Imagine not being able to hear....If you are a hearing person, it is very difficult to imagine what it must be like to be hearing impaired… When we first went to the Carel du Toit Centre in February 1990, 23 years ago, Willem and I were asked to sit and watch a DVD before our interview, to find out if we wanted to follow the program….We watched the DVD and part of the film was in silence, which was very difficult to follow. Afterwards some words, sub titles, came up on the screen which explained this was how a deaf person would watch the film….in silence, as they could not hear the sound….To find out what this is like for them, all you need to do is watch a film without the volume on, this way you can find out what it must be like for them! When we found out Hughan was profoundly deaf, it was devastating at first. You can’t see deafness and the idea of Hughan not being able to hear us was impossible. As his mother, I just wanted to fix what was wrong and having to come to terms with him not being able to hear us was unimaginable. By chance, Willem and I watched a documentary in Helen Keller (please see film posted on 12th May), who was profoundly deaf and blind. She learnt her first word ‘water’ when she was about 7 years old. After watching the documentary on all of her achievements during her life, we decided there was no feeling sorry for ourselves and it was up to us to teach Hughan. All we ever wanted was one day he could leave home and lead a life on his own. As a parent or guardian of a deaf child, they are utterly reliant on you helping them with their lip-reading and communication skills. Whether you choose to follow a speech or signing program to teach them. We chose a program we felt comfortable with. We started to sign to Hughan when he was 14 months old until he was 18 months old, when we chose a speech only program to follow. We believed 100% in what we were being taught would help Hughan and had the desire to help him every moment of every day. The little thing we did every day and the choices we have made to help him over the last 23 years have had a huge impact on his life and have been life changing. We started building Hughan’s lip-reading and communication skills one word at a time, followed by a short sentence. We did this until he was about 6 years old when he started extending his short sentences using the words like….‘and’, ‘but’ and ‘because’. Hughan was a candidate for the cochlear implant and in 1992 he was the 10th child in Cape Town to receive the implant. Not all people are candidates for the implant. It was still in its pioneer stage and England and other parts of the word had not started doing them yet. If it did not help Hughan we would have had to start signing to him as he was unable to hear most speech sounds with his hearing aids. We moved to Cape Town so Hughan could be taught to use the equipment. This also took time! Take time to help a hearing impaired person. Help them and learn to communicate with them. This is just like learning a new language. Helping parents with hearing impaired children through our own experience… Please visit our page…..
Posted on: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 08:03:42 +0000
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