Understanding your emotions

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HealthWiki > Helping Children Who Are Deaf > Chapter 14: Support for parents and caregivers > Understanding your emotions

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In this chapter:

 

In this chapter:

Parents, other family members, and caregivers will react to the emotions they feel in different ways. It is best to let each person feel the emotions in his or her own way, without judgment.

Touli feels angry that the baby is deaf, but I feel sad all the time.

Emotions such as worry, loneliness, or fear will become less strong as time passes. You will come to realize that a child who cannot hear well has the same needs for love, affection, discipline, and learning as other children.

What if she can't learn like the other children?

These emotions will return to you at important times in your child's life, like when she starts school. This does not mean something is wrong. It just means you are going through another period of adapting to her deafness.

These strong emotions can help you take action to make your child's life better. For example, loneliness may encourage you to reach out to deaf adults in your community or to other families with deaf children. Anger may give you energy to help organize other parents to persuade the government to provide education for deaf children.

When you accept that your child cannot hear well, you can begin to love your child as she is. And, like all children, she will give you much support, pleasure, and joy!

Look at how much fun they are having! How did I ever think Delphine would be a burden to our family?