Getting Kids with Hearing Loss Ready for the First Day of School

The first day of school is both exciting and stressful for many kids. There is so much anticipation and anxiety and everyone wants the first day to go well. Here are a few tips to make sure that the first day goes smoothly: Put brand new batteries in cochlear implants or hearing aids. Nobody needs [...]

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Volunteering: A Win for Everyone

Gabriel’s teacher called his parents in for a meeting. Mr. Michaels was concerned that Gabriel was starting to view himself as a victim. He explained to Gabriel’s parents that recently, when challenges came up in class, Gabriel would sigh and mutter that “its too hard for a kid with hearing loss anyway, what is the [...]

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All preschool programs are not created equal

Susan Nittrouer and Lisa Burton set out to study the speech perception and language processing of children the hearing loss. The collected a group of 8-to-10 year old children with hearing loss who were all in mainstream elementary schools and had always used oral language. When they compared the outcomes to a comparison group of [...]

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High Expectations and Realistic Situations: A New Motto

There is a very tender, delicate balancing act that parents of children with hearing loss find themselves in. It is really a fundamental issue that lies beneath the surface of so many of the other issues that come up parenting children with hearing loss – so lets address it head on: On the one hand [...]

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“ I love you so much but you need to pick up your dirty clothes off the floor:” A challenge for 2011

This sentence is probably the parenting message that goes through my mind the most often! I am not sure why my children do not ever seem to pick up their dirty clothes without me nagging and I am not sure why it drives me so absolutely crazy. But they don’t and it does. While preparing [...]

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Why Fathers are So Important for Kids with Hearing Loss

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 [...]

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No, Spanish is Not the Same as Greek: Responses to Readers

A reader wrote: “I do want to point out that there are many Spanish or other kind of family growing up in America and the Spanish/Mexican kids speak Spanish with their parents and family and have to go to school and use ENGLISH. Is that any different??” Yes, dear reader, I think it is.  As [...]

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Why don’t you want to go to the Halloween/Christmas/Hannuka/any other holiday/birthday/anniversary/any other kind of party – everyone else is going!?

Being a guest at a party is not supposed to be too stressful. Yes, some parties are obligations that you might not feel so enthusiastic about. Yes, you need to get dressed appropriately, you might need to bring a gift, and you need to arrive on time but not too early, but attending a party [...]

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“You lost WHAT?!?! Handling the loss of hearing hardware without losing your mind

If I had to identify the worst moments in my experience parenting a child with hearing loss, they must be the day the FM boot fell off of his hearing aid during a little league baseball game. This part was already a replacement so it was not insured. I’ll get sick  even now if I [...]

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Questions and Suggestions from Family and Friends about Your Baby with Hearing Loss

“We found out three months ago that our baby is deaf. We are still taking her to follow-up appointments and trying to sort out exactly what she needs. We are also slowly getting over the shock of it all – it was a perfectly normal pregnancy and no one in our family has a hearing [...]

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