses one word "hi!" and she hisses like a cat (because sadly this is a sound she hears a lot from the cat). Other than that, she uses a few signs -- milk, all done, daddy.

She just started walking so her attention has really been focused on her motor skills. But now that she's got the hang of that, her babbling has exploded!

[cedoreilly]

My DD is profoundly deaf in her right ear (waardenburg syndrom). She currently get resource room services. How much of it is because of her hearing and how much of it is really other stuff is hard to tell. With help down there, she is reading on grade level!

The average person looking at her can not tell she has hearing loss since she hears so well in her "good" ear. She does have issues, though, paying attention and function in a large noisy classroom.