Parent’s Perspective: Transitioning DHH children from early intervention to primary school
Tom was born deaf, he always has been deaf and that's just how our family is.
My husband and I have got a hearing loss and my two children Kayla and Keira they've got a hearing loss as well.
So we, I guess, had some inkling that there was some issues for Poppy back when she was about a year old and went to our maternal and child health nurse and she just happened to ask the question, "do you have any concerns?" and I said to her, "look she doesn't babble like my older daughter and when we're usually in the car there's a very high pitched squeal that she does," and thankfully that wonderful health nurse referred us for her to have a hearing test and so she was diagnosed at 14 months and it came as complete surprise for us.
Tom was first diagnosed with his hearing loss when he was born. He had a hearing screening test in hospital, just under two days old, and all were told was that he failed that test.
Well when Poppy was diagnosed, we were told that she had a severe hearing loss in both ears, she was further tested and she was found to have a profound loss in one ear and a severe loss in the other.
She was about 2 months old and then she had the test and pretty much straight away confirmed that she had a hearing loss.
(And who's this? Nanna. And this? Jack.)
It was very upsetting when Tom was diagnosed.
Oh and what about the other colour with it, what colour? It's blue, clever boy.
It was a lot it was very overwhelming in the beginning.
My husband actually quite upset about it. I was more like "oh here we go again."
And we got him fully diagnosed at one month old. So it was then that we found out that he had a moderate to severe hearing loss, which was quite overwhelming.
So when then, I guess, had the conversation about cochlear implants which was very hard,
When Tom got to the age where we had to start deciding which school to send him to, it was quite a nervous time.
(Good boy Tom … he likes to make spaceships. Excellent look at that)
I have an older child, Jack, who's two years older than Tom, so I really wanted to send Jack to a school where I knew that Tom could follow and the boys could go schooling together.
Well you talk about choices… there's not a lot of choices.
But fortunately for us because of our hearing loss and our experience we knew who to contact.
(Dip, lip, not, pot…Good work)
Kayla is in grade 6 and Keira is in Prep.
Initially for Kayla, my eldest, we put her into a local school for three years,
We looked at many schools, both main stream, catholic schools and private.
We needed to gather a lot of information in order to make the right decision about which school that we chose. We needed to do a lot of homework ourselves. We needed to go and visit schools, to walk in the door, open up a conversation with Principals and get a feel for the school, generally just to see how it was operating day to day – you could really imagine how your child would fit into that environment and that's what really helped us make the decision of where we really saw Tom and where we thought he'd be most comfortable and where he'd receive everything that he needed to keep up at school.
The teacher has to wear the transmitter and the children have like a micro-link connected to either their cochlear implant or hearing aid and they all sync together so when the teacher's talking it directly goes to their hearing aid so they can hear directly and there's no interference from other areas and background noise and stuff.
Poppy is now six years old, so when we were making a decision for Poppy in regards to schools we really looked all over Melbourne.
I went to visit a couple of times, um, I went into the classroom.
It was difficult because we also have an older daughter who's hearing, so we were trying to make decisions regarding her schooling but also with Poppy in mind. So at the time Poppy was only about two years old, so we were trying to make these decision for what we anticipated her needs would be in x number of years time.
Would you like some biscuits 'darl' with cheese? Bikkes, cheese and tomato. Ok sounds good.
When it was time to decide which school we went to for Tom, we didn't let location hold us back. We investigated eight schools in our local area and just weren't comfortable with any of the options that were around us. We chose a school that was just under an hour away because simply that was, what we saw in our eyes as the best option.
So when deciding on schools we made visits to many schools right across Melbourne, spoke to parents, and I found speaking to parents really invaluable -- that was huge in our decision making. So we were prepared to move if we needed to, if we could see that a school was clearly going to be better for her we would have moved.
I suppose very soon we'll have to start thinking about where Tom will go to secondary school because, again, big brother Jack is two years ahead of him. Ideally we'd like to keep them together.
We have certainly been considering secondary school, I guess we're almost at the same place as we were making the decision about primary school because we're now looking for our older hearing daughter with of course Poppy in mind.
Hopes for Poppy… is that she continues to be the outgoing person that she has been since, I would say, almost day one.
I really hope that Tom just grows up to be a confident man. I also do worry sometimes, with Tom being left behind or missing out on experiences because of his hearing loss.
Its up to … like Kayla, she's old enough to make her own decisions – she has a lot of hearing friends as well who are quite embracing and accepting of her hearing loss.
When you come to the time when you need to choose a school for your deaf child, I think that you just need to get out there and walk into schools and experience them for yourself. I don't think that you can visit too many schools. The more you see the more you have to compare, and to work out which place is the right place for your child.
Um, go with your gut feeling, but also be open minded about it. And make sure they have the best of everything.
I do not like them in a hat, I do not like them with a mat.
Do some research. Um, go to different organisations, ask questions, lots of questions. Try it out. It's ok if you make a mistake, or it didn't work out, that's ok.
