schooling with hearing drops

September 28, 2002

You and others on this day's posting ask the same questions I asked. Each

time our daughter's hearing dropped it was like being kicked all over again,

sometimes worse the second and third time. Each time we questioned whether

special schooling was needed, if we should move, etc. Two things I can

offer:

1. If you like the oral approach, your son can succeed with it even if he

loses all or most of his hearing. Just keep getting good auditory verbal

training.

2. There are technologies to help with almost every level of hearing loss.

Our daughter just got a cochlear implant as a high schooler and now we get

to watch her hearing ability COME BACK bit by bit as she learns to listen

with it (she still has the same loss but the CI helps her really hear). For

us the implant was our safety net, something we could go to if she lost it

all.

And now our experience: She stayed in public school with a few more services

each year or two (e.g. in elementary school she had FM plus teacher facing

her; in middle school in addition to FM she took notes on a computer so she

could lip-read the teacher while note taking, in early high school she had

typists and then wonder of wonders, we discovered CART=classroom captioning

through which she could get everything. the one thing I recommend is CART

when they start high school.

So we stayed in public school and she was the only hearing impaired one in

the school. It worked for us. Others go to programs especially for the deaf.

>>>>I'm wondering if this is going to keep happening. And though we know we

can all deal with the fact that he may be " completely " deaf someday, I am

wondering if we should start teaching him sign language now, just in case.

Or am I jumping the gun?<<

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