If your child has hearing loss, there are some things he would like you to know to put your heart at ease. We, children, know how much our hearing loss scares and hurts you, mothers. Don’t doubt that. Seeing your suffering makes us hold in our feelings, silence our pain, fears, and insecurities. This post is dedicated to mothers. Since my mother has already passed away, I’m telling you things I wish I had said to her. The ultimate challenge of hearing loss is communication—and it starts at home, between mothers and children.

10 things your DEAF KID wants you to know

1. I know that hearing aids are expensive and I care about them
2. I know you’re afraid I’ll be bullied
3. I know you’d prefer I didn’t need hearing aids
4. I know it’s tiring to repeat things
5. I know I’m annoying when I don’t want to use my hearing aids
6. I know you think a lot about my future
7. I know you compare me to other children
8. I know you often wonder what you did wrong
9. I know you panic that I’ll lose my hearing aids
10. I know you panic that I’ll lose my hearing aids

I know that hearing aids are expensive and I care about them

I still remember the day when my grandmother and mother found out how much my first pair of hearing aids would cost. I remember the panic they felt because they couldn’t afford them. I remember the guilt I felt because they had to take out a loan.

Your child knows the sacrifice your family had to make to help him hear. Don’t remind him of this all the time because no child is at fault for needing hearing aids. Sometimes parents don’t realize how corrosive these reminders can be.

If your child is having trouble adapting, don’t give up. There are many factors involved—from a poorly fitted hearing aid to feelings of shame and denial. Get involved in solving the problem, find the tools that will help. But don’t become the parent who only repeats how much they paid for the hearing aids and that the child is an ungrateful stubborn person for not wanting to use them.

I know you’re afraid I’ll be bullied

Mom, the worst thing you can do in your entire life is to overprotect a child, especially when they have a disability, whatever it may be. Replace the fear of bullying with frank conversations that help your child answer questions on their own. Replace the fear of bullying with clear explanations on how to deal with difficult situations to teach about hearing loss and differences if and when they happen.

From time to time, a mother writes to me reporting a bullying situation among children and wanting to resolve it between adults. Children and teenagers need to resolve things on their own—and they can, most of the time.

Parents need to get involved in building an anti-ableist future. But for that to happen, it’s necessary to break the mindset that a child with hearing loss needs to be protected from the rest of the world and spared any suffering.

He needs to be taught to resolve and defend himself. And often, the ‘attacks’ happen only in the parents’ imagination.

I know you’d prefer I didn’t need hearing aids

Well, mom. You probably learned that a person who needs assistive technology (hearing aids, glasses, a cane, a wheelchair, or anything else) is pitiful, worthy of pity, less capable, or something like that. You probably wished your child was ‘perfect,’ and then discovered his hearing loss.

It’s time to unlearn. To review concepts. To see your child as the incredible human being he is. Many parents get stuck in this fear of their child using hearing aids. They can only imagine what others will think, what others will say. You don’t control other people’s thoughts, and who cares what they think.

What matters is what YOU think. Remember: ableism starts at home! Countless parents are ableist without ever stopping to reflect on it. And countless parents justify their bad attitudes like this or project their ableism onto others.

Stop, reflect, change. Your child deserves a mother/father who teaches him to love the technology that allows him to hear better. Not a mother/father who teaches him to be ashamed of it and want to hide it.

I know it’s tiring to repeat things

I really do, mom. Communication between hearing people is fast and agile and you weren’t used to having to repeat things several times all day long. But understand that each repetition is an act of love and a huge help for your child to understand things and better develop his speech and vocabulary.

Some days you will snap, complain, and even say out loud how tiring it is to have to repeat. It will hurt your child, he will forgive you—but he will also always remember you emphasizing how his hearing loss can be irritating. Try with all your might to avoid these outbursts.

I know I’m annoying when I don’t want to use my hearing aids

But what I need most is your encouragement to use them. I need you to help me build my self-esteem and confidence every day. I need you to celebrate every hearing achievement with me. I need you to be more encouraging and less critical, mom.

I will have good days and bad days. On good days, I’ll happily wear my hearing aids because I understand how they help me and how necessary they are for my development. On bad days, when something makes me sad, I’ll give you trouble because I won’t want to wear them. And that’s when I need your help, your affection, and your guidance the most.

I know you panic that I’ll lose my hearing aids

I’m afraid too, mom. I’m afraid of losing them at school, at swimming, on the bus, in the school van. I’m afraid when I have to take them off to get in the pool—not just afraid of losing them, but afraid of not hearing and not understanding when someone talks to me or calls me. I’m afraid the dog will mistake them for food and my younger brother will mistake them for a toy.

We need to build strategies together so I can learn to take care of the hearing aids when you’re not with me. It’s a team effort. Will you help me?

I know you often wonder what you did wrong

You didn’t do anything wrong for me to have hearing loss. But you will spend your life at risk of doing something wrong because I have hearing loss.

You’ll want to put me in a protective bubble. You’ll want to hit someone because they called me deaf or made fun of me. You’ll want to solve things for me. You’ll want to build a perfect world where nothing can make me sad.

But I will grow up, mom, and I’ll have to face the real world alone. And in it, your superpowers will no longer exist. What I need most is your help to fly on my own.

I know you’ve cried in secret

Crying now and then is good. It’s a relief. But you don’t need to do this, mom. When you feel like crying, hug me, play with me. Talk to me. Frank conversations are the most necessary, the ones that open all the important paths.

I know you compare me to other children

Everyone does this, mom. But remember to overcome this temptation because every case of hearing loss is unique. Every hearing loss is unique. And the neighbor’s grass sometimes seems greener, but you probably won’t know the joint effort it took to make it look greener.

Forget about others. Focus on me. Understand that my timing will be different from other children, that my strengths and difficulties will be different too. Don’t suffer in advance and seek professional help to deal with your anxiety and anguish. Otherwise, you’ll project them onto me and this will harm me a lot.

I know you think a lot about my future

Mommy, let’s live in the present? Life happens here and now, not ten or twenty years from now. I will have to find my own way, and I know you will help me in this search. But it’s not by suffering in advance or wanting to build a future that hasn’t arrived yet—and that may be something that won’t even make sense to me later—that you will solve anything.

Calm down. We are in this together. Hearing loss will be with me throughout my life. If we don’t learn to deal with the challenges it brings me in the best way TODAY, tomorrow will be much harder.

ANY QUESTIONS?

Paula Pfeifer is a brazilian deaf writer, a Social Scientist, content strategist, speaker and consultant. She is also a accessibility and disability advocate. She lives in Rio de Janeiro with her husband – Dr. Luciano Moreira, ENT fully focused on hearing loss and hearing surgeries – and has a son, Lucas. Two of her books about hearing loss, hearing aids and cochlear implants can be found in english and spanish in Kindle. Support Paula Pfeifer’s work.  You can support here!

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