Hearing Families

There is a lot of research that demonstrates how the mother’s role is crucial in the development of children with hearing loss. This should not come as a big surprise – mothers are unarguably very important in the lives of ALL children, with hearing loss and without hearing loss. There is also a significant amount of research about maternal stress and its impact on children with hearing loss. This means that mothers of children with hearing loss often suffer from feelings of stress – above and beyond the normal stresses of day-to-day living and raising children (which can be many!).

But, there is too much pressure being put on mothers. The more mothers talk to their children, the better their language skills will be. The more mothers are involved in their children’s intervention, the better the outcomes will be. A search of “mothers” and “deaf” turned up 221 articles, while “fathers” and “deaf” returned only 22 articles. In families where fathers are a part of the child’s life – lets start giving mom a break and even more important for children – recognizing and emphasizing the impact of fathers in kids’ development.

Fathers are very important sources of love and approval. Perhaps there is some effect of  a child feeling like its unanimous – everybody loves me and thinks I am great. The message that not “just” Mom, but also Dad enthusiastically supports and cherishes me has a great influence on a child, especially a child with a hearing loss. I think that the benefit to the child is more than just one more person on my side – but rather creates a sense of complete or total support and encouragement.

Fathers provide a different emotional perspective. I don’t believe that all men are a certain way and all women are different. But even if you do – a Dad, because he is a different person than Mom, will have a different look at the world, simply because every person looks at things a little differently. This means that if a child is having a hard time at school, with friends, or whatever, a father’s input on things will mean that the child gets the advantage of another perspective. Perhaps more essential than another source of advice is the child understanding that there are more than one way to look at a problem.

Fathers share the work. There is no question that the more language a child is exposed to, the better the child’s language outcomes will be. For children with hearing loss, it is not so simple as just talking and reading books together. But those two things – talking and reading books – have a tremendous impact on language outcomes. Fathers can be a different narrator for the child who wants to read the same book for the millionth time. Fathers are a conversational partner for the child, with a different voice, a different tone, and different speaking style. Fathers bring all of their favorite stories, jokes, ideas, and thoughts to the child’s life.

Fathers make hard decisions together with mothers. Especially at times of transition – diagnosis of hearing loss, choosing early intervention programs, choosing cochlear implant strategies, changing schools, choosing speech therapy programs – having a child with hearing loss requires parents to make serious decisions. It is very lonely and frightening to face these decisions alone. Sometimes, without thinking really, mothers jump into “get it done” mode and work very hard to find the best audiological treatment or educational program for their child. But fathers need to be involved in the decision-making process. It is very important for the child for parents to make these decisions together, since they will need to work hard to help their child accomplish all she can.

Fathers help mothers feel supported. So many research papers looked at maternal stress – how frazzled the mother was by the many challenges of raising a child with hearing loss. Some of the stress is a result of the unexpected nature of the hearing loss in many cases. No one saw this coming, who heard of a baby with hearing loss? We thought only Grandmas wear hearing aids! And some of the stress comes from the real day-to-day challenges, especially struggling to communicate with a young child with hearing loss. I think that more stress comes from feeling like too much responsibility rests on one set of shoulders. Mothers need to share all of this with fathers. It spreads out the responsibility over more shoulders and it makes all the difference in feeling lonely and overwhelmed.

Children learn from the example of two parents working together. A child with hearing loss learns from the examples around her just like all children do. It is not a good feeling for a child to think that she is one to blame for wearing out poor mom. That is too heavy a burden for any child to bear. If two parents cooperate and share the decision-making, the day-to-day doctor’s appointments and speech therapy carpools, and most important, the feeling of responsibility for the child’s care and development – it is best for the child’s sense of who they are in the family.

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Tags: children, cochlear implant, coping with stress, deaf, diagnosis, hearing loss, parenting, parents