Hesperian Health Guides
Words to the Family of a Child with Hearing Loss
HealthWiki > Disabled Village Children > Chapter 31: Hearing Loss and Communication > Words to the Family of a Child with Hearing Loss
If there is a chance for your child to go away to a school for children with hearing loss, if it seems right, try to let him go. Children with hearing loss learn in different ways than other children. The school may provide more opportunities. However, if your child is doing well at the village school, has a teacher who understands and helps him, and has many friends, he might do better there. Help him understand the choices and see what he thinks would be best. Be sure he knows he has a loving family to come home to.
After they finish school, your child can do many different kinds of work. People with hearing loss have become accountants, teachers, lawyers, farmers, health workers, clerks, skilled craftsworkers, and doctors. It is worth the effort to see that children and adults with hearing loss get training and find work.
Be careful that after he has grown up, you do not treat him as a child. He might seem younger than his age. But the best way to help him grow up is to expect him to grow up.
When people with hearing loss grow old enough to marry, they often choose to marry someone who also has hearing loss, for they can understand each other better. They can have children, and raise them well. Parents with hearing loss often have children who can hear. These children will learn spoken language from hearing family, neighbors, the radio, TV, and in school.
Most children with hearing loss can do everything like other children except hear. When you discover the method your child communicates in best, use it all the time to help them be included in your family and community and to succeed in life.